Edward J. Correia, writing in SD Times, takes a look at the new ViewML browser for embedded Linux based systems. Correia describes ViewML as “an open-source HTML engine that breaks 1MB ROM Barrier.” Correia writes . . .

“Filling a void in the embedded industry for a small-footprint Web browser, MontaVista Software Inc. together with Century Software Inc. has developed ViewML, an HTML engine suitable for embedded Linux. MontaVista says ViewML executes in about 2MB of RAM and requires 760K of ROM to embed. The companies have released the ViewML Project to the open-source community for use in handheld computers, smart phones, set-top boxes and other memory-constrained devices.”

“According to Greg Haerr, president and CEO of Century Software, everywhere his duties took him, people would ask for an embedded browser suitable for small devices, and he said that the current field of desktop HTML engines was using between 10MB and 20MB of memory. 'We decided that the only way to go with this project was to produce a completely open-source browser dedicated toward the small RAM configurations found on today's PDAs and Internet appliances,' said Haerr.”

“. . . Haerr explained that ViewML is composed of the HTML engine from K Desktop (www.kde.org) with the Fast Light Toolkit (www.fltk.org) providing the user interface. Century Software, which also develops the Microwindows open-source GUI for embedded systems, did most of the integration of the ViewML components.”

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