Thoughts on the Epiphany Browser? (not Chrome botnet crap, or even FF-based, GTK+ WebKit-based) (+ A good framework for web automation?)
from ChubakPDP11@programming.dev to programming@programming.dev on 11 May 2024 03:11
https://programming.dev/post/13916889

I honestly have issues browsing to even the simplest of non-static pages. I think it’s like, the graphical version of lynx(1) or w3m(1). I think it’s based on X’s browser right? So basically, it’s based on the Open Webkit Standard. It uses the GTK+ WebKit engine. This engine has a programmatic interface.

You can install it via:

sudo apt install epiphany-browser

Make sure you add the -browser, otherwise some shitty game that crashes your system is installed. DO NOT RUN THIS GAME! This is not a joke.

Of course this only works for Plebian-based systems. Other package managers may, or may not have it.

So as I said, I had a lot of issues navigating. I was experiencing network isseus at the time. Tried it again when they were fixed. SLOW AF!

It’s not that fetching www is slow, rendering hypertext is slow as well. Lik, I monitored tcp/443, it got done fetching the text and it was STILL struggling to render!

Soo… ‘render’ is the key here. It’s obvious why it’s slow. It does not use Direct Media Access.

But that does not mean it’s useless right?

I can imagine lots of uses for web automation chuds. Basically bind libwebkit2 to Python and you’ll be free of automation protocols. Although it does support automation protocols as well.

In fact you can use wpewebkit-driver to interace with Epiphany’s web driver. Good thing about it is, the protocol hackable af.

sudo apt install wpewebkit-driver

So anyways, if you did not know about this, now you know.

And I think most people DO know about it, because another browser that uses libwebkit2 is GNOME browser which comes as default X browser on most Plebian systems. I don’t think anybody uses it though. It’s kinda like an extremely un-intrusive IE6 lol.

Thanks.

#programming