Add a blog post about the 2.44 release (#220)

blog/2024-05-08-wpewebkit-2.44.md

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+title: "WPE WebKit 2.44 highlights"
+author: csaavedra
+permalink: /blog/2024-wpewebkit-2.44.html
+preview: The WPE team released WPE WebKit 2.44 a few weeks ago. Let's have a look at the most significant changes to the port for this release cycle.
+thumbnail: /assets/img/logo-black.svg
+---
+The WPE team released WPE WebKit 2.44 a few weeks ago. Let's have a look at the most significant changes to the port for this release cycle.
+
+## WebKit's DisplayLink support
+
+DisplayLink is a WebCore feature that improves resource utilization and improves synchronization with vertical screen retrace. 2.44 adds an implementation of this feature for the WPE port that improves rendering performance.
+
+## Improved hardware-acceleration video decoding and rendering
+
+When WebKit is using GStreamer 1.24 or newer, video playback can use the new support for DRM modifiers in the DMA-BUF sink. This improves video decoding and rendering, as it allows for zero-copy negotiation with the video decoders.
+
+## WebCodec API supported
+
+WPE now supports the [WebCodecs API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebCodecs_API), which allows web developers low-level access to video frames and audio chunks, a feature of importance for multimedia applications that need finer grain control over what gets played on the browser.
+
+## Other noteworthy changes
+
+* Support for the JPEG2000 image format has been removed. WebKit was the only major engine still supporting the format, which these days is rarely used. As a consequence, OpenJPEG is no longer a dependency. JPEG2000 should not be confused with JPEG-XL, which is still supported.
+* Support usage of libbacktrace, enabled by default at build time. This library provides quality stacktraces that can help developers and deployers more efficiently debug crashes in WPE-powered browsers.
+* Many memory and stability improvements, particularly on the multimedia backends.
+
+For a complete list of changes, please check the [releases page](https://wpewebkit.org/release/).