[Sugar-devel] Browse and the move to WebKit

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On 17 June 2011 17:51, Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti <marco at marcopg.org> wrote:
>> With WebKit2, this all you need to load a web page into a GtkBox
>
> So that's my understanding of WebKit -- it's easily embeddable.
>
> I am not sure whether the API is as complete or as good as we want it.

I think the WebKit2 API must be complete or Apple wouldn't have been
able to build Safari on the top of it. What I'm not sure is if the gtk
backend implementation is complete/polished enough.

> IOWs, it's likely not a trivial job to get a good polished result.

Absolutely not trivial. It would be probably quicker to get a working
browser by forking firefox or chrome, but then maintenance would be
quite a burden.

> Just from using the various webkit-based browsers in existence in
> recent Fedoras and Ubuntus -- while both Safari and Webkit are
> outstanding (and backed by large dev teams), Surf limited but workable
> (a few versions back, need to test latest!...) everything else has
> been very unstable and disappointing.

Did you test epiphany? I think that would give you a pretty decent
idea of what is achievable without putting work into WebKit itself.

Marco