Edit: There's a beta release in this post (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=151923&postcount=13).

I don't know why, but I've decided I really want a good, working, web browser on the iLiad. Maybe it's Kindle envy, maybe I spend too much time porting when I should be working, who knows.

WebKit seems to be all the rage these days. They have builds of it for just about every platform, and the iPhone has really brought it into the mainstream. So my goal is to port WebKit to the iLiad and provide a useful interface for browsing.

It must be able to use the pagebar to page up and down.
Screen refreshes must not be obtrusive, and should be responsive. (Native refreshes only, no hacked libX11)
Support for Bookmarks and Recent URL's.
Easy to install package that can run from anywhere.


I've got Webkit compiled, and I'm using midori (http://software.twotoasts.de/?page=midori) as a front end. Right now, the only page I can visit without it locking up is Google.com. But hopefully with some more bugsquashing, we can have a real, working browser on the iLiad. :2thumbsup:D

Very cool.

Nice. This will be a very good addition to the iLiad. Thanks for your work Adam.,

Thanks Adam, do you actually use the Iliad to read books or just porting?, if so where did get the time? Please tell us the magic trick.

Cheers

I love you Adam!!! (づ￣ ³￣)づ~♥

Thanks Adam, do you actually use the Iliad to read books or just porting?, if so where did get the time? Please tell us the magic trick.

Cheers

I don't do as much reading as I'd like. I use my iLiad at work mostly for a notepad and for documentation...

The more apps we have the better.
Hey Adam B., I hold your "I-wanna-do-it-all-without-hacked-libX11" in high regard. :cool:

Nice!
Webkit is BTW not "Opera-based". It is originally based on the KHTML rendering engine (from KDE) and used by Apple as the rendering engine of Safari. It is currently also being used in the Google's Android platform as well as in Trolltech's Qtopia.

It turns out Javascript was causing the browser to lock up. Once I turned it off, it's smooth sailing...

Some more teaser shots:

This you HAD to come up with while my Iliad is away for the battery refit.. argh ... I wants this webkit thing! I wants it ... my precious ...

This you HAD to come up with while my Iliad is away for the battery refit.. argh ... I wants this webkit thing! I wants it ... my precious ...

It's OK, you're not missing out. He's just teasing us with screenshots at the moment. There'll be t-shirts and lunch-boxes and Adam B. action figures before we get to see the browser itself :D

I just received my shipment box for the battery replacement. I hope to have a beta release of this today before I ship out my iLiad (and am without it for a week or so :().

:thumbsup:

I'm attaching a beta release of Midori/Webkit

It's beta for a few reasons:


Some links will randomly cause the browser to crash.
The "File" menu doesn't always work (you'll need it to quit the program). Sometimes you may have to click "edit", "view" or some other menu to get the menus to start showing up.
Javascript has been disabled. You won't be able to browse any sites using it.
In order to use the pagebar to page up and down, you'll need to first tap the browser area
Clicking links can be a bit tricky, you'll need to make sure you tap quickly with the stylus, or it will highlight the text instead of going there.
You'll need some connetion scripts to connect to the internet before you use the browser.
Text entry into the address bar won't show up until you exit the keyboard.


If that list doesn't scare you, go ahead and download it. I think it's the best browser on the iLiad yet. The screen refreshes are all done internally, so they shouldn't be too troublesome. The pagebar and up/down arrow keys work. Most web pages look just fine with it.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Great job :2thumbsup, and it´s "only" a Beta-release..

Subjective more performance than minimo.

Best regards

nkelle

Yep,

I install your webkit, he looks like great but he doesn't works with my Connection manager. Wich one are you using to provide a good LAN (not wireless) connection on you iLiad ?

Hello AdamB!

I have installed your webkit but it seems very slow. I can't even input anything at the browser. Is this a known issue and if so is there any workaround ?

Iliad v2.12 with latest DP and mtxvr 4.

Best Regards,

Kinetic

Hey I just forgot to tell that Midori is very cool. :) :thanks:
Without checking the Midori settings I started to compile THE anonymity tool tor (http://www.torproject.org/index.html.en).
It's annoying that Privoxy wanna have a have a own user id & groop. :p
Then I checked the settings & found out the proxy settings are grayed out. :angry: Is it a not compiled feature or disabled somewhere?

AdamB - Thanks for the contribution!

"Could you provide more howto run details for the n00bs (e.g., me ;)) ?"
[EDIT] ok, found it at: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Iliad_Software#Web_Browsers

AdamB's initial post to this thread started with a desire for a "good, working, web browser on the iLiad". I fully agree, but, although I applaud all the hard work that has gone into them, my conclusion so far is that none of the existing iLiad web browsers are good enough for routine use.

