Small browsers

Yes,please create one :+1:

Wow, thanks, you mentioned some decent browsers.

Greetings
Peter

Looks like it, yes. Although nothing would prevent the OP from forking and continuing the project. PeterW said it didn’t have to be runnable. Might be easier to have some sort of base code to start hacking, if that’s the objective.

I think I’ll go for Netsurf.

It supports Haiku gfx API, Linux Gtk, Linux framebuffer and more (I think Windows and BSD, too). It has basic Javascript support. It is still small. It seems to be independent of the well-known rendering engines, but I’m not totally sure about that.

Greetings
Peter

Yes it is, you van even reuse their libraries, they are quite neat.

for example we use libcss in Renga to parse colors
https://www.netsurf-browser.org/projects/libcss/

Worth a mention here is Themis download | SourceForge.net which is a browser targetting BeOS and Haiku specifically. Last activity on this was in 2019 and I don’t know what stat it is currently in.

If you think writing a web engine from scratch specifically for BeOS/Haiku is the way to go, this is the project attempting it.

5 Likes

Is there a recipe for ladybird? I am very interested in the serenity project.

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Before making a branch of any HTML4 capable browsers, consider that HTML5 broke a lot of compatibility with the older syntax. I think Netsurf is only HTML4 capable (or at least the Amiga versions were). If it is only HTML4 standard compliant, you might end up with a highly-optimized, small browser that can’t render as many pages as WebPositive can.

Well, HTML5 is important if the user wants to surf on modern websites. So is HTTPS which is not yet supported by Netsurf, too (afaik). Also Typescript would be nice which is missing yet.

But I really like the modularity of Netsurf. And I like the many GUIs supported even more. My personal dream is having a browser on Linux framebuffer. And on other systems, including ReactOS, Hurd and Haiku.

Unfortunately I have already another programming project. Maybe I’ll switch back and forth between the two. Also I’m not the greatest coder of the world. But on a first glance the Netsurf code seems understandable for me which not the case with many open source software pieces.

HTML5 as a start seems a bit tough. Maybe I add or improve bookmarks handling.

Another important improvement would be giving some debug infos when a page can’t be handled. And of course crashing is not nice. But crashing is common with many browsers, including Web+.

Greetings
Peter

NetSurf supports HTTPS just fine. It uses curl for nework access.
It also has an HTML5 compliant parser.
It is much less complete in terms of Javascript and also lacking some parts of CSS.
But it’s certainly not limited to HTML4 and plain HTTP…

5 Likes

Good to hear that.

I think first I will try to improve the bookmarks handling.

Greetings
Peter

1 Like

The recipe is ready. Will be published in haikuports tomorrow as I am currently on a bit of a road trip.

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Those require QtWebKit or QtWebEngine. They are not small as a result.

Thanks anyway for mentioning the 2 browsers.

My personal favourite really is Netsurf and its many subprojects (libraries).

Greetings
Peter

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Done - Haiku Depot Server

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Looking into a build for 32bit atm, if things are OK can you enable it there @3dEyes ? (will report later, build atm is still running)

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Of course, why not?

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I love using Links, though I can see opportunity of building in more utility. Would be great to get something like it that is more Haiku native.

Maybe worth getting this project going again Themis download | SourceForge.net ?

2 Likes