Update README, document changes in 3.3 betas

[browser-switch] / README

BROWSER SWITCHBOARD
version 3.3b2

Browser Switchboard is a program which allows you to choose which
browser to use as the default browser. It supports MicroB, Tear,
Fennec/Mobile Firefox, and Midori out of the box, and can also be used
to launch MicroB without having browserd running.


Download:
Binary packages and source are available for download from the project
page on garage.maemo.org: https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=1159


Quick Start:
1. Download the binary package: browser-switchboard_X.Y-Z_all.deb
(where X.Y-Z is the version number, of course).
2. Install the package using the Application Manager (open the
Application Manager, then select Application->Install from file in the
menu).

You can now select the default browser by using the Browser Switchboard
applet in the Control Panel.  Links in most applications, locally-saved
web pages opened from the file manager, and (for Maemo 4.x) entries in
the Web sidebar panel will open in the browser that you select as the
default.  Opening the "Web" menu entry and running "browser" from the
shell will also cause your chosen default browser to open.  If you don't
configure a default browser, MicroB will continue to be used as the
default browser.

No matter which browser you select as the default, MicroB can always be
opened via the MicroB menu entry in the applications menu (for Maemo
4.x, installed in the Extras menu by default), or by running "microb"
from the shell.  While MicroB is open, it will receive all links from
other applications; closing MicroB will restore your chosen default
browser.

If you experience trouble after installing the package, try rebooting
your device.  If that fixes things, please report this as a bug.


Configuring the Default Browser by Hand:

If for some reason, you don't want to use the Control Panel applet to
configure Browser Switchboard, you can create the configuration file by
hand from a shell.  Run the following (where $ is your prompt, not
something you type):

$ cat > $HOME/.config/browser-switchboard <<EOF
default_browser = "your_browser"
EOF

where your_browser can be one of "tear", "microb", "fennec", "opera",
"midori" or "other" (see below for more on the "other" option).  You can
of course also edit the $HOME/.config/browser-switchboard file with your
favorite text editor.

To restore the default behavior, just delete the config file:

$ rm $HOME/.config/browser-switchboard


Advanced Configuration:

Here's a more complete sample configuration file:

# BEGIN SAMPLE CONFIG FILE
# This is a comment
# continuous_mode: 0 -- close after handling a request; 1 -- run
# continuously in the background (default)
# On Fremantle, this is forced to 1 regardless of config setting
continuous_mode = 1
# default_browser: "tear", "microb", "fennec", "midori", "opera" or
# "other"
default_browser = "tear"
# other_browser_cmd: If default browser is "other", what program
# to run (%s will be replaced by URI)
#other_browser_cmd = "some_browser %s"
# logging: Where log output should go: "stdout", "syslog", "none"
#logging = "stdout"
# autostart_microb: Fremantle only: whether MicroB should be
# prestarted in the background: 0 -- never prestart MicroB; 1 -- always
# prestart MicroB; -1 -- only prestart MicroB when MicroB is the default
# browser (default behavior if unset)
#autostart_microb = 0
# END SAMPLE CONFIG FILE

Lines beginning with # characters are comments and are ignored by the
script.  [Most options correspond directly to an option or option group
in the configuration UI.]

In continuous mode, Browser Switchboard keeps running in the background
instead of closing after handling each request.  This saves a bit of
startup time for each link (on my N800 running Diablo), but costs you
about 100 KB extra memory.  Continuous mode is enabled by default; set
continuous_mode to 0 to enable.  On Fremantle, continuous mode is always
enabled regardless of the value of this config setting, to provide
better compatibility with MicroB's behavior.  [This option corresponds
to the "Optimize Browser Switchboard for" option group in the UI; "Lower
memory usage" corresponds to continuous_mode off, while "Faster browser
startup time" corresponds to continuous_mode on.]

The "tear", "microb", "fennec", "opera" and "midori" options for
default_browser should be self-explanatory.  [These correspond to the
options in the "Default browser" combo box in the UI.]

If the default browser is "other", Browser Switchboard will run the
program specified in other_browser_cmd as the default browser, with a
URI replacing the %s on the command line; for example, if
other_browser_cmd is set to "some_browser %s", and Browser Switchboard
is asked to load http://www.google.com/, it will perform the equivalent
of typing in 

$ some_browser 'http://www.google.com/'

at a shell.  [In the UI, setting "Default brower" to "Other" activates
the "Command (%s for URI)" setting, which corresponds to the value of
other_browser_cmd.]

The logging option controls where Browser Switchboard sends its debug
logging output to.  You should not need to change this unless you're
debugging Browser Switchboard, and there is no UI for this option.  The
default option is "stdout", which means you won't see output unless you
run Browser Switchboard from the shell.  "syslog" will send the output
to the system log (assuming you have a syslogd set up on your device),
and "none" disables debug logging entirely.

