[Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Just like promised the last week I spend some time coding a webbrowser for Sailfish which supports landscape and supports tabbing.
I based my work on the tinywebbrowser project by Mike7b4. So thanks for the initial code and inspiration.

The current features of the browser so far:

• Landscape support
• Tabbing support (real without reloading of tabs)
• Bookmark support
• Setting browser user agent
• Setting default font sizes
• Opening up links in new tab (by long press and hold on link)
• Copy links (by long press and hold on link)
• Open rtsp, rtmp and mms links with external viewer (e.g. LLs VideoPlayer)
• Setting DNS Prefetch
• Setting Offline WebApplication Cache
• Manually add bookmark with specific user agent
• Fast scroll to top or bottom of page
• Watch Youtube with internal or external player (e.g. LLs VideoPlayer) with direct link
• Download Youtube videos
• Private Browsing
• Clear Cache, Cookies, History
• ReaderMode (with NightMode)
• Copy text from website
• Search text in website
• Keyboard hotkeys
• Session support
• HTML5 Video Tag detection
• Embeded Youtube detection
• Integrated file manager
• Integrated Download Manager
• Keyboard Hotkeys (for TOHKBD or bluetooth keyboards)
• Set as default browser
• Backup Manager (Import/Export Bookmarks,Cookies,History,Settings)
• Proxy Support
• Fast Tab Switching
• Create Website Launchers
• Cookie Manager

You can find the code here: https://github.com/llelectronics/webcat
RPM here: https://openrepos.net/sites/default/...-1.armv7hl.rpm
Tablet (i486) RPM: https://openrepos.net/sites/default/...0.8-1.i486.rpm

It is recommend to use QtWebkit 5.212 from Version 2.9.7 onwards.
You can currently find RPMs here: https://openrepos.net/content/llelec...ebkit-5212-dev

Update:
Version 3.0.8

• Fix webTitle visible after loading and urlText in focus
• Ytdl: Fix for multiple tabs trying to get youtube stream urls
• Fix youtube stream acquiring
• Multiple presses on the ffwd and rew button in Videoplayer triggers further jump in the video (if done in 1.5 second interval) and shows *
  indicators

Version 3.0.7

• Switch Youtube getting streams to using https (Fixes Youtube video playback)
• Fixed ytQualityChooser not appearing
• Add ytdl support (Download or copy from LLs video player)
• YTDL Support: 360p videos are loaded by default (if a Video is not playing back try the 360p option by long pressing the play button in mediabar)
• YTDL Support: Update ytdl if binary older than 10 days automatically
• Adjust video player component size for new yt mobile site
• Fixed race condition in suggestionView hide on Enter key press

Version 3.0.6

• Fix OpenDialog: Wrong path when switching between folders + hidden files show states
• Redirect urls that start with / to file://
• Fix https entry redirect to http:// error on some longer urls (Closes: #74)
• Hide error popup on LoadStart (Fixes: #75)
• Update User Agent String for youtube to load correct site
• Enable Desktop Scaling as temporary workaround for websites who do not work properly without dpr=1.0 (Press and hold reader mode for 3 seconds)
• Add working internal FM only image viewer based upon the Silica ImageViewer from Gallery
• Add greek translation + update translations

Version 3.0.5

• Fixed url entry + allow entering IP:PORT again
• Fixed about:file not being able to load images in browser
• Fixed fixUrl function to really perform check for file:// and about:
• Made landscape downloadmanager list a bit smaller
• Downloadmanager: Show active running download in docked panel that autohides if no download active
• Downloadmanager: Allow all orientations for status and error Page
• Fixed valid urls without :// in front
• Fixed resolution independent error box
• Downloadmanager: Align current download label horizontal all the time and elide correctly
• OpenDialog/Filemanager: Allow showing hidden files and folders by pressing on the title of the current folder
• Fixed BackupManager not showing progress on restore
• OpenDialog/Filemanager: Fixed remove function for multiple files and folders (Potential high risk of loosing data when trying to remove
  multiple folders in earlier versions)

Version 3.0.4

• Add support for light theme
• Make background white for video player when isLightTheme
• Add rew and ffwd buttons to video player

