Kweb Suite (Minimal Kiosk Browser, omxplayerGUI)

[anders_carlman]

KWeb is a great application.
However I can't set an appropriate window size when running in kiosk mode with a rotated screen.
The 'N' command line parameter options supports only "regular" aspect resolutions. Basically, when rotated all the widths/heights will be reversed...
Is there a possibility to achieve a correct rotated window size in current kweb version, or would it be possible to include such functionality in the next release?

Thanks!
/Anders

[gkreidl]

KWeb is a great application.
However I can't set an appropriate window size when running in kiosk mode with a rotated screen.
The 'N' command line parameter options supports only "regular" aspect resolutions. Basically, when rotated all the widths/heights will be reversed...
Is there a possibility to achieve a correct rotated window size in current kweb version, or would it be possible to include such functionality in the next release?

Thanks!
/Anders

Tell me the resolution you need and I'll compile a version with that resolution hard coded into it (as default size perhaps). Do you need kweb and/or kweb3 for your kiosk application?
Contact me via PM.

[PuppetHoundZ]

Got my Pi2B.

It's really fast.

All video shuddering goes away and it plays in HD using the websites directly rather than the play button on the browser!

Videos play smooth but at times they glitch and crash which is noted. BUT! All lag, frame-rate issues go away with the new Pi in most cases !

It trully is a computer on it's own. You're browser is awesome.

I set my GPU allocation to 256mb for this test.

Keep up the good work. Pi2B really excels with your browser it's a fully functional desktop browser.

[MrZunz]

I have a problem when installing. When I run

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wget http://steinerdatenbank.de/software/kweb-1.6.4.tar.gz
tar -xzf kweb-1.6.4.tar.gz
cd kweb-1.6.4
./debinstall

I get the following:

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Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main libavformat53 armhf 6:0.8.16-1+rpi1
  404  Not Found
Fetched 0 B in 0s (0 B/s)
Error during install: 'Failed to fetch http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/liba/libav/libavformat53_0.8.16-1+rpi1_armhf.deb 404  Not Found
'cp: cannot stat `/usr/local/share/kweb/ktop': No such file or directory
sudo: kwebhelper_set.py: command not found
./debinstall: 9: ./debinstall: preparekweb: not found

I tried installing from source as stated in the manual, but it can't find the file on your webserver anymore. I would really love to be able to use kweb as an alternative for epiphany since that has no kiosk mode support.

By the way, this is from a fresh installation of raspbian on my raspberry pi 2.

[gkreidl]

Run
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get ugrade
first and try installing kweb again.

[MrZunz]

Thanks! That worked!

However, I really want to boot into fullscreen with matchbox-window-manager... I did follow the manual and pasted the kiosk script in "./kiosk". But when I run the "xinit ./kiosk" command I get the following error:

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pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo xinit ./kiosk

_XSERVTransSocketOpenCOTSServer: Unable to open socket for inet6
_XSERVTransOpen: transport open failed for inet6/raspberrypi:0
_XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: failed to open listener for inet6

X.Org X Server 1.12.4
Release Date: 2012-08-27
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 3.2.0-2-mx5 armv7l Debian
Current Operating System: Linux raspberrypi 3.18.7-v7+ #755 SMP PREEMPT Thu Feb 12 17:20:48 GMT 2015 armv7l
Kernel command line: dma.dmachans=0x7f35 bcm2708_fb.fbwidth=776 bcm2708_fb.fbheight=480 bcm2709.boardrev=0xa01041 bcm2709.serial=0xf1c7cbcc smsc95xx.macaddr=B8:27:EB:C7:CB:CC bcm2708_fb.fbswap=1 bcm2709.disk_led_gpio=47 bcm2709.disk_led_active_low=0 sdhci-bcm2708.emmc_clock_freq=250000000 vc_mem.mem_base=0x3dc00000 vc_mem.mem_size=0x3f000000  dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait
Build Date: 11 February 2015  09:31:17PM
xorg-server 2:1.12.4-6+deb7u6 (Julien Cristau <jcristau@debian.org>)
Current version of pixman: 0.33.1
        Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Wed Apr  8 19:12:42 2015
(==) Using config directory: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d"
(==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
./kiosk: 2: ./kiosk: matchbox­window­manager : not found
./kiosk: 3: ./kiosk: kweb ­KHCUA+­zbhrqfpoklgtjneduwxy file:///usr/local/share/kweb/kweb_about_a.html: not found
xinit: connection to X server lost

waiting for X server to shut down Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file.

