New rendering engine for Web Area

4D is updating its internal component for embedded Web Area objects for the most up-to-date and well-maintained existing rendering engine. As we want to durably support the state of the art in HTML and JavaScript technology, we are changing to Blink (also used in Google Chrome) for the Web Area for all 4D 64-bit versions.

Blink is providing 4D web area with several benefits:

• Internally runs in multi-process
• Improved html5 conformance and stability (JavaScript and plugins run in a separate process)
• Support for Retina displays
• Same rendering and behavior on macOs and Windows

Switching to Blink

The switch to the Blink framework requires no code change for your application and has strictly no impact in the Web area usages; all commands and events for embedded Web Areas work the same as before, except few preferences which are not supported and are ignored. Just note that moving to Blink may introduce a few minor behavior differences as if you were displaying your web page using different browsers.

HTML 5 Support

Compare by yourself: The online tool HTML5test allows to see how well the browser used supports the HTML5 standard. While the versions using WebKit scores 352 points, 4D v16 64-bit using Blink reaches 492 points!

For more details about the new rendering engine for embedded Web Area, please refer to the “Using Blink” section of the Web Area article in doc center.