Joone's Blog

Accelerated Composting in WebKitGtk+

2011-12-05T20:25:00.001+09:00

During the WebKitGkt+ hackfest 2011, I have worked on applying Accelerated Compositing to WebKitGtk+ with Clutter. It started working like the webkit-clutter port, so I was able to run the same demo in GtkLauncher as follows:

This is not upstreamed yet, but I am now getting the patches reviewed. Gustavo and Martin are helping me to make more good patches. Thanks!

I think that this hackfest was done successfully. You can check more news about the WebKitGtk+ hackfest from other blog posts:
http://blogs.igalia.com/juanjo/2011/12/04/webkitgtk-hackfest-wrap-up/
http://blogs.igalia.com/juanjo/2011/11/17/announcing-the-webkitgtk-hackfest-2011/
http://www.hadess.net/search/label/hackfest

Finally, I would like to thank my employer Collabora, Igalia and mainly the GNOME Foundation for helping us to attend the hackfest. See you at the next hackfest!

WebKitGtk+ Hackfest 2011

2011-11-30T21:29:00.001+09:00

Gustavo and I are attending the WebKitGtk+ hackfest 2011 which is held at the Igalia office in A Coruña, Spain like the last time. This is an annual event for WebKitGtk+ maintainers to work together at the same place.

We made a list of work items on the blackboard as usual on the first day. You can find these topics in the wiki. My major work item is to apply Accelerated Compositing implementation of the clutter port to WebKitGtk+. If I finish it a bit earlier, I will try to hack my unresolved patches such as IME support in WebKit2Gtk+ and applying Tiled Backing Store to WebKitGtk+.

Happy Hacking!

Talking about GNOME3

2011-11-24T15:55:00.001+09:00

I gave a talk about GNOME3 at Daum DevOn conference in Korea. Daum is a popular web portal site in Korea like Yahoo. They invited many developer & user communities to the conference, so the GNOME Korea community had a chance to introduce GNOME3 and the community to the attendees.

I was so glad to introduce GNOME3.2 and the infra technology like GTK+, Clutter, GStreamer, WebKitGtk+, Telepathy and GObject-Introspection. Here are the slides and some photos.

GNOME3 & 그놈 한국 공동체

View more presentations from Joone Hur

My lovely baby girl

2011-10-04T00:48:00.000+09:00

Last Sunday, the 2nd of October, was the most memorable day in my
life. Because I was married on the same day 6 years ago and I became a father for the first time. Actually, the birth was scheduled for the 13th of October, but it seems that she was born 2 weeks earlier to celebrate our wedding anniversary. :-) She is a little bit smaller than other babies, but healthy and well.

I hope that all goes well with my baby.

Desktop Summit 2011

2011-08-28T02:35:00.029+09:00

It has been a week since I got back home from Cambridge. I had a day trip in London before leaving for Korea, which was very nice because I got the chance to look around the royal places, museums, and parks. In particular, I was so excited to find a TINTIN shop by chance. :-)

Anyway, Desktop Summit 2011 was great: there were many great talks, workshops, BoFs, and parties as usual. It was good to meet my Collabora colleagues, WebKitGtk+ maintainers(Kov, Xan, Martin, Alex, Philippe, Diego), a Korean KDE contributor(peremen), and some new people(Adrián, Debarshi,...). I even gave a talk of webkit-clutter. If I was asked to compare this summit to the last one, I can say two things: first, GNOME and KDE talks were not duplicated so I could attend a KDE talk about a WebKit Browser and there were more common sessions GNOME and KDE folks could share together. Therefore, this conference seemed more like a true Desktop Summit. The next difference was that it’s very hard to find mobile related topics in this conference. I think that It was a big loss for the community that Nokia left MeeGo. Although Intel is trying to maintain the MeeGo Project, it seems like it's not easy to delivery MeeGo to the mobile market alone.

webkit-clutter talk

Photo by Adrián

I gave a talk about webkit-clutter in place of Kov because he had personal business to attend to. This talk was a part of the WebKit talk: first, Martin explained the new features of WebKitGtk+ 1.4.0 and upcoming feature of the next version. Second, Alex introduced the current status of WebKit2Gtk+ and gave a demo of it, which showed us how to restart a flash plug-in without affecting browsing capability. That explains why we need the multiple process model in web browsing. Finally. I introduced the webkit-clutter port: why the webkit-clutter port is needed, what we have done, and what features are coming. I will introduce more details about the WebKit talk in the next blog post.

Blending the web and the desktop

Xan showed a demo of installing and running a web application in GNOME3. He said “80% of the time people use the web so 80% of GNOME effort should go to the web”, I agree with him, we need to focus on web integration with GNOME more. Anyway, Xan seemed like a web evangelist during his talk.

Other interesting talks

GStreamer 1.0: Wim introduced the main changes of GStreamer 1.0 such as managing memory, buffer metadata, and dynamic pipeline. You will be able to get more information from the GStreamer conference l in Prague, Czech Republic

GTK 4 - the future of your favorite toolkit: Actually, nobody has started working on GTK4+, but the speakers showed a big picture of GTK+4 which will improve in areas of animations, effects, and transformations. For realizing this plan, Clutter will be used as a graphic backend, which allows GTK+ applications to use animation effects easily.
GNOME Shell version π: Owen Talyor Introduced GNOME Shell 3.2 with some demos such as Google Account Integration, soft keyboard, and more extensions.
GNOME a continent, starting from Asia: There was a introduction of how the GNOME Asia summit started, what it has done and what it will do. I wish to attend the next GNOME Asia Summit held in Hong Kong.
Towards a multitouch gnome-shell: Although it will take more time to see if X.org supports multi-touch officially, Carlos showed a demo of the multi-touch gnome shell. This seemed like the first step to touch based devices.

NateOn connection manager for Telepathy

NateOn is an instant messenger which is very popular in Korea. As you can see the above picture, it supports the Linux version, but the project has not been maintained well. The problem is that NateOn was removed from the Debian archive because it built with KDE3.(ChangWoo’s blog article) As a result, Korean users can’t download NateOn from Debian repositories. Although there was a proposal to develop a NateOn connection manager for Telepathy from the GNOME Korean community, it was just an idea. Fortunately, I met a Telepathy contributor, Debarshi who is interested in this project. I shared all the information about NateOn with him so that he was able to start developing the connection manager. When it starts to work a bit, I will be able to join the project.

Currywurst

I didn’t have a chance to go to any tourist attractions in Berlin this time, but I had Currywurst which is well-known Berlin food. It was good to have it with a beer.

Visiting the Cambridge office

After the Desktop Summit, I moved to Cambridge for visiting the company HQ office. It was very nice to meet people and work at the office. I had brought along some postcards of UNESCO World Heritage of Korea for a small gift as follows:

You can see them from the bulletin board when you visit the office.

