The Flash plugin in itself isn’t capable of embedding WebKit rather WebKit and Flash can share the same application container and communicate using a common API when compiled as an AIR application.

However, I hold a knife and fork by my proverbial hat in case anyone can make this browser-in-browser work by embedding AIR into a regular browser.

Good luck.

See Netscape 8, which made a franken-browser of Firefox by using MSHTML for some sites, Gecko for others. Consider cookie sharing or non-sharing, certs, etc. You can use the IE settings model from AIR, but the interpretation of those settings won’t be identical. AIR is in its early stages, and it has the “advantage” that its content does not have to interoperate bug-for-bug compatibly with IE. AIR has its own content model.

And then there’s download footprint.

A full browser that can handle web compatibility plus OS integration is non-trivial, to put it mildly.

But sure, the ScreamingMonkey approach could be used over the long run, with enough work on distribution and compatibility. IE is a possession target. MS won’t stand still for it, but if they break too many APIs that their own code (e.g., Silverlight) can use but Flash cannot, they’ll raise antitrust issues again.

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http://www.onflex.org/ted/2006/08/fxt-flex-templating.php

All I am saying is, with Adobe AIR, you could, in theory, get the next gen of sIFR where instead of the fonts being rendered better, the whole page is rendered in an engine of choice. I never said, “everything else would break”. I didn’t say “ad-blockers and controls would break”.

Im confused by comments like “Wow. Please, no.” Is that what you say to sIFR too? Maybe those who just say, “All I can say is… please NO… do not do this” could be specific. I am pretty sure you are making assumptions I am not making.

My assumptions:
1. 100% unobtrusive. 1 page to develop in html/css/js.
2. The plugin is Flash which has wonderful penetration and trust.
3. Nothing in the browser would break (back/forward/bookmarks/ad-blockers).

In terms of the comment about browser innovation. I agree, there were several years of stagnation from Microsoft. However, those were GREAT years for developers. Sometimes we NEED stability to develop great things. I think the pendulum needs to swing sometimes. I am not disagreeing with the point about competition brings innovation.

Competition is an enabler… it encourages innovation and variation. Using Flash/some other means as a hybrid to fix lack of reliability boils down to one plugin to rule them all. Browser/Plugin what’s the difference at that point, it still spells monopoly on innovation. We saw probably the worst possible result of that with IE6… 5 years of no innovation… while it probably wouldn’t be worse than that… putting all our eggs into one basket in any situation is a very very bad idea… one way or another it slows down development and innovation…

The real solution to this problem is for major vendors (and by proxy smaller vendors) of browsers to agree to not compete (yet still innovate) at the rendering level without working together to find the right solution. We’re seeing a lot of movement in this area lately and THAT is what should be encouraged.

If vendors can agree before releasing their respective products that X “feature”, where feature is something new deliverable by code, should be coded by a web developer with X method… we will go a lot further, a lot quicker towards resolving the problems plaguing our industry today. We as a community must encourage competition that EXCLUDES the handling of HTML/CSS/JS, and then encourage agreements between vendors to continue to innovate at that level. If Microsoft/Mozilla/Opera/Apple do not attempt to brand their innovations with handling HTML/CSS/JS then most of our problems will be gone.

Make a better browser? Absolutely! Compete at the speed the rendering process absolutely! Extend the browser to handle more day to day tasks like RSS feeds? Absolutely!… but leave the core to an agreed standard… not W3C standard.. just ANY standard…

Back to the point… our goal is reliability… backward compatibility is a very good idea as it encourages growth… so lets focus on getting all players to play nice with one another rather than inventing clever ways of avoiding the work of finding a consensus. If that consensus can be reached soon… then in a couple of years we’ll have a reliable platform to develop on that will continue to be reliable as time goes on. Lets just find a way to make the approval and agreement process happen BEFORE a browser is released to the public… getting four teams (Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and Apple) to sit down together may be difficult, but doesn’t seem to me an insurmountable goal… and frankly its makes them all look good, regardless of their marketshare… :)

I think it is a funny idea, a bit weird, and really a tragedy that it could be useful. A crude but effective workaround for the fact that browser standards never quite seem to be good enough to avoid having to code browser-specific workarounds.

I dont think its that much In Apple’s interests, especially as they now have Safari for Windows and so would probably rather be pushing that. Dont know what their relationship with Adobe is like these days, no flash for iphone so far etc.

It could make sense for Adobe to do it. I guess it will come down to how much AIR takes off as a standalone thing seperate from the browser, and how much Silverlight actually proves to be a threat. Certainly one of the merits of making stuff using flash was that it would behave the same across playforms & browsers, and they have been trying hard to keep in with developers & the latest trends by embracing AJAX, so I suppose its not impossible that they could go down this path.

The basic premise of a progressively enhanced page, that renders in an engine that the publisher chooses, and not the user would make “backward compatibility” a limited concern. Microsoft’s speech on Thursday was adamant that backward compatibility stopped them from fixing bugs and innovating. JavaScript 2 sounded great, but backward compatibility creates loads of problems.

@Brendan: The flash player has more penetration than IE and probably as much or more trust. If metabrowsing piggy-backed on AIR, and specifically the Flash ActiveX Control, why would 90% of users not notice? Ideally, they would never know. Flash currently is meshed into the users pages with barely a second thought. That’s why I think using AIR is a shorter route than a browser-plugin alone.

If Google or Apple started to publish a pure meta-browser plugin, I also think that distribution would become much easier. Ultimately, this is a boon for publishers and site developers. You know what the user will get, and are still making html/css/js.

Why wouldn’t Apple want to do this? Or Adobe? That AIR demo seemed to be 90% of the battle. And Apple has everything to gain on this.

Why am I awake at 5:40am?

You lose all the goodies the browser provides for HTML. Ad-Blocker, Search, User CSS, User JS, Context-Menu with your stuff like “translate word”, ability for change the font size and enforce a minimum font size, fast back/forward through rendered page caching etc. pp.

No thanks.

The problem with these schemes remains distribution. It’s not easy getting onto most PCs. You have to pay the Dells of the world for the right.

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