WebKit engine for default browser
 

Here is beta version of webkit engine for default Maemo browser. This will make default maemo browser use webkit and get very-very big javascript performance boost and better support for new standards.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_6tXj0BwWuOg/SV...reenshot00.png

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_6tXj0BwWuOg/SV...reenshot01.png


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
READ THIS http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...&postcount=133

WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T
entering some text in url field that doesn't look like url will open google search
file downloading doesn't work
cookies work
zoom works
finger scrolling works
find on page works
setting home page works
options like load images, accept cookies, enable javascript, select encoding do nothing

I tested it on clean system with latest firmware, tell me if you'll have some problems with package installation or anything else on your system

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

now to free up the space needed for the install...

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

:eek: la Grande!

mmmm, remove Fennec & Xulrunner... ;)

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

This is a newer webkit than the one in extras now, then? Should give tear a boost as well...

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

tso,
only 10mb for webkit library..

Benson,
yes, it's much newer.
I respect efforts to create alternative browser but why develop/use Tear instead of default maemo browser which is more mature and stable if we can use newest engine in it and even switch engines?

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

WANT. And, you say we can even switch engines on a whim? WANT.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Because I like it. :p

More objective reasons: potentially lighter-weight (this should be minimal, though), and definitely unconstrained by Nokia's UI spec (major).

Also, back when last I messed with swapping engines (opera and microb under OS2007), I saw a lot of bugs (or maybe even correct, but strange, behaviors) pertaining to engine swapping. I just ditched microb, as OS2008 was almost ready anyway. While some of that may have been fixed, and it certainly can be fixed, it can also be bypassed entirely, and right now I see no significant benefit to running microb vs. webkit.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

TrueJournals,
it's harder to do switching on the fly but close browser-switch-reopen is easy (however I have some problems with browser daemon process which ignores settings and tries to load not right engine sometimes, I need to fix this before making it public)

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Benson,
yes I see some benefits of Tear (it can be much lightweighter than maemo browser because of complex client/server architecture of latter), but it really still need much work to be stable (it crashes very often on my device) and integrated into the system (I mean bookmarks and so on). I'm not sure there are enough developers and free time to do this, unfortunately. If they will succeed I'll be very glad, but I will focus on integrating webkit into default browser.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Well, on the fly being having to close and reopen the browser is fine. What I meant was that we won't have to go through some complicated process (perhaps involving uninstalling webkit) in order to switch.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

true that, but iirc there was a 20-30MB lib that wbkit depended on.

at last the exsisting one did, this new one i do not know...

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Nah, libwebkit is the only one needed.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Great! Want to test this out...

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Forgot, there is also icu library for unicode support, quite big too. but not sure maybe something else needs it to and it's already installed

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

libicu is for unicode support, it should be already installed.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

****, pronvit, you pwn.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Besides the obvious advantage of choice between rendering engines (performance, stability, bugs, compatibility, development) this allows also the user to pick either one while not having to relearn a new interface nor does she have to unlearn the old interface hence allowing the user to go back on forth because this part is the same. If you ever use an alternative keyboard layout and switch to another (forced or otherwise) you know what I'm talking about. E.g. laptop -> desktop, qwerty -> dvorak, or language layouts. Or say IE at work, with a real browser at home.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

LOL your're right.

I'm currently using Win at work and OSX at home, just switched, and still am trying to get used to CMD+C/CMD+V instead of CTRL+C/CTRL+V and so on... :)

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

one reason why the masses out there get stuck with our lovely n800 is exactly by threads like this.
I can only imagine what the webkit does or will do, but i do not understand it.
Could anyone of you just simply write down what the webkit does and how to
get it?

thnx in advance guys.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

pronvit: What revision of webkit are you compiling? Are you using libsoup or curl for the http backend? Pango or freetype? How have you managed to compile it? Last time Bundyo and I tried, it gived us some compiling errors. Tear is a great project I think. It lets us make some things that with maemo browser you couldn't, like have plugins. Also is written in Vala which is a great language. The stability problems you are having could be mainly because of webkit not being stable enough. As for icu library, there is a bug opened so that it will kill these dependency. Things are starting to look great on the webkit front, but it should need some stabilty before considering ready for every day use.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

endorphinum: Webkit is just a rendering engine, developed by Apple (it was forked from another open source project named KHTML) and it's the engine you can see when using Safari, Google Chrome, Tear :-) etc... What makes webkit better than gecko/mozilla is because is much better integrated on the platform, it consumes lower memory, and it is in general much faster.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

A rendering engine for web browsers. The thing under the hood of Mozilla Firefox so to say. Like the engine of a car.

