[Qt-qml] [qt-qml] How to launch/embed web browser on Symbian

[Todd Rose]

Our qt/qml app has several use cases where we would like to open an
external url and display the contents to the user from within our UI.
 Ideally the browsing experience would be embedded within our app, but
if we have to cede control to the default web browser app then that's
ok too.  So far we've tried several different approaches and are
currently blocked by show-stopping bugs in Qt and or QtWebKit.  Here's
what we've tried:

1.  Use QML WebView element - this is our ideal solution and it looks
great in the Simulator.   Unfortunately on a Symbian device (N-8) our
app crashes whenever you touch/click anywhere on the loaded web page
view.  This crash is also reproducible using the webbrowser demo
application located in the
<qtsdk>/Examples/4.7/declarative/demos/webbrowser project.

2.  Use Qt.openUrlExternally() from the QML side (or
QDesktopServices::openUrl() from the C++ side) - this would also be an
acceptable solution although it will be harder for our app to know
when the user is finished with the browser.  Anyway, this solution is
also doomed on Symbian because of a bug where the openUrl() call
doesn't do anything at all if the web browser is currently running.

3.  Currently implementing native Symbian code to launch the browser,
but we're not quite sure how to determine what the default browser UID
is, so we're left to hardcoding the UID for the nokia browser.

Anyone overcome any of these obstacles yet?  Our environment uses the
latest public Nokia SDK and the qt libraries it ships with (4.7.3 and
the webkit bundled with it).   We set EPOCHEAPSIZE to a large number
(64mb) so we're not running out of memory.  The crash happens on even
the simplest of web pages.  The bugs mentioned above are in the bug
systems but as far as I can tell they still haven't been addressed
yet.  Surely these are important enough to fix...

Thanks in advice for any help/advice

-Todd