There are many tourist attractions near the office, so I went to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and the Fitzwilliam Museum during my stay. It was very nice, so I have shared some photos here.

On the last evening, we had a team dinner in an Indian restaurant. Although British accent was a bit unfamiliar to me, I enjoyed the talks and the Tandoori chicken. Anyway, I’d like to thank everyone in the office for helping me stay and work well. Thanks!

Finally, I'd also like to thank my employer, Collabora for sponsoring my trip to Berlin for Desktop Summit 2011. I hope to see everyone at the next Guadec in A Coruña, Spain.

If Gaudi were a software architect

2011-07-09T23:46:00.006+09:00

Last December, I had a chance to visit Barcelona in Spain. This was my first personal overseas trip not related to business, so I was a little bit nervous to wander around the downtown area. Anyway, the most impressive attractions were definitely Gaudi’s architecture; in fact it seems impossible to talk about Barcelona without mentioning his architecture. While looking around his architecture and museum, I was thinking about "what if Gaudi was a software architect?" and "What could we learn from his practices as a software architect?" I will talk about these questions in this post.

During the time I was there, I visited some more of his famous constructions in Barcelona such as Park Güell, Casa Milà, and Sagrada Família. Among them, Sagrada Família is the most impressive work. He started working on Sagrada Familia in 1883, but he didn’t see the completion. Even our generation might not see it, because the main twin towers have not started to be built yet.

About Gaudi

Gaudi is considered to be the most creative architect in the world. He created his own trend of architecture. You can’t but agree with my opinion when you see Sagrada Família. When I first saw this architecture, it looked like aliens could create it because I have never seen a similar style before. His architectural style is still not common now, but I have seen ceramic tiles like Gaudi’s work in a park near my house.

Sagrada Família

How Gaudi created his works

People still are making miniatures in the workroom

Architects usually use blueprints to design a piece of architecture, but it is not enough to construct a large building. In general, they also use a modeling software to see a model of the architecture. It allow them to develop the architecture easily before constructing it.

On the other hand, Gaudi just sketched his ideas so many times and then made a blueprint as others did. In addition, he always made several miniatures in various scales. He realized his idea through miniature models and then developed and fixed his design. These miniatures have allowed successors to continue the construction of Sagrada Família for the almost 100 years since his death.

How software architects design software

Types of diagrams used to design software from wikipedia

Software architects also design software like Gaudi. They draw many diagrams to design a piece of software just as construction architects make blueprints, but it simply abstracts the overall structure and operations because it is impossible to document all of its complexity and details. Instead, they can implement a prototype to test the design and operations of the software. Fortunately, there are some software tools to help to make a prototype, or we can develop a real piece of software as a prototype in a short time. To me, it seems like making a miniature in construction.
I think making a miniature and prototyping are a similar process from the viewpoint of realizing imagination. It just makes it possible for us to check the overall design. However, it is impossible to make sure every detail is correct through the miniature and prototyping. In the case of construction, 3D graphics help to realize more details virtually. On the other hands, designing software is still dependent on an engineer’s experience and sense, because when we look into the details of the software, we just see logic, algorithms, and mathematics.

What if Gaudi was a software architect?

His famous ceramic tiles

Gaudi might have enjoyed prototyping and implementing code. Even he definitely would have been interested in UX (user experience) design. This is because not only did he design his buildings, he was involved in all of the details of his works such as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging and carpentry.

The software architect’s role
Some people think that the major role of software architects is just to design software and so they don’t need to write code or even read code, but I have a different opinion. Namely, software architects should implement the core part of software and review the major code: good code can explain how it works by itself. In addition, they should have insight into UX and graphics because they could affect its architecture.

Therefore, what I took away from seeing the wondrous Sagrada Familia and learning about Gaudi’s life and work is that if you want to be a good software architect, you need to work like Gaudi, which means you should have expertise in every detail of software and write code by yourself.

References:

WebKit Mobile Features

2011-05-21T17:04:00.000+09:00

Recently, I spent some time implementing the viewport meta tags and tiled backing store for WebKitGtk+, which are the mobile features of the WebKit engine. In this post, I’m going to tell you more about the mobile features of the WebKit engine and how to enable each feature when you build WebKitGtk+.

First of all, the WebKit engine is particularly strong in the mobile area, because it is lighter and faster than other browser engines and has been verified by the success of Safari on the iPhone. Due to this reason, most mobile devices have adopted the WebKit engine to offer their own web browser: Nokia Symbian, Google Android, HP WebOS, and Samsung Bada are all using WebKit based browsers.

Additionally, WebKit is an open source project. Naturally, all source code is open to the public, but there is no obligation for manufacturers to open their browser code, because the WebKit engine uses the LGPL, so it allows a browser executable file to just link with the WebKit engine dynamically. It means that the browser can be a different file independent from the WebKit library. Because of this reason, the mobile features of Safari on the iPhone need not be open to the public and subsequently it has been hard to access the mobile features. Fortunately, other phone manufacturers have participated in the WebKit project and are developing mobile features within the community. Currently, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Motorola and Erricson have participated in the WebKit project. In addition, the open source companies Collabora and Igalia have worked on WebKit for a long time.

Recently, some mobile features already have been applied to the WebKit engine such as the tiled backing store, touch events, and viewport meta tags. Since these features are a little complicated to understand in terms of the name, I will explain them including the other mobile features supported by WebKit in more details.

Fast Mobile Scrolling
Tiled Backing Store
Viewport Meta Tags
Frameset Flattening
Touch Events

Fast Mobile Scrolling

You can see a fixed background image(Smile Icon) when you even scroll the web page as you can see in the above picture. This can be possible if a web page has elements which have the CSS background-attachment property. In this case, WebKit carries out a slow repaint in order to avoid rendering artifacts. However, scrolling a web page with a fixed background image causes noticeable delays on mobile devices. It means that WebKit tries not to update fixed elements every time to scroll fast because it is hard to display a fixed element while scrolling fast.

In order to avoid this problem, we can make scrolling faster if we ignore the CSS property "background-attachment: fixed" by enabling the fast mobile scrolling option as you can see in the left picture (i.e. the fixed background can be scrollable on WebKitGtk+ with the fast mobile scrolling build option).

To enable the fast mobile scrolling:

1) Build WebKitGtk+ with the fast mobile scrolling option:

$WebKit/Tools/Scripts/build-webkit --gtk --fast-mobile-scrolling

Tiled Backing Store

When I tried to use Safari on the iPhone, I was impressed by the fact that the scrolling web pages were very fast. This is possible because Safari caches the content of the web page as bitmaps in memory, and the cached bitmaps we've seen are just painted on the screen without sending paint calls to WebCore when we scroll a web page. These bitmaps are created and deleted on-demand as the viewport moves over the web page. We call them the “tiled backing store.”

