Scope of cross-platform

[egsuh]

What OSs does it include?  Covers iOS and Android?

[Thaddy]

Yes. But you need to be experienced. Not as easy as Windows or Linux.
This is not so much the fault of FPC, but is due to setup of the toolchain and in the case of iOS a developers license. (although there are local workarounds, these are useless if you want to deploy your app)

[egsuh]

I’ll not get experienced^^. One company wants somebody to develop Webbrowser that excludes ads on PC, Android, and iOS at about $38,000.  So i‘m wondering anybody might be interested in this project using FPC/Lazarus. This is a bidding so not sure.

[Wallaby]

For developing a web-browser from scratch you'd need a lot more money and many man-years. Even Microsoft have given up on this task when they replaced their own engine with Chromium for Edge.

You could modify Chrome or Firefox for those platforms, but that's also a very challenging task and can't be done with FPC/Lazarus. Plus there my be certain licensing restrictions and added difficulty on iOS where all browsers are essentially wrappers around Safari.

[egsuh]

@Wallaby,

Yes, it would need much more money and time to develop a browser from scratch. They have set the timeline for 3 months. I'm not very sure of what they are wanting (I cannot ask), but there are possibility that they are looking for a webbrowser only for internal use, which will not show advertisements. 

I remember I've read somewhere in this forum, that somebody has developed webbrowser. And there is a web-browsing component in the Lazarus itself. So, I'm wondering on the possibility of forming an international development team, and doing this kind of projects. The requirements should be limited for this project.

[TRon]

I remember I've read somewhere in this forum, that somebody has developed webbrowser. And there is a web-browsing component in the Lazarus itself.

There is a htmlviewer component and that can be used as a base to create a (simple) browser.

It is limited in that it does not support javascript, plugins, style sheets, modern html and you would have to add support for mime types.

I would personally not even consider writing a webbrowser not even if it pays more than 6 figures. There are simply too many headaches (non complying standards being one of them). The timeline in which the project is suppose to be completed is ridiculous beyond words.

[egsuh]

@TRon,

Yes, you would be right. I'm just thinking that they may be looking for limited functions. I have to check further but right now I cannot contact them.

[TRon]

@egsuh:
If I would have to take a guess then it sounds more that they are looking for a Document Management System. On the other hand there are standard and already available solutions for that.... unless they are not comfortable with existing ones and they want a customized DMS in which case (and imho) the price as well as the timeline are still ridiculous.

It would be nice if (in the end) it is possible to find out what it is they actually meant. Not that it is important to know but curiosity spiked there