WebKit Maemo port, N800 and the EAL

I’ve been working with George Wright the last few days to integrate the WebKit/Gtk+ browser engine into Nokia’s recently announced EAL (Engine Abstraction Layer).

WebKit EAL, cairographics.orgSelecting a browser engine

WebKit/Gtk+ will soon be joining Opera and Mozilla as a well-supported alternative browser for the Maemo platform. I believe we are the first to provide SVG support:

 

It’s exciting to hear the Red Hat guys have been experimenting with WebKit/Gtk+ on the OLPC platform — J5 is a competent engineer and his comments have helped to give us direction for further development.

Given also the recent activity on Epiphany/WebKit, these are good signs that we’re working towards a usable browser engine both for mobile devices and the desktop, but there are still features to be implemented and bugs to fix, and I encourage those interested to get stuck in to the WebKit bug tracker, whether filing bugs or contributing patches.

Great credit goes also to Holger Freyther of the OpenMoko project, who is co-maintaining WebKit/Gtk+ upstream in Apple’s SVN repository along with me (we completed paperwork with Apple to become SVN committers about a month ago) and has been dealing with some particularly involved parts of the port involving scrolling, frames and native widgetry.