Looking for pointers/suggestion - how to make a webbrowser with these restriction?

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 6:23 PM, Anthony Kong <anthony.hw.kong at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, all,
>
> It is kind of a MacGyver question. I am just looking for some general suggestions/pointer.
>
> First let me first describe the development environment I am in: it is a locked down WinXP PC with limited development tools and libraries. At my disposal I have python 2.6 , webkit 5.33 dll, wx 2.8 and probably a V8 dll. No visual studio or any C/C++ compiler. Do not have admin right.

XP shouldn't stop you adding another program, even without admin
rights. Maybe not a "classic" web browser, but something uber-thin
like HTMLayout [1], though it's not FOSS (it's free for non-commercial
use though). It's perhaps too thin for you, but start by loading that
up and see how it goes.

> So given these existing ingredients, is it possible to build a rudimentary web browser using python as a glue language?  What will be the main challenge/bottleneck in this sort of project? In particular how can I hook up V8 and Webkit?
>
> I have some working experience with Win32 APIs, so you may throw some low level stuff at me if needed. :-)

Unless someone else has done it already, you're probably going to have
to do some C++ work to embed V8 inside Python. It's not difficult but
will need to be done. Webkit is another pile of work. By the time
you're done, you'll most likely have written a whole web browser
(minus the decades of experience in performance, security
vulnerabilities, etc), and it'll probably have problems with your lack
of admin rights.

What are your actual requirements? What can't you do? There are some
really REALLY insane possibilities you could try. Can you install
PuTTY [2] and Xming [3], and ssh to a Linux box to run a web browser?
(See, I told you it was insane.)

ChrisA

[1] http://www.terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/
[2] http://www.putty.org/
[3] http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/