Small footprint embedded browser

Look for lynx (text only)

Wim

My memory might trick me, but I think I once saw a libvga base browser.

without X.

I have used Links (not lynx :) on libsvga, with some enjoyment :

Appreciated. It's a little under-featured for our use, as best I can tell.

We have a 320x240 LCD display that has to be set in the hardware as

The browser must:

Know that it's really 320x240.

Operate in Kiosk mode (no menu or elevator bars, graphic area only).

Have Java script, and in the near future allow Java, Flash, Macromedia, etc.

Allow displaying text on top of graphics.

Function without a hardware keyboard or mouse; display no mouse cursor.

Accept programmatic input for URLs and mouse clicks.

I remember seeing promotions from startup in or near Glasgow (Scotland) who claimed that they could display anything on any device.

Wim

It is so,

Vadim

Why do you need a 'browser' for this? As there is no keyboard/mouse/any input, you could just as well do the browsing on a PC and upload a image to the device (instead of the url) each time you want to update the screen.

Wumpus

Hi Kevin,

A quick patch to Links will achieve this.

Links will display a single line at the top of the screen, indicating the current URL. I patched it not to show this.

Links has Javascript, the others - especially Flash - I'd call anathema to an "embedded" browser! Flash support on Linux is exceedingly poor. You have the following three ways to play Flash on Linux:

1. Use "the" PD player, open-source, which only supports Flash 2 or below (higher Flash versions may or may not play according to what features they use).
2. Use the Macromedia standalone player, which is very buggy and requires that you modify the Flash animations slightly if you want them to play fullscreen without a blank window on top of them.
3. Use the Macromedia-supplied Netscape plugin, using which is an exercise in applied pain. I happen to have Hellraiser, Hellbound, Hell on Earth, Bloodline, Inferno and Hellseeker (i.e. Hellraiser movies I-VI) on the computer next to me, and there is not a single torture in any of them more exquisite than trying to interface with Netscape plugins. I wrestled and tussled and struggled and strived, and then heroically gave up and went with option 1 (though I do give users the option of downloading and installing option 2 themselves).

If you want truly embedded Flash then 3 is your only real option.

I didn't explicitly try this with Links.

Links does this (I had the same requirement).

This is no difficulty. What exactly is the hardware generating these inputs, though?! If there is no pointing device and no keyboard, what do you have that wouldn't be easier to implement as a simulation of one of those two peripherals?

--

-- Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

I'd say: Get it, expand it and contribute your expansion back !

The device shows a slide show, where images change every few seconds, in a loop. Several hundred of these connected would heavily burden a host. It would also require special software on the host, and that's a no-no.

Me too. I know nothing about browsers and their mysteries (my specialty is embedded hard-realtime ultra-reliable software). I could learn, but we have to demo in six weeks.

Why didn't you just buy the thing ready-made from us, then? ;)

--

-- Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

You can do in less than that. Just go down the local computer store and buy a Pocket PC. ~200.

Get one with ethernet card and/or USB that can talk to your embeded device. You should be able to any customer software running demo in that PPC in 1.5 weeks.

You can do it even faster if you're windows programmmers.

-- SLink hyperlinks all functions, macros, variables from thousands of src file together. Browse hyperlinked source code for .NET CLI, Mozilla, Apache, NetBSD, Ethereal, Chorus OS at

Probably because you don't have most of the hardware we need, a lot of hardware we don't need, same for software, and you cost ten times as much as our product. Other than that...

and the other 40.3% are suspect

Your products cost only $19.90? Hmm :) There are a lot of products not on our website, which were developed for various OEM projects (most of which never happened... but the stuff still works)

I went to your site, saw a lot of minor variations on a theme, found a lot of broken links for people who sell your stuff, and the only price I saw was about $2K. Our board costs $40.

-- _ Kevin D. Quitt 91387-4454 snipped-for-privacy@Quitt.net 96.37% of all statistics are made up