WebPositive (also called Web+) is a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

included with the

Haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...

operating system. It was created to replace the aging BeZillaBrowser with a

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS ...

-based browser.

Origin

One part of its name is a tip of the hat to BeOS' simple

NetPositive NetPositive (often called Net+) is the default web browser for the discontinued Be Operating System (BeOS). It includes partial support for JavaScript, but no CSS support. It was originally developed as a stop-gap measure because no browsers had ...

, while the other points to its modern foundation: WebKit, the open source browser engine at the heart of many other mainstream browsers, like Apple's

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

. By making use of WebKit as its engine, WebPositive is able to keep up with the latest web technologies.

History

In the Google Summer of Code 2009, Maxime Simon, mentored by Ryan Leavengood, was commissioned to work on a WebKit port for

, initiated by the work Leavengood had done for a bounty on the Haikuware website. This led to the development of the HaikuLauncher prototype browser, which demonstrated the functionality of the WebKit rendering engine but did little else. In February 2010, Stephan Aßmus took on the task of improving the HaikuLauncher web browser to make it more usable. This led to many preview releases before a relatively stable version (r488) was integrated into Haiku R1 / Alpha 2. In that same year, Ryan Leavengood took over as the lead developer of WebPositive. Earlier versions of WebPositive used

cURL cURL (pronounced like "curl", UK: , US: ) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for "Client URL". History cURL was fi ...

services but they were slow and had many other bugs, one of the more serious being that cookies overloaded at times. It became clear that cURL could not be used in WebPositive. In October 2013, Adrien Destugues, also known as PulkoMandy, was contracted to work on WebPositive full-time, which culminated in his assuming project leadership for WebPositive and HaikuWebKit. Destugues replaced cURL as the core of the application with Haiku's Service Kit, a product earlier developed by Stephan Aßmus and Christophe Huriaux during 2010's Google Summer of Code, and Alexandre Deckner in 2011. Destugues has also made significant improvements to WebPositive's HTML5 support in WebKit, such as implementing support for datalists and color input.

References

External links

WebPositive User Guide

WebPositive tag on Haiku-OS.org

Destugues' talk on HaikuWebKit and Web+ at BeGeistert 028
{{Gopher clients Free software programmed in C++ Gopher clients

Software based on WebKit 2010 software