Safari 26.3 Enhances User Experience and Developer Tools
Apple has unveiled Safari 26.3, introducing a suite of enhancements aimed at improving user experience and providing developers with advanced tools.
Enhanced Fullscreen Experience for Vision Pro Users
For those utilizing Vision Pro on visionOS 26.3, Safari now automatically dims the surrounding environment when a video enters fullscreen mode. This feature is designed to minimize distractions, allowing users to concentrate fully on their content.
Introduction of Zstandard Compression
Safari 26.3 incorporates support for Zstandard (Zstd), an efficient, real-time compression algorithm developed by Meta. Zstd compresses text-based web assets before delivery to browsers and decompresses them swiftly on the device. This process reduces the workload on users’ devices and enhances browsing efficiency. Unlike Brotli, which typically requires pre-compression during the build process, Zstd’s rapid compression capabilities allow for on-the-fly processing. To utilize Zstd support, users must be running Safari 26.3 on iOS 26.3, iPadOS 26.3, visionOS 26.3, or macOS Tahoe 26.3.
Developer-Focused Enhancements
Developers will appreciate the updates to Safari’s Navigation API. The API now exposes an `AbortSignal` on `NavigateEvent`, which triggers when navigation is aborted. This addition provides a reliable method to cancel ongoing processes when navigation is interrupted, streamlining development workflows.
WebKit Improvements and Bug Fixes
The WebKit engine powering Safari 26.3 has received several bug fixes and improvements:
– CSS Enhancements:
– Resolved a style resolution loop occurring when a `position-try` box was inside a `display: none` ancestor.
– Fixed issues where anchor-positioned elements transitioning between `display: block` and `display: none` caused position jumps during animations.
– Corrected the inclusion of `fixed`-positioned boxes using `position-area` in the scrollable containing block calculation.
– Adjusted the rendering of `text-decoration: underline` when `text-box-trim` is applied to the root inline box.
– Addressed multi-column layout issues where the `widows` and `text-indent` properties caused incorrect indents in paragraphs flowing into the next column.
– Fixed display issues with CSS cursors like `move`, `all-scroll`, `ew-resize`, and `ns-resize`.
– DOM Improvements:
– Corrected timestamp handling by switching to raw touch timestamps.
– Media Updates:
– Enhanced the fullscreen button in visionOS inline video controls to visually indicate interactivity by extending the glow effect to all `button.circular` elements.
– Fixed Video Viewer mode for `iframe` videos on macOS.
These updates collectively contribute to a more robust and efficient browsing experience for users and offer developers improved tools for creating and managing web content.