The tiled backing store was applied to QtWebKit by Nokia engineers. They applied this feature to WebCore, so it can be shared by other ports. In the case of WebKitGtk, Code Aurora engineers submitted an initial patch, I have updated the patch to use only Cairo API by removing GTK+ dependency. This would allow the WinCairo and Efl port to use the updated patch for enabling the tiled backing store.

To enable the tiled backing store:
1 ) Build WebKitGtk+ with the tiled backing store option as follows:

$ WebKit/Tools/Scripts/build-webkit --gtk --tiled-backing-store

2) Set the tiled backing store setting to TRUE through WebKitWebSettings as follows:

WebKitWebSettings *settings = webkit_web_view_get_settings(webView);
g_object_set(G_OBJECT(settings), "enable-tiled-backing-store", TRUE, NULL);

Viewport Meta Tags

Apple introduced the full browsing feature for the first time when they released the iPhone. Until then, the mobile phone was not usable to browse web pages made for desktop due to the small screen size. To overcome this limitation, Safari on the iPhone zooms web pages out automatically to fit to the screen like in the above picture(left).

For this, Safari on the iPhone assumes that web pages have 980px width by default. When Safari loads a web page, it scales down the web page by a factor of 0.32 (320/980) to fit to the width of the screen in the case of iPhone 3G. But, the problem is that all pages are not displayed to fit to 980px width. For example, mobile web pages can be displayed well with 320px or 480px. the Google Search page is displayed on the iPhone like the right picture because the Google search page is required to have the less width compared to 980px.

To solve this problem, Apple defined the viewport meta tags to allow web browsers to support desktop web page and mobile web page effectively. Actually, this is not a web standard, but most mobile web browsers have adopted this feature and WebKit also supports it.

Let’s take a look at the viewport meta tag in more detail. The viewport meta tags can be used to set the width, height and initial scale factor of the viewport. Although most web pages don’t have viewport meta tags, mobile browsers which have 320 px screen width can apply initial values to web pages as follows:

<meta name = "viewport" content = "width = 980" initial-scale = "0.32">

In the case of mobile pages, you need to set the viewport meta tags as follows:

<meta name="viewport" content="user-scalable=no, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, width=device-width" />

As you can see each property, web pages can not be scaled up/down; even user scaling is turned off. This is because the mobile web pages are actually written for the small screen.

For more information on the viewport meta tags, refer to the Safari reference library.

Frameset Flattening

There are some web pages that have their own scrollable area with the scroll bars like the above page. We call this "sub frame." On touch devices, the problem is that it is desirable not to have any scrollable sub frame of the web page because the user could confuse with sometimes scrolling sub frames and scrolling the web page itself at other times because it is very hard for the user to understand what “sub frame” is. For this reason, iframes and framesets are hardly usable on touch devices.

However, if you enable the frameset flattening features when building Webkit, all the frames can be one scrollable page as you can see the above figure.

To enable the Fameset flattening:

WebKitWebSettings *settings = webkit_web_view_get_settings(webView);
g_object_set(G_OBJECT(settings), "enable-frame-flattening", TRUE, NULL);

Touch events

Supporting multi-touch has become popular since iPhone introduced it. Now, all smart phones support multi-touch. Using multi-touch allows the users to use more than two fingers to interact with applications on their smart phone. For example, you can use a piano or guitar applications using your 5 fingers.

However, using multi-touch is not only possible for native applications, but also for web pages. Since WebKit supports touch events as DOM events, web developers can deal with touch events using JavaScript. There are 4 kinds of touch events: touchstart, touchmove, touchend, and touchcancel. Unfortunately, WebKitGtk+ doesn't support the touch events yet. So if you want to test the touch events , running QtWebKit or mobile Safari would be good. For more information on how to use the touch events, refer to the Safari reference library.

Finally, I’d like to let you know there are more mobile features I didn’t introduce here, such as intelligent zoom, kinetic scrolling, zooming animation, and etc. WebKit doesn’t support them by itself, but the hosting applications can implement these kind of features, because these features are likely to depend on the platform. However, when these features are added to WebKitGtk+, I will talk about them in more detail.

References

WebKit Contributors Meeting 2011

2011-05-01T13:04:00.002+09:00

I attended the WebKit Contributors meeting which was held by Apple, April 24~25 2011 near Apple Campus in Cupertino, California. This is the annual meeting for WebKit reviewers and committers. They come together to discuss the current issues of WebKit and hack the code in the meeting. In this post, I am going to introduce you to what we talk about in the WebKit meeting.

As you know, WebKit is the hottest open source project these days, because most mobile phones use the WebKit engine and additionally Chrome and Safari also are based on WebKit. In addition, the WebKit engine is used for mobile platforms such as HP WebOS and RIM Playbook. Therefore, Apple and Google as well as other big electronics companies like Nokia, RIM, Samung, Motorola have joined the WebKit project. As you might already know, Collabora, the company I work for, has contributed to WebKitGtk+ with Igalia.

On the first day, we made the tracks and sessions instantly in the morning. Actually, there were many talks and hackathons proposed, but we chose our favorite items by voting. Although I was not able to attend all sessions, I will introduce some of them briefly.

First, I'd like to talk about WebKit2. Actually, Apple announced the WebKit2 project to support a multiple process model in WebKit like Chrome browser in the previous year. Other ports like Qt and Gtk+ are also trying to support the WebKit2 model. In the WebKit2 session, we discussed many issues, but I listed up some of the most important ones which readers might be interested in as follows:

- Using C API, is this a great choice?
- Support for Out-of-process plugin
- Code sharing between WebKit1 and WebKit2
- DRT rewritten
- Support for threaded model
- Low-level communication code is very specific to the platform. It needs an abstract model for communication between the web process and ui process.
- It is difficult to follow accessibility implementation on a Mac.

The next interesting session was about hardware acceleration. We discussed the current issues of hardware acceleration in each port. In particular, Google’s effort on 2D acceleration is quite interesting to me. Actually, 2D acceleration is a very challenging task because I have seen many trials of improving 2D graphics rendering through OpenGL or OpenVG. However, the performance was not faster than CPU. Interestingly, Google seemed to try to accelerate 2D graphics by 3D graphics in the WebKit itself. But, all 2D drawings are not dependent on GPU, only the specific 2D drawing primitives are rendered by GPU. So they are currently profiling 2D drawing primitives rendered by GPU to see which 2D graphics primitives are really accelerated by GPU. If this hybrid model is successful, we will be able to apply it to other ports.

