[sugar] (another) WebKit port of Browse

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 1:32 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> We could add many more of the missing features to Browse if all the
> developers weren't so busy with the rest of Sugar. Also, although most
> of the sugar developers have occasionally hacked on Browse, we are far
> from experts in the big piece of code that Mozilla is.

This was my original point.  We either have sufficient resources to
develop our own browser, or we don't.  I think it will (in the end) be
more efficient to develop small Firefox extensions to support Journal
integration and collaboration, rather than taxing the sugar developers
with an attempt to (basically) reimplement large parts of firefox.

> I know that hiring takes time, I'm just making the point that doing
> the Browse activity we want for OLPC is not anything impossible nor a
> gigantic task. But requires at least focused people and efforts, and
> better if those people already have the right experience.

And my basic point was that I thought we'd be better off leveraging
more of the upstream feature development directly, so that our Browse
would continue to improve w/o our hiring a full time Browse developer.

Anyway, as Martin says, this is all armchair quarterbacking until
someone gets Firefox to more-or-less the same level as Browse is now.
In my earlier part I started the process by packing Firefox 3.0 as a
self-contained .xo file (no yum required); the next steps are to
install the appropriate theme tweaks to integrate it into the sugar
look, possibly some libsugarization, and to write the extensions to
integrate with Tubes and the datastore (XUL is your friend).
 --scott

-- 
 ( http://cscott.net/ )