Version 3.0.3

• searchText: Hide on Esc; Focus Webview on hide and search
• urlText: support modifier .com/.net/.org shortcuts; merge code duplication
• added*hw keyboard switch setting + overview page (switch between BB10 like shortcuts or desktop browser shortcuts) [Thanks to jgibbon for this awesome work]
• urlText: focus webview on escape
• bookmarks: hide on escape
• Renamed open-url-webcat to harbour-webcat-open-url + set icon theme and add german translation + use x-scheme-handler for *
  mimetypes (allows setting webcat as default browser in mimer again)
• Workaround to allow registering harbour-webcat-open-url as http/https handler in the mime database
• Only copy over dbus service file if necessary
• Updated translations (Polish, Swedish, French, Spanish)

Version 3.0.2

• Make quickscroll area smaller, appear after bigger threshold, and don't react on pressed
• fine tune extraThreshold for landscape quickscroll
• Disable some debug output
• Fixed moving of files (causing loss of data) in filemanager
• Fixed filepicker not able to select files
• Faster tab switching
• Don't loose keyboard shortcuts on tab switch / creating new Tab
• Add function to get nextTab and prevTab
• Added shortcut for quick tab switching ctrl+tab & ctrl+shift+tab
• hide tabBar and bookmarkList before switching tab
• Open Filemanager immediate and don't perform animation when entering about:file
• Add more keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+W - Close, Ctrl+T - New Tab, Ctrl+N - New Window, Escape - Stop)
• Allow swiping on urlTitle (only visible after website loaded completely) to switch tabs
• Use threshold value resolution dependent for back/forward swipes on minimized toolbar
• Fix highlighted tab not filling whole width with highlight

Version 3.0.1

• Fixed mimetype set as default browser
• Fixed keyboard shortcut for showing bookmarks not working
• Q should open up bookmarks/tab view aswell [like on BB10]
• Press A on keyboard to add current page to bookmarks
• Fixed editing of bookmarks / manually adding bookmarks
• Fixed wrong aligned ulrtext when pressing U shortcut on keyboard
• Made fancyscroller width a little bit shorter
• Fixed create folder in home + showing error message when folder cannot be created
• Don't show Add to places for home dir

Version 3.0.0

• Only add default bookmarks once on first start (not if bookmarks are empty)
• Cleanup (Make TabBar otherComponent)
• Added nightMode Button (replaced newWindow button) [Thx to Dharmendra63]
• Updated urls for default bookmarks
• Port away from SelectUrl page and use TabBar and BookmarkList components (faster navigation less clutter)*
• Added workaround for rendering cut when window in background
• Doubleclick on Goto Button switches to previous Tab
• Distinguish single and doubleClick on gotoButton more and don't fire singleClick event when doubleClicking (200msec delay timer checks for single and double click)
• Hide webview when bookmarkList is visible (more performance on some devices)
• Added File Properties Page for FM
• Open internal video player for audio files aswell
• Allow opening files with a click on file icon in properties
• Added RenameDialog + show full size of directories
• Added CreateDirDialog + fixed removing of folders
• Added permissionDialog
• Adapt to new SailfishOS Gallery video player defaults (Close button top right, Fullscreen button bottom right)
• Fixed margin bottom of fullscreenbutton + margin right for when maxTime is not visible
• Proper fix for video player component size and anchors after exiting fullscreen or changing orientation
• Added placesPage for FileManager
• Removed Pulleymenuitems available in placesPage and add properties to pulleymenu in filemanager
• Calculate dirSize in background so it does not freeze FileManager UI
• Added option to add custom bookmarks to placesPage
• Allow renaming of custom places items
• Allow setting desktop link to Webcat Fileman
• Double click on video player component switches to or from fullscreen
• Disable Split WebView as not working anymore
• Fixed Video Player Component wrongly anchored on close
• VideoPlayer Component takes now 1/3 of the the screensize in portrait mode and allows you to browse the web while watching a video
• Allow swiping video player component up and down to reposition when not in fullscreen or landscape
• Make sure webview gets visible when exiting fullscreen in portrait mode*
• Make sure to hide webview on fullscreen all the time
• Removed pressandhold on gotoButton and quick extraToolbar navigation
• Cleaned up extraToolbar. Removed newTab + closeTab.
• Visually redesigned MenuPopup to match rest of Webcat
• Always show 7 items in extra toolbar and align them to screen size
• Removed menuPopup from Tabbar (is available now in extraToolbar)
• Make extraToolbar bigger
• Use solid highlight color dimmed down as tabbar highlight (show active tab)
• Removed Jolla Tides default bookmark (website not active anymore)
• Added tor icon in tab/gotoButton if tor is enabled
• Fixed infoBanner for proxyPage and tor disabling
• Fixed urltext anchoring and switch to webtitle + weburl when title of webpage is available
• Fixed mediaDownloadRec overlaying menuPopup
• Fixed webview height/width by anchoring it to page and hide toolbars (except minimized main toolbar) at page end
• Simulate quickScroll UI in FancyScroller when in landscape mode
• Don't minimize toolbar when loading initial default about: urls
• Fixed mediadetect running on touchend conflicts with previously detected media (disabled touchend)
• Only check youtube url and add url to history if not about: url
• Don't hide mediaDownloadRec if atYBeginning and atYEnd
• Better workaroundRefresh method
• Set pixelAligned to true (slightly smoother website scrolling)

