SAFE Browser Application Packages || Dev Update

A wee update for any folks looking to get rid of the proxy setup.

I’ve spent the last days setting up basic app provisioning for the SAFE Beaker Browser, with some success. We now have windows, linux and osx builds! (I’ve had no linux feedback yet, but windows/osx are looking good!). Which means you can download a browser and run it alongside the SAFE Launcher to have proxy-free access to the network.


Download the SAFE Beaker Browser

You can grab the windows build here.

And osx/linux packages here

Note: Clearnet is still enabled, and all browser data is still saved locally. This release is purely a packaging of the POC with the safe: protocol.

Issues

If you encounter any problems, please let me know. This is still early days, so it’s likely.

The good news is, now that app provisioning is setup, future iterations should be much easier to produce. No more need to go through all the dev setup. (props to @betterthantrav for the dev-build guide there :thumbsup:)


Recent developments

My main aim once the gun was fired was to get the application packaging setup. @Viv and @Krishna_Kumar recommended appveyor/travis for builds, so I fired in there (bit of a crash course for myself), but I’m please to say, after wrestling with various build problems (oh windows, how I love you), everything is working (although there’s still some room for improvement :slight_smile: ).

This doesn’t sound like such an advancement, but it’s really nice to have builds tested quickly on all platforms, as well as being able to get full app packages built on the native platforms. So it should allow for smoother development going forward, and should remove the need for anyone to have to go through the full dev-build setup to get the browser running.

Next

I’m away on a long-planned holiday next week, so I won’t likely be online so much. But as soon as I’m back the week after I’ll be aiming to:

  • Update and stabilise safe-js. Adding in testing for all functionality.
  • Implement the full safe-js API functionality in the new beaker-safe plugin so webapp devs can have a native interface to the network.
  • Update the beaker plugin with a test suite and CI integration.
  • Prevent non safe protocol access by default. ( so the safe://tester
    banana does not show up).
  • Update CI integration configs for smoother app deploys on all builds.

This wave of improvements should get us towards the basic SAFE Beaker Browser implementation. And after that I’ll be planning out steps for the stretch goals.

:boom:

30 Likes

Awesome , You are doing great work here !

2 Likes

This is a big step indeed :slight_smile:

I briefly tried it on Debian and it was fine (just visited “dirvine”).

However, I already miss Alt-d (select address bar) :slight_smile: so maybe beaker doesn’t implement full keyboard shortcuts yet?

Have a great holiday. :airplane:

6 Likes

@Viv are there plans to bundle the SAFE Beaker Browser with the SAFE Launcher/Gateway?

@joshuef what is the plan for the SAFE Beaker Browser icon?

Will not run on Ubuntu 16.04, When I click the executable nothing happens :frowning:

Interessting. Let me check the linux builds.


edit: Erroneous semi-quote. I’d accidentally highlighted something. :expressionless:

1 Like

I assume once the current icon stuff is all nailed down and we’ve the final version, we should use that. Or some variation thereof. Would that make sense? (I’m not 100% up to speed with the icon chat the last weeks)

1 Like

Browser crashes unexpectedly on startup on my iMac 10.11.3 but i’m still very excited none the less. Very early POC so understandable. Can’t wait to see the finished product and you’re doing great so far @joshuef

Thanks, @Nigel!

It crashes consistently? Any errors popping up?

It crashes on my Mac also - running latest version of OSX

You’re welcome @joshuef! No errors pop up just the message from Mac that app unexpectedly quit :confused: and the option to report to apple. Wish there was more info I could pass along.

Other words: everybody! :smiley:

Much love! This has definitely been our most used and favorite toolkit. Thanks very much for the work here!

1 Like

Going to see if I can pass along something from console on Mac that will give some more info

2 Likes

@Nigel, I’ve heard reports that while the build I linked to above isn’t working on OSX, this one is.

Would you mind giving that a whirl?

1 Like

Updated the OP builds for OSX/linux.

Declaring the protocol for OSX (on the OS level) was killing the electron app package. New build lives here: Release v0.2.2 · joshuef/beaker · GitHub

2 Likes

I absolutely will and get back to you tonight :slight_smile:

Trying the linux binaries here on a fedora 21 -

I get this error : share.riseup.net -

When inspecting what was unpacked from safer-beaker-browser-0.2.2.tar.gz , I see that both resources/app.asar and resources/electron.asar are not recognized as folders by my system, but rather look like binary files.

I am not sure how this is supposed to be, could it be some sort of packing or unpacking error ?

When I build from source everything goes fine, btw.

this will be very much appreciated !

2 Likes

The browser is working great on mac 10.11.3 now @joshuef. Things load up quick, everything looks slick! Props!

1 Like