Any idea what I am doing wrong here?

[gkreidl]

Try without "sudo". You shouldn't run the browser as root.

[baggednismo]

First things first, im excited there is a minimal kiosk browser and WILL use proxy servers! But im having some problems with it and config settings. The only problem with Chromium is its bug with proxy servers. I need the RPi to be setup as a transparent proxy (which has already been done) but Chromium not matter how i configure the OS or Chromium it will never use a proxy server so here I am.

On the first page @alanrpi's first post is very similar to how im using chromium and kiosk right now. What i will be changing to is xinit launching from terminal. I looked though the manual and found xinit directives but its not clear exactly how to use it. It very clear that kweb can be used a simple browser or the front end of an application running on the pi. For my use I only need it as a simple browser to view a PHP/JS dynamic content webpage.

As of right now I havent been able to identify exactly how to launch the browser and passing the parameters at the same time. so a recap of what exactly im looking to do is:

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@chromium --noerrdialogs --kiosk http://www.page-to.display

once I know this works I want to do something similar to this:

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xinit /usr/bin/chromium --noerrdialogs --kiosk http://www.page-to.display

Now since i havent been able to figure that out i stepped ahead and made sure my transparent proxy was working so through the GUI i opened kweb (also tried kweb3) browser and went to my static proof of concept webpage. As I had hoped the proxy is working but then I see the website viewport is blank... kweb is unable to actually view the website but every other browser I have installed is capable of doing so.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[gkreidl]

Did you enable Javascript?

[baggednismo]

Ok, after making the post it really helped finding the solution (and seeing some examples of what the script would be locally)

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xinit /usr/bin/kweb -KJBH http://path-to-website.com

Do I have to worry about the error dialogs and the pi just being unplugged on the next boot when opening kweb browser?

[gkreidl]

Ok, after making the post it really helped finding the solution (and seeing some examples of what the script would be locally)

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xinit /usr/bin/kweb -KJBH http://path-to-website.com

Do I have to worry about the error dialogs and the pi just being unplugged on the next boot when opening kweb browser?

Which error dialogs? If you mean the error messages on the console they are normal for every gtk application since the Foundation published the accelerated browser engine (and updated a lot of packages which are not really compatible to Wheezy any more).

[baggednismo]

I was referring to browser error dialogs if the browser crashed or was shut down due to the pi losing power. I didnt know if kweb even had these opetions like chromium but i am trying to nip those problems in the bud before they come to light

[MrZunz]

Try without "sudo". You shouldn't run the browser as root.

Still throws the same error. However, when I run the command from above

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xinit /usr/bin/kweb -KJBH http://path-to-website.com

from the terminal it works, but when I execute it from /etc/rc.local it doesn't and gives me that weird not found error, whether I execute it with sudo or not... I have been battling this for 2 evenings now and I am kinda at a loss right here...

[gkreidl]

Try without "sudo". You shouldn't run the browser as root.

Still throws the same error. However, when I run the command from above

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xinit /usr/bin/kweb -KJBH http://path-to-website.com

from the terminal it works, but when I execute it from /etc/rc.local it doesn't and gives me that weird not found error, whether I execute it with sudo or not... I have been battling this for 2 evenings now and I am kinda at a loss right here...

Battling for 2 evenings instead of reading a 40 page manual?

1) Using kweb with xinit without starting a window manager is not recommended. It works, in a way, but it is not guaranteed that everything will work this way.
2) xinit is rather picky about paths.
Create a kiosk file in the root of your user directory; something like that;

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#!/bin/sh
matchbox-window-manager &
kweb -KAJBHq http://path-to-website.com

Fom the command line start it with;

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xinit ./kiosk

If everything works, you can add it to rc.local like that:

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su -l pi -c "xinit ./kiosk"

[pipuppy]

Hi,
I have installed kweb on a raspi2 with a clean install of raspbian and for the most part everything seems to be working really well except I get an error everytime kweb starts. As a Linux newbie I am unsure what the error message means.