In other sessions, we talked about reducing the build systems in WebKit. Currently, we have 8 build systems for each WebKit port. So, when we add new source files, sometimes we forget to add the files to all of the build systems, which causes build breaks. Accordingly, CMake and GYP were proposed for unifying the build systems. However, each port just follows its development environment, so it seems like it would be hard to unify each current build system into one. I think that WebKitGtk+ can move to CMake, but I’m not sure if the GNOME guys like it. In addition, one of our core contributors, Eric introduced how his team designed and implemented HTML5 parser. Actually, the existing parser was so complex as written in one source file which was the longest file in WebKit, so he told us that it took several months to understand the parser code. So he divided the parsing functionality into several classes such as HTMLToken, HTMLTokenizer, HTMLTreeBuilder, HTMLDocumentParser, and others.

Additionally, there was a party on the first day held by the Google Chrome Team. I met the reviewers who have reviewed my patches. I was pleased to meet them directly; it was like meeting old friends. It made me feel more connected to the community.

These days, the companies in which the WebKit contributors are involved are competing with each other, but as I saw at the meeting, the contributors are working together to develop a better web engine. For instance, I learned that Google is trying to overtake Apple with Android and Chrome, but they still work closely to develop the features of the HTML5/CSS3 standard. In addition, Nokia and RIM’s reviewers, like Kenneth and tonikitoo always review Samsung’s patches. I think this is an example of the power of open source.

Anyway, I hope to talk more details about the next meeting. Thanks!

Firefox4 & the future of the Web

2011-04-22T18:57:00.003+09:00

Firefox4 was released last month. It has been downloaded more than 57 million times since its release from all over the world. The release has been successful so far, but it seems not to be easy to compete the other browsers as much as before. In this post, I am going to talk about new features of Firefox4 , the reason why using Firefox is important, and the task of remaining competitive as a community supported browser.

New features of Firefox4
First, let’s take a look at the new features of Firefox4[1].

App Tabs & Panorama

How many tabs are you opening when using Firefox? In my case, I open more than 10 tabs, so it is very difficult to find the page I want to see easily. App Tabs & Panorama help you organize so many tabs. In more detail, App tabs are a kind of tab, but these tabs are located in the left side of the tab area, which just display its icon without the title. So it allows users to place more tabs in the tab area. The difference compared to normal tabs is that these tabs can be shown after the browser restarts. If you open Facebook, Twitter, and GMail as App Tabs, you don’t need to open those web pages again. In the case of Panorama, relevant tabs can be group together as you see the above figure. It helps the user find a tab more easily. In addition, you can move tabs among groups by drag & drop.

WebGL

WebGL brings 3D graphics to Firefox, which allows for developers to create 3D games and 3D UI for the Web. This link introduces several WebGL demos running on Firefox4, so you can imagine how the Web would change in the future.

In addition, Firefox4 introduces a lot of new technologies for Web developer:

JägerMonkey JavaScript engine : This is a new JavaScript Engine that replaced TraceMonkey, which allows JavaScript to run faster.
WebM Support: WebM is an open source, free royalties video codec open by Google. It allows people to author and distribute their own video without paying any royalties.
HTML5 Parser: This allows the browser to parse HTML content in the same way, even if the content has errors.
IndexDB: This is the Web standard for database.
More File APIs: It allows to upload files more easily.
Audio API: It allows to process audio streams for mixing and equalizing.
Multi Touch: Multi touch is supported by Windows7.
Web Console: This allows developers to check the content loading status from the console window.

For detailed information on the new features, take a look at the following page:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/

Why Firefox?
Do you remember the dark age of the Web? After the browser war[2] between Internet Explorer and Netscape was over in the 1990s, Internet explorer came to have more than 95% of the market share by 2002. As a result, nobody had cared about innovation in web browsers; until 2006 there was only one new version of Internet Explorer since version 6.0 was released in 2001. IT experts call this period of time the dark age of the Web, because there was no alternative browser for Internet Explorer. As a result, many web sites were dependent on Microsoft’s proprietary technology, like ActiveX control. Firefox was created to give back the Web to people by breaking the dark age like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

Now, nobody dominates the Web because Mozilla has been doing well to develop the Web using open technology and in the standard way by HTML5, CSS3, SVG, free codec, etc. This means that there should be no barriers to see Web contents from any browser on any platform. However, there are still threats from big companies. They could control the Web in their own way if they surpass the other browsers. ActiveX control issue in Korea is a well known example. Therefore, we have to be interested in spreading Firefox and keeping the Open Web.[3]

Future of Firefox
Open competition makes the Web innovate faster than before. Actually, Firefox has a unique position in the browser market. It is an open source project and has lead to innovate the Web technology. However, Google Chrome also strongly has lead the Web innovation, which supports the multiple process model and the Web technology based add-ons. Additionally, it is an open source project and their development process is open like Firefox, so anyone can be involved the development. In the mobile market, the situation is worse. Apple doesn’t allow users to run Firefox on the iOS because Firefox can be an application platform itself. Another problem is that Firefox for Android is not popular yet.

Well, how does Mozilla overcome this situation? Mozilla is trying to move the development focus from platform to product. In addition, they are preparing the Mozilla2 project which is a future platform for Firefox. It allows us to open each web page and add-on using a separate process. In my opinion, Mozilla should release Firefox for iPhone based on WebKit, because offering the same experience is more important than being addicted to the Mozilla platform.

Firefox is not just a web browser but provides a way to see the world and meet people. If we access the Web through decentralized tools like Firefox, nobody can control the Web, allowing everyone to use the Web equally without any restrictions.

References
[1] http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars#The_first_browser_war
[3] http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/09/16/describing-the-open-web/

The age of the web browser is coming

2011-03-02T17:18:00.005+09:00

When did you start using a PC? In my case, I started to use computers when I was in university. At that time, it was very difficult for general users to use a computer, because we had to memorize the commands and the directory path, which an executable file is located in. Even using a mouse was optional to use PCs. However, the computing environment has changed rapidly since Windows and the Web were introduced in the 1990s. These days, even a 2 years old baby is able to use a smart device like the iPad.

Our PC usage has also changed rapidly. For example, installing softwares was always required to run them a few years ago, but these days, you may deal with most things on a web browser. If you close the browser, it may mean you are not using your PC anymore. As the Web technologies develop, the Web provides more services that we didn’t expect before. For example, we watch movies, music videos, and even TV on our browsers. In addition, we send and read emails using the web browser on any PC. Even if you use Google Docs, you can edit documents, slides, and spread sheets. Although it is missing many features such as animation effects, clip arts, etc, compared to MS Office, it is simple to use, and offers unique features such as collaborative editing in real-time. We may be living in the middle of the change from the desktop to the Web, similar to move from the text-based user interfaces like DOS to the GUIs like Mac OS and Windows.

