Web Browsers And Packages

Release: 2010-02-05
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SRWare Iron

Iron 4, from the German company SRWare, is based on Google's Chromium 4 open source project which is mostly based on Apple's WebKit 532.9 with some replaced and missing components. This web browser is an open-source, Layout Level web browser with the WebCore layout engine providing the HTML, XML and CSS while instead of WebKit's Nitro scripting virtual machine, Iron uses Google's V8 scripting virtual machine which provides high performance JavaScript support. Iron provides web-standards support for web applications and web pages.
SRWare Iron 3 supports:

  • HTML 4.01 (HyperText Markup Language);
  • HTML 5 'Subset';
  • label attribute for option elements;
  • Ruby Annotation (HTML 5) (Iron 4);
  • HTML 5's <meta charset="">;
  • HTML 5 Forms's <input type="search"> and <input type="range">;
  • &apos; named character reference;
  • contenteditable and spell checking support (but not spellcheck attribute);
  • canvas Element;
  • HTML 5's audio, video and source elements;
  • WAI-ARIA adds support for Accessible Rich Internet Applications;
  • Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, Visual & Interactive and partial Paged level 2.1 provides a realistic way of adding presentation and layout to your document structures;
  • Some main and experiemental CSS level 3 features;
  • The ability to style and script with unknown markup;
  • For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico, .png, .jpg, .gif (and .icns in Mac OS X only)), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap), XPM (X Pixmap) and SVG 1.1;
  • Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), 99% of level 2 (Core, HTML, XML, Views, Stylesheets, CSS, CSS2, Events, UIEvents, MutationEvents, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents, Traversal, Range), bits of Core DOM 3, XPath DOM 3, TextEvents DOM 3, Bits of DOM 5 HTML exposes documents to scripting interaction;
  • JavaScript 1.6 (without multiple catches);
  • Selectors API allows an easier way to access parts of the DOM using CSS-like selectors;
  • In Iron, Google's Gears provides Database Storage to allow local database performance and capacity with SQLite, and its support for SQL, to store complex information. Plus local web caching and various extra APIs;
  • Also since Iron 3, to compliment cookies and Gears, Web Database Storage support allow local database performance and capacity with SQLite, and its support for SQL, to store information beyond the abilities of cookies;
  • Plus since Iron 4, support for Web Storage's localStorage for name/value persistent data.

Canvas feature support includes:

  • Stroke and fill colours;
  • Rectangles;
  • Paths;
  • rgba/hsla colours;
  • Shadows;
  • Text;
  • Linear and radial gradients;
  • Patterns;
  • Translations, rotation and scale;
  • Bring in pixel images;

CSS level 3 features supported includes:

  • hsl(), rgba(), hsla() functions;
  • Namespaces Module, most of Media Queries;
  • proper border-radius;
  • Multiple Background Images and the opacity property for full gradient transparency;
  • some -webkit- properties such as reflections (-webkit-box-reflect), -webkit-border-radius, -webkit-box-sizing;
  • CSS Gradients, Masks, Box Reflections, Animation, Transitions, 2D Transforms and some 3D Transforms support with -webkit- prefix;
  • text-shadow and -webkit-box-shadow, ::selection pseudo-element selector, Structural pseudo-class selectors (like :nth-child, :not, :empty, :first-of-type, etc), :enabled, :disabled and :checked UI state pseudo-class selectors, :target selector;
  • @font-face At Rule with multiple src values, local() and format() functions (support for TrueType (Iron 4), OpenType (Iron 4), SVG Fonts);

Native Media format support includes:

  • OGG Video (Theora);
  • OGG Audio (OGG Vorbis);
  • Wave Audio;

SVG support includes:

  • Groups;
  • Stroke and fill colours;
  • Basic shapes (Rectangles, Rounded Corner Rectangles, Lines, Circles, Ellipses, Polylines and Polygons);
  • Paths;
  • Opacity;
  • Text;
  • Hyperlinkg;
  • Linear and radial gradients;
  • Translations, skews, rotation and scale;
  • Bring in pixel images;
  • SVG declarative animation;
  • SVG Fonts;
  • SVG (at least 1.1) Filters;
  • CSS support;
  • Scripting support;
  • Scripted animation;
  • SVG does not integrate with webpage (has white matte background);

In the realm of XML:

  • eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 with Namespaces & full XML-Stylesheet Processing Instruction (PI);
  • eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0, 1.1 (without Ruby Annotation) and Basic 1.0;
  • eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 1 & eXtensible Path Language (XPath) 1 provides the ability to convert extensible document structures into other document structures;
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 for ultimate 2-dimensional vector image display, with advanced text and declarative animation & scripted animation, does not support Filters;

provides an excellent platform for experiencing the World Wide Web.

Iron passes the Acid 2 Test which tests Cascade Stylesheet (CSS) support. More about the Acid 2 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).

Iron also clocks 100 out of 100, passing all tests with one test taking 33 attempts, from the Acid 3 Test. Acid 3 tests DOM, scripting, HTML, SVG and various other technologies for Web 2.0. More about the Acid 3 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).

In order to allow users to navigate and use interactive webpage features using the keyboard (part of making webpages accessible) Google Chrome provide the following: On MS Windows and Linux you can tab through links and form controls in general.

Iron Features

Iron has reached version 4 for Windows and Linux (Version 3). A Mac OS X version is in beta. Like Chrome, Iron provides the same simplistic user interface with ideas from Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple Safari. Plus extra Googleness such as create shortcuts which allow you to add desktop shortcuts to any web application such as Gmail, Google Calendar, etc (but not limited to Google Services). Under the hood are components from Mozilla and Apple's WebKit with more Googleness such as Gears.

Iron supports both Gears and HTML 5's Database Storage for local SQL-powered data storage and since Chrome 4, name/value localStorage for web applications. Also supports HTML 5 Media such as the video element. But has no session storage support beyond the old cookies (Gears does not have session storage only persistent storage).

Tabs are first class citizens in Iron with each protected by a sandbox to prevent unwarranted scripts and programs interacting with other tabs or the operating system. It improves memory management too as each tab is handled by its own computer process rather than one process for the whole browser. If one Iron tab crashes, the rest of the browser continues to run. Anti-phishing and Anti-Malware is also supported. An Incognito tab allows private browsing without any history saved.

For Web Authors you can use the WebInspector (right click some text on the webpage and click Inspect Element) to view syntax coloured source code of webpages, stylesheets and scripts; view the webpage as a full Document Object Model and applied styles lists. In 'Pages' toolbar button, Developer menu are the JavaScript Console, debug JavaScript, View Source, etc.

Iron 4 adds SVG Filters support and Chromium extensions.

Features that need to be added to SRWare Iron

  • For CSS:
    • Support for Web Open Font Format (.woff);
  • From HTML 5:
    • Web Storage's sessionStorage;
    • section, article, aside, nav, hgroup, header, footer, mark, time, progress, meter, figure, figcaption, details and summary elements;
    • Transparent background of SVG Documents brought in with object needs to allow HTML webpage background through instead of white matte;
    • Inline SVG in text/html documents;

To download SRWare Iron for Windows you can go to its official website.

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