Kodi Community Forum

Nope.

Thanks

Have anybody noticed this :
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=342...stcount=98

is there a way of having an integrated web browser in xbmc? so it's the only program i ever have to run off my htpc?

Search button broken again?

For any coders looking into actually implementing a browser for XBMC, here's some info to start off.

Embedding Mozilla (something close to an SDK).
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/

WebKit is also embeddable but I can't find any link like with Mozilla.

Also, if you wish for a python plugin/script, here's some info.
http://www.aclevername.com/articles/python-webgui/

Obviously, for anyone doing this, you'll have to take into account that XBMC is a media center. So this must work and be easy to use on a big screen tv with a remote (among other things).

ceros Wrote:For any coders looking into actually implementing a browser for XBMC, here's some info to start off.

Embedding Mozilla (something close to an SDK).
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/

WebKit is also embeddable but I can't find any link like with Mozilla.

Also, if you wish for a python plugin/script, here's some info.
http://www.aclevername.com/articles/python-webgui/

Obviously, for anyone doing this, you'll have to take into account that XBMC is a media center. So this must work and be easy to use on a big screen tv with a remote (among other things).

... and as stated early in this thread, Awesomium might also be a way to get it to work.

miljbee Wrote:... and as stated early in this thread, Awesomium might also be a way to get it to work.

Awesomium looks nice, but there's no Linux support (yet).
http://my-trac.assembla.com/awesomium/ticket/1

You have to remember that cross-platform support and platform-independence is very important to keep in mind for something like this if it is to ever be accepted into the XBMC mainline code!

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Development_Notes

All code should strive to be platform agnostic - XBMC is a multi-platform software, thus any single platform specific features should be discussed with other team members before implemented, and software portability should always be kept in mind. All major new features and functions should be developed in a separate branch or committed in small increments so that other members have the opportunity to review the code and comment on it during development.

XBMC today runs on Intel (x86/x86-64), PPC (PowerPC), and ARM processor-architectures, and on Linux, Mac OS X (version 10.4 and 10.5, also Apple TV OS), Windows, and Xbox operating-systems/platforms, ...and someone is currently in the process of also porting the XBMC on ARM branch in our SVN to Android operating-system.

Team-XBMC developers have previuos already expressed that they think that WebKit would probably be best suited if someone would wants to try to embed it into XBMC, as Webkit is of agnostic design, have very few dependencies, and has a small memory footprint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit
Maybe more importantly is also that WebKit is maintained by a very large and well organized group of developers, so that we do not worry about that bit and instead just get the latest library version when the latest regular releases comes out.
http://webkit.org

Gamester17 Wrote:You have to remember that cross-platform support and platform-independence is very important to keep in mind for something like this if it is to ever be accepted into the XBMC mainline code!

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Development_Notes

All code should strive to be platform agnostic - XBMC is a multi-platform software, thus any single platform specific features should be discussed with other team members before implemented, and software portability should always be kept in mind. All major new features and functions should be developed in a separate branch or committed in small increments so that other members have the opportunity to review the code and comment on it during development.

XBMC today runs on Intel (x86/x86-64), PPC (PowerPC), and ARM processor-architectures, and on Linux, Mac OS X (version 10.4 and 10.5, also Apple TV OS), Windows, and Xbox operating-systems/platforms, ...and someone is currently in the process of also porting the XBMC on ARM branch in our SVN to Android operating-system.

Team-XBMC developers have previuos already expressed that they think that WebKit would probably be best suited if someone would wants to try to embed it into XBMC, as Webkit is of agnostic design, have very few dependencies, and has a small memory footprint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit
Maybe more importantly is also that WebKit is maintained by a very large and well organized group of developers, so that we do not worry about that bit and instead just get the latest library version when the latest regular releases comes out.
http://webkit.org

Just to clarify this now, here's a comparison between WebKit and XULRunner (what is most likely needed from Mozilla for an integrated browser).
http://packages.debian.org/sid/libwebkit-1.0-2
http://packages.debian.org/sid/xulrunner-1.9

webkit has 25, xulrunner has 30. With webkit, sooner or later three more dependencies will post (hurd, libc0.3, and libunwind). Also, webkit doesn't have support for compressed web pages, but that's bound to change soon, and with that change, more than likely there will be dependencies on zlib and libbz2, bringing the total number of dependencies for webkit to 30.

So in other words, webkit has no significant advantage in terms of the number of dependencies it needs.

Also, Mozilla is cross platform and developed by a very large and organized group of developers as well.

I'm not sure of these claims of memory usage, but at least Firefox is known to run on xbox (via Xbox Damn Small Linux). On the other hand, I can't find any info of any webkit browsers running on xbox.

I wanted to know if it was possible to browse the internet from XBMC. Is there a plugin or something that would allow me to do this, or is this simply not possible?

XBMC is a media center, not a web browser.
to launch external app, search for "Launcher" in the forum.

bidossessi Wrote:XBMC is a media center, not a web browser.
to launch external app, search for "Launcher" in the forum.

Hmm I didn't know that XBMC was a media center and not a web browser, thanks for sharing some of that great wealth of knowledge you have there.

Alright so XBMC cant do that, oh well.

Instead of integrating an entire web browser, how feasible would it be to have XBMC parse an X/HTML file and render it through the skinning/layout system? Wouldn't be able to do javascript or plugins obviously, but you could render simple web pages directly within XBMC.

Jayos Wrote:Instead of integrating an entire web browser, how feasible would it be to have XBMC parse an X/HTML file and render it through the skinning/layout system?

For that you still need an HTML layout engine, and then you might as well use WebKit as it is a graphical HTML layout engine, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_layout_engines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_...ut_engines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web...d_browsers