As I mentioned on the previous blog titled Roadmap, Brendan Sleight is helping out the project by running a Webconverger ISO through qemu and recording it to a video. Awesome eh?
Now I need to figure out how to link deeper into a video, after a certain amount of seconds just before X starts, splashy prematurely quits. That’s a bug.
I’ve also come across the astonishing Simple Light Incredible Temporary Autonomus Zone project. A rival Live distro that weighs in at just 25M. Webconverger is 10x the size and provides embarrassingly less functionality. I’ve signed up to their mailing list and I am investigating their miracle diet for Webconverger.
Posted Mon 21 Jul 2008 20:05:10 UTC
I am pushing up Webc 3.2 mini now (100kB/sec upload is the best I can get with Virgin fibre optic XL). This returns the pdf viewing feature I mistakenly left out the 3.1 mini package list. This happened because the Webconverger and WebKit release I made at that time did not support inline xpdf.
The next big todos as ever is to get:
- the hard drive installer working
- include wireless networking
- get maxi updated
- autobuilds and some better QA from bmsleight
The hard drive installer milestone is a bit too complicated for me and I am dependent on Daniel to look at this again on my behalf. Tbh I have been a little hesitant to roll out this feature as I feared I would get “Webc installer destroyed all the contents of my hard disk” type emails. Webconverger as a Live CD is about protecting people from (over) writing any data. To the astute previous work described in Debian Web Kiosk paves the way for a hard drive installer in any case, so the installer is coming along… very slowly.
As for wireless networking, I have my own little solutions, however they work for me and my particular hardware and wireless setup. Wireless hardware and wireless setups are awfully complex. I am quite envious of Apple’s slick Iphone wireless interface. Writing something like that with wpasupplicant might be possible. So far my efforts could be described in a linux haters blog rant.
The good news in ‘wireless networking’ is that 3G USB dongles in the UK or EVDO as seems to be referred to in the states looks like an excellent achievable new feature for Webconverger.
I personally dial into 3G internet via bluetooth via my Nokia and it works quite well. USB dongles are usually simple serial line modems that simply need a ppp dial up script and some polish. However I still need to get “borrow” one of these dongles to implement support. I will contact Vodafone or perhaps trial with T-online.
I can’t quite decide whether to move from boot /proc/cmdline options and
run a local httpd like thttpd and run a
“control panel” Web application to configure elements of Webconverger.
Thanks to Mike Hommey’s webkit packages, Alp Toker’s Gtk/Webkit commit of Rodney Dawes Flash support and countless others we have serious competition for Firefox.
I’ve added a webkit directory for developing Webconverger with WebKit. There are two ways to play with WebKit. A basic library wrapper called:
/usr/lib/webkit-1.0/libexec/GtkLauncher
from libwebkit-1.0-1. Or the Debian epiphany-webkit package actually uses that library to provide the Epiphany Web browser.
Epiphany is very annoying as it seems to bring in a lot of Gnome cruft. Also I hate dbus dependencies. Still need to get Webconverger on a diet!
PDF viewing does not work atm and Epiphany also needs its chrome seriously hacked to disable bookmarking amongst many other elements, to make it kiosk grade. Anyway, the simple GtkLauncher is almost OK really. So have a look at webc-webkit-r33561.* in the mini download directory. [Alt]+[F4] or [Shift]+[Alt]+[c] to close the window in this instance btw.
Put a hard hat on and feel free to peruse my “work-in-progress” webconverger webkit screenshots.
Update: My post to the epiphany-list
Posted Tue 24 Jun 2008 22:26:59 UTC
I’m venting my opinion about (mobile) user interfaces in light of Aza Raskin’s concept post.
For me there are (broadly speaking) two categories of computing user interfaces:
Microsoft Windows (post 1.0) made err… the floating (overlapping) windows style interface familiar to millions of people, though I think there are problems with floating windows:
- Different sized windows aren’t useful, esp. very small ones.
- Dragging items between windows usage paradigm is not that common (copy&paste is easier)
- Managing different windows is hard, esp. when they overlap. Clutter!
- Popup windows suck
- Hidden / obscured / dragged off screen windows suck
So if I am right, why aren’t we seeing tiled user interfaces?
Well I believe most people nowadays know tiled user interfaces simply as tabs. And we hopefully agree that browsers have made the tabs UI paradigm pretty mainstream.
Safari on the Iphone is also basically a tabbed user interface too and I like it. Apple’s fixed maximised tab is right for browsing on mobile devices.
In my experience ‘designers’ don’t really understand scalable / resizable user interfaces. Traditional designers know A4 and exploit such print dimensions to showcase their work. So again forcing designers to think at fixed intervals of screen sizes like 480×320 in the case of the Iphone works. (resizable or overlapping) windows doesn’t.
If you’re a Linux user (Ubuntu maybe?) and you want to try the tiled UI
paradigm for more than just your browser (Firefox), give the excellent
dwm window manager a try. It’s
what Webconverger uses. 
Update: The image above could be a little misleading, as Windows mobile does not actually use floating (overlapping) windows on their platform. Proof that Mozilla should really steer clear of this path in it’s UI design for mobile environs!
Those people who make those Webtops like this one are impressive. Though I still think the overlapping windows in a browser window is broken and stupid.
Posted Thu 19 Jun 2008 20:30:04 UTC
Since Firefox 3 is now official, I’ve made Webconverger 3 official. Try the latest 3.x webc-mini release.
So burn webc-3.0.mini.iso to a CD to effectively try Firefox or rather the brand-free Iceweasel 3 in a safe live environment.