Interestingly, there is a hidden side to this change. Actually, Microsoft has dominated the desktop through Windows and Office. However, Google has been trying to encourage people to use the Web more. Search & Ads are their main business, but they have been offering various web services such as GMail, Google Docs, Calendar, and Youtube to lure people away from the desktop. Now, nobody stops this change because even Microsoft has also adopted this trend. As Microsoft opened the desktop age instead of IBM, Google is also trying to open an era of the web desktop.

If this is true, how does Google lead the change? As you know, Google is a web service company, but they launched the Chrome browser and Chrome OS in 2009. Actually, Google has sponsored the Firefox project for a long time. But now, they are developing their own browser and operating system like Windows. Moreover, they are investing a lot of engineering resources in order to innovate the Web technology. As a result, the Web seems to work more like the desktop in terms of introducing more desktop features such as dealing with multimedia, accessing hardware like GPS and cameras, working offline, etc. However, Google can be evil if they want to be, because they are gathering all information, even your private data, so we should keep our eyes on Google not to be evil, although the informal corporate motto of Google is “Don’t be evil”[1].

You are in the middle of the switch to a new desktop environment. I expect that many people will get benefits through this change because it makes people use PCs more easily and helps people get out of the pain of maintaining their PC. Also, it would give more business opportunities to new companies and developers.

What should we do in this change? Just use the Web using the latest version of the web browser such as Firefox4 or Internet Explorer 9, which will come out this year. In addition, you need to acquaint yourself with famous web services such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Youtube, Google Docs, etc. Because, if we have to follow the change, it would be better to lead it. If so, you may also have the opportunity to change your surroundings at your position through this exciting transition.

Reference
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil

WebKitGtk+ Hackfest 2010

2010-12-31T00:35:00.011+09:00

I attended the WebKitGtk+ Hackfest held in the Igalia Office, located in Coruña, Spain, in this month. It was a great opportunity for me to meet the WebKitGtk+maintainers directly. This hackfest was sponsored by Collabora and Igalia. The Igalia office was very nice; it can be compared to the Google office in terms of the atmosphere. There were free snacks, beverage and game consoles in the office. Moreover, we had buffet lunch everyday. I'd like to give thanks to Collabora and Igalia for sponsoring the hackfest and the GNOME foundation for sponsoring my trip to Coruña.

During the hackfest, we concentrated on hacking WebKitGtk+ to fix bugs and implement new features, only stopping to sleep and eat . Of course , we also made time for a city tour in Courña for a quater of a day.

Gtk+ and libSoup maintainers also attended the hackfest to support WebKitGtk+ maintainers, because WebKitGtk+ depends on those libraries. Moreover, embracing Gtk+3 needs Gtk+ maintainers' help to keep the pace with Gtk+3 changes. Also, an Epiphany browser maintainer also joined the hackfest to fix Epiphany bugs together with the WebKitGtk+ maintainers.

(CC) 2010 Mario

On the first day, we listed up all work items on the chalkboard (as you can see in the above picture). When we finished each item, we rewarded ourselves with Super Mario BGM. :-) You can see the performance video as follows:

Martin finished a task! YEAH! from diegoe on Vimeo.

During the hackfest, I worked on viewport meta tags support and some missing features in the DRT test in WebKitGtk+. In addition, I improved the webkit cache model feature. In particular, I was pleased to finish the viewport meta tags patch. Actually, it might have been impossible without the maintainers' help: Kov, Martin, and Xan reviewed my patch carefully and improved it, so I'd like to thank them again. I'll explain the details of the viewport meta tags support later.

After the hackfest, I felt like I was a member of the WebKitGtk+ development team. In the future, I will try to contribute more patches to WebKitGtk+.
You can also find this blogging in Korean version. :-)

Happy New Year and Thanks again for reading!

My favorite hiking course in Seoul

2010-11-14T21:59:00.008+09:00

Have you heard about Jeju Olle-gil (제주 올레길)[1] or Jirisan Dulle-gil(지리산 둘레길)? They are famous trails in Korea to hike in the rural areas to enjoy natural things. In particular, due to the success of Jeju Olle-gil, each provincial government is introducing new hiking courses to attract tourists. Actually, anyone can make their own hiking course, but many people don't know. In my case, I have one in Seoul. Therefore, I would like to introduce my hiking course in this blog.

It has been 7~8 years since I started to hike this way. I have hiked this way with some of my friends. Most of them have been satisfied with my course , because it offers a good view of Gyeongbok-Geung (Palace) and historical sites. Also, there are good cafes, restaurants, and museums, parks around this course, even including two mountains.

This course starts from Sajik park near Gyeongbok-gong station on Seoul Subway Line 3. The overall course is as follows:

Sajik Park(사직공원) => Inwang-san(인왕산) => Bukak-san(북악산) => Samcheong-dong gil(삼청동길) => Insa-dong(인사동)

This is just my own personal course, so you can make your own course depending on your preference or time allowance. Now, let's take a look at each point.

The start point is Sajik Park, which is not a famous place now, but it was an important area in the Joseon dynasty. The purpose of Sajik Park was to hold a memorial ceremony for the ground and the five grains(rice, millet, beans, wheat and barnyard millet) ,which is the basis of stabilizing the dynasty. However, the Japanese Empire tore down the annexes and made this area into the park that it is today.

The next point is Inwang-san, which doesn't seems high, but it's covered with rocks, so you need to wear hiking boots. When you go up to the Inwang-san peak, you can see a complete view of Seoul including Seoul Tower and every mountain surrounding Seoul, even Incheon Airport if the weather is very clear. Also, there is a sad historic episode about an empress of the Joseon dynasty which is connected with Inwang-san. Her name was Empress Inhyeon(인현왕후)[2], a wife of SukJong (the 19th Emperor of the Joseon dynasty). She lost her position of empress due to strife. And then, she went to the peak of Inwang-san wearing white clothes and made a deep bow in the direction of the King every morning for 3(?) years. Fortunately, she became the empress again, but she died soon after without having had any children.

Before moving to the next point, you can have a break time in the cafe between Inwang-san and the entrance of Bukaksan near Changeui-mun(창의문). This cafe offers various types of coffee produced from famous areas of coffee bean production[5]. It would be as good as taking a break and talking with your friends.

If you want to go to the top of Bukaksan[3], you should prepare your resident registration card , driver's license or passport (if you are a foreigner) due to the security of the Blue House. Actually, Bukaksan was not allowed to be entered for a long time since guerrillas from North Korea attempted to raid the Blue House to kill President Park JeongHee in 1969. As a result, the road to the mountain was closed for about 38 years. For this reason, development of this area has been limited for a long time. Therefore, you may doubt if you are in Seoul during your hike up to the top of Bukaksan, because you can only see green mountains and many detached houses.