On Fremantle only, autostart_microb controls whether MicroB is
prestarted when the device boots and whether the MicroB browser process
is left running when no browser windows are open.  By default, MicroB is
prestarted (and the process left open when no browser windows are open)
only when MicroB is set as the default browser; you can force MicroB to
always prestart by setting autostart_microb = 1, while you can force it
to never prestart by setting autostart_microb = 0.  [This option has no
corresponding UI at the moment.]


The browser-switchboard-config Command-Line Configuration Tool:

A command-line configuration utility is provided to allow programs and
scripts to query and set Browser Switchboard configuration variables.
For example,

$ browser-switchboard-config -b

will display the default browser, and 

$ browser-switchboard-config -s -b "opera"

will set the default browser to Opera Mobile.  See the help output from
running browser-switchboard-config with no arguments for more
information.

The primary purpose of this tool is to allow browser vendors to provide
an option in their browsers to set themselves as the default browser,
via something like this (shell-like pseudocode):

if [ -x /usr/bin/browser-switchboard-config ]; then
        if [ `browser-switchboard-config -b` = "mybrowser" ]; then
                display "MyBrowser is the default browser."
        else
                button "Make MyBrowser the default browser"
                action "browser-switchboard-config -s -b mybrowser"
        fi
else
        display "Install Browser Switchboard to make MyBrowser the default browser"
fi

Browser vendors: setting yourself as the default browser without
prompting the user first (via package maintainer scripts, for example)
is strongly discouraged.


Browser Switchboard and MicroB's browserd:

MicroB uses a background process called browserd to decrease its load
time.  Browser Switchboard knows how to launch MicroB without having
browserd running all the time, so if you don't plan on using MicroB
often, you can disable browserd (for example, by using the
maemo-control-services control panel applet available in Maemo Extras to
disable tablet-browser-daemon).  This will save you about 1 MB of
memory, but add a few seconds to MicroB's load time.


Uninstalling Browser Switchboard:

Remove the Browser Switchboard package using the Application Manager,
and everything should be back to normal.  If you experience problems
after uninstalling, try restarting your device first; if that fixes
things, please report this as a bug.


Compiling Browser Switchboard:

If for some reason you don't want to use the prebuilt binary package to
install Browser Switchboard, you can compile and install by hand:
1. You will need a copy of the SDK for your device.  Make sure the
following packages are installed: libdbus-glib-1-dev for
browser-switchboard; libdbus-1-dev, libgtk2.0-dev, libhildon1-dev,
hildon-control-panel-dev for the config UI.
2. Download the source tarball: browser-switchboard_X.Y.orig.tar.gz
3. Unpack the source tarball in your SDK install:

SDK$ tar -xvzf browser-switchboard_X.Y.orig.tar.gz
SDK$ cd browser-switchboard-X.Y

4. Compile:

SDK$ make diablo
SDK$ make -C config-ui diablo-plugin

(Replace "diablo" with "fremantle" and "diablo-plugin" with
"fremantle-plugin" if compiling for Fremantle.

If you want the standalone config application instead of the Control
Panel plugin, do 
SDK$ make -C config-ui diablo-hildon-app
instead.

If you're using the Scratchbox2-based SDK+, you want
SDK+$ sb2 make
etc. as usual.)

5. Install to a temporary directory, and tar up the result:

SDK$ make DESTDIR=temp install
SDK$ make -C config-ui install
SDK$ cd temp
SDK$ tar cf stuff.tar .

6. As root on your device, move files that will be replaced in the
install process out of the way:

DEVICE# mv /usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.osso_browser.service
  /usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.osso_browser.bak
DEVICE# mv /usr/bin/browser /usr/bin/browser.bak

7. Copy the tar file from step 5 to your device, and as root, unpack it
in the root directory of your device:

DEVICE# cd /
DEVICE# tar xf /path/to/stuff.tar

To uninstall, remove the files you installed, restore the backup copies,
and reboot your device.


Bug Reports and Patches:

Bug reports, patches, and suggested improvements can either be sent to
the maintainer via email (see below) or posted in the Tear thread on the
talk.maemo.org forums (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=28539).


Source Code Repository:

Source code is hosted in a Git (http://git-scm.com/) repository on
git.maemo.org.  You can get a copy of the current development version by
cloning the repository:

$ git clone http://git.maemo.org/projects/browser-switch

or you can browse the source using gitweb
(http://git.maemo.org/projects/browser-switch/?p=browser-switch;a=summary).


Maintainer:

Steven Luo <steven+maemo@steven676.net> is the primary maintainer, with
Jason Simpson (the original developer) assisting in development.


License:

Browser Switchboard is available under the terms of the GNU General
Public License (GPL), version 2 or later (see the file LICENSE in the
source).