I'm pleased to announce version 2.2 of Browser Switchboard (formerly browser-proxy), a script which lets you use Tear (or other alternative browsers) as the default browser on Maemo devices.

Source and prebuilt packages for Diablo can be downloaded from our new page on Garage: https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=1159. Installing the package (browser-switchboard_2.2-1_all.deb) will take care of installing and setting up the script for you.

IF YOU ARE UPGRADING from one of my previous browser-proxy packages, you must remove it before installing this new package; otherwise, the new browser-switchboard package will refuse to install. Unfortunately, the package rename doesn't play nice with seamless upgrading.

Full instructions for configuring and using Browser Switchboard, along with instructions for installing it manually, are available in the README file.

The headline change in this release is of course the new name (thanks buurmas for the suggestion). Along with the new, hopefully less confusing name comes rewritten and extended documentation, which I hope is clear and comprehensive. (If it's not, suggested improvements and/or patches are welcome.)

The script now also launches MicroB if there is no config file and Tear's not installed, so installing the script without configuring it on a system without Tear installed no longer breaks opening links. As a result, the package no longer depends on Tear being installed, so if you installed Tear just to try this script out you can now remove it. (Note that this behavior is a stopgap measure until we get a configuration UI; once that happens, I expect to just default to launching MicroB and let the user choose a different browser if he/she wants.)

If you're upgrading from browser-proxy version 2.1, and have a config file, note that the default config file location has moved to /home/user/.config/browser-switchboard to match the new name. The old config file location will continue to work for now, but you may want to rename your config file.

Bleeding-edge source code is now hosted using Git; see https://garage.maemo.org/scm/?group_id=1159 for more information.

Future directions:

• Building a configuration UI is the primary focus for the next release.
• I'll shortly be pushing a reimplementation of the core script in plain C to a branch in the repository. The C implementation is considerably faster to start and has a smaller memory footprint than the current Python script, but lacks the maintainability and readability of the Python version, which is why I'm not sold on switching to it on a permanent basis.
• I don't know whether this works on Fremantle and/or Mer, though I suspect it would take little to no work to get it working there. Success/failure reports, and patches if necessary, are welcome.
• Once we have a UI, get this into extras where more people will find it.