Running Safari using Webkit Nightly Build(Windows)

We are all very excited about the beta release of Safari for Windows, but it is very buggy right now. This is even worse for Non-English users, such as we Chinese. The current beta version 3.01 doesn't support Chinese language rendering. Now I will tell you how to solve it partially using Webkit Nightly Build

For those who don't know what Webkit is, here is a general idea: Webkit is the rendering engine of Safari. Apple has made it opensouce, so that developers from the community can contribute to it.

By update your Safari webkit to the latest nightly build, you can benefit from the  latest improvement, but of course you are at a risk of suffering new bugs as well. I have just update my Webkit to the latest(r23540), the very first improvement i can see is that now i can view Chinese websites, sadly, I still cannot imput Chinese. But who knows, maybe tomorrow the nightly build will solve this!

Here is the process of update your Webkit to the Nightly build:

1. download the Webkit Nightly Build  for Windows Here

2. Extract it somewhere, all files should be under a folder called "WebKit-r23540', the number varies on your nightly build version.

3. Go to your Program File/Safari folder, create a new folder called "New"

4. Copy the Webkit.dll from "WebKit-r23540" to the "New" folder.

5.  While browsing the folder Program Files/Safari, right click and choose "new">"shortcut". For the "Location", put 

 

%PROGRAMFILES%\Safari\Safari.exe /frameworkPath:"%PROGRAMFILES%\Safari\New"

 

For the "Name", just leave it as default.(Safari.exe).

6. Inside the "Webkit-r23540" folder, there should be a folder called"Webkit.resources", copy everything there to the "Webkit.resources" folder under your "Safari" folder. 

7. Done. Now you can double click the Safari.exe shorcut to launch Safari with the latest Webkit build. You can duplicate the shortcut wherever you like.

Note: Dont replace the original "Webkit.dll" under your Safari folder! It will ruin your Safari app and you have to reinstall it again. 

8. In order to render Chinese font properly, you'd better change the "Encoding" to "simplified Chinese". "Edit">"Preferrences">"Appearences" 

If you find there is new Webkit Build over the Webkit website and you want to update further, the only thing you need to do is to extract the latest "Webkit.dll" and replace the one in "New" with the new one.