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Quicksilver - chromium port

asked 2015-08-25 09:55:02 +0300

Naveen gravatar image

updated 2016-08-17 11:24:44 +0300

jiit gravatar image

Stumbled upon this cool video (link below) showcasing the chromium browser port (apparently called "quicksilver"). Looks faster and better optimized than any other browser available for sailfish. Does anyone know if there's an rpm available?

link to video

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There's a GitHub repo available, but I don't think that it has been released anywhere yet. Hopefully we'll see it either in OpenRepos or maybe even in the Jolla Store some time soon. :)

raketti ( 2015-08-25 10:00:36 +0300 )edit

Hej,

Is it SFOS2.0 it is running on? O_o

LVPVS over.

LVPVS ( 2015-08-25 10:08:44 +0300 )edit

@LVPVS - Nice catch, it actually is! Or at least SFOS 1.1.9. (which should finalise the transition UI wise to SFOS 2.0).

raketti ( 2015-08-25 10:48:04 +0300 )edit
2

There hasn't been any comments on this topic for ages and the mentioned repo has no activity since about 3 years. Is there a chance to resurrect the project? Any interest? As the SFOS native browser is quite outdated, maybe a port of a recent chromium could help us?

naytsyrhc ( 2018-05-30 16:43:28 +0300 )edit

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25

answered 2015-08-25 11:59:59 +0300

tworaz gravatar image

updated 2015-08-25 12:00:50 +0300

Well, I do have some RPMs available on my server, but there is a reason I haven't announced the project officially. The minimum required SailfishOS version is 1.1.9, which means only a few people outside of Jolla can run it. It won't work correctly on older releases. There are some bugs in libhybris which crash chromium and the compositor bits required by QuickSilver are missing. Also the test browser, QuickSilver Shell is not a real browser that is supposed to replace sailfish-browser or any other browser available in harbour. It's only a simple test application that allows me to test the engine. My goal is to make a proper, easy to maintain chromium engine port for sailfish. UI is a separate issue.

The sources for the project are not available, yet. QuickSIlver repo on my github page contains an original POC code I wrote early this year. Since then the architecture of the port has changed quite a bit. There are actually two separate projects right now. OzoneQt and QuickSilver. One makes it possible to run chromium engine on top of Qt, another implements a simplified embedding API that is usable from Qt Quick.

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How come you chose chromium and not servo?

ApB ( 2015-08-25 12:09:38 +0300 )edit
4

Have you ever tried servo? Last time I've checked it still had problems rendering majority of the web content out there.

tworaz ( 2015-08-25 12:14:23 +0300 )edit

I know its not ready yet. But since this is a engine test and experiment i thought it would be of interest. After all -according to the devs- they target mobile.

Videos of servo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DmFcdpSVV0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR7RwaZ_xrw

ApB ( 2015-08-25 12:55:20 +0300 )edit
2

Well, personally I don't put much trust in servo. It's nice that some of the mozilla devs can work on their pet project, but so far it's just that, a pet project. After all those years in the making there still isn't a product available which uses servo. At the same time firefox just keeps getting worse and worse.

Also, please look at the list of companies which are involved in the project. Samsung and Mozilla. Compare this to the list of companies that contribute code to chromium/blink: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/AUTHORS. I don't see how mozilla with their limited resources will be able to produce a completely new engine and programming language that can be better than chromium. IMO even if they have some nice ideas most of the interesting ones will get incorporated into other engines. Similar story to the Plan9 vs Unix.

tworaz ( 2015-08-25 13:11:13 +0300 )edit

@tworaz Servo is progressing nicely. And, apart from more frequent updates, how is your project different from the Blink engine in current Qt libraries? As WebPirate and Webcat show even on the older engine, that can be pretty useful too.

Fuzzillogic ( 2015-08-25 13:29:59 +0300 )edit
14

answered 2015-09-16 20:29:15 +0300

tworaz gravatar image

updated 2015-09-18 14:34:24 +0300

If anybody is really interested in trying the port some RPMs compatible with 1.1.9.28 can be found at: http://tworaz.net/downloads/jolla/quicksilver/47.0.2510.0/. Please keep in mind this is highly experimental stuff, use at your own risk. I've sanity tested both builds and they work fine on the jolla tablet and phone, but I can't give any guarantees about their suitability for anything more than satisfying your curiosity.

If you expect a fully featured browser that can replace sailfish-browser or any of the 3rd party browser apps from harbour those RPMs are most probably not for you.

