WebKitGTK 2.46 Uses Skia Rather Than Cairo, More CPU/GPU Optimizations To Come

Igalia open-source developer Carlos Garcia Campos has written a new blog post to outline recent graphics improvements found in WebKitGTK 2.46 and WPEWebKit 2.46. Most notable with the new stable release is using the Skia library rather than Cairo as the 2D graphics renderer. There are also other graphics improvements and more enhancements to come.

Carlos noted that with WebKitGTK/WPEWebKit they are now using Skia rather than Cairo for 2D graphics rendering. The Skia GPU-based rendering is the default but there is also CPU rendering support. Skia as a reminder is the 2D graphics library developed by Google and used by Chrome, Chrome OS, Flutter, and many other projects. The shift of WebKitGTK to Skia was talked about earlier in the year.

WebKitGTK/WPEWebKit should also now have a better experience on HiDPI displays, the 2D canvas can be accelerated independently of whether the CPU or GPU is used for painting layers, CSS filters are now implemented using Skia APIs, native support for color spaces with Skia, enhanced font rendering, better damage tracking, and more.

Carlos ended his blog post with:

"This is just the beginning, we are already working on changes that will allow us to make a better use of both the GPU and CPU for the best performance. We have also plans to do other changes in the graphics architecture to improve synchronization, latency and security. Now that we have adopted sysprof for profiling, we are also working on improvements and new tools."

Exciting times ahead.