15 Apr 2009 18:42
TAGS: gentoo@ipaq ipaq python qt webkit
As I noted before, I'm running Gentoo in chroot of my iPAQ H3870. As next step of fun with this PDA, I'm willing to create a mobile webbrowser for this (and other) Linux-powered mobile devices. Inspired by iPhone's Safari I want the browser to have the following features:
- fast
- easy to use
I want to use Qt and Webkit for this purpose. I will use PyQt for prototyping. As the interface will be minimal this should not add big overhead. For final version probably I'll compile C++ code statically (inserting the latest Qt library into the result program).
What features the browser should have and how I will implement them?
- fast — using Webkit engine — well integrated with Qt 4.4+
- fast — using fast JavaScript engine — one of newest Qt/Webkit's features using JIT
- easy to use — full page zooming — using Qt/Webkit zoomFactor property
- easy to use — kinetic scrolling — feature popular in iPhone GUI (already implemented by some Qt hackers)
- fast — some hacky-features should be implemented like weight(-and-number-of-connections)-reducing proxy (like in Opera browser) and some AdBlock-like features (probably non-configurable)
I'm planning VERY minimal interface. No long-history, no bookmark management. Only a button to "save" a page to the browser's dashboard. Also I think about some cool internal things to really make the browser usable and to make it as good as the iPhone's browser.
I would really like to see your browser and test it! And I can help you with creating design and User Interaction if you want.
Pre-specification looks really promising. I would also think about compression of data (like Opera Turbo), which is especially important on mobile devices with on-air data transfer (even using HSDPA, while you mostly pay for the amount of send-received data).
Good luck with this project!
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