  1. The builds have been made from bleeding edge chromuim code (lkgr branch checkout from 15.09.2015) some engine bugs are expected. Until the port is finished I don't plan to release builds based on chromium stabilization branches.
  2. I don't aim to make a new browser for sailfish. Instead at some point I'd like to port sailfish-browser to chromium. The QuickSilver Shell app is basically a simple test browser I use to test the engine, not something that is supposed to be an end user app.

If you'd like to build your own qtwayland package use mer code from mer-5.4 branch with one extra patch from: http://tworaz.net/downloads/patches/qtwayland/.

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1

Thanks for sharing!

Just out of curiosity - is switching to chromium engine for sailfish-browser in any Jolla plans (and you're working on a proof of concept), or is it just your personal project? I like that sailfish-browser is based on Gecko, but I understand that is might not be sustainable in the future.

nodevel ( 2015-09-16 21:51:47 +0300 )edit
8

I do currently work for Jolla, but there are no official plans to switch to chromium. QuickSilver is my personal project I work on during weekends.

tworaz ( 2015-09-16 22:10:24 +0300 )edit

Hi,

I installed the build you provided and, albeit still experimental, I can definitely see some potential here.

My test bed was mainly hdblog.it/mobile which seems a quite complex website, with a lot of HTML5 content. In particular, I noticed a faster rendering and an overall smoother experience when compared to sailfish-browser. I'm pretty sure it's not just a feeling of mine, but also finger gestures detection looks more precise - chromium/quicksilver can detect more precisely if I'm trying to scroll the page or swipe to right/left to navigate through the website sections, an area in which the current Sailfish browser fails quite often.

Ah, and also the shell navigation concept with pull to refresh, swipe to go back and forth looks interesting :)

So, well, it was just a quick feedback :) hope I can see a sailfish-browser build based on your chromium port some day...you're doing great!

fravaccaro ( 2015-09-17 02:45:57 +0300 )edit

how are you guys installing the rpms, because,,,i tried and only the qt5-qtwayland-wayland_egl-5.4.0+git21-2.armv7hl.rpm installed. the other two failed.

kibet85 ( 2015-09-17 12:47:00 +0300 )edit
3

Some instructions that guys on sailfishos-porters put together: http://piratepad.net/sailfish-quicksilver.

tworaz ( 2015-09-17 14:15:12 +0300 )edit
2

answered 2015-09-11 13:27:22 +0300

Tanty gravatar image

I'd love to see something similar with https://github.com/WebKitForWayland instead of Chromium.

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Isnt QTWebkit somewhat similar? There are several browsers based on QTWebkit available, such as Webcat or Web Pirate.

inte ( 2015-09-11 17:07:04 +0300 )edit

It is, other than QtWebKit is discontinued and W4W is maintained, very light and in good shape.

Tanty ( 2015-09-11 17:08:40 +0300 )edit

I'd like to see Xwayland like:

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/xserver.html

gfwp ( 2015-09-16 21:30:12 +0300 )edit
0

answered 2016-07-05 12:47:54 +0300

hi Ive installed on nexus 5 appears to wirk well except i cant login to my goigke account. doesnt recognise my password. any work around. also im too stupid to fibd the back button? best r

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answered 2016-07-05 15:23:40 +0300

codeandcreate gravatar image

Works nicely on my Moto G. i hope there will be a full browser shell for it soon. it runs much faster than the official browser or webcat (...).

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1

Meh, I'd prefer something else than Chrome/Blink. I know, it's hard to avoid these days, also because Qt uses it. But it's becoming a mono-culture, which isn't good for the web.

Webcat and web pirate might benefit from Qt 5.6, which brings up-to-date (Blink based...) rendering engines. However, it seems that QtWebKit is under active development as well.

Meanwhile I prefer Firefox for Android on the j1, as it's up-to-date, add-on support, unfortunately a must for privacy protection, and allows for other privacy-protecting settings via about:config.

Fuzzillogic ( 2016-07-05 21:51:47 +0300 )edit

Yeah, i would use also Firefox, if i could ^^

codeandcreate ( 2016-07-05 22:07:52 +0300 )edit

Have you tried chromium for android ? http://chromium.woolyss.com/#android

Its much faster than firefox.

johny ( 2016-07-05 22:53:02 +0300 )edit
1

@johny, I care more about privacy than about speed, even if Chromium is faster (which, given desktop benchmarks, I doubt is significant). In that regard, I trust Mozilla much more than Google, and thus I prefer Firefox Sync. Also, what about the lack of extensions? Does Chrom{e|ium) support them already?

Fuzzillogic ( 2016-07-06 21:43:01 +0300 )edit
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Asked: 2015-08-25 09:55:02 +0300

Seen: 3,863 times

Last updated: Jul 05 '16