I'm interested in creating a Webkit-based browser that works across platforms, but I've run into some issues. I found out that Windows forks of Webkit can be pretty buggy and that the Webkit2 API seems unsupported on Windows (is it available on Mac?). I also noticed that Microsoft has some patched builds of the latest Webkit sources available through Playwright, and I'm wondering if I should build from those or just clone the official Webkit sources and compile on Windows. Could anyone help clarify the best approach here? Also, how do I go about building the version from Playwright?
2 Answers
You can indeed build WebKit on Windows using the WinCairo port. However, even though it has a multi-process "WebKit2" layer, it doesn’t provide a stable embedding API on Windows. Playwright is more of a patched test runner and might not be practical for building a full browser. If you're looking to create a cross-platform app, you may have to deal with different APIs for macOS (WKWebView), Linux (WebKitGTK), and Windows (WinCairo). If you're really aiming for one unified API across platforms, you might want to consider Chromium through CEF or use the system webviews instead.
On macOS, the multi-process layer is indeed available, which makes things simpler there. However, with Playwright, it seems like you're dealing with a patched version of the minibrowser, and it doesn’t really give you an embeddable version of the engine. If you’re keen on sticking with Webkit instead of Blink (which most browsers use now), you're going to face some challenges. It might be worth checking out what others have done with Webkit-based projects if you're determined to go down that path.
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