Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

Unia · 2013-03-31 19:52:44

~~Hey folks,~~

I'm an Ebuddy XMS user and I use their webinterface to XMS alot. I always found it rather annoying to have a big memory hungry browser open just to chat a bit on XMS and of course, switching back and forth between my laptop and my phone wasn't going to do it either.

Thus, I wrote a quick, lightweight (48 SLOC) "desktop client" to Ebuddy XMS' webinterface. It's actually just a webkit view inside a GTK3 window which points to their webinterface url. Nothing more, nothing less.

~~If you are interested (I know most people won't be, but I hope to give the few who would use this an "ooh, nice" moment), you can grab it from my GitHub: https://github.com/Unia/gxms~~

Building instructions are all there. I will add a PKGBUILD in a minute. EDIT: It's up.
EDIT2: AUR package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gxms-git/

EDIT 23-12-2013: GXMS has been deleted.

Last edited by Unia (2013-12-23 00:08:09)

GogglesGuy · 2013-03-31 21:19:16

Unia wrote:

I always found it rather annoying to have a big memory hungry browser open just to chat a bit on XMS and of course, switching back and forth between my laptop and my phone wasn't going to do it either.
Thus, I wrote a quick, lightweight (48 SLOC) "desktop client" to Ebuddy XMS' webinterface. It's actually just a webkit view inside a GTK3 window which points to their webinterface url. Nothing more, nothing less.

And webkit isn't big in memory?

Unia · 2013-03-31 21:25:05

GogglesGuy wrote:

And webkit isn't big in memory?

Depends on how you use it. In this case, it sure takes less memory than Firefox. Plus, now I don't have to sift through all my tabs to get to XMS; I can just switch to my chatting tag and back.

anonymous_user · 2013-03-31 23:37:10

And would this be lighter than any other webkit based browser (Midori, dwb, luakit, surf, etc)?

Unia · 2013-03-31 23:43:57

I have no idea. I would assume so, seeing it really is only just one webview whereas those browsers you mentioned are, well, browsers.

I had my Firefox running (albeit with two or three tabs, next to the XMS web interface)at 360ish MB, whereas GXMS "only" took 60MB. That's 20% of what Firefox used and good enough to me.

I guess I could look into webkitgtk's API again to see if there are some settings I can set to make it lighter.

Unia · 2013-04-06 13:11:15

I just installed Midori to check if its memory usage, these are my findings:

 52.6 MiB +   7.7 MiB =  60.3 MiB	midori
 27.2 MiB +   3.1 MiB =  30.3 MiB	gxms

And, just for the heck of it, Firefox's usage with only this forum open in a tab:

230.0 MiB +   4.9 MiB = 235.0 MiB	firefox

I think that quite well sums up why I say GXMS is low on memory and lightweight.

Unia · 2013-04-10 18:33:20

Just giving a heads up: I incorporated urgency hints and a search function in the last few days.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-03-31 19:52:44

Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

#2 2013-03-31 21:19:16

Re: Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

#3 2013-03-31 21:25:05

Re: Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

#4 2013-03-31 23:37:10

Re: Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

#5 2013-03-31 23:43:57

Re: Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

#6 2013-04-06 13:11:15

Re: Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

#7 2013-04-10 18:33:20

Re: Announcing GXMS: a desktop client to Ebuddy XMS with Webkit

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