Webbrowser Control for Main Screen

pokorra

I have had a look at the branch from Tim, with regards to the main menu within a web browser. I will reply myself to this post, for starting the discussion.

Just showing the extensive research I did on getting the Webbrowser control to work on Ubuntu:

On Ubuntu 11.10: starting client compiled from branch code.launchpad.net/_tim-ingham/ ... L_MainMenu:
libgluezilla not found. To have webbrowser support, you need libgluezilla installed

pokorra

I am not happy that Mono support for the Webbrowser control is so weak. At the moment, I don't think I can get the Winforms Webbrowser to work on Ubuntu.

We need to be clear, what priority the support of OpenPetra for Linux has for us. To me, it is a show stopper to any control, if OpenPetra does not work on Ubuntu anymore.

Another concern to me is that we are becoming very dependent on yet another technology. I have noticed in the past, that with every added component, the system has become more complex. If we are now formatting the main menu in HTML, and have to use some external control to render it, that makes things more complicated, not just for platform portability, but even on Windows: Coping with different versions of Internet Explorer etc.

The HTML approach would have been nice, but I think we should not go there.

My suggestion is to develop a control for the main screen that is simple but elegant to use.
Perhaps we should start again first with writing down what we want, and make some fake screenshots.
Also we should look again at the prototype that Christian developed some years ago. I tried to go into that direction with the current Main screen.
We should improve the right task bar, which the students of 2011 have already worked on, I think.
The right hand side, is at the moment a simple list box. We could make that a little bit more flexible, to insert other controls as well, and mimic a dashboard functionality.

pokorra

I have uploaded a couple of screenshots of the prototype that Christian has worked on a number of years ago.

You can download the executable here: files.pokorra.de/openpetra/NewMa ... tNet20.zip

tim_ingham

Can we use an embedded browser in Open Petra?
Regarding the embedded Web Browser, I'm not at all happy with the .NET WebBrowser control, which is based on an outdated and buggy version of IE. However I was pleased to discover that we can embed Chromium, using the Chromium Embedded Framework:

code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

There are a couple of wrappers that can be used in .NET - at least one is specifically suited to mono.

Chromium is standards-compliant, and looks identical on Windows and Unix. The framework provides the simple facilities I would need, and many others.

So is this the way to go?
All I've done is demonstrate that using a browser for the Main Menu is possible - I'm not necessarily committed to to this being "the right way". We could still decide to use a collection of customised .NET control, although we would need to deal with issues related to cross-platform compatibility.
I'm still inclined to like the idea of using a browser for the Main Menu. Even putting to one side the possibility of having a "web front end" for Open Petra, I think that it would provide us with a "treasure chest" of technology that we can plunder for future projects that may be web-based.

And is now the time to do it?
We do already have a functioning Main Menu, and I'm inclined to think that we should continue to "make do" with that, and concentrate on producing a functional "alpha" product that can be used by our intrepid alpha testers. Once all the functionality is present and (mostly) correct, then we can come back and provide a shiny Main Menu, using HTML or some other technology.