I actually prefer the LiveUSB version. Download webc-3.0.mini.img and checkout the instructions for putting Webconverger on your USB stick. Boots in a minute on my Thinkpad X40!
There probably will be some bugs so please report them to the mailing list / forum or directly to me if you so wish. For the more technically inclined, see Iceweasel bugs and Mozilla’s BTS.
Enjoy and congratulations to Mozilla on the historic bit of PR which is download day.
Posted Wed 18 Jun 2008 22:52:03 UTC
A webconverger user pointed out that one could download and run files in webc3beta2.
This may be true, as Firefox 3 has a new Download Manager which is also very difficult to disable.
After a few hours of frustrating hacking and a lot of help from #extdev on irc.mozilla.org, I have hopefully disabled the chance of a jail break via the downloadManager. This (more) “locked down” behaviour should be better than what it was in Webconverger 2.
webc-3.0b3.mini contains these improvements to the kiosk extension. However, I have noticed that on my test machine (Thinkpad X40) ALSA sound playback does not seem to work with these new images. Does sound playback work for you on YouTube? Please let me know.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Recently I noticed some people trying to get around Webconverger’s customisation business model by building Webconverger themselves with the developer instructions.
A treacherous path to follow instead of enslaving me to do the build. Building Webconverger is not easy.
In case you still want to try build Webconverger, do take look at the recent changes to the wiki and see the todo list.
Who said you had to be ruthless to do business?
But seriously, I do (selectively) try help people actually build Webconverger as I would like more people to contribute. I can’t do everything. Just running the Webconverger company takes more time than development time. 
New feature I just implemented is no screen blanking in webconverger-base. No time for re-freshing the builds currently. Be patient… Firefox 3 is almost upon us!
Posted Sun 08 Jun 2008 18:36:33 UTCSo you’re a super smart Debian/Ubuntu geek.
Here’s a chance to impress when you have friends over. Hopefully your friends like computers too via the familiar Firefox Web browser.
To save some blushes when your ‘personal’ Web history might be exposed whilst showing your friends some cool new Web application…
Use Webconverger!
Add:
deb http://debian.webconverger.com/ lenny/
To your ‘/etc/apt/sources.list’
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install webconverger-base iceweasel-webconverger
You should then be prompted to install two packages:
iceweasel-webconverger - the firefox extension to lock down the browser
webconverger-base - the bits that create a private browser using webc
Install them. Now the geeky part:
- [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F6] and login into tty6 with your usual username.
sudo su - webcstartx -- :1
Here we launch a seperate X session in the webc’s user sandboxed space.
- [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F7] should get you back to your normal X :0
- [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F8] switches you to your second webc X :1
To quit and clean up, on your second X :1 [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Backspace] and logout from the webc user and finally:
sudo apt-get remove webconverger-base iceweasel-webconverger
iceweasel-webconverger atm will lock down any user’s browser on your system. So you might want to uninstall it once you’re done.
Webconverger aims to uphold your privacy with this Internet Appliance aka Web Kiosk standalone mode for your Debian/Ubuntu system. This is an initial release, so my clever brethren, if you spot any security bugs in webconverger-base, do tell.
P.S. If you have no friends this Webconverger mode is good for porn.
Yesterday I was surprised to see a Python in the packages list! A silly mistake is to use Python instead of simple shell when writing system scripts. You can even use shell for Web stuff.
I fealt very stupid when I found webconverger-base depended on Python. Woops! Fixed.
Then I found out that ALSA sound support depends on Python. Doh. How can I remove Python without killing the music?
It gets worse. I had in mind to implement a wpasupplicant Web interface with shell CGI with perhaps mini-httpd. However wpasupplicant depends on libpcsclite1 which in turns pulls in tons of dependencies with pcscd. A slipperly slope indeed.
Debian Live has a wonderful little hooks section chroot_local-hooks and a stripped example that helped Webconverger get on a diet.
One of the most important software quality metrics is less code. One such movement is suckless and armed with sloccount you go to work, add new features (maybe not) and rework the code. If you manage to have less lines of code than what you started with, then you’re really following the principle of less code.
So it feels particularly good to make Webconverger shed dependencies, packages and lines of code from 3.0 beta 2 as you can see for yourself in either mini or maxi download sections.
Update: I’ve since been pointed out many other packages in the list that could be removed from Webcoverger like the legacy X driver packages. Damn Small Linux will be the guide to take Webconverger sub-100 megs.
Posted Thu 22 May 2008 06:38:03 UTCJust uploaded a new version 3 beta of maxi.
Webconverger has pretty AMAZING i18n support. That means after adding a locale in the boot option locale=ja_JP.UTF-8 you get a Japanese Web kiosk. Easy.
This is great to play around with exotic CJK characters and inputs. Select a text box and scim (an input switcher) will be activated with [Control]+[Space]. Pretty impressive huh?
Chinese
locale=zh_CN.UTF-8 keyb=zh
Japanese
locale=ja_JP.UTF-8
Korean
locale=ko_KR.UTF-8
Trouble is, I don’t hear of many people from the CJK part of the world. 
The only time I heard that Chinese people love Webconverger, was from a library in Canada. Come on guys, you’re welcome on the open Web platform. I’m happy to see many Chinese are already using UTF-8, which is great news. If you’re Asian and find the fonts or some other rendering looks bad, please let me know.
Update: 3.0beta2 maxi now has an easy to use Grub menu on the CD iso version.
Enjoy