You can get the app in the warehouse and jolla store aswell and rate it there ;)

Videodemonstration: http://youtu.be/1uVjaETqmMA
0.9-1 Videodemo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNYjdr5tCSs
0.9.6 Videodemo: http://youtu.be/vttkJgKOK48
1.9.9 Videodemo: http://youtu.be/WZXlqOrLKK8
2.0.9 Videodemo: https://youtu.be/Ck2TND0-PwE
2.1.0 Videodemo Backupmanager: https://youtu.be/sBge7JAlXro
2.2.0 Videodemo Fast Tab Switching: https://youtu.be/iaeMNppgOSQ
2.3 Videodemo:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeffwP7SXkY
3.0 New Features:https://youtu.be/Tm4uT1YZdfQ

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

nothing can see after install when I start it

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Thanks for your work. But I have two problems:

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Hmm... need to debug it. Just a sec.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

I have also experienced these two errors (not being able to install through Warehouse and the blank screen).

The error code of the former is:
I know it's hard to debug such things when databases persist in the SDK :)

EDIT: Nevermind, that was not the right advice. But the error lies there.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

For the white screen please make sure to have qt5-qtgraphicaleffects installed.
I will upload a new package with this as dependency when I figured out the db.js problem.
Thx for your help and patience.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Update: I think I fixed it: https://openrepos.net/sites/default/...-2.armv7hl.rpm

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

llelectronics you won't make it to harbour with gt5-qtgraphicaleffects

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Really ? Hmm... then I need to think about something else to make it to harbour.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Thanks! Looks great!

Just few issues I noticed:

• The URL bar covers a small part of the page - on one website I visit, there a link to switch to mobile version, which is currently hidden behind the bar (I just noticed that the bar becomes thinner after scrolling, but only on longer pages).
• The tab bar is visually bit confusing - not really sure what is current tab... You could remove the 'New tab' and 'Close' buttons as they're accessible through the pulley menu
• Would you consider adding bookmark editing function? It is quite easy to edit bookmarks in the default browser (through a config file), but since here it's in a database... It is difficult to make a bookmark pointing to http://talk.maemo.org/search.php?do=getnew :)
• Switching to landcape and then back to portrait zooms the page in
• Rotation animation is not very smooth

These are just minor issues - I am very impressed by your work. I wouldn't have imagined something would replace the default browser in its initial version. Simply amazing.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

A long press on the left icon minimizes the urlbar.

