[IAEP] Browse is old

[Sridhar Dhanapalan]

On 3 March 2012 23:52, Sridhar Dhanapalan <sridhar at laptop.org.au> wrote:
> Browse is old and not useful for a lot of newer content. Our
> communities are creating content in HTML5, an effort that we want to
> encourage.
>
> However, Browse is based on the Gecko in engine in Firefox 3.6, which
> is far behind the times. I know that is is being ported to WebKit [1]
> as part of the GTK+3 transition. However, it'll be at least a year
> before we roll out a GTK+3 version of Sugar in our schools. What can
> we do in the interim?
>
> We can load a different Web browser, especially since now since saved
> files can be shared with the journal via the Documents/ directory [3].
>  The best I've found is an Opera wrapper from Flavio [2]. It scores
> much higher than Browse for HTML5 compliance [4], but nowhere near as
> much as Firefox 10 or Chromium 17. Also, Opera is proprietary
> software.
>
> Sridhar
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/WebKit
> [2] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4503
> [3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.94/Notes#Easier_file_exchange..
> [4] http://html5test.com/


Bernie raised an interesting idea. Would it be reasonable to backport
the WebKit Browse to the OLPC OS 11.3? We could statically link the
dependencies in the bundle.

Thanks,
Sridhar


Sridhar Dhanapalan
Engineering Manager
One Laptop per Child Australia