Bitte, schau mahl WebKit am Wikipedia Deutschland an.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

i recall having to manually install it the last time i was poking around with webkit...

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

For example, Midori, is based on webkit, and it is really fast, in this video, it's running on Mer/Ubuntu 9.04 with no vfp-support (witch makes it 15% slower that it would be in vfp-enabled os) correct me if i'm wrong with this vfp-thing.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

This is awesome! Can't wait to try it out!

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

/me fidgets and waits for those binaries

Please, make haste! I cannot wait to try this out :D

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Nice work, pronvit! This is delightful news. Let's hope Nokia is paying attention, too; Webkit is an infinitely better engine to use, mobile device or not. It is actually designed to be portable, without any weird spatterings from its parent projects.

Does this still support cookies and password saving?

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

I remember seeing that the MicroB developers have done this already somewhere...
But I think Nokia are already paying attention as the S60 9.1 browser is webkit...

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Picklesworth, currently working on cookies support. And this still need to be done before it can be really used instead of microb.

The problem with nokia attention to webkit is that I like webkit (and porting to maemo) actually because of one reason - better javascript engine which is 12 times faster than mozilla. But it's still considered beta and isn't used in S60 or Apple Safari. So if Nokia will make webkit default engine for Maemo but still without new javascript engine, this won't help much.

Also Midori seems to be very simple and nice. Bundyo, I saw your thread on hildonizing Midori, why you stopped that work, what was wrong with it?

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

You mean its 12 times faster than MicroB's engine, which is based on FF 3.0 alpha.

FF got js speed improvements with 3.0 (after that alpha) and 3.1 with the JIT, so its comparable right now. We just need a little update. FF memory allocation is far better than WebKit's. Neither JIT AFAIK works on ARM yet...

I started Tear. Midori is Ok, but I'm not good with C and WebKit doesn't get newer with Midori anyway. Latest working is from March, I didn't succeed in getting any next build to run (with working JS) on Maemo and the March one is unstable and feature poorer than MicroB's old FF engine.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Are you sure? Latest FF 3.1b2 gives me only 40 points in V8 benchmark on pc (compare with 25 points for latest webkit on n810).

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

And that's 12 times? :)

Yes, I know latest WebKit engine is faster. Its just not that faster... :)

http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2008/12/08...pha-a-new-one/

Oh, and there's no ultimate benchmark... ;) I can probably dig up one that will show FF in the lead... :)

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Hm..
Try to go to http://code.google.com/apis/v8/run.html with microb or Tear, what do you see? And compare with my screenshot in first post

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Are you actually reading before posting? :)

Let me quote that to make myself clear:

No, its not. Maybe it is from MicroB.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

MicroB is Mozilla-based browser for Maemo. When we're in N810 forum, what's the difference between "faster than mozilla" and "faster than microb"?

Or you thought 12 times faster than mozilla means mozilla on PC? :D

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Mozilla is a generalization, its the company now, the engine is Gecko. I do not refer to MicroB as Mozilla, since its just a branch, there's also Fennec for instance. I don't refer to FF or Thunderbird as Mozilla too... :D

You said you were porting... porting from where? Yes, I understood Mozilla for PC. I still understand it that way :P

Anyway, case closed.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

I updated first post with installation instructions

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

i think ill wait for the kinks to be ironed out.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Tried this out, really impressed with the speed. So thank you pronvit for this.

The massive libicudata.so.38.1 library can be moved to a [vfat] mmc and symlinked back to /usr/lib fine.

Re: WebKit engine for default browser
 

Wow, just tried out gmail. I don't know if it's 12 times or not, but it is WAY faster! Thank You.