For some reason I ended up on a GPE webpage (http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/) today. It mentions image viewing (http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/projects/gpe-gallery.shtml) and web browsing (http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/projects/gpe-mini-browser.shtml) components I was not aware of. This browser was not on the list of WebKit/GTK+ apps for the very good reason that it is using the older GtkWebcore libraries instead. On the other hand, it was definitely designed for handheld devices. Does anyone have experience with this browser on a Linux handheld? The image viewer (and file manager) might also be worth porting to the iLiad.

Not being a developer, all I can do is nag from the sidelines. The Kindle's very basic web browser has opened my eyes to what the iLiad should be capable of. It ignores most style sheets (even in "advanced" mode), but it displays simple web sites well and has bookmarks. It is also possible that what I am looking for is achievable with one of the existing browsers and an appropriate web portal. Any suggestions?

AdamB's initial post to this thread started with a desire for a "good, working, web browser on the iLiad". I fully agree, but, although I applaud all the hard work that has gone into them, my conclusion so far is that none of the existing iLiad web browsers are good enough for routine use.

This can be interesting, then:

It seems that there is a company trying to bring a web browser to the iliad: see this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2RIhviKEY&NR=1

The company web (http://www.hficompany.com/) names it as "Particle Browser BETA":
http://www.hficompany.com/news.html

It certainly looks more polished than the current web browsers for the iliad... but there is no word about availability on that web.

WOW!!
We can only hope to take advantage of such great browser very soon...

This is very interesting. It requires a server, but perhaps this could be any desktop PC. From HFI FAQs (http://www.hficompany.com/faqs.html): Q. What components make up HFI systems?
A. There are two essential components to our systems, the thin client network agent on devices, and the server software running the processing behind the scenes.

This is very interesting. It requires a server, but perhaps this could be any desktop PC. From HFI FAQs (http://www.hficompany.com/faqs.html):

Or maybe it could be iRex running the server and us connecting to it via IDS. That would be an upgrade to look forward to!

As an increasing number of websites changed over to the https protocol, the support for SSL is needed. Does Midori supports SSL?
(Dillo does not: "can't start dpid daemon")

BTW Thanks to porting quys

Hisko

Dear Adam,

An index-file with a link as:
<a href="internet/C/index.html" target="_top">Internet</a>
does not work in midori (and also not in dillo). Whereas
<a href="internet/CCC/index.html" target="_top">Internet</a>
does work (with changing the /C subdir in /CCC).

I wanted to have the Ubuntu 8.04 Help on my iLiad. The only web crawler capable to handle "https: help.ubuntu.com/8.04" was wget. As a result I got a full copy of
__ help.ubuntu.com/8.04
_____ /Item1
_________ /C
____________ content1.html
____________ other1.ext
_____ /Item2
_________ ...
_____ /...
_____ /Last Item
_________ ...
_____ index.html

A modified index.html is attached.
I tried /a instead of /C with negative result.
As mentioned above replacing /C by /CCC works positive, also removing the intermediate /C sub (thus .../Item1/Index.html etc) works positive.
The problem is only on my iLiad, not on my laptop or desktop.

Questions:
Is this an error in the linux kernel or modules used by Midori and Dillo?
Can this behaviour beeing fixed?

As for a work around: Replace in all downloaded html files "/C/" by "/" Something like grep "/C/" > sed? -R "/C/" "/" ?

Thanks
Hisko

The only web crawler capable to handle "https: help.ubuntu.com/8.04" was wget. Plucker may be another option for off-line web page viewing. Plucker files are created from web pages by (say) Sunrise XP (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=64) and are readable via FBReader.

Dear Wallcraft,
Thank you for your answer.
However SunriseXP is not able to handle https: pages. Failed:"Internet connection is offline" or in update log
"notHandled: 4294967295 an SSL-enabled server port.<br />"
Because of your answer I tried Plucker-Desktop again, not with the build-in browser but IE7. Now I got a browsable .pdb copy! The result however lacks the original web layout aswell as the link icons are not allways placed and displayed correctly.

The best web copy results I got from Teleport Pro (however no https:), Webcloner and wget in Linux. The reason is that they copy the web sites exactly and do not make their own interpretation. Only wget is freeware.

Thus I still stick with a nice set of copied (sub-)directories, 100% perfect on my laptop, but because of the "/C/" issue worthless for the Dillo or Midori browsers.

PS: Minimo is OK for https pages!
But for offline browsing also can't handle the "/C" in the link path.

Addition:
Minimo shows that "/C/" issue is handled correctly for url's, but not for offline file links

This leaves 2 questions:
- https (ssl) in midori?
- can the "/C/" issue beeing solved for offline browsing?

And I support all request for an improved screen management in Midori

Hi Adam,

Would you be so kind to explain how to compile/install the webkit/gtk for the Ilaid dev platform?
I have been trying to do that for the better part of the morning with no success.

Thank you,
C.