vteplugin: improve your workflows by decreasing number of opened windows
By arno on Thursday, April 1 2010, 19:54 - webbrowsers - Permalink
When working on my computer, my two main applications are a webbrowser and a terminal. I'm constantly switching between those two windows, and therefore loosing some valuable time during the switch.
At first, I decided to improve my workflow by browsing the web from my terminal, but browsing experience in the console is slightly limited. I had still a strong motivation after lynx had prompted me 4 times if I wanted to store cookies when using a search engine, and didn't give up when I realized cookies were not stored on hard drive, but I decided to find another way when I could not log into this blog.
As it was difficult to use a webbrowser inside my terminal, I tried to run instead my terminal inside my webbrowser. Then I made vteplugin, a plugin to run a terminal inside a webbrowser tab.
screenshot of vteplugin inside midori
It works in Gecko (firefox, seamonkey, ...) and webkit-gtk (midori, uzbl, ...). I don't known if it works in webkit-qt (arora, ...). If you try it, I'd be happy to known the result. It does not work in opera. To install, you can download it from this blog or clone it from github. Then, extract it and run ./waf configure && ./waf build and, as root, ./waf install. Restart your browser, and open vteplugin.html file.
On the technical side, it's a npapi plugin using XEmbed Extension. It uses libvte to open a terminal in plugin window
Now, like web2.0 fanboys, I can have all my applications inside my browser, but all my data are still belong to me.
Post written with vim inside vteplugin inside iceweasel
Comments
Very interesting. I'm going to try it.
But, now, instead switching between your web-browser and your terminal, don't you switch between your tabs right now? Is it more quick or easier for you? In all cases, it's in the same application - a good point.
Thanks for your plug-in.
After installing libgtk+ and libvte, it works like a charm for me. For informations, my configuration is : Ubuntu 9.10; Firefox 3.6.
very cool, thanks! a couple of things that make it not good for regular use:
1. no scrollbars
2. can't tab into or out of the terminal
3. would be nice for exit to close the tab :)
Absolutely.
Also, after selecting browser's tab, terminal hasn't yet focus.
But, it was a nice idea!
@dietrich ayala:
1. The ability to set scrollbars is a good idea. I'll investigate.
2. This problem is a npapi bug: http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.co... a partial workaround is to have some shell functions that call browser internal api, and use a command to switch tabs from inside vteplugin
3. This is not possible directly with vteplugin: a npapi plugin cannot interact with browser outside the document it's embedded in.
So, it looks like I (or someone else :) need to write a firefox to address point 3, and help in workaround for point 2.