WebKitGTK+ 2.12 Turns On The FTL B3 JIT, Windowless Wayland Plugins

Written by Michael Larabel in GNOME on 22 March 2016 at 09:00 AM EDT. 2 Comments
GNOME
WebKitGTK+ 2.12 is all ready for this week's GNOME 3.20 release.

Carlos Garcia Campos of Igalia has provided a nice overview of the changes and new features found in this version of WebKitGTK+, the browser layout engine used by some GNOME components.

Among the highlights are now making use of WebKit's FTL JIT as the JavaScript compiler (in fact, the new FTL B3 JIT that no longer makes use of LLVM) to make for faster JavaScript, faster performance due to GLib main loop changes, overlay scrollbars support, mandatory NetworkProcess, and support for NPAPI plug-ins in Wayland. However, due to technical limitations, the NPAPI plugin support on Wayland is limited to windowless plugins with no UI. Those windowless plugins now will also work too with any other non-X11 windowing system.

Those interested in more details on WebKitGTK+ 2.12 ahead of tomorrow's GNOME 3.20 release can find out all of the good stuff via this blog post.
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