Joshua Marinacci's Blog

Any HTML Renderers for Java?

I haven't written anything in a while because it was a busy Christmas season, Kimi is going back to school along with work, Lizi has to be fixed, and I started an exciting new job in the field of document management. But more on all of these later. Back to technology.

This year is looking up. The tech sector seems to be recovering and for the first time in a while I am feeling good about some new technologies. The odd thing is, I think that this is coming not from genuinely new technologies, but the mass adoption of existing ones. Broadband is finally getting pervasive, most people have somewhat CSS compliant browsers, and most desktop computers are powerful enough to run Swing apps.

It's true that the infrastructure created by the .COMs will change the world, just not for the .COMs. Now that it's all out there, with millions of miles of fiber laid and scores open technical standards developed, we will finally start reaping the benefit of the networked economy. It's sad that so many companies failed, but at least now we get bandwidth dirt cheap. (Though some would say not cheap enough).

I've got a lot of interesting things to write about this year. Almost everything I do will be focused on NetApps, though that gives me leeway to write about a wide variety of topics. You can expect more interesting things with Swing, XML, CSS, HTML, and maybe a little bit of P2P stuff. As always I will try to be technically interesting while accessible to readers not familiar with the particular technology I'm working on. Lot's of good things coming.

I do have one question though. A new article I'm working on requires the use of an embedable web browser for Java. Something along the lines of WebCore in the iTunes Music Store. I have search the net high and low looking for a Java HTML renderer and the results have been, well, less than pleasing. I thought I'd ask my faithful readers if there are any that I've missed. This is what I've been playing with so far:

the Swing HTMLEditorKit
Jazilla, a resurrection of RenderX and the Javagator.
WWE, a new one just released
WebWindow and ICEBrowser, commercial toolkits.
SteadyState's CSS parser

If anyone has found a toolkit that I haven't mentioned, or perhaps another way of looking at the problem, (say embeding Mozilla through JNI) then I'd love to hear about it.

Comments

• multivalent
  Hi Josh,

  You may want to give Multivalent a try. The main website for it is: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~phelps/Multivalent/

  --gordy

  Posted by: gordyt on February 03, 2004 at 02:50 PM

• Grand-Rapid
  There is another Grand-Rapid. Find it at: http://www.meyou.com/grandrapid/index.jsp

  Posted by: vazz on February 03, 2004 at 03:10 PM

• SWT
  you can embed IE in SWT on windows, and mozilla in SWT on linux.

  and you can embed SWT in AWT/Swing

  haven't messed with it too much, but it is pretty cool...

  Posted by: kenlars99 on February 03, 2004 at 03:40 PM

• Embedding IE/Mozilla inside a Swing app
  SWT sucks. You can embed a native browser inside a Swing application as described here: http://nothome.com/IECanvas/

  although I would agree with you that there should be a 100% Java solution to this problem.

  Posted by: cowwoc on February 04, 2004 at 06:39 AM

• SWT
  Yes, problem here is you have no real programatic control over the browser. Settings are all taken from the settings the user has made to the browser, popups/error boxes etc all just happen like you were using IE directly for example.

  I've been trying aswell to get a good solution to java controled rendering, Mozilla WebClient is a java layer ontop of Mozilla which seems promising but has a bit of work to do yet. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/blackwood/webclient/#Using
  

  Posted by: darraghc on February 04, 2004 at 06:48 AM

• Netscape IFC
  Just for the sake of completeness, I must point out that Netscape's IFC contains a HTML rendering component. Since most of the IFC links on Netscape's site are broken, I'm including the URL for an IFC book.

  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/ifcnut/desc.html

  Posted by: coxcu on February 04, 2004 at 08:46 AM

• Netclue
  Another commercial webbrowser can be found at http://www.netcluesoft.com.

  Posted by: jsz on February 04, 2004 at 12:28 PM

• WebRenderer
  WebRenderer is a Java native-based browser component utilising industry standard browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Safari.

  Main features:
  - Standards support
  - Speed
  - Stability
  - Predictable

  Platforms supported: Windows, Linux, OSX and Solaris.

  Easily embeds into Swing and AWT user interfaces.

  Posted by: webrenderer on February 04, 2004 at 06:34 PM

• Even more completeness: HotJava
  Why doesn't Sun release HotJava as a java.net project?

  http://java.sun.com/products/hotjava/index.html

  "HotJava Browser 3.0 provides a highly-customizable modular solution for creating and deploying Web-enabled applications across a wide array of environments and devices. The newest version of HotJava Browser uses the JavaBeans component model, designed to give developers an edge on getting Internet and intranet products to market quickly and cost effectively.

  Key features and improvements of HotJava Browser 3.0 include:

  * JavaScript (Full ECMA 1.4 standard support)
  * HTML rendering fidelity improvements, adding support for critical Netscape 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 extensions to the W3C HTML 3.2 specification
  * Improved user interface, adding a more "modern" look and feel to the browser
  * Over 500 bug fixes and user requested enhancements "

  Posted by: coxcu on February 05, 2004 at 10:10 AM

• Netclue alive?
  hi,
  has anybody some idea what happended to Netclue? It seems they're out of business! The only mature alternative seems to be IceBrowse.

  Posted by: gardufu on April 02, 2004 at 03:22 AM

• Embed IE
  I have had the same problem.
  After using ICESoft (does not support a lot of web standards like multimedia, Flash), I finally used IE
  embedded in a swing multi-window application.
  I built the "desktop" interface using "undecorated"
  Jdialogs (since JInternalFrames are STILL lightweight only) with my own window controls and desktop layout manager. I used njawin to embed the browser. I actually have a lot of control over the browser (full access to the document, ability to customize contextual menu, etc). I know it's not perfect but unfortunately that was the best solution at the time. I am going to trying embedding gecko so my app runs on many platforms....

  
  Guillaume

  Posted by: azazellov on June 07, 2004 at 10:41 PM

• Warrior Just released, and not fully functional, but should continue to improve.

  Posted by: xamjadmin on March 11, 2006 at 06:42 PM

• Cobra, BTW, is the HTML rendering engine of Warrior. Project goals are to support HTML 4, Javascript and CSS2.

  Posted by: xamjadmin on June 22, 2006 at 02:20 PM

• JRex (http://jrex.mozdev.org/) is an interface to Mozilla. I actually found it from another page on java .net (http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2004/05/24/html-pt1.html)

  Posted by: npiguet on August 29, 2006 at 12:42 AM

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