QtWeb: a surprise

darry1966 suggested that a web browser named QtWeb might be good for Precise Puppy.

It is available as a ready-to-go binary from here:
http://qtweb.net/download.html

Just Unzip it and set it to executable, then run:

# unzip QtWeb-elf386.zip
# chmod 755 QtWeb
# ./QtWeb

It starts up very fast.
I tested a https: site, it reported no ca-certificate, I had to give permission, but then it worked.
I went to youtube.com, played a video.

So, the Adobe Flash player works, and I presume the mplayerplug-in. There is no addons/plugins manager.

This looks like an excellent alternative to Opera, and it is considerably smaller. The zip'ed download is only 10MB.
Well, I know that is not really tiny, but considering that it has webkit, icu, and everything else statically linked in, that is very good.
It means, it should "just work" on all our pups.

Try it out, do you know some sites that will test it's limits? Embedded video? hairy HTML5? Javascript?

Oh, one thing, it does not support Java.

I am posting from it right now. It defaults to the GTK current theme, so looks just like the other apps.

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Comments

QtWeb fast
Username: BarryK
Yes!!! Testing on my old Compaq Presario, see previous blog post, running Precise Puppy 5.6.4 (5.7alpha1), I got these startup times for QtWeb: 1st 2nd 10 6 If this browser holds up in general browsing, including difficult sites, then it is highly likely to be my choice for Precise. Note also, it has these features built-in: [i]User-agent-switcher Torrent client Adblock[/i]

qtweb
Username: aarf
"Raring Puppy version 5.6.94 # time /mnt/sda8/QtWeb real 0m6.505s user 0m1.717s sys 0m0.243s fastest browser start ive seen.

qt video/music+wm
Username: scsijon
"if your going to use qt, consider changing your mplayer to qmplayerhttp://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/CMPlayer?content=146858 and for music use clemintinehttp://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/Clementine?content=120600. also consider adding the eggwm,http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php/Egg+Window+Manager?content=13686 as an alternate windowmanager, a very good qt based windowmanager that I had working happily using jwm's config and setting files so I had to basically do nothing to get it up and running. and for a whole lot of 'whats-out-there' check qt-apps.org, it's scary.

BBC News Channel
Username: Terryphi
"QtWeb fails at bbc.co.uk/news . Click on BBC News Channel Live : sound but no video. That is a show stopper for me. Try some other live news sites and see if this is a common problem.

BBC News Channel
Username: broomdodger
"[code]QtWeb fails at bbc.co.uk/news . Click on BBC News Channel Live : sound but no video.[/code] QtWeb on the Mac with Flash 11.7.xxx works but Flash 11.8.xxx fails. Have you tried a different version of Flash?

A new toy!
Username: Dewbie
"What a nice little browser! I installed QtWeb in Puppy Linux 3.01 as-is, no dependencies needed. It’s at least as quick as SeaMonkey 1-series, but slower than Dillo. (Then again, it doesn’t have Dillo’s limitations...) For the record, I’m on dial-up with a P2 / 350.

BBC News Channel
Username: Terryphi
"Broomdodger: I was testing with the latest Flash version for Linux (11.2.202.297). Just for test purposes I have subsequently tried the earlier version 10.3.183.19 . Neither version produces streaming video at BBC News Channel Live. Conclusion: QtWeb is just not mature enough to be used as a primary browser. That is a shame because it is fast, low on resources and renders webpages well.

QtWeb: a nice li'l thingy.
Username: capoverde
"QtWeb has become my secondary browser soon after trying it about two and a half years ago, a few days before Ray MK's post about it on the main forum: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=66547 Its speed and simplicity make it ideal when there's something to be done quickly on the Web, it is reasonably stable and despite some small drawbacks (some of which have gone in version 3.8.4) it generally does the job well. With a standard ADSL connection it takes less than three minutes to download, unpack, set permissions and get running; it even has a number of localizations ready -- like Italian here. With all Puppy versions I tried since 4.31 it ran nicely out-of-the box (just changing the binary's permissions); even the Win$ version gets along smoothly under Wine! Being fully portable, a flash memory carrying both the Linux and the Win$ versions lets you browse from virtually any PC -- even without leaving footsteps, if you like...

