On Apr 14, 2005, at 7:44 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>
> We don't need a perfect solution, but besides HTML (and CSS) we need
> JavaScript, Java and Flash. The Simputer people just gave up and 
> defined
> their own special language (IML) for their device to access. This was
> possible because there was essentially no previous content in their
> target audience's native languages and they would also be unlikely to
> want to access the wider internet available in other languages. This
> wouldn't work in Brazil, for example, where there is already a lot that
> would be interesting for the future laptop users (a few important sites
> even used Active X, but that seems to be going away).

I don't think Java is necessary - the number of sites that use applets 
these days is vanishingly small.

Javascript would be easier than you might think. At my day job, we have 
a Javascript runtime for VW that's pretty close to fully compliant with 
ECMA-262. It has good interoperability between Smalltalk and 
Javascript, and you can debug and inspect Javascript objects using the 
regular Smalltalk tools. It's fast and robust - we use it in our 
production code, and have lots of users writing scripts for it. It's 
available as open source.

We already have Flash support. It will probably need to be updated for 
newer versions of Flash and so on.

I think the hardest thing about a browser would be the HTML/CSS layout 
stuff.

Colin