Web Browser???

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meridian.blue
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Web Browser???

Post by meridian.blue »

As far as the restriction regarding third party code, refer to the chart here: http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3913
The only third party app that stands a chance of making it into ROS is a web browser of some kind, but it would have to meet the requirement of being a win32 app.
The bar is set pretty high, let's see... Are you suggesting something along the lines of Amaya Browser?
http://www.w3.org/Amaya/
Ged
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Post by Ged »

Most likely something based on this engine, but with a a new GUI as Amaya uses WXWidgets IIRC.
Haos
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Post by Haos »

Interesting:
AmayaWX uses OpenGL for page rendering. This allows a better support of SVG and animations. The drawback is that Amaya is very dependent on video card's drivers, if a driver is buggy, Amaya will probably crash...

On Unix platforms, Amaya comes with the Mesa library to implement OpenGL primitives. Mesa is a software OpenGL implemetation so Amaya isn't dependent on video card drivers on Unix. If Amaya doesn't start or is very slow on Unix platforms it's something else.
This is something i possibly could even see in our trunk. Of course, only if GUI is win32 native, not wx/gtk.


@meridian.blue

Great lurking work. Please Lurk Moar.
.aart3k
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Post by .aart3k »

Was there been http://webkit.org considered?
Haos
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Post by Haos »

It doesnt even build natively on Win32, requires Cygwin... libs forked from KDE, i sense porting nightmare. Native Win32 support is a must.
Z98
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Post by Z98 »

frik85, the developer for the RosCMS, is watching the webkit win32 port. Alex Ionescu, who interned at Apple so his opinion might not be entirely unbiased, also is pushing for Webkit. But again, this is very early in the game. I wouldn't expect a serious push to begin until at least 0.4.
Haos
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Post by Haos »

Amaya doesnt work on ROS currently, partialy - it needs msvcp60, but also because of:

Code: Select all

(subsystems\win32\win32k\ntuser\hook.c:593) Not implemented: HookId 2 Global FALSE
(subsystems\win32\win32k\ntuser\hook.c:593) Not implemented: HookId 3 Global FALSE
(subsystems\win32\win32k\ntuser\hook.c:745) Invalid handle passed to NtUserUnhookWindowsHookEx
Ged
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Post by Ged »

It only needs msvcp60 if it's built with Visual C++ 6. When built via rbuild it won't have this dependancy
Haos
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Post by Haos »

Good to hear this. On the other hand, jimtabor told me that this afforepasted error is a known one.
linuxgx
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Post by linuxgx »

Even I've come to terms with the idea of a user controlled web-based application installer.
Its the simplest idea. why force applications on users.
In a way it reminds me of the linux application managers.
cppm
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Post by cppm »

Amaya looks very cool, first of all as a seriously compliant renderer, and secondly as a sane editing platform, allowing real WYSIWYG capabilities.

However it seems more like an industrial tool, far removed from the cheap and cheerful (ugly?) trident IE engine. And requires a decent graphics card, not something that should be in the base system.

I would suggest an ideal solution, for those that are still hooked on the IE interface, create one of those slim multi backend browsers with a simple IE like shell. So then users/distro makers can choose from engines such as gecko, webkit and amaya etc or even trident if it's available :|??!

That is the advantage of IE, it's simple, reasonably effective, and just there. With this slim GUI approach, one would start up 'the internet' and it one just has to download a 'plugin' for the rendering engine (atm obviously the mozilla activeX control) and away they go. In the future, distros would probably remove this step with their prefered rendering engine.

Essentially like the curent wine approach, but so you can change the rendering backend at will.

For those that want the full personal browser experience, it's still there, but the convenience of IE is still there at minimum overhead. :D
linuxgx
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Post by linuxgx »

If you must have it then I must agree that the apove approch provides the most logial solution.
meridian.blue
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Post by meridian.blue »

And requires a decent graphics card, not something that should be in the base system.
Really... I'm using a ancient NeoMagic MagicGraph 3mb adapter @ 1024x768/60hz-24bit on a Intel 400mhz w/128ram and a 64mb ramdrive and it works just fine.
slim GUI approach
Exellent!!! I also use Maxthon http://www.maxthon.com/ great idea. This approach could give the Amaya eye candy (if a Maxthon like high performance browser shell could run on a Amaya engine) while retaining muscle. Eye Candy! my favorite yummy... :wink:
cppm
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Post by cppm »

meridian.blue wrote:
And requires a decent graphics card, not something that should be in the base system.
Really... I'm using a ancient NeoMagic MagicGraph 3mb adapter @ 1024x768/60hz-24bit on a Intel 400mhz w/128ram and a 64mb ramdrive and it works just fine.
hmm maybe mine's just buggy then... actually I suspect that it's compiz interfering with the canvas, that's an issue I have with any OpenGL app atm :P either way I should imagine that rendering with OpenGL isn't the fastest solution, and ultimately any built in rendering engine would have to be usable on hardware without any specialised graphics rendering capabilities.

Also I've noticed that many pages render "inaccurately" (or should that be, accurately...:P) and don't look quite right under amaya.

Thus why, amaya of all engines shouldn't be built in, and one reason why the plugin rendering engine would be good

The hooks for mshtml could be tied up to a plugin system for rendering engines...

PS: Yep it was compiz interfering with amaya, as usual, but it was still dog slow compared with gecko. Scrolling was a treacle town. Many pages were messed up, tried logging into facebook, and it told me I was using an incompatible browser... when i entered my e-mail and password, amaya helpfully told me there was no GET support yet, WTF?... (facebook doesn't use GET for passwords btw, that would be stupid, I suspect it's just another bug)

This browser is definitely not ready for general browsing...
meridian.blue
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Post by meridian.blue »

Thus why, amaya of all engines shouldn't be built in, and one reason why the plugin rendering engine would be good
The engine is superior to everything in the wild, that meets most of the ROS requirement (read the first post). The engine isn't the problem it's the gui (well mostly). Remember the topic is a third party solution not a hypothetical ad hoc reinventing of the wheel. Amaya already exists.
This browser is definitely not ready for general browsing...
Again the issue is a third party solution/engine not a panacea or utopia. Based on this reasoning there would be no such thing as alpha or beta (W3C originally released Amaya as beta) and certainly ROS would not exist. Geez, this is all open source that's what mods are for. Trident is proprietary and the gecko browsers use Java and that's a dealbreaker.
Last edited by meridian.blue on Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:33 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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