QtWeb PET
Username: BarryK
"I have made QtWeb into a PET package (10.2MB): http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-common/qtweb-3.8.4-x86.pet

browser >> zdrive
Username: 01micko
"Proposed solution to browser wars; have an option in 3builddistro to redirect the browser to the zdrive. That also alleviates the ongoing problem of outdated browsers in the main sfs. Thoughts?

zdrive browser
Username: pemasu
"zdrive based browser sounds great. People can easily update or change browser without need to consume save file. If there isnt any disadvantages in zdrive based browser ? Maybe someone will be enthusiathic creating megabrowser pack for megabrowsing people.

QtWeb as spot?
Username: BarryK
"Has anybody managed to get QtWeb running properly as user spot? I don't mean just get it to run, that is easy. I can't get it to save it's config setting into /root/spot, it saves them in /tmp. I tried to save a web page inside /root/spot, it gave an error.

Re QtWeb as spot
Username: BarryK
"Well, I solved the saving problem. I had /root/spot/Downloads set as the download directory, owner:group = spot:spot and permissions 755. I changed it to 775, that is gave group write permission, and the web page saved. But, the config setting still eluded me. Hmmm, could copy the config file to /tmp before starting QtWeb, then copy it out after QtWeb has quit, to save it permanently. A hack solution though.

Making QtWeb store its settings in $HOME
Username: jamesbond
"Barry, Create a blank file "unins000.exe" in either the root directory (/) or in where QtWeb is located. If you do this, then the config will be stored properly in $HOME directory (/root/spot in case of spot). PS: The code that checks for this is supposed to detect where QtWeb is located - if you put it in /usr/bin/QtWeb then you should create the file in /usr/bin/unins000.exe but for my case apparently it always fails the check so the ugly unins000.exe has to be created at root: /unins000.exe :cry: Get the source tarball and look at browserapplication.cpp - look at "definePortableRunMode" method (ah, the joy of open source!). If you're willing to rebuild QtWeb from source, then just edit this method so that s_portableRunMode is always set as 'false'.

Re QtWeb as spot
Username: BarryK
"jamesbond, Thanks so much for that info! Very interesting, unins000.exe at / did not work for me, made no difference, but at /usr/bin it works! Right, now I'll finish off the mechanism for offering to run QtWeb as spot, and will modify the QtWeb pinstall.sh in the PET to create unins000.exe.

QtWeb PET re-uploaded
Username: BarryK
"OK, I have re-uploaded the PET, same name as before.

Missing /
Username: jrb
"[code]# touch usr/bin/unins000.exe touch: cannot touch ‘usr/bin/unins000.exe’: No such file or directory[/code] same with chmod

Re missing /
Username: BarryK
"There is nothing wrong. When pinstall.sh executes, the path is correct. It will execute either in Woof, inside 'rootfs-complete' directory, or in a running Puppy where current working directory is /. The absolute path should never be specified in pinstall.sh.

Straight to desktop
Username: BarryK
"jrb, I noticed that you posted on the Forum that Precise 5.6.4 did not go straight to the desktop, ran xorgwizard instead. No, it does go straight to the desktop. The reason it would not is if there existed a 'pupdesk.flg' file, which would only exist if a very first bootup required a hard reboot. If the desktop succeeds, that file is removed. If the user is unable to click the 'OK' button on QuickSetup, then the desktop is deemed to have failed, and pupdesk.flg is not removed, and at next bootup the xorgwizard will run.

X startup
Username: technosaurus
"The installer could provide "hints" to the config for X resolution/driver etc... this would prevent a lot of unnecessary stuff to run on diskless installs or for pfix=ram (presumably all of this will have already been run if the installer runs) ex: X=Xvesa screen=1024x768x24 (other stuff would be nice too like wifi connection, sound levels, startup daemons,...) Note: glxgears will continue to get slower until Linus provides syscall wrappers for OpenGl and other video functions (will never happen for multiple reasons) currently the software based tinyGL (by Fabrice Bellard) outperforms all of the "hardware" implementations I can test

Tags: puppy