Webkit Flaws? Why shouldn't Webkit be used as a baseline for HTML/CSS development?

Question

I have started using Safari as a baseline for all of my web development projects, then using workarounds where appropriate for issues with other (mostly older) browsers. As far as I understand, Webkit is the most standards compliant layout engine available right now (am I wrong?), and it appears to be "leading the pack," so to speak, with HTML5/CSS3 support.

So I'm wondering what I'm missing (if anything), as long as i implement graceful degradation/progressive enhancement why shouldn't Webkit be used as a baseline? Does webkit have any serious design flaws that I'm not aware of?

Answer 1

If you are designing for HTML5 you may want to use this site (http://www.html5test.com/) and compare various browsers, and decide which one has the features you want to use, or best supports it, then have graceful degradation for other browsers.

If you want Acid3 compliance, then do the same with this site: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid3/

My baseline tends to be Firefox, but that is because I am trying to use the latest version of Javascript, but it depends on what you are trying to use, and what you are willing to try to work around.

There are other tests, for various standards, so determine which ones are most important, and that will help you determine the baseline to use.

Answer 2

WebKit is certainly very good at marketing, but Gecko, Presto (Opera) and WebKit really aren't too far apart in standards support. Nowadays, even IE is getting pretty good, though they have several years of doing nothing to compensate for.

I would suggest using the relevant standards as a baseline, and use several browsers during development, so as not to focus yourself on WebKit-specific features too much.