I see a lot of commercially available solutions for adding a web server to an embedded application... however I dont see anything thats designed for a client type app.
For example, my project has a LCD screen on it, and adding a network controller chip (realtek, microchip, etc) would not be a problem. What would be involved in retrieving and displaying web pages? Is there anything commercially available that would bridge these two?
You might want to do a Google search on "embedded web client" - there seems to be quite a few commercially available versions. I've seen the documentation from Allegrosoft on theirs, and it seems relatively straightforward:
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There may even be some GPL versions out there as well.
Good luck.
snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote in news:1125519112.990555.275110 @g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
You need a TCP/IP stack, then open a socket to port 80 of the server and start to read and write. Displaying a web page is however not trivial in that you must implement a browser. I heard about an open soruce develoepement of an embedded web browser (source forge?). Due to the complexity of developping such a browser I definately would take a close look at such a project before deciding to start your own.
If you only have to display certain web pages which you have under your own control thigns would be a lot easier in that you could restrict the developement of your "browser" to those features you acually use. On the other extreme you will find yourself developing a flash plugin for your browser, implementing a Java Engine, Java Script and probably a whole lot of other stuff. Just think of a webpage offering an integrated MPEG video...
Faced with a similar problem I chose to adapt eLinks for my application.
It depends very much on what sort of data you need to render. JavaScript, cascading style sheets, animated GIFs, background MIDI music, Flash animations... or just text?
Errrm.... no. The server is, ahem, a web server. The client is the browser. The embedded app has to worry about the former, not the latter. And, happily, it's in control.
Errrm :_) what? Where in the above paragraph did I used the word "server" ? I understood that the OP intends to display webpages fetched from remote sites (yes from a remote server) - that's what a browser (client as the OP stated) does and if it should be generic enough to be of use in todays world this means implementing an awfull lot of stuff - as I mentioned.
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