I have been launching kweb from a terminal window from within the desktop gui by typing "kweb" followed by enter. As kweb launches an error appears in the terminal window...

** (kweb:2415): WARNING **: Error retrieving accessibility bus address: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.ally,Bus was not provided by any .service files

kweb continues to launch without any obvious problems but the "WARNING" message concerns me. The only thing I have done to my raspbian (aside from installing kweb) was to remove the Wolfram engine and Sonic-pi to free-up around 500+ m/bytes of space then update/upgrade raspbian...

sudo apt-get purge wolfram-engine
sudo apt-get purge sonic-pi
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

All the purging and updating was done before installing kweb.
After installing kweb I ran sudo python check.py which told me I needed to install "xterm" after which I re-booted and launced kweb from a terminal window in the desktop and received the error though kweb continues to work?

I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the error I am seeing please?

Regards,

pipuppy

[gkreidl]

This is a warning, not more. If you stop the browser, you will see a lot more warnings or errors in the terminal. All GTK applications show such warnings since the Foundation introduced the new accelerated web browser and upgraded a lot of packages to versions which are not completely compatible with Wheezy.
But nothing to worry about. Except for lots of warnings everything seems to be running fine (for about 8 months now). I suppose that will be fixed when we migrate to Jessie.

[pipuppy]

Hi gkreidl,

I just spotted your reply as I was adding more information to my original post

Thankyou for responding so quickly and for putting my mind at rest. I am pleased the errors are not serious as I like the look/feel of kweb and enjoy using it.

Thanks again,

Kind regards,

pipuppy

[MrZunz]

2) xinit is rather picky about paths.
If everything works, you can add it to rc.local like that:

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su -l pi -c "xinit ./kiosk"

Thanks! That works, all is running great now! Thanks so much! And please forgive my stupidity of not reading the whole manual...

One question though; When I run it with the F command I'm assuming it is using the newer engine, but I use a lot of CSS3 transistions on my page, and they don't work with kweb but do with epiphany. Is this somehow disabled by kweb?

[gkreidl]

[
One question though; When I run it with the F command I'm assuming it is using the newer engine, but I use a lot of CSS3 transistions on my page, and they don't work with kweb but do with epiphany. Is this somehow disabled by kweb?

No the 'F' options enables some "experimental" features, but kweb still uses the old engine (it's not possible to switch the engine). But if it works in epiphany, just use kweb3 instead if kweb. It uses the new engine, the same as epiphany.

[MrZunz]

Oh ok, thanks for everything, it is much appreciated! One more question, is there a chance webkit speech recognition is able to be implemented or already is? Or is it never going to be possible?

[gkreidl]

Oh ok, thanks for everything, it is much appreciated! One more question, is there a chance webkit speech recognition is able to be implemented or already is? Or is it never going to be possible?

I'm not aware of any speech recognition in webkit libraries, not even planned, AFAIK.

[tulblut]

Have you ever tought about adding a "link-bar" with a fixed number of configurable buttons (to access some pre-defined websites)?
It'll be very useful in a lot of situations.

[gkreidl]

Have you ever tought about adding a "link-bar" with a fixed number of configurable buttons (to access some pre-defined websites)?
It'll be very useful in a lot of situations.

No. That would require a settings dialog window and a separate configuration file (the normal one is not read if you use command line arguments). The user editable bookmarks page offers a very flexible solution. You could even define it as your home page, if you like.

[pootang24]

Hi gkreidl. Got kweb3 running in kiosk mode on a pi2 to display an internal webpage. There is a Javascipt plugin on the page that should make the browser play a sound at specified times, however it doesn't.

This is the plugin: https://github.com/IonDen/ion.sound

I'm starting kweb with the following command: kweb3 -JEAKYX http://intranetpage.local

Should the browser be supporting the sound element? Perhaps I'm missing something. It's MP3 with a OGG fallback. Thanks for any help you can give.

[gkreidl]

Try replacing "AudioContext" by "webkitAudioContext" in the Javascript file or use a class as explained here:
http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1 ... html#s01_2