supporting all X (not only gtk+) applications in browser

[Yuhao Zhu <yuhao ryan zhu gmail com>]

Hi All,

I am not sure if this is the right place to post this.  But I saw this post (https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2010-November/msg00103.html) in this mailing list.  It is about rendering gtk+ applications in firefox.

I think it is a good idea to run desktop applications in web browsers, which basically acts as a container.  The caveats of the Chrome OS is that users can't use real full version of all sorts of fancy software, but have to suffer the trimmed online version.  Imagine we can really have a "Browser OS" where the browser is the only software, which could do conventional browsing, as well as (remotely) run desktop applications.

That patch in gtk+ sorts of does this, but as per my understanding (please correct me if wrong), it transfers pure pictures/pixels, and only deals with gtk+ applications.  However, why can't we just intercept the communication between X clients and servers, and render in the browser.  All we have to do is to ask X server to render the client in the browser tab (probably in a canvas) instead of as a standalone application.  In this way, we don't have to transfer pictures -- we are just re-routing the X rendering to the browser.  Supporting Wayland is also possible, and probably better.

Imagine that we can host all sorts of fancy desktop software in central servers in the cloud, and users just have to open the browser, get access to remote server, and they can use them!  In this way, all data is stored on the cloud, rather than constantly synch-ing with the server!

Yuhao