The Syllable project has reached another long-time milestone. It was always planned to factor out the web rendering engine of its web browser, ABrowse, into a library with a native Syllable View widget on top, so it can be embedded into more applications than just a web browser. Kristian Van Der Vliet did just that: building on Arno Klenke's WebCore port, he updated that and then stepped up the modularisation by creating the WebView class. He rewrote the browser on top of that and named it Webster [screenshot]. The first alpha version is available in the project's applications downloads. The latest Syllable 0.6.6 development build is required to run it, as several bugs in the system were fixed for the new browser. The next development build will have Webster included. The source code is available on the development site.
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Member since:
2007-02-15
Member since:2005-07-06
There are a lot of steps in between, not least of which is writing the Syllable platform support for plugins in WebCore. You also can't have an SDL view running inside a "real" Syllable application, so we'll have to port Gnash to Syllable as a native port before we can create a plugin for Webster.
Member since:
2008-07-12
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
WebView is a library that implements a series of native Syllable classes on top of WebCore which can be used by applications to render and control a "web view".
Yes, it would be. Simply maintaining our port is plenty enough as it is.
I understand why you're confused. To clarify, "WebKit" is two things. It is the collection of components such as WebCore & JavaScriptCore which make up the browser engine, and it is a library on top of those components which provides the API for applications to use.
However WebKit the library is not actually a fixed, solid entity: it naturally has to be specific to each platform, so for instance on OS X it is an Objective C API. So you can in fact get the entire engine without "porting" WebKit, which would really involve writing an entire version of WebKit for your platform anyway. So instead WebView is a much more simple API that does the same job that WebKit does on other platforms.
Edited 2008-07-29 21:42 UTC
Member since:2006-01-22
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-04-14
Member since:2006-06-09
What a great comment.
Silverberg's Internet Explorer team sized around 100 by 1996 (IE3), probably over 400 the next year (IE4) to reach 1000 by 1999 (IE5).
Comparing a full time money-backed team of 400 1997's achievement to a part time will-backed team of 1 2008's achievement... oh yeah, make so MUCH sense.
Congrats.
Member since:
2007-04-23
Webster is also the name of a browser for RISC OS: http://www.arsvcs.demon.co.uk/webster/
Having two quite distinct browsers with the same name is bit confusing, so I think a rename would be in order.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-04-23
The latest version is indeed called Webster XL, but the product line and the original browser name is just plain Webster.
And, yes, it may be difficult finding a name that hasn't been used somewhere before. But there are not so many different browsers around that it should be a real problem. And a Google search on"Webster browser" would reveal that it is not only the name of a browser for RISC OS but also an add-on for Internet Explorer. Who these days do not do a Google search before deciding on a name for a new product?
Member since:2005-07-06
I don't, because it's of little consequence and frankly, a huge pain in the backside that detracts from the actual job of getting things done.
As you said yourself, the RISC OS browser is called "Webster XL" and the name is already overloaded anyway, so one more application with the name "Webster" that's tied to a single platform is not going to harm anyone.