The initial bits of what will eventually be part of the Eclipse FireFly project have been released by Genuitec. The current release is the WebKit for SWT component that future releases will be based upon.
Acid3 test at 100% and a sample Flash Web site by Rush.
What is it?
WebKit for SWT (ver. 0.5) is an embeddable Java™ WebKit browser component developed by Genuitec. This component can be used in the development of a wide range of Java SWT applications that require integration of rich HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and Flash content and functionality.
WebKit for SWT is being developed to serve as a technology platform for our OSS mobile web initiative, Eclipse FireFly Mobile Web DevKit and in the research of a new generation of network-based developer tools.
You’ll be taken to the genuitec.com portal for download
Note:
The initial bits are available for Windows only, with more details available in the .zip file download. The install requires Java6.
Firefly Mobile's Blog 
March 4, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Congrats guys, this is quite the achievement! I look forward to the work becoming part of the FireFly project. A couple questions for you guys:
1) When do you plan on doing a creation review for the FireFly project?
2) The approach you used was interesting. Is there a technical reason you preferred to create your own widget (i.e., WebKitBrowser) versus extending the SWT Browser widget? By extending I mean doing something similar to what was done for Mozilla integration… ie., the SWT.MOZILLA flag, you would have a SWT.WEBKIT flag… just trying to see what was in your mind when you made the design decision.
Keep up the good work!
March 4, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Hi Chris,
1) FireFly project creation –
We are working to provide the review documentation today for a March 11 review date. This is tenatative atm. I’ll be at EclipseCon talking about FireFly and demo’ing how we are using WebKit for SWT as a platform for that effort and our upcoming MyEclipse Mobile Web Studio.
2) SWT Browser Impl – I have a separate implemenation that is a full SWT browser implementation, e.g., Browser(parent, SWT.WEBKIT_CHROMIUM) which we plan to make avail as soon as we get a few things organized around this effort and are ready to EPL it.
March 4, 2009 at 9:30 pm
i’ll download it right now!
March 4, 2009 at 11:00 pm
[…] WebKit for SWT Released! « Fireflymobile’s BlogThe continuing spread of WebKit. […]
March 5, 2009 at 1:13 pm
We should talk about how to integrate this into SWT or at the very least, how we can cooperate such that you don’t have any modifications to SWT. That’s probably the best way to start.
March 5, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Hi Steve,
There were several issues with the SWT browser design that makes it impossible to extend the browser model by plugging in a different rendering engine such as WebKit. I plan to draft an experience report that I’ll gladly share to initiate discussion for different ideas. For example, I have already opened an eclipse bug to make the browser event constructors access public instead of package level. I’ll be at EclipseCon talking about WebKit for SWT as part of the FireFly Mobile Web BOF and presenting a project overview in a short talk. I’m open to meeting there for face2face discussions if needed.
March 5, 2009 at 6:58 pm
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March 6, 2009 at 8:47 am
Will I be able to access the full DOM and all JavaScript from Java with this browser kit?
March 8, 2009 at 9:25 am
I like to include WebKit for SWT in an Eclipse RCP application as a View.
AFAICS for now it is only possible to place the jars on the classpath of a ‘simple’ java application and not to use them as plug-ins (especially the swt.jar replacement).
Will this be possible in the near future?
March 8, 2009 at 10:36 am
>digulla
DOM access & mgmt is N/A atm but is already in developmenm
March 8, 2009 at 3:05 pm
If for example I click a button in a page, can I get a reference to the button in my code?
March 9, 2009 at 8:09 am
@Wayne Parrott
Cool. I’m looking forward to a way to be able to write browser apps with GWT, JavaScript and Java mixed in a single process. 🙂
March 9, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Make sure I am CC’d on any bugs you open. The browser framework you are plugging into was not designed to be used from outside of the browser package, hence, you are seeing issues.
See you at EclipseCon.
March 9, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Ron Borman, yes it will be possible to use WebKit for SWT in an RCP application in the future. I’ll plan to describes how to use WebKit for SWT from a plugin.
March 9, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I opened an Eclipse bug for the SWT browser issues I encountered. I’ll provide more details asap:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=267741
April 10, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Is it possible to Enable Google Gears with WebKitSWTBrowser? Please respond. I am kinda tired of searching in google for the answer.
Thanks in advance.
Maha
April 10, 2009 at 1:57 pm
It seems There is no KeyListener Implemented yet. Is that something we can expect in the near future?
Thanks again.
April 10, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Maha;
Google Gears is not yet an option, though this is something we are looking at in future releases. No time frame firmed up at the moment, but it is in research by the development team. Same story with KeyListener.
April 10, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Webkit for SWT is a very good idea. You can develop real desktop applications with ajax GUIs. Forget Google Gears ore Adobe AIR.
April 23, 2009 at 3:31 pm
http://www.genuitec.com/about/labs-webkit-for-swt/WebKit%20For%20SWT%20Developer%20Guide.html says, ” While WebKit for SWT supports most of the Chromium plugins… ”
I tried to run gears.google.com in the webkit browser. Its asking me to install. I tried downloading the file and it says, click here to complete the installation.
I see the below thing in the logs.
changed: LocationEvent{WebKitBrowser {} time=0 data=null location=http://gears.google.com/download.html?statcb=1 top=false doit=true}
changed: ProgressEvent{WebKitBrowser {*Wrong Thread*} time=0 data=null current=0 total=100}
completed: ProgressEvent{WebKitBrowser {} time=0 data=null current=0 total=0}
changed: LocationEvent{WebKitBrowser {} time=0 data=null location=http://gears.google.com/download.html?statcb=1 top=false doit=true}
I doubt, the webkitSWT Browser is not able to allow pop ups! If gears cant be supported in this browser, gears would say, “This is not a supported browser”. It would not ask me to install Gears.
what do you say?
August 7, 2009 at 5:53 am
is there anyway that I can use it in a eclipse plugin now?
August 29, 2009 at 7:25 pm
The webkit browser is pretty nice. However I do notice whenever a new browser object is created and then disposed, the unused object is not garbage collected and the memory footprint of the jvm increases significanly (~5mb of ram for each browser object). Is there somewhere i can file a bug for this?
August 31, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Paul,
Thanks for the bug report on memory leak. We will looking into this problem. We are getting back on track with our OSS plans for webkit4swt and should have some news on that soon.