[webkit-help] Question about usability of WebKit

[Brent Fulgham]

Hi Jeroen,

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 7:10 AM, jeroen clarysse
<jeroen.clarysse at telenet.be> wrote:
> my questions however were :
> - is webkit intended to be part of a non-web-based application ?  Can I write an app that looks nothing at all like a browser, and simply displays an internal, locked, webpage ?

Yes.  Applications like iTunes are built this way.  Several other
applications are using WebKit internally.

> - can I load local data into that webpage ? My experiments are local files, opened, edited and saved on the users harddisk

Yes.

> - is it possible to launch my runtime (with that local file), from my webkit-based application ?

It depends on how the runtime works.  WebKit can be embedded in your
application, so the application could invoke the runtime as well as
host the WebKit environment.

> - can I do this cross-platform on mac & windows ?

Yes.  Mac contains WebKit as a core system component, so you don't
have to ship it.  On Windows you have to use the WinCairo port (or
look into Chromium) to redistribute without violating Apple licenses.

> - am i being silly and should I stick to my own custom-drawn code, and port that to Carbon ?

Don't use the Carbon UI toolkit -- it's deprecated and won't let you
build 64-bit applications.  I think your approach sounds totally
feasible, but will require you to maintain different application
frames around WebKit.  The internal JavaScript/HTML/CSS will of course
be cross-platform.

-Brent