WebKit nightly builds now offer Gmail rich text
Anthony Baker emails to tell me that the new nightly builds of WebKit 
(which will be used for Safari 3.0) have fixed the WYSIWYG form editing problem that bedevils users of current Safari versions.
This means, he says, that “you can now hit Gmail and get the same kinds of rich-text editing capability provided to IE, FF and other browsers. You can also access Google Docs.”
And it’s true. Using Safari 2.0.4 (419.3) the formatting bar in Gmail’s basic HTML view doesn’t appear:
But WebKit displays the HTML formatting bar in all its glory (as it also does in Google Docs):
Not only that but some basic formatting keyboard shortcuts work too. So ⌘B and ⌘I toggle bold and italic text, making it easier for die-hard keyboard users to format their emails without fingers leaving the keyboard.
Not all the shortcuts work though. Tab+Enter doesn’t send a message and ⌘U doesn’t produce underlined text.
The latest beta of the much-hyped Desktop client for Gmail, MailPlane which I have been fooling around with for a few days also offers the option to use WebKit behind the scenes to give users this added functionality (but that’s a topic for another longer post.)
WebKit scolds you for daring to use extensions, but that’s a small price to pay for a user in love with Gmail’s HTML features.
[Thanks, Anthony!]
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Tags: Apple Mail, formatting, GMAIL, Google, HTML, mail.app, mailplane, Safari, web forms, WebKit
April 27th, 2007 at 12:33 am
My pleasure, Tim.
Also: FWIW, Google Docs works in Webkit, too. Haven’t tested all the features, but it did render everything very, very fast.
Additional Gmail item: Their new “Forward/Reply” pull-down menu still doesn’t show up in Webkit, even though the rich text editing menu does by default. Wonder if that’s something on their end versus functionality missing in Safari. We’ll see…
April 27th, 2007 at 1:47 am
I hope it soon gets integrated with OmniWeb. This will be one fewer reason to launch Firefox ;-)
April 27th, 2007 at 6:54 am
Well, the two things I wonder are:
Will they ever support the chat feature?
and
Will they roll these features into an update for 10.4.x?
April 27th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Hi,
Pardon my ignorance, but how do you install this thing. I have tried Inputmanagers, internet plugins and no joy. Thanks for your respond.
April 27th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Quirilio, just download the latest disk image from the Nightly Builds web site
, install it and run it like a normal browser.
WebKit has a gold rim instead of Safari’s silver one, so you can always tell at a glance which one you are using it. If you like it, you can even set it as the default browser in Safari’s Preferences.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Hi – does this mean that it will also work with WordPress WYSIWYG post editing functions?
Thanks!
April 28th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Does that mean that WYSIWYG editing also works in WordPress, Yahoo Mail and all the other services which still force you to use Firefox if you would like visual WYSIWYG editing…?!? I love my Safari, but that functionality is so overdue by now, I sure hope it will show up soon…!
April 28th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Actually, Gmail’s rich text options already work with OmniWeb. (OmniWeb uses a later version of WebKit than Safari.)
April 28th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Gmail may work with current OmniWeb, but not Google Spreadsheets. This is why I’m eager to see it incorporated.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Hmh, I downloaded the latest nightly and tried it…but it just kept crashing on launch, messed up my original Safari and didn’t show any real difference with most WYSIWYG editors…!?! :(
Too bad…I really, really keep hoping for some major improvements though…
April 29th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Mile, That is probably because you have a SIMBL installed, like maybe acidsearch or saft or some other safari enhancer. As it says on the webkit site, these will cause the nightly to crash….
April 29th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Okay, I guess it’s my mistake then…! Thanks for the info, I must have missed that…
Anyway, I guess I’ll still wait for some kind of “official” update or so…
May 12th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Support for WordPress’s blog editor is coming, they use TinyMCE, whose latest sources work in Safari.
May 17th, 2007 at 6:04 am
I just tried and tested this bad boy out on WordPress.
Although Webkit loads no worries, which was previously a problem when running extensions like SAFT and Safari Stand, there is still unfortunately no RTE in WordPress :(
Hopefully this will get fixed soon!