Actually, Seoul was not always such a big city like this, it used to be a fortress capital city during the Joseon dynasty. Therefore, you can still find several gates in Jong-ro district. Unfortunately, many parts of the city wall and some gates were destroyed in the Japanese occupation and the Korean war. Some parts of the city wall are left on Inwang-san and Bukaksan. In addition, you can find a secret gate over the top of Bukaksan. It is called "Sukjeong-mun(숙정문)".

There are two ways from Sukjeong-mun. One is for Seongbuk-dong gil, the other is Samcheong-dong gil. Now, I’d like to introduce the Samcheong-dong gil course, because it is close to Insandong-gil. However, if you take the direction of Samcheong-dong gil, it takes more time to hike down the mountain, so you can enjoy hiking more in the forest of Bukaksan.

Samcheong-dong gil is one of the most beautiful streets in Seoul. There are many art shops, art galleries, cafes, museums, and restaurants. Actually, this area is a bit expensive, but the atmosphere and quality of food actually are quite good, so it would be a good choice for a nice meal with your closest friends. Before introducing some of them, I wonder whether you have heard about a Korean proverb, “금강산도 식후경”. It means that eating comes first in any situation so it would be good to drop by a restaurant first.

Most of the restaurants here are a bit expensive and for special occasions, but Samcheong-dong Sujebi[6] is cheap and simple. According to Wikipedia, “Sujebi is a Korean traditional soup consisting of dough flakes roughly torn by hand, with various vegetables”. It also tells that Korean people began to eat Sujebi from early Goryo period, but my grandmother told me that Sujebi became common during the Korean war due to the significant rice shortage. At that time, the U.S. army gave wheat flour to Korean people as a form of food assistance. Many Koreans reluctantly had to have flour-based foods including Sujebi (because rice is the staple food of the Korean people). Due to this reason, it is very hard to find Sujebi restaurants these days. Anyway, this restaurant seems to be as old as Sujebi. Nevertheless, some bloggers complain the taste was not as good as it was once, but it is still one of the Korean dishes you must taste.

After the meal, looking around the shops in Samcheong-dong is also good, in particular for women. If you have enough time, I recommend that you visit the Owl Museum[7] and the Tibet Museum[8]. Those museums are very unique because they are managed by private owners, so you can feel a different atmosphere compared to public museums.

The owl museum only specializes in owls, so you can find paintings, craftworks, and toys about owls. In the case of the Tibet museum, there are various things about Buddhist art, folkcrafts, clothes, photos and so on about Tibet. Although Tibet has been occupied by China since 1950, we are still able to see their unique culture. Before visiting those museums, you need to check up locations because both museums are located in side streets. Also, you have to make sure that the museums are open when you want to go.

The last point on my course is Insa-dong gil. Actually, Insa-dong gil is too famous to introduce here. Therefore, I would only like to introduce a traditional Korean teahouse in Insa-dong. As you know, Insadong-gil is famous for its traditional teahouses. Unfortunately, traditional alcohol pubs are increasing these days. Therefore, finding real traditional teahouses is getting harder in Insa-dong.

The above picture shows the interior of a teahouse I found by chance. Actually, I tried to find Kyungin Art Gallery because the gallery also offers Korean tea. Instead, I found a neat teahouse because I took a wrong side street. The teahouse is a real Hanok (Korean traditional house) and offers all kinds of equipment such as pottery and trays. In addition, the hostess is very kind so you can feel like being not a customer but a guest in this house.

In conclusion, making your own hiking course is not difficult. Just try to remember what streets, cafes, and restaurants you’ve preferred, and link all points with some stories such as historical episodes or your memories. And then if you share the course with your friends, your course will be rich with even more stories and attractions.

References

[1] Welcome to Jeju Olle website, http://www.jejuolle.org:8080/eng/
[2] Empress Inhyeon(인현왕후), http://bit.ly/9FsgLk
[3] Welcome to Bukaksan, http://www.bukak.or.kr
[4] Seoul’s best walking trails http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100624000575
[5] Club Espresso http://place.daum.net/place/Top.do?confirmid=9544927
[6] Sujebi, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sujebi
[7] The owl museum http://www.owlmuseum.co.kr/
[8] The Tibet museum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_Museum_(South_Korea)

Why I participate in open source project

2010-10-13T11:00:00.003+09:00

It's already been almost 4 months since I started a new career as an open source developer. Before starting my new career, I had worked for a big electronics company and worked on open source projects such as Mozilla, Gtk+, WebKit project since 2007. The job was stable and salary was also good. However, I decided to quit my job and started to get involved in the projects as a contributor. So, I'd like to introduce why open source is important for developers and the reasons why I participate in open source projects.

What is open source?
Open source is a method of developing software. According to Wikipedia, "Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials". It means that anyone can access the source code of open source software. In addition, it should allow anyone to modify the source code and distribute it to anyone. Linux and Firefox are representative results of open source. Therefore, if you find some problems and have any proposals, you can modify the source code and submit the code to the maintainers. If your code makes sense, it could be merged into the open source software. If so, many people could use the software you contributed. Isn't this amazing ?

Why people start open source projects
There are various reasons why people start open source projects. Most of these projects don't have a big plan. They just start the project for meeting their needs. Some people start their projects just for fun. For example, Linus Tovalds, the creator of Linux kernel, just started Linux kernel project for fun during a long winter vacation when he was a university student. Of course, there was a small motivation. The Unix workstation machine was very expensive, so he had to go to the university to use it. Therefore, he wanted a Unix-compatible operating system to be run on his own 386 PC. After that, many people joined his small project. Currently, Linux kernel has been used for running digital TVs, Android phones, and other embedded devices. Although there are some open source projects that are started by companies for strategic reasons, most open source projects are started for trivial reasons.

Why developers should join open source projects
First, you can improve your development skills in terms of reading the code and getting reviewed by other open source developers. In the case of Linux kernel, it supports various types of computer architecture, and the source code has been highly optimized for a long time. In addition, many open source software have been verified in terms of being included in commercial software.
Second, you can learn the latest high technology, because open source projects are always open for new technology. So, anyone can improve the funtionalities of open source software and suggest new features. In my case, I fixed Korean Hangul typing problem in WebKit, a browser engine, used for Safari and Chrome browser.
Third, you can experience development process of software product because the big open source products: Linux kernel, Firefox, and OpenOffice, have a similar life cycle and organization like commercial software such as Microsoft Windows and Office. For instance, an open source project also requires individuals in various roles such as developer, tester, graphic designer, technical evangelist , educator and so on. In addition, most decisions about the project makes through mailing list, or IRC. If you have contributed for many years and have a good reputation, you can have a bigger say in the project. Finally, you can make friends with open source people from all over the world. There are various nationalities and ethnicities in the community. Some people are students, some are older. Nevertheless, they can share their thoughts and ideas for the same goal. For the above reasons, I strongly recommend that you participate in the open source projects even if you are not a software programmer.

