I don’t know why, but I’ve decided I really want a good, working, web browser on the iLiad. Maybe it’s Kindle envy, maybe I spend too much time porting when I should be working, who knows.

WebKit seems to be all the rage these days. They have builds of it for just about every platform, and the iPhone has really brought it into the mainstream. So my goal is to port WebKit to the iLiad and provide a useful interface for browsing.

• It must be able to use the pagebar to page up and down.

• Screen refreshes must not be obtrusive, and should be responsive. (Native refreshes only, no hacked libX11)

• Support for Bookmarks and Recent URL’s.

• Easy to install package that can run from anywhere. WebKit is compiling now. Next, I’ll build Epiphany and use the webkit core. As long as that goes smoothly, I can work on refreshes and the rest of the application. Wish me luck…

Edit: I think I found a better front end than Epipany. Midori is much smaller and more light weight than Epiphany. It should be able to do everything required and be relatively quick on the iLiad.

I had Midori up and running with the Webkit backend, but nothing would display because WebKit was made to work with gtk 2.8, and the iLiad has 2.6. I believe I’ve found a patch, so I’m recompiling (takes about 2 hours on my dev pc). Hopefully I should have an early working application soon….