Using WebKit (Safari compatible) in delphi to simulate iPhone mobile

Question

Has anyone successfully used WebKit in Delphi?

WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications.

I want to create an iPhone/iPad Mobile Simulator same as in electricplum. (I have tried the FREE version - seems like it also uses Adobe AIR).

With Safari browser we have the most accurate preview results for iPhone mobile sites. so I would like to embed the WebKit (that is used by Safari) in my application, so my customers can have a reliable preview of their mobile web sites.

I have searched the web, but could not find a working code. (The best I could find was this, but it's not working).

---

The 3 main problems with Delphi Chromium Embedded suggested in the answers are that:

• It does not support D5
• I can overcome the fact that there is no support for D5 (creating the component with D7 in a separate process or DLL) But, It is very unstable! I have tested it with D7: Random access violations.
• It does not render HTML pages with div layout/HTML5 same as Safari does (or electricplum - "Electric Mobile Simulator").

Sidney

WARNING: The provided link to the Safari code in the board message of bsalsa.com is reported as dangerous (the link to _http://www.simail.si/download/Delphi_Webkit.7z). DON'T DOWNLOAD IT! – Magnetic

Answer 1

Have a look at DelphiChromiumEmbedded. It's not Safari, but it is Webkit based at least...

Cnossus

@Sidney ChromiumEmbedded is pretty much your best bet... however I see you have a D5 tag there... not sure if you'll be able to use it without some changes... – Multiplication

I have tested Chromium. as I thought, it is based on Google chrome engine so it renders the HTML like chrome (which is not what I want) and does not use WebKit. It is also very unstable. – Sidney

@kobik: I was under the impression that Chrome did use Webkit. And Wikipedia says it does... – Cnossus

@MasonWheeler As I understand it, Chrome uses WebCore (part of WebKit), but doesn't use WebKit's JavaScript engine, having replaced JavaScriptCore with V8. – Longevous

chrome basically is webkit =) – Yarkand

I'm accepting this answer since I have to accept one. maybe in the future Chromium will be stable... – Sidney

Answer 2

The reliability of that is not going to be very good. In a corporate environment you might want to just put a mac on the network with the iPad/iPhone simulator from xcode, and script it to open your site and take screenshots.

Or even write a iOS program to open a webkit view with your site, and just put an iPad on the network.

• Taking a screenshot
• Open a webpage
• Running in the background
• Sending mail directly through smtp

And take a look at this question and answer

You might want to consider how much work a delphi webkit is going to be compared to just buying a mac. The upgrade cycle is going to be painful whatever route you take, but quality is going to be much better with the mac/iPad.

Webworm

Thanks for your response. As I mentioned, Safari on Windows gives us very good results. In fact our design team is using "Electric Mobile Simulator" with great success. But I want to embed that inside our product. – Sidney

+1 BTW. That gave me an interesting idea... maybe there are already exists reliable web-services based on iOS, that will get an input of the URL, and return a PDF... – Sidney

comment to @Self: using a screenshot is problematic, because the screenshot is not responsive. meaning I can't actually navigate and actually see transpositions effects for example. – Sidney

On a mac/pc you could use vnc/ichat/skype/remote desktop or so to capture screen semi-live. If your connection is good enough (and the machine fast enough) you should be able to have no dropped frames – Webworm