State of WCGBrowser

While I realize that wcgbrowser isn’t exactly the most exciting or groundbreaking piece of software ever created, I’ve been having fun improving it bit by bit over the last few months since I opened the source code.  If I keep hacking away at this pace, I’ll easily have the most feature-packed kiosk browser around, for whatever that’s worth.

Here’s a quick rundown of new features, if you haven’t been watching the git logs closely:

  • Can open downloads in external programs via MIME type
  • Navigation bar is completely customizable
  • Compatible with python 3.x
  • Uses standard YAML for config file, no more weird mutated .ini syntax
  • inactivity timeout and “finished” button can either close or reset browser

Of course there are still bugs I’d like to fix, and features I’d like to add:

  • SSL errors are still ignored.  I’d like to have a mechanism for specifying downloaded .pem files so that self-signed certificates can be added via the config file.  I think soon I’ll implement an “SSL mode” directive that will at least allow you to validate registered certificates.
  • Possibly more widgets for the navbar, or the option of a bottom status/widget bar.  I was thinking maybe the ability to add buttons that could run system commands might be useful.  Maybe…
  • Maybe the option of tabs instead of child windows?  This could take the window manager out of the picture if you need this feature.
  • I need to clean up the code some.  There’s a lot of explicit shuffling around of configuration values that could probably be done in a much cleaner way, and a lot of debug code that probably needs to be evaluated for necessity.

I guess I should be careful adding too many features in.  Right now the program does everything I need it to do for my current deployments.  If you’ve tried it or are using it — what, if anything, is it missing for you?

One Thought on “State of WCGBrowser

  1. Dean says:

    Just wanted to thank you for making WCGBrowser available. I was going to run chromium-browser for web kiosks on my library’s thin clients, but no matter how much I locked it down with policies and such, there was always some way leaving the session in a sub-optimal state. WCGBrowser fits all our needs beautifully. Thanks!

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