WebKitGTK+ Hackfest: Day 3

Another incredible day of hacks, and UI design.

• Carlos added support for downloads to the MiniBrowser, the WebKit2 test application
• Bob, Juanjo and I visited the GUADEC facilities, ahead of next summer's conference
• We had a long discussion about HTML5 applications, hosted and packaged ones, as well as native applications
• The discussion about the new "Web" UI carried on, with some more details being added to the Wiki page
• Andy carried on his work on adding gnome-shell required language features to JavaScriptCore

And despite the crema de ojuro, hacking carries on at the week-end. Join us in #webkit-gtk-hackfest on GIMPNet.

WebKitGTK+ Hackfest: Day 2

After a late evening yesterday, the hackfest started a bit slower, but started picking up pace again with a big ticket item, the WebKit2 GTK+ API discussion. This was the destination for a lot of the WebKitGTK+ hackers, leaving us outsiders, well, outside. The discussion isn't quite finished.

This lead us onto a little lunchtime kick-about. The arrange 6 v. 6 game turned into a 5 v. 4 before getting to the ground, and finish as a 3 v. 4 when two of our most jet-lagged/backbroke hackers dropped out.

And then onto a lunch. And another late evening.

• Philippe fixed more bugs in WebKitGTK+'s fullscreen video playback mode
• Bob uploaded a new draft of his WebKitGTK+ cookbook
• Gustavo was playing Street Fighter whilst increasing the size of his farm on Facebook (in WebApp mode!)
• And the new buildbot is up, running, and churning through test suites in a loop, as fast as the hackers can add new code.

WebKitGTK+ Hackfest: Day 1, Afternoon

After num-num tapas for lunch (and some chocolatey cake), we got back to the agenda, with Jon presenting the design for the Web application, successor (in spirit, and perhaps in code) to Epiphany.

• Andy did the initial work on adding new language features to JavaScriptCore (let and const, as used heavily in gnome-shell)
• Martin and Gustavo worked on a way to automate running the WebKitGTK tests with test fonts, and are working on making all the tests automated, and reproduceable
• Philippe fixed fullscreen support in the HTML5 YouTube player
• Dan fixed the broken security status in Epiphany
• Carlos worked on the WebKit2 support for windowed plugins, and the WebKit side of favicons support
• Philippe, Martin and yours truly discussed sharing of fullscreen media controls (UI and behaviour) between WebKitGTK, Totem and Sushi, as well as a way to make fullscreening smoother.

I hear they didn't finish all the beers for Igalia's 10th anniversary party...

WebKitGTK+ Hackfest: Day 1, morning

After landing in (not so sunny) A Coruña yesterday, we started bright and early today with the WebKitGTK+ hackfest agenda.

We've got most of the topics pinned, as listed on the wiki. If you have more topics to add to the discussion, feel free to drop by #webkit-gtk-hackfest on GIMPNet IRC, and try to drum up interest in somebody championing your topic.

It looks like we could get some pretty cool demos done by the end of this week!

ObexFTP in GNOME, (non-)update

If you've tried to use ObexFTP browsing (browsing files on mobile phones over Bluetooth) in GNOME in recent times, and didn't get a good experience from it (crashes, or very unreliable browsing), those problems are known, and due to the architecture used to implement the functionality.

If you want to help make ObexFTP browsing good again, please try to convince one of your coder friends to help port the existing code to use the "gobex" library that the obexd D-Bus service uses.

Unless somebody steps up in the GNOME 3.4 timeframe, I will disable the access to the functionality in gnome-bluetooth. The brokenness makes us look very bad, and the files are still available through other (cabled) means in most cases.

Bluetooth panel merged

The Bluetooth panel was the last bad citizen in getting merged into gnome-control-center itself. It's now been integrated into gnome-control-center itself, using a very cleaned up libgnome-bluetooth.

Ready for GNOME 3.4! Please report any breakage.

OMG! I haz designed a bug fix!

In GNOME 3, we removed an option which got GNOME users hot under the collar (and gave the opportunity to the ones who weren't something to troll about): we removed the configuration option to select what happens when you close your laptop lid.

We started digging, and found out that the main reason for people wanting this feature was so that they could go from a table to another in the coffee shop, from their desk to the meeting room in the office, or a table to the next in the library, with the laptop lid closed, and your internet connection still on-going.

In that case, what's really needed is a way to disable suspending when you're moving the laptop. But having to dig in the settings would take too long anyway. And, apart from a number of tethered ones, users would live happily without that ability, so we wouldn't be adding this in the gnome-shell UI itself.

Let's add the button in a separate application. A single button isn't too interesting though. Let's make this more interesting!

Office Runner!

Testimonials

• “this is the best thing ever”
• “the most creative way I've heard of to solve a power management bug in a while”
• “I expect people to spill their coffees over this”

What now?

The code is available in GNOME git, and we're just waiting to knock a few TODO items, and get a UI  review before releasing the first version. Patches welcome. Enjoy!