Improved web loading - Replace UZBL with something else

[vpetersson]

As discussed in #257, it would be desirable to replace UZBL with a more modern browser. Chromium appears to be the best out-of-the-box browser for the Raspberry Pi right now.

The issue is that it's not as easy to remote control as UZBL, but it's worth exploring.

The primary way to remote control Chromium/Chrome appears to be using the JavaScript API. There's also a project called Chromix-too which provides a command line tool on top of the JS API.

As a side-note, my initial idea was to use Selenium, but unfortunately this is not an option due to the lack of ARM support in the driver.

Let's evaluate if this is valid in a proof-of-concept branch.

[gustavosbarreto]

Hi @vpetersson

Do you know the electric-webview? It's a scriptable WebView built on top of QtWebEngine which provides a simple protocol over Unix Socket, TCP or WebSocket to communicate with its WebView.

I'm the author of electric-webview. Please let me if you want to evaluate.

https://github.com/gustavosbarreto/electric-webview

[vpetersson]

@gustavosbarreto Interesting idea. Have you tested it on the Raspberry Pi? We have been working with QT on the Raspberry Pi in for another project and from that experience, we know that WebKit etc on the Raspberry Pi requires a fair amount of patches to work well.

[gustavosbarreto]

@vpetersson Yes, I have tested it on the Raspberry Pi. Works fine. I'm using Yocto to build a image for Raspberry Pi 3.

[vpetersson]

@gustavosbarreto Very cool. Do you have an apt package that we can test with?

[gustavosbarreto]

@vpetersson I don't have a DEB package, sorry, but you can build it yourself following the instructions at https://github.com/gustavosbarreto/electric-webview/blob/master/README.md#building

[vpetersson]

Cool. Looks straight forward. We will investigate this going forward.

[xlegs]

Has anyone managed to make a build with this? How would one go about replacing UZBL, anyway?

[vpetersson]

@xlegs it is a fair amount of work. You'd have to modify all signaling done in viewer.py as well as all the initiation process for the viewer.

[vpetersson]

Another alternative: https://github.com/resin-io-playground/resin-wpe

[antonmolodykh]

Project	Website	Hardware acceleration	Updated in the last month	Scriptable
Luakit	https://github.com/luakit/luakit	No	Yes	No
Chromix-too	https://github.com/smblott-github/chromix-too	?	No	Yes
Electric-webview	https://github.com/gustavosbarreto/electric-webview	No	No	Yes
Kweb	https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40860	Yes	No	No

I will add to the list. I will be glad to the new options

[vpetersson]

Just an update to anyone following this issue: you can now try the new browser out by running the installer and selecting the 'Experimental' version.

[vpetersson]

The new browser scores 253 with HTML5test.

[vpetersson]

Closing out this ticket as it is work in progress. The new browser is available in the experimental branch and the code can be found here.

[ansonhoyt]

@vpetersson since this is ongoing, is there an open ticket tracking it for interested folks to follow your progress?

[vpetersson]

@ansonhoyt There's already a version for this. You can test it out using the experimental branch. We don't have any specific issue tracking for it as they will just go in as normal issues.

[pjsignage]

@vpetersson Is the experimental version available to deploy using balena.io?

[vpetersson]

@pjsignage I think it should, yes. I haven't tested it myself.

[ghost]

@vpetersson Could you please re-evaluate the current possibility of using Chromium/Selenium, there seems to be an ARM driver mentioned in this conversation: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49796818/webdriverexception-message-service-usr-lib-chromium-browser-chromedriver-unex I mean this driver: https://github.com/electron/electron/releases/download/v1.6.0/chromedriver-v2.21-linux-armv7l.zip There is also a driver mentioned here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38732822/compile-chromedriver-on-arm Is this what is needed for using Chromium as a viewer? Thank you.

[vpetersson]

@lztrade we've already invested significant effort in the browser rewrite. This is already available in the experimental branch. Hence we would need a very good reason to throw this out.