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Posts: 114 | Thanked: 201 times | Joined on Apr 2009
#1077
I'm pleased to announce version 3.0rc1 of Browser Switchboard (formerly browser-proxy), a script which lets you use Tear (or other alternative browsers) as the default browser on Maemo devices. (As the version number suggests, this is a release candidate, not a stable release; you may wish to wait for a final release before installing and/or upgrading.)

Source and prebuilt packages for Diablo can be downloaded from our page on Garage: https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=1159. Installing the package (browser-switchboard_3.0rc1-1_all.deb) will take care of installing and setting up the script for you.

Direct upgrades from Browser Switchboard 2.2 are supported. Direct upgrades from browser-proxy packages (2.1 and below) are NOT supported. You must remove browser-proxy 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 compiling and installing manually, are available in the README file.



The headline change in this release is a brand-new configuration UI, accessible from the control panel. The UI exposes all of the configuration options for Browser Switchboard in a manner that I hope is clear and intuitive. (If not, suggested improvements and/or patches are welcome.)

Browser Switchboard now defaults to opening MicroB if there is no config file -- this is a change in behavior from previous versions. If you were using Browser Switchboard to launch Tear before, and hadn't made a configuration file, you'll now need to set Tear as your default browser explicitly using the UI (or by hand).

The D-Bus proxy component, previously a Python script, has also been rewritten in C. The C implementation is faster and uses much less memory than the Python script, and shares the config file parser with the configuration UI (also in C). I've tested this change extensively, but I can't guarantee that it's bug-free -- please report if you do experience problems.

HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL packages for Fremantle are also available on Garage. As far as I know, these packages should work, but I haven't been able to test them beyond verifying that the control panel applet works in my (highly broken) Maemo 5 SDK environment. BACK UP your device before installing -- and do let me know how it goes! In particular, I'd like to know whether the Fremantle build launches MicroB successfully.

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:
  • We could use an icon -- right now, the control panel applet uses the stock browser icon, and the package itself doesn't display an icon in the Application Manager. Volunteers?
  • Once these changes settle in, get this into extras where more people will find it.
 

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