NetSurf Web Browser

Small as a mouse, fast as a cheetah and available for free. NetSurf is a multi-platform web browser for RISC OS and UNIX-like platforms, including Linux, and more. For more information, visit the NetSurf homepage.

This version is a port of NetSurf to the current Samsung Digital TV platform as part of the SamyGO project.

Features

• it's very speedy, portable and written in plain C
• a basic port to an SDL based framebuffer already existed - which I'm building on. However this version lacks lots of features which other ports (e.g. GTK port) already have.
• it has good HTML and decent CSS support (CSS1 only)
• it hasn't got any support for JavaScript, plugins or Flash

Download and Installation

System requirements

• Recent Samsung TV based on ARM/Linux architecture
• Gallery must be available
• Games section must be available within the Gallery
• A compatible firmware version must be running (not the latest ones, which were released in 2010)

Installation

• Download the browser here.
• Unpack attached TGZ to the root folder of a USB stick. Now you should have a NetSurf folder in there.
• Plug the USB stick to your TV
• open gallery
• goto "manage applications" --> "games"
• run the 'NetSurf browser'

Usage

The SamyGO version of NetSurf has been specially adapted to the TV environment and can be used in two ways.

Using a normal keyboard and mouse

NetSurf can be operated like any PC web browser, using a keyboard and mouse. You will need to run the SamyGO keyboard and mouse extension before starting the browser and plug in a USB keyboard and mouse (if possible, cordless...)

The supported keyboard shortcuts are:

Key	Action
Home	Opens the main menu
F1	Go back in the history
F2	Switch navigation mode
PgUp/PgDn	Scroll by a page
Cursor	Move to next link / scroll (depending on navigation mode)

If you always use a keyboard and mouse, you may want to disable the NetSurf Options#Virtual keyboard.

Using the TV's remote

Alternatively, you can use NetSurf with the TV remote only. There are limits in how applications can access the TV remote, so please read the following section carefully.

Normal navigation

• The red button returns to the homepage
• The green button is the "History: Back" function
• You can switch between different navigation modes (for the arrow keys) using the yellow button.
  • Link navigation (default) moves the cursor to the next link
  • Page Scroll and Scroll modes scroll around (duh)
  • Pointer mode moves the "mouse" pointer
  • Press yellow button again to return to Link navigation mode.
• The Enter key (in the middle of the arrow keys) activates links or edits HTML form elements.
• Press blue button to exit Netsurf and return to the Gallery.

Warning: Do not press any other buttons on the remote - strange things have happened for me while testing, although I'm now trying to exit NetSurf on any other button press. You can usually recover by pressing the "TV" button, then "Content", then "TV" again.

Note

Please discuss any questions in the SamyGO forum, using the NetSurf thread.

Configuration (Options file)

NetSurf can be configured by editing the file NetSurf/framebuffer/res/Options. The possibilities are documented in the sub-page NetSurf Options.

Source code

NetSurf is Open Source and licensed under the GPL. Of course, the source code is available. Get it here.