Apple introduces new WebKit features in latest Safari beta builds for OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion

Apple on Thursday seeded to developers new builds of Safari for OS X 10.9 Mavericks and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion featuring new WebKit modifications including WebGL tweaks, which should see wider adoption in OS X 10.10 Yosemite and iOS 8.

Safari 7.1 for Mavericks and Safari 6.2 for Mountain Lion brings WebGL-powered 3D rendering to Apple's browser, as well as other WebKit engine features like IndexedDB, JavaScript Promises and CSS Shapes and Compositing.

Apple is asking developers testing the latest seeds to concentrate on subpixel rendering, which is now on by default for all Web content. According to the release notes, websites with in-app Web views may render differently depending on design constraints.

Additionally, the company requests focus on extension compatibility.

As for the new WebKit features, Apple notes the following:

• WebGL. Safari support for WebGL allows developers to create 3D experiences that work natively without plug-ins.
• IndexedDB. The IndexedDB API allows web developers to store structured data for web applications that work online or require large amounts of data to be cached client side.
• JavaScript Promises. Safari enables JavaScript authors to more naturally work with asynchronous programming patterns.
• CSS Shapes and Compositing. Using CSS, websites can now easily ��'ow text around images and geometry shapes, and perform image compositing operations on DOM elements.

Developers can download Safari 7.1 for Mavericks and version 6.2 for Mountain Lion via Apple's Developer Portal.