Running the Web Browser Engine Sample Application

The Web Browser Engine comes with a sample GF-based application called Wklauncher that demonstrates the Web Browser Engine API.

Because the Web Browser Engine library uses GF to render, you must ensure that io-display is running and properly configured to use the correct display resolution and color depth.

Wklauncher also requires a devi driver such as devi-hid in order to use keyboard or mouse input. For example:

devi-hid -P mouse kbd

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The following procedure assumes that you are running the sample application from a self-hosted system.

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Run the sample application

To run the Wklauncher sample:

1. At the command-line prompt, set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that the required shared libraries can be found:

   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QNX_TARGET/opt/webkit/x86/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

2. Type the following command to run Wklauncher:

   $QNX_TARGET/opt/webkit/x86/bin/wklauncher url

   where url is the fully qualified URL of the page that you want to launch in the browser.

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   Ensure that you have provided a fully qualified URL. The Wklauncher sample does not assume the http:// prefix.

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The Wklauncher sample application does not provide a field to enter a URL. You can navigate using your favourite search engine on the Web. Remember that Wklauncher is only a basic sample application designed to show you how to create a browser-based application using the Web Browser Engine API. You can add a navigation bar, as well as other common browser features by using the Web Browser Engine API.

Getting a More Responsive Mouse Pointer

The Wklauncher application uses a hardware cursor to display and move the mouse pointer. On some websites, you may notice that mouse pointer responsiveness is less than ideal. In the interest of keeping Wklauncher event-handling simple, this issue has not been resolved.

One way to solve this issue is to use a separate process to display and move the hardware cursor. QNX Neutrino 6.4.1 provides an example application called gfi-demo that you can run as a separate process to display and move the mouse cursor. You may need to run it at a higher priority to ensure smooth movement when the Web Browser Engine is busy. In some cases you may also need to run devi-hid and or io-hid at a higher priority. The Wklauncher application has a -C command-line option to disable it from displaying the cursor.

The following example launches the Wklauncher sample using the gfi-demo application to render the cursor:

nice --1 gfi-demo &
$QNX_TARGET/opt/webkit/x86/bin/wklauncher -C http://www.qnx.com