Integrated Web Browser

Porting webkit so that it uses XBMC's gui is going to take a lot more effort than what I'm willing to expend for a GSOC project. Then there's the issue of maintaining that port. It serves XBMC better to use one of the well known ports of webkit, such as qtwebkit.

It will certainly be possible to embed a web browser in any addon. In fact, the plan is to have the web browser component be another addon.

I'm not familiar with how boxee does this as I don't follow their development anymore.

(2012-04-08 03:01)amejia Wrote:  It serves XBMC better to use one of the well known ports of webkit, such as qtwebkit.

It will certainly be possible to embed a web browser in any addon. In fact, the plan is to have the web browser component be another addon.

I'm not familiar with how boxee does this as I don't follow their development anymore.

Why not at least look at Boxee's code surrounding WebKit before you begin? Maybe even get help from Boxee developers with ideas on how to make thier concept better, to learn from their mistakes and success?

With your own aproach would only get a classic web browser as an addon, so in reality not much more then launching an external Firefox with remote and zoom support?

IMHO the best thing with adding an integrated web browser would be the added capability to use it for embedded Silverlight and Flash addons such as Netflix, so not just to gain a classic web browser as an addon.

MeeGo TV Browser which is Chromium / WebKit based MeeGo browser for TV platforms could perhaps be the perfect fit for XBMC?

http://wiki.meego.com/TV_Browser

Quote:The internet world has created browser for PC. Assuming not only a mouse and a keyboard, but also a 50 cm viewing with a multi windows presentation layer and a skilled human who drive the beast. Unfortunately, a TV has neither a keyboard or a mouse, the vision is done from 3m, there is no windowing concept and the Live TV presentation remains in control of the UI all the time. TV needs is a browser which address some critical issues. Controllable by an external application.

• Instant start
• Accept alternative input method
• Support HW accelerated Video
• Give access to all the TV features from Javascript
  [**]System configuration
  [**]Asset browsing
  [**]Video and Audio
  [**]PVR and Pause live TV.
  [**]Video and Audio output
  [**]Input devices

http://meego.gitorious.org/meego-middlew...tv-browser

MeeGo TV Browser is still an active project and their developers also already use XBMC as their media player for MeeGo TV / Tizen.

Any update on this? Integrated web browser in XBMC would be great! Is the only big missing feature on this great mediacenter!

Indeed lots of use for a web browser.

Would be really cool to have a link from a music artist to their last.fm page and charts in a web browser

(2012-05-08 18:27)zag Wrote:  Indeed lots of use for a web browser.

Would be really cool to have a link from a music artist to their last.fm page and charts in a web browser

Yes..!

Does anybody know, how to integrate output of a GTK+ based application into XBMC?
I've written a flash player (or more generic, an NPAPI plugin player), that uses Xcomposite/Xdamage/Xfixes to upscale content. It also works as an upscaling webbrowser, if webkit's installed.

You can get the standalone app here: http://www.crutzi.info/crutziplayer

It's written in Python, and already handles the content output as a texture (with cairo), so all I need is something like reparenting the GTK+ app into XBMC...

(2012-06-11 08:50)crutzi Wrote:  Does anybody know, how to integrate output of a GTK+ based application into XBMC?
I've written a flash player (or more generic, an NPAPI plugin player), that uses Xcomposite/Xdamage/Xfixes to upscale content. It also works as an upscaling webbrowser, if webkit's installed.

You can get the standalone app here: http://www.crutzi.info/crutziplayer

It's written in Python, and already handles the content output as a texture (with cairo), so all I need is something like reparenting the GTK+ app into XBMC.

if it is purely written in Python then you a probably better of asking in the Python Add-on Development forum as a new thread
http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=26

otherwise the question should be posted in the new thread in the core development forum as a new thread there
http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=93

(2012-04-05 19:00)amejia Wrote:  Here's a visual. This is the web browser component I worked on around this time two years ago. At the time I was experimenting with a fork of qtwebkit called llqtwebkit, so what you see is using llqtwebkit. However, it is certainly possible to embed a web browser into XBMC by just using vanilla qt and qtwebkit, which is what I intend to do.

Hi, can you please share your code with us?

A web browser inside XBMC would be great. I've been playing around with how to make a useable web browser for a TV in a side project http://www.remifi.com

My conclusion was browsing the web on your TV will always be awful, so I'm using an iPhone/Android to find the website then tell the TV to open it, play it, and fullscreen it.

I'm interested in knowing what you guys think of the idea. I think it's quite possible to embed it inside XBMC http://www.remifi.com