Yeah I need to think about redesigning the tab bar

You can add bookmarks manually from the pulley menu.
Editing bookmarks from there isn't so hard to implement.
Its definitely on my todo list.
Thanks ;)

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Thanks, I didn't notice the 'hold to minimize' behavior and adding the bookmarks manually. I don't think I need bookmark editing anymore :)

Just few more things:

• It would be nice to have a 'Reset to default' button in the Settings, in case someone messes up the font sizes without remembering what was the original setting :)
• Also an option to delete cache/cookies/history would be nice.
• What does exactly the 'Private Browsing' option do? Does it create a new session (clean cookies, no persistent history/cookies) and goes back to the original one when turned off?
• When you open the keyboard in landcape and rotate to portait, something very weird happens. But I guess that is a bug in Sailfish.

EDIT: These are just suggestions. If the browser stays as it is, it is still the best browser on the platform. I'm not experienced with QtWebkit, but I can offer some help with translations.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Hi,

Also not able to install via warehouse. When launched from terminal, it says:

Don't know if it's package problem or warehouse problem as I already have you video player installed so maybe this package is also correct.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Seems to be a warehouse problem.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Yep, pkcon install harbour-warehouse works just fine. Already love quick-scrolling buttons, thank you!

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Good point will add that to my todo list.
Thats one interesting thing I have to dig into as currently I have no idea how it is saving those :P (WebView QML or the invoker somehow do this automatically)

What it does exactly I don't know. But I guess it won't save history or cookies when enabled. (I am using the qtwebkit private browsing option here)

Yeah it is a bug in the virtual keyboard of sailfish I guess. (or the Silica Page component)

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

For me the warehouse version worked. Thank you! :)
The only annoying problem I see so far is the keyboard + url bar covering almost the whole page and hide the input elements you are writing in.
The input box should be rendered at least on the small top visible part.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Another two small issues:

Default bookmarks are recreated with every start of the browser. That makes them impossible to permanently delete.


It also seems that there's something wrong with the font/encoding. Characters special to my language (č, ř, ž, etc.) look like from a different font and don't fit the rest of the text.

Here is how it looks like in Webcat (incorrect):
http://s13.postimg.org/tbdm5cbb7/20140111213707.jpg

and here's how it is in the default browser (correct):
http://s14.postimg.org/i7r5ghs0d/20140111213657.jpg
(click to view)

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Your browser is great, thank you.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Nice and slick browser, thanks for it so far. Looking forward to ui improvements.

I would like to see some faster option in two important actions: moving to previous page and changing tabs. Maybe pulkdown menu or swipe left / right in min zoom ?

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

IMHO. harbour is a joke atm. so much is not allowed...

but hopefully they will allow more qt libs etc... when phone upgraded to qt5.2 hopefully also python3 etc...

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

There's a good reason for this. Users wouldn't like it if a OS update would break half of their apps because the app developers all used unstable APIs that where subject to change.
So only API considered stable is allowed.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Update:
First minor bugfix release

Get it here: https://openrepos.net/sites/default/...-3.armv7hl.rpm

Changes

• Fixed Settings Page Header not showing 'Settings'
• Fixed WebView not bigger then toolbar (minimized)
• Revamped Tabbar highlight (see: Screenshot)
• Added 'Load Defaults' to Settings
• Integrated needed QtGraphicalEffects to make it harbour conform

I tried that before it leads to navigational problems or swipe downs misinterpreted as swipe left or right and so on. So I left that out for now.

Yeah thats a good reason. I integrated the necessary QtGraphicalEffects modules that I need for Webcat to avoid that.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

To install it from Warehouse, you need to first install tinywebbrowser. Or could it be just enabling that repo?

I found a bug whilst trying to login here (TMO) on Webcat. The keyboard doesn't disappear properly, and you have to restart the app to get normal functionality back.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

You dont need anything from tiny webbrowser.
That was only an information which codebase/inspiration he used.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Browsermark 4973, iPhone et al about 3500??

My i5-3570K makes about 5600...

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Thanks for the update. Much better now. The browser is now really nice in use and my new default one. :)
First feature important for me would be some sort of login saving or maybe in first step only user name recognition.
That's always really a mess to type in on a mobile device :D

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

So far really liking your browser.
Feels really smooth and fast, also all webpages that I tested with my quick 30minutes testing loaded proberly. Favorites and all settings seem to work.

some improvement suggestions: Writing to a forum, eg. this text to maemo.org, is a slight pain because it minimizes the webpage to so small. Same goes for different login windows.
Also the minimized status bar on bottom is difficult for at least for me to call back up. Maybe I have big fingers or something, but I seem to be clicking webpage link or swipe the browser away too often. I think there should be another gesture than.long press to call the status bar back up.

