[9fans] Browsers again - was What's missing?

[matt <matt@proweb.co.uk>]

Hello David,

Tuesday, April 24, 2001, 4:07:49 PM, you wrote:

DR> Has anyone looked at other browsers like opera? Konquerer, I think, is based on
DR> Mozilla, so I guess it wouldn't be a good candidate for a porting, but maybe
DR> there are some good non-Netscape browsers that can be ported easily.

DR> But is it that difficult to add the missing functionality to Charon which makes
DR> discussions about porting or supporting other browsers relevant?

well there are a number of browsers that I know of (see below)
If it was that easy to write one, this list would be much longer.
If the world stopped at "HTML Renderer" life would be much easier.
Instead we have DynamicHTML, XHTML, CSS level2, SSL, java applets,
javascript support, Macromedia Flash, MathML, SVG & plugin support
(maybe).

If I was to take on the project (some chance! though I'd love it) i'd
start from Amaya. No frames but I think plan9's window model could
cope by opening each frame in a new canvas.

the plan9 model would need to be retrofitted (some sort of caching
proxy that gets mounted, a dom FS etc.)

Any you may know I like the look of XMLTerm http://xmlterm.com/
Despite it being on Mozilla

So here's the list I threw together. If only Lucent coudl throw
30 million dollars at it like MS did we'd be laughing.

matt


Amaya http://www.w3.org/amaya
"Amaya is a browser/authoring tool that allows you to publish
documents on the Web."
"HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML Basic, HTTP/1.1, MathML 2.0, many CSS 2
features, and limited SVG support. "
It's the w3 reference browser. Written in C and is built upon the w3
libwww code.
It's a nice browser but if the HTML isn't well formed it can barf.

Opera : www.opera.com
"Opera - the fastest browser on earth!"
not open source but who knows what Lucent can persuade!

Konqueror : www.konqueror.org
"Konqueror is the successor of kfm, the file manager and web browser
in KDE 1.x"
Not built on Mozilla I think but definately tied into KDE. It needs QT
and kdelib to compile.
Nice browser but a nightmare to port no doubt.

Gnome - www.gnome.org have a browser widget coming as part of the Gnome desktop. I'm
speculating but it'll be tied to Bonobo.

Dillo http://dillo.sourceforge.net/
gtk based browser
Requires: XFree86-3.3.6_8, gettext-0.10.35, glib-1.2.10, gmake-3.79.1, gtk-1.2.10,
jpeg-6b, png-1.0.10


Grail - http://grail.sourceforge.net/
"Grail is an extensible Internet browser written entirely in the
interpreted object-oriented programming language Python. "
"It requires recent versions of Python and Tcl/Tk to run."
"Grail supports full HTML 2.0, including images, forms and imagemaps,
and many HTML 3.2 features"

Sun's Hot Java (tm) browser
http://java.sun.com/products/hotjava/
"Key features and improvements of HotJava Browser 3.0 include:
JavaScript (Full ECMA 1.4 standard support)
HTML rendering fidelity improvements, adding support for critical Netscape 4.0
and Internet Explorer 4.0 extensions to the W3C HTML 3.2 specification
Improved user interface, adding a more "modern" look and feel to the browser
Over 500 bug fixes and user requested enhancements"

mMosiac http://perso.enst.fr/~dauphin/mMosaic/
"mMosaic is a derivative work of NCSA XMosaic 2.7b4. You can use it as
a simple browser. Now it supports <TABLE> and other supplementary tags (like <CENTER>).
One level of <FRAME> is supported"

Mosiac itself http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/XMosaic/
Requires: XFree86-3.3.6_8, jpeg-6b, open-motif-2.1.30_1, png-1.0.10, xpm-3.4k




--
Best regards,
 matt                            mailto:matt@proweb.co.uk