“The family of available desktop browsers for Linux has evolved
into quite a clan, with over 20 member browsers vying for user
attention. Why, then, introduce another one? After surveying
the field of available browsers, in search of even one appropriate
for embedded deployment, we found that no single Web client would
suit. Browsers were either too large-like Netscape’s Mozilla-and
would never run on most embedded systems, or too small, with very
incomplete HTML. So we decided to design a new browser, one
that was specifically suited for the needs of the embedded Linux
community.”
“We had five initial design goals. First, we wanted to create
the smallest browser possible, but retain 100 percent standards
compliance for HTML parsing. … Second, and just as important, we
wanted to use available open-source code for the HTML parsing and
display engine. … Third, we wanted to use the selected HTML
widget code as is. … Fourth, we wanted to use a set of
user-interface widgets suitable for small environments. …
Finally, we felt that for the browser to be widely accepted it was
necessary for it to be flexible enough to run on the standard X
Window system as well as the newer embedded Microwindows graphical
windowing environment (www.microwindows.org).”
“The ViewML browser runs in about 2 Mbytes of RAM; code file
size is around 800k. Combined with Microwindows, the entire
environment can run in less than 2.5 Mbytes of RAM, which allows
its use on most 32-bit embedded Linux systems running graphical
displays. With the entire ViewML project in open-source, other
contributors will quickly join the effort and enhance ViewML even
further.”