Also I think there should be gesture for back button and page refress.

Still have learn to watch videos with this and your video player.

All in all, great job, this is now my main browser

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Great work!

Using the latest release and as I am opening randomly links to a new tab, a "load failed..." window appears, even though link is valid, like within maemo.com?

Closing tab- could maybe keep the bottom bar as it is, since like if trying to close many, it closes everytime.

Also, how do you reload current page, tabbing the address bar and then reload? A always visible button would be great.

Could there be a functionality to open tab(s) behind the current page?

Also would it be possible to open new tabs like in N9 to new Windows/instances?

Thank you for the app!

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Very cool app :). Thank you!

But there is a little thing which should be improved, as the default sailfish browser webcat also focuses input files. Which is a bit annoying on pages like together.jolla.com because you need to switch to scrolling mode everytime you click a link on the site. Maybe this could be changed :).

Also a "safe password" option would be very cool :).

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

To open links in background tabs should be the default behaviour. When opening a link in new tab it is normally done because one wants to continue reading on the current page.

For example:
Browsing through a search result page and opening a number of the resulting links that looks promising.
Or a forum index and opening all threads which are of interest.

Thus, opening links in new tabs without hiding the active one gives the most effective browsing experience.

(edit)
Another very nice thing is if the pages, which are opened in the background tabs, are loaded in background and ready to read when one switches over to them.


//j

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

No long press needed. Just a single press is enough.
Usually the bar is a the bottom so it shouldn't be hard to hit.

Tried that. It clutters the user interface and makes the url textfield unbearable small.

Its on my todo list.

Thats a webkit or browser engine related thing. I guess every browser does this. So unfortunately I am not able to fix it.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Orientation lock (No/Portrait/Landscape) should be in settings! Try to read something in bed.. The page jumps when you move the phone.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

A nice feature for me would be auto-hide of the adress-bar in landscape-mode. And if possible, it could be adjusted by user (auto-hide on/off). Thanks for your great work with Webcat!

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Some things I noticed:

I think the engine always crashed when I entered one page. I think that was due to it had a gif(it was quite big but not huge).

For me it loaded only partially this site or it loads it very long time and I didn't wait long enough:

http://www.nhl.com/

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

I can confirm this.
Please try loading m.nhl.com which should load the mobile site which works fine.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

The browser does not seem to support downloads. When clicked on a link (to a mp3 podcast file), it shows a popup saying "Load failed, Frame load interrupted by policy change".

It is also not possible to select text in input boxes, as long tapping brings up the 'Copy link' etc. dialog.

It would also be nice to turn Settings and Add Bookmark pages into dialogs and get rid of the 'Save Settings'/'Add Bookmark' buttons according to SailfishOS's logic. I can do this and make a pull request, but I'm not sure when I'll have time for it (exams...).

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Thanks for this great app LLelectronics! I'm glad you're in the Sailfish dev community, the apps you've proposed so far are really great, and very well integrated (very close to default apps in terms of ergonomics, which is good).

However, I've tried to set Webcat as the default browser in Sailfish because I think it's the closest browser currently, yet being better, but something is wrong. What I tried is that (the 6 steps). When I try to open a link from another app (Quickddit for example), Webcat does open, but it will show the bookmarks and not the page corresponding to the URL. When Webcat is already open, taping the link will put Webcat in focus, but not load the URL in the current tab nor in a new one.

By the way, the "update-desktop-database" command line showed several warnings about LLS Video Player, don't know if it's relevant:

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

Exactly that is not built in currently.

This is the hardest one. I am looking into it but I doubt that this is possible in pure qml/javascript.

Yeah you are right.

This is not supported currently. The c++ backend for this is still missing.

The warning can be ignored.

Re: [Announce] Webcat Browser
 

I hope you'll find time and solutions for these three features, in future versions! :)