Introducing Safari Technology Preview ⇥ webkit.org

Think WebKit nightlies, but with fewer bizarre bugs and much iCloud-ier. Ricky Mondello writing on the official WebKit blog:

Safari Technology Preview is a standalone application that can be used side-by-side with Safari or other web browsers, making it easy to compare behaviors between them. Besides having the latest web features and bug fixes from WebKit, Safari Technology Preview includes the latest improvements to Web Inspector, which you can use to develop and debug your websites. Updates for Safari Technology Preview will be available every two weeks through the Updates pane of the Mac App Store. […]

Unlike the nightlies, Safari Technology Preview supports the full set of iCloud-based Safari features, including iCloud History and iCloud Tabs. And we’ll use the time between Safari Technology Preview releases to curate and test updates to a point where we think developers will find it practical to use as their primary browser.

I stopped using WebKit nightlies after Safari got a bunch of iCloud-specific things — especially iCloud Keychain — but this sounds great. Looking forward to using this regularly, because I need less stability and more purple icons in my life.

By the way, I’d just like to point to the Mac App Store review guidelines:

2.6 Apps that are “beta”, “demo”, “trial”, or “test” versions will be rejected

Just in case you thought you might be able to get away with this, as a third-party developer. Not that you did, of course.

Interestingly, the app is available via the web, but updates are delivered through the Mac App Store. I always wondered what it would be like if third-party developers didn’t have to use frameworks like Sparkle and could instead pipe their updates through Apple’s official software update channels.

Update: If you’re downloading this, remember to set your preferences as you’d like them and add your extensions — the tech preview doesn’t migrate anything from Safari. The Develop menu is, of course, switched on by default.