This Bugzilla instance is a read-only archive of historic NetBeans bug reports. To report a bug in NetBeans please follow the project's instructions for reporting issues.

Bug 94395

Summary:	Make the swing HTML browser user-selectable by loading optional module
Product:	ide	Reporter:	Tomasz Slota <tslota>
Component:	Extbrowser	Assignee:	Jan Stola <jstola>
Status:	NEW ---
Severity:	blocker	CC:	geertjan, sj-nb
Priority:	P3
Version:	6.x
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Issue Type:	ENHANCEMENT	Exception Reporter:

Description Tomasz Slota 2007-02-05 15:34:17 UTC

Swing HTML browser currently has "hidden" status and cannot be selected as WWW browser by the user 
(see issue 87648). 

We could optionally allow using it as WWW browser by installing optional module from the update center.

Comment 1 Sergey Petrov 2007-04-26 12:52:43 UTC

Swing html browser was used for nb module automated testing, it's good to have
ability to use internal browser again at least test will be able to download
browser from update center

Comment 2 Karthikeyan Rajeswaran 2008-03-02 20:31:59 UTC

Cons for using 'Internal Swing Browser':

1. As 87648 mentions, the swing browser is very limited and does not handle complex pages well. (Possibly the internal
browser can just serve localhost files and invoke external browser for external URLs. But this approach has its own
drawbacks: If a localhost file is a complex file with javascript etc, the rendering will fail. Also, if a webapp has
external links, then the execution will have to jump back-and-forth from internal-browser to external-browser...)

2. For web applications, it is desirable to use an external browser, since that is the intended deployment platform
where users would be eventually using the web app. (For desktop apps of course, the GUI editor will work correctly with
any embedded html browser component just as with any other component).

Pros for using 'Internal Swing Browser':
1. Since the browser is available any way, why not let the users choose it and use it? (The downside of this that, when
an issue happens, users may not know whether it is due to the browser's limitation or due to a bug in browser-invocation
in NB).

IMHO, this bug should be closed as wont-fix. (The bug can always be reopened if there are strong reasons to bring the
feature back or if several users want this feature by requesting in comments and/or by adding therir votes).

Ref: http://www.nabble.com/No-Swing-HTML-Browser-detected-in-NetBeans-6.0.1-%3A%28-td15777389.html