The WPE team released WPE WebKit 2.44 a few weeks ago. Let’s have a look at the most significant changes to the port for this release cycle.
WebKit’s DisplayLink support
DisplayLink is a WebCore feature that improves resource utilization and improves synchronization with vertical screen retrace. 2.44 adds an implementation of this feature for the WPE port that improves rendering performance.
Improved hardware-acceleration video decoding and rendering
When WebKit is using GStreamer 1.24 or newer, video playback can use the new support for DRM modifiers in the DMA-BUF sink. This improves video decoding and rendering, as it allows for zero-copy negotiation with the video decoders.
WebCodec API supported
WPE now supports the WebCodecs API, which allows web developers low-level access to video frames and audio chunks, a feature of importance for multimedia applications that need finer grain control over what gets played on the browser.
Other noteworthy changes
- Support for the JPEG2000 image format has been removed. WebKit was the only major engine still supporting the format, which these days is rarely used. As a consequence, OpenJPEG is no longer a dependency. JPEG2000 should not be confused with JPEG-XL, which is still supported.
- Support usage of libbacktrace, enabled by default at build time. This library provides quality stacktraces that can help developers and deployers more efficiently debug crashes in WPE-powered browsers.
- Many memory and stability improvements, particularly on the multimedia backends.
For a complete list of changes, please check the releases page.
Claudio is long-time WebKit contributor from Igalia, working in different areas of WebKit, WPE, and the stack around it.