idea: web web browser

[piratePenguin]

I dont mean something like eye os, or whatever web-based "operating systems" that are out there these days.

I mean, we have the web rendering engines webkit, gecko, presto etc.. They support a LARGE amount of common web document formats and scripting. These standards are being used effectively by Google and others to make web applications such as Maps/Docs that rival platform-specific software or just completely conquer.

But if these rendering engines can be used to render fully-blown, useful applications, then if somebody developed a "browser shell" using technologies supported by web rendering engines work could begin on rapidly developing and exposing experimental future ways to browse the web: to millions of people.

For example, just as in Firefox you can change it's theme by moving the mouse around on the getpersonas gallery, you could be also switching browser paradigm i.e. once you were using toolbar-on-top with all the buttons you always need to one where those are hidden as in the iphone and can be revealed by a dragging motion. Or one where a middle click brings up a circle menu (I dunno what these are called -- blender uses them?).

Realistically, what I said about working with different web rendering engines is probably overkill for a tonne of experiments. (There are things to consider such as saving information, accessing hard disk: this could be done by a server process that the "shell web page" is interacting with standard and that voids the need to integrate with the browser. In fact, maybe it's possible to work with multiple browsers even as this is exclusively for experiments.)

(One of the backbones of Firefoxes extensible framework is XUL - an xml markup language used to define and render it's interface. To my knowledge it's the only web browser that uses the same renderer for web pages as for the actual complete browser interface)

summary: web browsers render web content, so why aren't they the sexiest most customizable things as standard, doing whatever one person decided might work and integrating highly with the web? (We are seeing a shift towards this integrating - social bookmarking etc, ideas for Firefoxes home tab feature in its next release displaying updates from facebook automatically and shite like that, but could this type of thing be accelerated by letting people with web skills develop the frontends of the users browser?)

[Aloone_Jonez]

It sounds like a good idea for producing multi-platform applications.

The only problem I can see is that relying on scripting will make it slow.

This is a bit off-topic but one of the things I've always disliked about *NIX is that there are several incomparable graphical tool-kits Qt, GTK etc. I think if the *NIX graphical system were designed today, they would have decided to use a standard XML based format for all graphical elements so you'd only need to install one graphical tool kit for all the programs on the system. It would make desktop integration much easier and provide a common look 'n' feel as is provided with other desktop OSes.

[piratePenguin]

Indeed a good idea for producing multi-platform applications is the web. That's the web as we have it. If an app needs to interact with the operating system (e.g. a cd-recoding app) then the web of course doesn't work (there will be a <device> tag in html5 for microphone and video support afaik, I wonder is that something that's supposed to expand, but I still dont see it). If that's the case you need a native app and Mozilla makes XULRunner which is a packaged gecko so that developers can make native applications using the gecko-supported technologies (xul, html, css, etc.. but thats just the frontend stuff and not most of the purpose an app would chose xulrunner). Examples of xulrunner applications are firefox, thunderbird, and songbird, and there are more..

A webbrowser indeed needs to interact with the operating system. Or at least the browser backend needs to. But the frontend. If as firefox is developed with complicated xul that is only supported by gecko, we built frontends using html, css: standard web technologies, then we can build a highly extensible system where it's possible to effectively switch between front ends (and without a restart, perhaps in an instant on a fast computer).

So picture instant browser themes that chrome/firefox 3.6 have: only the whole interface is customized.

For the record, I think chrome/ff can do better by supporting semi-translucent and live scripted backgrounds. (ff does support animated pngs, but so much more should be possible)

Additionally if the multi browser thing works we have the effectiveness of your fully customized browser and web info in the cloud that you can use on your mobile, at work and at home without hassle. (Now, Mozilla has the Weave extension to achieve this for Firefox, and Opera has it's own solution I'm sure. Chrome would be wise if it hooks up with Google Notepad and an eventually bigger service to save more than just urls but session tabs etc (does that sound scary to anyone else?). But the point is this web integration comes more naturally for web applications. Particularly if your web browser is a webpage: then you can use it anywhere.)

[Aloone_Jonez]

Perhaps Firefox based applications are already made?

I remember them installing Firefox on some computers at work because a certain CAD program required it to work. Unfortunately I don't know what program it was or why it needed Firefox, it could have been something as simple as it having an non-IE compatible HTML help file.

[piratePenguin]

Perhaps Firefox based applications are already made?

I remember them installing Firefox on some computers at work because a certain CAD program required it to work. Unfortunately I don't know what program it was or why it needed Firefox, it could have been something as simple as it having an non-IE compatible HTML help file.

Probably. Or for displaying SVGs for publishing on the web or something like that. It could be an xulrunner application - that you could regard as a "firefox application" (but more accurately gecko/xulrunner application), but I don't think there is such a cad application.

I might experiment with an addon for Firefox that replaces it's interface with just html back/forward links and see how it runs and how theme switching/adding extensions from a webpage would go.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I've no idea because I didn't use it.

You're right, it could be a viewer or something like that. It may even have been to be able to interoperate with a program running on a UNIX box.