WebKit Goals for 2020, Hacker News

Some things that Apple wants to work on in WebKit
- Disclaimer: no promise on dates, or that this will all ship
Audiences
- Users
- Web Developers
- Native Developers
- WebKit Developers
Users
- Performance
  - Performance Defense
    - PLT5, JetStream 2, Speedometer 2, MotionMark, RAMification, Membuster / PLUM
  - New things to measure
    - IndexedDB, Promises, back-forward, JSC API, Battery life
  - Performance Ideas
    - Media query change handling
    - No sync IPC for cookies
    - Fast for-of iteration
    - Turbo DFG
    - Async gestures
    - Fast scrolling on macOS
    - Global GC
    - Service Worker declarative routing
- Privacy
  - Address ITP bypasses
  - logged in API
  - in-app browser privacy
  - PCM with fraud prevention
- Security
  - Authentication
    - WebAuthN external authenticators (NFC / USB) on iOS
    - Device-bound auth?
  - Network Security
    - Disabling TLS 1.0 and 1.1
    - Automatic HTTPS Upgrades
    - No opener / Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy
  - JavaScript Hardening
    - JSC Fuzz-0
    - Use IsoSubspaxes for all GC objects
    - Software Verified JIT
  - WebCore Hardening
    - Achieve WebCore Fuzz-0
    - IsoHeaps for everything in WebContent
    - Automatic Smart Pointers
  - Sandbox Hardening
    - Stronger WebContent Sandbox
    - CoreIPC Fuzz-0
    - Get IOKit Out of WebContent
Web Developers
- Web Platform: Catchup
  - Graphics & Animations
    - CSS overscroll-behavior
    - WebGL 2
    - Web Animations
  - Media
    - Media Session Standard
    - MediaStream Recording
    - Picture-in-Picture API
    - Remote Playback API (ask jer)
  - DOM, JavaScript & Text
    - Async Clipboard API
    - BigInt best-possible performance with JIT layers
    - DIalog element
    - HTML enterkeyhint attribute
    - Resize Observer
    - requestIdleCallback
    - Unicode 12
- Web Platform: Innovation
  - CSS Shadow Parts
    - Stylable pieces
  - CSS ui- * font keywords (expose new system fonts, serif, monospace)
  - GenericCue (Captions besides WebVTT)
  - JS builtin modules
  - Prototype and spec for streamable fonts
  - Undo Web API
- Web Platform: Quality
  - WPT
    - CSS (writing modes, overflow, multicol…)
    - Service Workers
    - SVG
    - XHR Fetch
  - Other
    - tests 262 100% pass rate
    - WebAudio low hanging fruit
- Dev Tools
  - Improvements in every STP
    - Async stack traces for Promises
    - Stepping through Async Await
    - Network Throttling
    - Network Tab Overview time range selection
    - User Timing
    - Timeline Filmstrip
    - Improve console UI

Native Developers

Obsolete Legacy WebKit
- WKWebView API needed for migration
- Fix cookie flakiness due to multiple process pools
- WKWebView APIs for Media

WebKit Developers

Architecture Health
- Define “intent to implement” style process
- Faster Builds (finish unified builds)
- Next-gen layout for line layout
- Regression Test Debt repayment
Service & Tools Improvements
- IOSurface in Simulator
- EWS Improvements 2020
- Buildbot 2.0
- WebKit on GitHub as a project (year 1 of a multi-year project)

Q & A

What architecture changes are associated with Turbo DFG
- Open to different ideas: first will be removing the baseline, definitely a possibility of a 5th tier, first replacing baseline
Finishing unified builds: will there be a bot to verify non-unified will still operate?
- No specific plans, but a worthy idea
Native dev: WKWebView for Media Applications?
- Many apps that use WKWebView want to control how media playback works
- About control of video in a web view
How do you decide what’s important to do next?
- We look at a number of factors
- It used to be a judgement call, now we’re codifying
- We look at a number of signals
- How much dev interest?
- is there a harmful aspect?
- WPT areas are similar:
  - Most tests failing in Safari, but not in FF or Chrome
- Sometimes we use high-value websites