Why I participate in open source projects.
Actually, I am an experienced programmer. I have more than 12 years of software development experience. However, I just spent my most of my development career for working on proprietary software. Fortunately, I met good open source people in the open source community and learned how to be involved in open source projects. In addition, I was able to work on open source software and had the chance to work together with the community in my previous company. It was a valuable experience because I learned how to write good quality software in terms of code review and code reading. Also, I could contribute my abilities and effort to open source projects for the public interest.

Currently, I am working on the WebKit, GNOME, Mozilla projects as a full-time open source developer. Although I am not making money working on these projects, I'm enjoying the life of an open source developer for the time being . Of course, there are ways of making money working on open source projects. In the future, when I have more experience with open source development, I will try to start my own open source project just for fun.

Building Chromium browser on your Mac

2010-08-07T17:03:00.013+09:00

Building your own browser is the best way to find bugs and fix them. Now, I'd like to introduce how to build Chromium on your mac. I think that the latest code seems more stable(?) and provides more features.

This is a starting point to build Chromium on Mac OS X.
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/MacBuildInstructions

Installing the depot-tools

http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/install-gclient

$ svn co http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/tools/depot_tools

Add depot_tools to your PATH:
$ export PATH=`pwd`/depot_tools:"$PATH"

Getting the code

A checkout straight from the Subversion (SVN) repository can take a long time. It would be good to download a tar ball from http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/archives/chromium_tarball.html

Then, you can update the code to the latest revision from the SVN repository.
$ gclient sync

Building from the command line

To build all targets (it takes a long time due to test case builds)
$ cd ~/chromium/src/build
$ xcodebuild -project all.xcodeproj -configuration Debug -target All

To build just chrome:
$ cd ~/chromium/src/chrome
$ xcodebuild -project chrome.xcodeproj -configuration Debug -target chrome

Running Chromium

Run Chromium debug build
$ cd ~/chromium/src/xcodebuild/Debug

$ open ./Chromium.app

Run Chromium release build

$ cd ~/chromium/src/xcodebuild/Release

$ open ./Chromium.app

The latest revision of Chromium looks cool.

Feedbacks from the communities on the key events handling in WebKit

2010-08-04T22:24:00.004+09:00

I posted an email to the WebKit mailing list on the issue I mentioned in the previous blog.The email introduced a status of the inconsistent event handling during a IME composition on WebKit. Fortunately, I've got quick feedbacks from the communities on each issue as follows,

Issue1) IME Composition events should be handled consistently in all ports of WebKit.
=> "This can't be achieved as it depends on the platform IME system. Therefore, different IMEs making consistent behaviors across multiple platforms is an exercise in futility. However, If we are seeing different behaviour with the same IME on a single platform, that's a bug."

Issue2) The textInput event should be dispatched after a compositionend event.
=> "There's a discussion on www-dom at w3.org about changing the spec because there seems a issue of handling a textInput event. Currently, before the textInput event is dispatched, DOM has been already mutated during a composition. Therefore, If there is to be a textInput event, first, the composition text is removed. And then, if the textEvent is not cancelled, the browser inserts the composition text again. It seems not efficient."

Issue3) While a composition session is active, keyboard events should not be dispatched to the DOM.
=> In relation to keyboard events, WebKit has fired key events during a composition for a long time. Therefore, It can't stop to fire key events in order to avoid site break.

As a result, they agreed that the DOM Level 3 event model for input composition does not match the requirements of actual web content as I have worried. Therefore, in order to avoid the confusion among web developers, the DOM Level3 events spec needs to introduce the reason why each browser handles keyboard events in different ways.

IME composition events are handled inconsistently in WebKit

2010-07-27T13:33:00.017+09:00

I have been working on Korean Hangul composition issue in WebKitGtk. By the way, I noticed that IME Composition events are handled inconsistently in each port of WebKit.

According to W3C DOM Level 3 events,
1) A browser should fire compositionstart, compositionupdate, and compositionend event during a composition.
2) The textEvent event should be dispatched after a compositionend event if the composition has not been canceled.
3) While a composition session is active, keyboard events should not be dispatched to the DOM (i.e., the text composition system "swallows" the keyboard events), and only compositionupdate events may be dispatched to indicate the composition process.

However, all ports of WebKit handles composition & textEvent events in inconsistent ways. Even keyboard events are still dispatched to the DOM during a composition.

Therefore, it is necessary to fix the problems as follows:
1) IME Composition events should be handled consistently in all ports of WebKit.
2) Keyboard events should not be dispatched during a composition.
3) The textInput event should be dispatched after a compositionend event.

The following table shows the status of DOM events of WebKit during a Hangul(Korean Alphabet) composition.

Korean Hangul Composition Event Test in WebKit based browsers

You can find a test case from here.
I filed a bug for this issue in WebKit Bugzilla.

Debugging Fennec front-end

2009-10-12T00:17:00.006+09:00

Fennec is a XUL application, like Firefox based on Mozilla Platform. Therefore, it can be debugged and modified with the Firefox debugging tools you are familiar with.

XUL applications consist of several XUL, JavaScript, and CSS files, which are archived in a Jar file. In the case of Fennec, it has two jar files in fennec/chrome/. en-US.jar which has localization information, chrome.jar which has Fennec front-end code.

To modify them,

1) Extract the chrome.jar in the current path
2) Modify the chrome.manifest as follows

override chrome://global/skin/about.css chrome://browser/skin/about.css
skin browser classic/1.0 content/..
content branding content/branding/
content firstrun content/ contentaccessible=yes
content browser content/

In order to display variable values or simple JavaScript debug message information in the system console, you can use the dump function. Before using this command, it needs to enable browser dump preferences by typing about:config in the URL bar.

browser.dom.window.dump.enabled=true

This is an example of using dump() in the startup() funciton in browser.js


 startup: function() {
    var self = this;

    dump("begin startup\n");

    let container = document.getElementById("tile-container");
   ...

The dump function works well on Linux system, but ~~it doesn't work in Visual Studio in Windows system in order to debug Fennec for Windows Mobil~~e.
It works well in Visual Studio, so I could see debug messages in the output box of Visual Studio using the latest build of Fennec.

References

How to check a hardware keyboard in Windows Mobile

2009-08-27T23:36:00.003+09:00

Windows Mobile keeps a status of hardware keyboard in the registry.

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell\HasKeyboard"

A software keyboard can pop-up if a device doesn't have a hardware keyboard.
However, in the case that the device has a slide-out keyboard, it depends on the status of the slide-out keyboard.

For example:

1) if the keyboard does not slide out, the HasKeyboard value has to be "0"
2) if the keyboard slides out, the HasKeyboard value has to be "1"

However, the above registry value, HasKeyboard, always returns 1 because it doesn't consider the status of slide-out keyboard.

