4 \contentspage All Qt Modules
8 \ingroup technology-apis
10 \brief The QtWebKit module provides a web browser engine as well as
11 classes to render and interact with web content.
13 QtWebKit provides a Web browser engine that makes it easy to embed content
14 from the World Wide Web into your Qt application. At the same time Web
15 content can be enhanced with native controls.
17 QtWebKit provides facilities for rendering of HyperText Markup Language
18 (HTML), Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) and Scalable Vector
19 Graphics (SVG) documents, styled using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and
20 scripted with JavaScript.
22 A bridge between the JavaScript execution environment and the Qt object
23 model makes it possible for custom QObjects to be scripted. For detailed
24 documentation see \l{The QtWebkit Bridge}.
25 Integration with the Qt networking module enables Web pages to be transparently loaded
26 from Web servers, the local file system or even the Qt resource system.
28 In addition to providing pure rendering features, HTML documents can be
29 made fully editable to the user through the use of the \c{contenteditable}
30 attribute on HTML elements.
32 QtWebKit is based on the Open Source WebKit engine. More information about
33 WebKit itself can be found on the \l{WebKit Open Source Project} Web site.
35 \section1 Including In Your Project
37 To include the definitions of the module's classes, use the
40 \snippet webkitsnippets/qtwebkit_build_snippet.qdoc 1
42 To link against the module, add this line to your \l qmake \c
45 \snippet webkitsnippets/qtwebkit_build_snippet.qdoc 0
49 \note Building the QtWebKit module with debugging symbols is problematic
50 on many platforms due to the size of the WebKit engine. We recommend
51 building the module only in release mode for embedded platforms.
52 Currently QtWebKit will always be compiled without debugging symbols
53 when using gcc. Take a look at the last lines of
54 \c{src/3rdparty/webkit/Source/WebCore/WebCore.pro} if you need to change this.
56 \note Web site icons, also known as "FavIcons", are currently not supported
57 on Windows. We plan to address this in a future release.
59 \note WebKit has certain minimum requirements that must be met on
60 Embedded Linux systems. See the \l{Qt for Embedded Linux Requirements}
61 document for more information.
63 \section1 Architecture
65 The easiest way to render content is through the QWebView class. As a
66 widget it can be embedded into your forms or a graphics view, and it
67 provides convenience functions for downloading and rendering web sites.
69 \snippet webkitsnippets/simple/main.cpp Using QWebView
71 QWebView is used to view Web pages. An instance of QWebView has one
72 QWebPage. QWebPage provides access to the document structure in a page,
73 describing features such as frames, the navigation history, and the
74 undo/redo stack for editable content.
76 HTML documents can be nested using frames in a frameset. An individual
77 frame in HTML is represented using the QWebFrame class. This class includes the
78 bridge to the JavaScript window object and can be painted using QPainter.
79 Each QWebPage has one QWebFrame object as its main frame, and the main frame
80 may contain many child frames.
82 Individual elements of an HTML document can be accessed via DOM JavaScript
83 interfaces from within a web page. The equivalent of this API in QtWebKit
84 is represented by QWebElement. QWebElement objects are obtained using QWebFrame's
85 \l{QWebFrame::}{findAllElements()} and \l{QWebFrame::}{findFirstElement()}
86 functions with CSS selector queries.
88 Common web browser features, defaults and other settings can be configured
89 through the QWebSettings class. It is possible to provide defaults for all
90 QWebPage instances through the default settings. Individual attributes
91 can be overidden by the page specific settings object.
93 \section1 Netscape Plugin Support
95 \note Netscape plugin support is only available on desktop platforms.
97 Since WebKit supports the Netscape Plugin API, Qt applications can display
98 Web pages that embed common plugins on platforms for which those plugins
99 are available. To enable plugin support, the user must have the appropriate
100 binary files for those plugins installed and the \l{QWebSettings::PluginsEnabled}
101 attribute must be enabled for the application.
103 The following locations are searched for plugins:
106 \header \o Linux/Unix (X11)
109 \o \c{.mozilla/plugins} in the user's home directory
110 \o \c{.netscape/plugins} in the user's home directory
111 \o System locations, such as
113 \o \c{/usr/lib/browser/plugins}
114 \o \c{/usr/local/lib/mozilla/plugins}
115 \o \c{/usr/lib/firefox/plugins}
116 \o \c{/usr/lib64/browser-plugins}
117 \o \c{/usr/lib/browser-plugins}
118 \o \c{/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins}
119 \o \c{/usr/local/netscape/plugins}
120 \o \c{/opt/mozilla/plugins}
121 \o \c{/opt/mozilla/lib/plugins}
122 \o \c{/opt/netscape/plugins}
123 \o \c{/opt/netscape/communicator/plugins}
124 \o \c{/usr/lib/netscape/plugins}
125 \o \c{/usr/lib/netscape/plugins-libc5}
126 \o \c{/usr/lib/netscape/plugins-libc6}
127 \o \c{/usr/lib64/netscape/plugins}
128 \o \c{/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins}
130 \o Locations specified by environment variables:
132 \o \c{$MOZILLA_HOME/plugins}
133 \o \c{$MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH}
134 \o \c{$QTWEBKIT_PLUGIN_PATH}
143 \o The user's \c{Application Data\Mozilla\plugins} directory
144 \o Standard system locations of plugins for Quicktime, Flash, etc.
152 \o \c{Library/Internet Plug-Ins} in the user's home directory
153 \o The system \c{/Library/Internet Plug-Ins} directory
158 \section1 License Information
160 This is a snapshot of the Qt port of WebKit. The exact version information
161 can be found in the \c{src/3rdparty/webkit/VERSION} file supplied with Qt.
163 Qt Commercial Edition licensees that wish to distribute applications that
164 use the QtWebKit module need to be aware of their obligations under the
165 GNU Library General Public License (LGPL).
167 Developers using the Open Source Edition can choose to redistribute
168 the module under the appropriate version of the GNU LGPL.
171 WebKit is licensed under the GNU Library General Public License.
172 Individual contributor names and copyright dates can be found
175 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
176 modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public
177 License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
178 version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
180 This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
181 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
182 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
183 Library General Public License for more details.
185 You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License
186 along with this library; see the file COPYING.LIB. If not, write to
187 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
188 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.