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Safari Technology Preview 109 Includes Upcoming Safari 14 Features

Apple on Thursday released Safari Technology Preview 109, the latest version of their developer preview web browser. The preview version of Apple’s popular browser offers developers and other interested users the ability to try out features that may or may not, debut in future public release versions of Safari.

The new Preview release is the first version built on the new Safari 14 update included in macOS Big Sur.

Release 109

Safari Technology Preview Release 109 is now available for download for macOS Catalina. With this release, Safari Technology Preview is now available for betas of macOS Big Sur. If you already have Safari Technology Preview installed, you can update in the Software Update pane of System Preferences on macOS. Safari Technology Preview is currently only available for Intel-based Macs.

This release includes new Safari and WebKit features that will be present in Safari 14. The following Safari 14 features are new in Safari Technology Preview 109:

Safari Web Extensions. Extensions written for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge that use the WebExtension APIs can be converted to Safari Web Extensions using Xcode 12.

Privacy Report. See the trackers that Intelligent Tracking Prevention prevented from accessing identifying information.

Improved tab management with tab previews. Tabs feature a new space-efficient design that lets you view more tabs on-screen and preview tabs to find the one you’re looking for.

Website icons in tabs. Icons in tabs are turned on by default in Safari 14.

Password breach notifications. On macOS Big Sur, Safari will notify users when one of their saved passwords in iCloud Keychain has shown up in a data breach; requesting a password change uses the well-known URL for changing passwords (https://example.com/.well-known/change-password), enabling websites to specify the page to open for updating a password.

Domain-bound codes. On macOS Big Sur, added support to Security Code AutoFill for domain-bound, one-time codes sent over SMS; in the following 2FA SMS, Safari only offers to fill the code on example.com, and no other domain.

Your Example code is 123446.

@example.com #123446

Web Authentication. Added a Web Authentication platform authenticator using Touch ID, if that capability is present (macOS Big Sur-only). Added support for PIN entry and account selection on external FIDO2 security keys.

Adobe Flash is no longer supported in Safari.

In addition to these new Safari 14 features, this release covers WebKit revisions 262502-263214 and Password Manager Resources version 10e3fca9.

Web API

  • Changed the file picker of the <input> file element to show the selection filter
  • Changed to disallow XHR+Fetch responses when a response contains invalid header values
  • Changed image referrerpolicy mutations to be considered “relevant mutations”
  • Fixed empty dataTransfer.types when handling the dragstart event
  • Fixed a case of being unable to select an item from dropdown
  • Made ReadableStream robust against user code

CSS

  • Fixed align-content to apply for a single line
  • Fixed pseudo-elements (::after) in shadow roots to animate
  • Fixed CSS custom properties for specific border properties

Web Animations

  • Fixed animating font-size values with em units

SVG

  • Fixed Document.currentScript to work for SVGScriptElements
  • Fixed multiple SVG filters unexpectedly lightening the image using linearRGB

IndexedDB

  • Added support for IDBFactory databases method

Scrolling

  • Fixed horizontally scrolling elements that are broken when revealed by toggling visibility

Layout

  • Changed to not apply the special anchor handling when the anchor content is visible after clamping
  • Fixed inserted text placeholder to vertically align to top and behave like a block-level element when it has 0 width

Media

  • Fixed a YouTube video that gets stuck after rapidly tapping on touchbar’s picture-in-picture button
  • Added a quirk to allow starting AudioContext if document was interacted

WebRTC

  • Improved SCTP cookie generation

Back-forward Cache

  • Stopped allowing pages served over HTTPS with Cache-Control: no-store into the back-forward cache

JavaScript

  • Added support for private class fields
  • Added “el” (Greek) to our maintained available locales list
  • Changed Logical Assignment to perform NamedEvaluation of anonymous functions
  • Changed JSON.stringify to throw stack overflow error
  • Changed RegExp.prototype getters to throw on cross-realm access
  • Changed super to not depend on proto
  • Fixed AsyncGenerator to await return completions
  • Made errors an own property of AggregateError instead of a prototype accessor

Editing

  • Fixed text form controls to prevent scrolling by a pixel when the value is the same length as the size
  • Fixed observing a newly displayed element inside previously observed content
  • Fixed text manipulation to exclude characters outside of the unicode private use area
  • Fixed editing to handle nested item boundary elements
  • Fixed to not re-extract elements whose children have been manipulated
  • Fixed first and last unit in a paragraph to not contain only excluded tokens

Accessibility

  • Changed <address> element to no longer map to ARIA contentinfo role

Apple Pay

  • Added new values for -apple-pay-button-type

Web Inspector

  • Changed text inputs to not spellcheck or autocomplete
  • Fixed an issue where XHRs with the same URL as the main resource were not shown in the Sources Tab
  • Improved the performance of resizing the Scope Chain panel in the details sidebar of the Sources Tab

Web Driver

  • Fixed Automation.computeElementLayout to return iframe-relative element rects when the coordinate system is “Page”
  • Fixed WebDriver on non-iOS ports that cannot perform ActionChain which has scrolling down to the element and click it

The update can be downloaded from the Safari Technology Preview website, or if the browser is already installed, it can be updated via the “Update” tab in the Mac App Store. Full release notes for the update are also available on the Safari Technology Preview website.

While the preview is intended for use by developers and advanced users, in order to provide Apple with feedback on the development of the Safari browser, it can be run side-by-side with the release version of Safari. The app doesn’t require a developer account to download and install. For more information, visit the Safari Technology Preview website.

Chris Hauk

Chris is a Senior Editor at Mactrast. He lives somewhere in the deep Southern part of America, and yes, he has to pump in both sunshine and the Internet.