Windows Mobile doesn't provide a standard API for detecting a status of slide-out keyboard, so each device maker uses its own hidden or public API.

In the case of Samsung Windows Mobile devices, they provide Windows Mobile SDK through the Samsung Mobile Innovator site. Therefore, we can get a state of the slide-out keyboard.

However, HTC doesn't provide any document on how to use device APIs.

As a result, some hackers had tried to find out how to use hidden APIs for using hardware features of HTC devices, but there is no API about slide-out keyboard.

Fennec has a bug related with detecting the state of slide-out keyboard.

Actually, this bug seemed easy to solve. At least, it was easy for my i780, but my first patch couldn't support HTC touch pro which has a side-out keyboard.

I tried to check the most of registry values if there is any change.
Finally, I found the value from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\GDI\Rotation\Slidekey

My patch was applied to the mainline of Mozilla and then this cumbersome bug has been fixed.

I am happy to contribute my patch to Mozilla.

SAMSUNG Windows Mobile SDK 1.0 Released!

2009-04-26T20:05:00.011+09:00

Samsung Windows Mobile SDK 1.0 was released!

You can download Samsung Windows Mobile SDK 1.0 from SAMSUNG Mobile Innovator web site, but it needs to be registered for downloading. Of course, it's free.

It consists of API Spec, programming guide, installation guide, header files & library for device APIs, and sample code.

The APIs is used for providing advanced features unique to Samsung phones. You might already have experience using advanced capabilities featured in the Windows Mobile APIs, like GPS, Bluetooth, or multimedia support. In addition to the Microsoft Windows Mobile APIs, you can use Samsung device APIs to access phone features such as the accelerometer, notification LEDs, and haptics feedback.

Fennec team is preparing to support device APIs for Fennec.

Bugzilla Items

Therefore, it would be very helpful to support device APIs exposed to Fennec.

In addition, you can download SAMSUNG device emulator skin files from the web site.

The Device Emulator skin archive contains skins for the following phones:

SGH-i617 BlackJack II
SGH-i907 Epix [and SGH-i780 Mirage] (I own this model)
SCH-i760 Robin
SCH-i770 Saga
SPH-i325 ACE
SGH-i900 Omnia [and SCH-i910 Omnia]

Device Emulator skins enable you to change the physical appearance of the Device Emulator in Microsoft Visual Studio. When installed, the Samsung Device Emulator skins will enable you to run the emulator with the appearance of a Samsung phone

How to make a cab installer of Windows Mobile Fennec build

2009-04-13T22:41:00.003+09:00

When you finish building Fennec for Windows Mobile, you can ask "How can I install Fennec on my Windows Mobile handset?"

"Where is the installer?"

Fennec build system creates only a zip file in the path of "objdir/mobile/dist".

You might install Fennec using this zip file. But, it is cumbersome. Fortunately, the Fennnec team has released Fennec for Windows Mobile as a cab install.

"How can they make a cab installer?"

If you want to make a cab installer, move to /objdir/mobile/mobile/installer.
And then, run Makefile as follows,

$make installer

If so, you can find a cab installer in the path of "objdir/mobile/dist".

Fennec is running on SAMSUNG i780

2009-03-27T23:33:00.005+09:00

I was told a very good news from Blassey blog.

Doug Turner solved the test blocker of Fennec for Windows Mobile.

I was delight to hear the new because I had tried several times to run Fennec on my SAMSUNG i780 (called Mirage in Korea). I had failed to run Fennec.

Tooday, I tried to build Fennec for Windows Mobile from the trunk of Mozilla.

It is working well, but very slow on i780.

I found several problems as follows,

- Multiple instances

- Long start-up time

- IME button not disappeared

- Broken Hangul(Korean)

I will file up these problems on the Bugzilla and try to fix them up.

Supporting Hildon Menu for Fennec

2009-02-20T15:00:00.004+09:00

I implemented the hildon menu for Fennec on Maemo.

Actually, the hildon menu feature has not been decided to be added for 1.0 release.
I'm not sure if this patch could be applied to the mainline.

Mozilla platform already supports the hildon framework so it is easy to add new things for Maemo if you wish.

Mozilla@FOSDEM2009

2009-02-10T13:25:00.005+09:00

Photo: Teemu Mäntynen

FOSDEM 2009 finished last week. Although I didn't attend FODSEM, I got a feel for what was going through through blogs and photos on Flikr. FODSEM(Free and Open Source Software Developer’s European Meeting) is a largest occasion for free/open source developers in Europe. It is relevant to various open source projects and it can be compared with OSCON(O’Reilly Open Source Convention) held in the US.

The following projects had their own session:

KDE, GNOME, Mozilla, X.org, Fedora+CentOS, OpenSUSE, BSD+PostgreSQL, GNUStep, Jabber, Debian, Ada, Free Java, OpenOffice, Drupal, Ruby & Rails, MySQL, Linux Kernel
In addition, there were other projects sessions such as OpenMoko, Maemo, CMake, Webkit, Xfce, and OLPC.
In particular, there were Mozilla related sessions as follows:

Mozilla Europe
Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla and Universities
What’s after Firefox 3.1
Community Sites Project
Building XUL communities
SeaMonky
Overview of Mozilla QA
Oni
Rising to the Sun(bird)
Thunderbird3
Prism
Fennec
Embedding
Mozilla headless back-end
Events/EduCamp@FOSDEMa2009

Photo: Teemu Mäntynen( An old woman wears a Firefox t-shirts. it's lovely)
For your information, you can find session videos of FOSDEM. They have not open 2009 videos, you can find session videos of the 2008,2007

I hope to attend FOSDEM next year.
References

Hildon related bugzilla issues

2009-01-12T13:19:00.013+09:00

426291	--	Add support for Hildon (Maemo) application menu
426292	--	Add support for Hildon (Maemo) filepicker
426293	--	Add support for Hildon (Maemo) banner for alerts
426299	--	Create a theme for Hildon (Maemo) platform [tracking bug]

There are several bugs of Fennec about Hildon integration as you can see the above list, but the Fennec team has not cared about theses bugs, because they seems to strive to implement the UI features and Windows Mobile port for XULRunner. Therefore, the platform specific features still have not been implemented, even for the Maemo platform.

Anyway, Hildon menu integration seems to be simple to implement for me.

Can I try??

Firefox for Mobile Devices

2008-12-26T22:55:00.004+09:00

I'd like to share a little bit old presentation about Mobile Firefox.

From: mobileportland, 2 months ago

Firefox For Mobile Devices

view presentation (tags: browsers mozilla portland firefox)

Dietrich Ayala's presentation at May 2008 meeting of Mobile Portland

SlideShare Link