Meeting with Artem and Alexey Regarding Embedded IE 09/26/2007

Attendees

• Deva
• Sandip
• Joelle
• Artem
• Alexei

Purpose

1. To determine the current progress of Embedded IE
2. To understand their implementation
3. To determine if we can re-use their interaction layer
4. Basic information sharing.

General Notes

• Artem has tried to embed XULRunner, but ran into the following problems
  1. It's Heavyweight
  2. XULRunner on Linux and Solaris
     • GTK container
     • Built Firefox on local Linux box, but wants it to be compatible with Generic Linux. Used XLIB
• Alexey has embedded IE but has encountered the following issues:
  1. Cursor Change
  2. Caret Moment
     • Text Input - Blinking Caret
• It is difficult to share some sort of buffering.
• IE is using invalidated area from Java2D technology for redrawing.
• Embedded IE is drawing a transparent window over the area in which he wants the browser visible. He intercepts the WM_Paint method calls and draws them at the Java level.
• Transparent windows are doable on Win32, but this may not be possible on X11 windowing system for example.
• Artem is going to ask Oleg if considered using the IE Embedded method of implementing an embedded browser? Did Oleg consider using transparent windows.
• All input methods are implemented by IE itself.
• Window Sub-classing
  • Capturing Paint Event
  • Additional Treatment of Focus Transfer events.
• Webkit has a number of platform specific stubs that are implemented differently. They are intercepting paint calls and drawing rect, string, etc.

AIs:

• Artem will talk to Oleg about why he chose not to use this transparent method of embedding IE. Is it possible to have transparent windows on other platforms. We are asking because it seems AWT folks would know best.
• Joelle will talk to X11 folks to find out about transparent windows. She needs to do so anyway in prep for Ed's visit.

Outcome:

• It seems that drawing a transparent XULRunner over the are of which the browser will be drawn in Netbeans would be best of both worlds (from our previous solutions). Then dealing with interaction events will be minimalized.
• Alan Coopersmith is the tech lead of X11, he says that we can create transparent windows on X11 although he it is not heavily supported.
• Need to do more research on intercepting the native paint method.