Help Embed Firefox in SL

I wish I knew Firefox more

It seems that when you click on something, the LL code has to do a fair amount of drilling down to get to the thing that's supposed to know about the click. Specifically, it has to ask the Document Shell for the Presentation Context, ask the Presentation Context for the View Manager, ask the View Manager for the Root View, ask the Root View for the Widget, and finally use this to manufacture a Mouse Event that's then given to the View Manager to tell it to do stuff. Phew.

First guess would be that in one of these cases the assumptions are wrong (ie, it's not really the root view, or not really the root widget of the root view) but these things seem to have internal dispatchers so I can't see that would be a problem. Just wish I knew how the plugins worked..

/signed

I'm not a coder or anything but I am thinking that Flash interaction does not work because there is no SDK implemented to handle Flash communications and events? If this is this case then that would mean having to request a license for the Flash SDK, etc. I don't know. What do you think?

Better yet, make Flash work with in-world scripting events. So we can have prettier huds!

http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul

reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL

note: ubrowser is apparently not XUL capable yet and cant properly display the XUL page.

Cory, is it meant to be pronounced "micro browser?"

Normally when you click on a Flash applet in Firefox, the Flash responds to the click. In uBrowser it doesn't. There's no problem with the lack of an SDK, since the click somehow got to the Flash applet in the original browser.

I would just like to echo the call to release this functionality without flash and plug-in support. Please.

Count me in the "Sooner-than-later" crowd.

Even if the Flash-requiring websites won't be interactive, just being able to display the simplest of web pages would enable so much new functionality in SL. If it's working without plugins, release it now and just be aggressive about letting users know plugins are not yet fully supported.

Just in case someone didn't factor this in, the reward of a "free" island to you may be a taxable event depending upon your jurisdiction.

I echo those who don't feel Flash is necessary feature for HTML-on-a-prim to be released. Indeed, given the number of Flash sites that crash my firefox browser, I'd be leery of incorporating such a source of instability and potential security holes. If you don't find this argument compelling for Flash, substitute "ActiveX" for "Flash" (yes, I know that's an extreme comparison but I making an appeal to emotion here.)

Ah ok, phew. hehe.

I agree with the folks here. Let's get this thing out soon without full plugin support. At least let us get our hands dirty. Effective enough what you can do with HTML and CSS alone.

First I am not a driving force behind the uBrowser and related code bounties. Thus the following comment is a personal observation and not a company statement / policy / etc. </end green>

One benefit to waiting for a fully functional version before release (besides avoiding the previously mentioned QT issues) is that these code bounties gain an implicit extra 'set bonus' if you will - Firefox in SL. As is evidenced by this thread, that is to some a significant motivation in itself.

Why do people want firefox on a prim?

Are we going to have to generate HTML from LSL to render text?

If you just want a browser and SL at the same time without running in windowed mode and taking the performance hit... err... and computer that can't handle windowed mode gracefully is going to bog down horribly from gecko on a prim.

If you're going this way, give us general application embedding... or give us LSL calls to paint and render text on a generated texture.

XUL (and SVG) applications are fully supported and are one of the most exciting aspects of this technology - there are some examples in the list of included bookmarks - take a look at the Mozilla Amazon Browser or the Email app for instance. If it doesn't work for you, I'd like to know about it.

/callum

No, no, no, no. This is a full-fledged web browser. It bypasses Second Life (I believe), and goes straight from your client to the web. There might be some LSL commands that control the browser -- llSetAddressTo(string url) -- but uBrowser is pretty much just like Firefox, but it's on a 3D object instead of in a 2D window.

Callum, what about cookies? When I tried to log into LiveJounral through uBrowser, nothing happened. I know XmlHttpRequest works, so their authentication system should work; I thought maybe the cookies in uBrowser may have been shut off for security reasons (re: harddrive write permissions).

Can you set up a sourceforge project for this?

It would be nice to have a place to discuss the project and trade developer ideas on how to get around some of the problem it's facing.

HTML has to be the single most important feature SL can ever release. The value of this to LL to enable more businesses to come into SL is enormous. Has Linden Lab considered biting the bullet and spending some serious dough on some guru contractors to get this done sooner?

Interesting - all the profile stuff is a little up in the air (from what i can tell) and will certainly change. I thought cookies worked although they'll be different from any cookies in your regular Firefox broweser. Thanks for the heads up - I'll add it to the list.

Agreed - I did have a SF project set up but it was so awful and slow that I decided to splash for my own box at a colo and my own site. There does need to be better way to discuss things though - I'll see what I can set up.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Just wanted to add my name to this list (sorry if I missed quoting anyone). RELEASE IT NOW! Add the extras later.

ubrowser does render the XUL page at:
http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul

My bad.

I dunno, now you're worrying me. I don't like it from a performance perspective, but I also don't like it from the business perspective. How many people would use this to bypass the Linden economy and sell stuff directly in US$ through Paypal?

Well, at least it'd shut up the entrepreneurs complaining about inflation... when the Linden's worthless, it'll be because they've already jumped ship to US$.

I have to agree. We have a bit of a metadiscussion going on in the Library forums over this issue and pretty much agree that while this seems like a "cool new toy," from a practical standpoint it doesn't work as well as a standard browser. Brownie points for DHTML Lemmings as a link though.

It just seems to be going in reverse. It's not "let's get SL into the web" as much as "let's get the web in SL" at this point. Not sure how I like that, honestly.

Well, I just ran uBrowser side by side with SL and I was very impressed with the performance.

Well done!

I would like to say that I am very much looking forward to this in SL. Though, I have to say, the ability to ensure that everyone is sharing the same view of the same page is the critical application.

Just browsing the web, as has been pointed out in this thread, misses the point.

The key here is that we are in shared virtual space and are having shared experiences we can communicate, collaborate, and connect around .. "shared" being the keyword.

So, that being said, I would much rather functionality which let two people click and type on the same page before flash or plugins. Not to sound repetitive here, but I can already view flash plugins quite nicely already.

What I can not do is share the experience of being on the web in a virtual shared space.

I know my opinion doesn't have much weight, but I think the whole thing is silly. They should focus on making sl a better 3d experience, not pushing in the web. If I want a browser I click the firefox button in my task bar and get the web. I don't know why I want to be able to access the web through the 3d viewer? I guess it's a way to use the web in game? Post to a blog, buy stuff, whatever? Why can't I just pull up a browser over top of sl and do this? Why does it need to be on a prim?

For creative layout? I honestly don't think html / css is easier to layout then an image. For "neat" factor? I guess it can win on the neat factor, but really, I don't have sl for web content, I have sl for only the content SL can provide me with, a 3d enviroment. Heck, even watching streaming movies is a novelty, I have a better time watching them in a program dedicated to watching movies. It is really the same reason I don't use mozilla and use firefox instead.

Anyway, this is off topic from the thread. It is a neat thing to let people actually dip their hands into some sl development, and i'm glad to see it open sourced before they have people working on it for virtually free. This is somewhat of a precident seeing a company unable to perform a coding task open source it and ask people to work on it for them. It is a funny way to pay a developer, but interesting all the same.

LL's a neat company, I like them and what they are trying to do. I just can't wait for someone to get in there and do it right.