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Posts: 560 | Thanked: 422 times | Joined on Mar 2011
#5
Originally Posted by lma View Post
Gecko could always be updated, but it's a really non-trivial job so no one ever did it. Microb doesn't use XUL.
Are you sure? Maybe it can just interpret XUL docs then? I am not an expert, merely an interested user with some programming/computing knowledge/experience. However, the following output suggests there are XUL elements within microB:
Code:
$ find / -name *xul* 2>/dev/null
Code:
/usr/lib/microb-engine/libxul.so
...
/usr/share/microb-engine/defaults/pref/xulrunner.js
...
/usr/share/microb-engine/chrome/browser/content/navigator/navigator.xul
/usr/share/microb-engine/chrome/browser/content/browser/browser.xul
...
NB. I do not have (and have not had) Fennec/Firefox installed on this device.

I was looking for info about Gecko and, AFAI can tell, Gecko is a part of XULRunner. Although, the Mozilla Wiki seems only marginally better than ours, in its somewhat circular referencing and slight tardiness, so I might be wrong!

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the role browserd plays (apart from being the always-on daemon)? I was under the impression it was the link between the closed UI and the open engine so opening it up would pave the way for the engine to be updated?

Firefox 3.5/3.6 (desktop equivalent, using Gecko 1.9.2rc3) was released when HTML5 was in its infancy so even though a number of features are implemented, they are done so in a non-standard way, e.g. "-moz-border-radius" instead of "border-radius". Other features, which have been adopted by HTML5 can be performed adequately on the N900, but the existing interpreter cannot cope with these features, e.g. mp4 baseline playback in a <video> element without flash but sites such as youtube.com/html5 fail.

Many of us still have a year or so to run on N900 contracts (some even more!) and based on the ever increasing presence of HTML5 combined with the device's capability*, I believe that trying to improve the browser engine is not only worthwhile but, in fact, vital to all users. Further, with an open daemon and improved engine, surely it could well benefit Harmattan users too?

*capability: i.e. HTML5 includes many new/unimplemented technologies such as SVG, MathML, WebSockets, CSS3, etc. - the majority of which would work well on the N900, even if some heavier features, such as WebGL, are too slow to be much more than a proof of concept for us.

... Ah well, I guess we should all be pleased that microB is, even now, more HTML5 compliant than internet explorer!
 

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