This note’s for you

Go replace Firefox with The Real Browser! Here’s why:

• It’s cool.
• It’s fresh.
• It’s Free.
• Every kid around the block uses it.
• It supports Web 4.0 right out of the box (no I won’t tell you what that is, you gotta try it out yourself)

Here’s the obligatory screenshot:

Today I implemented frames and form-submit support for GNU Classpath’s HTML renderer package. This completes (API-wise) this package against JDK5. Of course it’s sill full of bugs and doesn’t support every HTML/CSS feature out there, and not even what is supported by the reference implementation. Ah and coincidentally this also API-completes Swing up to JDK1.3 and almost (one method to go) from JDK1.4.
OTOH, the new frame support implements yet another feature that the reference impl can’t render correctly, which is frames in a grid layout. So we’re getting into a situation where we support CSS or HTML features that the reference doesn’t and vice versa. I am really looking forward to a possible merge in half a year. Let’s see what we can improve until then

Look and decide for yourself. The one important Intarweb page how it is rendered on IE7 (left) vs GNU Classpath (right):

Thanks Dalibor for finding that and Stuart for sending me this little screenshot.

I would like to add that I am not happy with the name rkennkezilla as suggested by Mario. The HTML widget stuff pulls together the work of many GNU Classpath developers, maybe more than any other package in GNU Classpath.

And yes, this post is completely serious, no kidding folks!

I’m finally closing bug #23505 (the HTML RFE) now. The HTML implemenation in GNU Classpath is by far not complete (can it really? Even Firefox doesn’t pass the ACID2 test yet). But we have a fairly reasonable and complete HTML renderer now, which should be enough for most uses of HTML, which is some formatting on buttons, labels, etc, plus (hopefully) simple help pages and similar stuff. The biggest gaping hole is frame support, which isn’t exactly hard to implement, but which I simply haven’t done so far and which I don’t consider super important right now. Another thing is the lack support for actually submitting forms. I will address both issues (and other remaining stuff) at some point. But right now I’m focussing on completing my font work.

Update: Mario was so kind and hacked a logo for the upcoming jgecko browser (lets seed out some rumours ):

Some more significant improvement in the HTML rendering engine of GNU Classpath:

And in case some of you wonder why I’m doing this, now that the JDK will be open:

• It isn’t open right now.
• It’s a heck of fun to do this
• Classpath might actually improve here over JDK (already doing so for some CSS stuff like borders and padding)
• Did I already mention the fun thing?

And as soon as it becomes open, I think I’d even offer my improvements to the OpenJDK project.

I am continuing my work on HTML in Classpath. Last days I implemented rendering of lists, borders and tables. Here’s some screenshots of what it can do right now:

The CSS borders implementation triggered a funny discussion on the MLs if we should stop hacking when we get better than the RI. In this case I implemented some more sophisticated border attributes of the CSS spec, which the RI doesn’t handle right now.

I hacked up GNU Classpath’s HTML rendering engine for rendering some more HTML/CSS tags and attributes. By far not capable of browsing the web, but some simple HTML formatting that is usually used on buttons, labels and other GUI elements should do fine with it now: