mmm... I'll try to recreate ui than if swapping rendering engine won't be easy or possible, but I don't understand why they don't release source. I thought nokia gave up maemo or am I getting something wrong?

Ok. So I've studied all this a little bit. It seems that best way to go about this is to re create the browser with Qt. Webkit is already in there, there might be some trouble and performance issues with adding v8 - that would give me something like "MiChromiumB" .

Consider that a proper replacement for MicroB UI should work with browserd and mimic any feature present in actual app.

I consider that an open replacement for the UI would be great news, but bringing it to a good shape won't be easy. Considering that it's your first time with Maemo development, my advice is to start first with something easier to achieve.

You could start trying to make a good port of Helium web browser from Meego/Nemo. It's actually a working browser based on QtWebkit and would be a nice improvement over actual choices.

Isn't there a port already in the repos? I have it on the N900 and seems to be working fine (missing new windows and some kind of history though but those are missing from the nemo build - or are they? last time I checked there weren't I think)

Yes, I've already figured that much, so as I said,I'm just going to create completely new web browser that would be easier to use than current alternatives like opera or firefox (tabs are extremely annoying).

Though, I'm not sure why it should work with browserd?

If you want to update/replace microb, then it should work with browserd, as at least other parts of maemo use it (maps, conversations).

If you "just" want to make a completely new and independent browser, then of course you can go wild and do it the way you see fit

In Maemo Weekly News of 7 Nov 2011.

they are this news : Open source Maemo 5 browserd Editor: Ryan Abel

http://www.mwkn.net/2011/45/devel.html

someone else started by replacing browserd and some of the interface packages. i did start looking into this a while ago but due to some issues @ home it had to go on hold.

microb is split into several components with a mix of licenses. the ui as stated is closed and the microb-engine is open. in the middle is one of the eal pacakges iirc. this package had an open replacement by the same guy as browserd, it was a requirement, but the original may have been updated on the garage page.

what had previously been talked about therefore was to keep existing ui and replace the backend. microb-engine provides the gecko/xulrunner parts so that was what i was looking at.

the garage site contains all the patches and a copy of the xulrunner versions they are applied to. not sure if this was updated recently as well to match installed version, haven't had chance to check. some if the patches are trivial, just branding changes. the rest are performance, gstreamer and modify the dialogs, notifications etc to use hildon gtk.

The patches won't apply cleanly to the newer versions. If you examine the code and the patch it is usually quite simple to spot the required changes, a nested if here, a renamed variable there.

As pali found with fennec, there was a javascript change around v8/9 iirc, which may cause more headaches. even updating to v7 or 8 would be nice though as it would support newer adblock.

finally, gst patches if not yet merged upstream are in the mozilla mailing lists.

Hey, I've been working on this a little bit past few weeks (having some trouble with v8 currently), and I can't seem to find any documentation on browserd or what functions are covered with it.

Any info on that?

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=62