Any HTML Renderers for Java?

I haven't written anything in a while because it was a busy Christmas season, Kimi is going back to school along with work, Lizi has to be fixed, and I started an exciting new job in the field of document management. But more on all of these later. Back to technology.

This year is looking up. The tech sector seems to be recovering and for the first time in a while I am feeling good about some new technologies. The odd thing is, I think that this is coming not from genuinely new technologies, but the mass adoption of existing ones. Broadband is finally getting pervasive, most people have somewhat CSS compliant browsers, and most desktop computers are powerful enough to run Swing apps.

It's true that the infrastructure created by the .COMs will change the world, just not for the .COMs. Now that it's all out there, with millions of miles of fiber laid and scores open technical standards developed, we will finally start reaping the benefit of the networked economy. It's sad that so many companies failed, but at least now we get bandwidth dirt cheap. (Though some would say not cheap enough).

I've got a lot of interesting things to write about this year. Almost everything I do will be focused on NetApps, though that gives me leeway to write about a wide variety of topics. You can expect more interesting things with Swing, XML, CSS, HTML, and maybe a little bit of P2P stuff. As always I will try to be technically interesting while accessible to readers not familiar with the particular technology I'm working on. Lot's of good things coming.

I do have one question though. A new article I'm working on requires the use of an embedable web browser for Java. Something along the lines of WebCore in the iTunes Music Store. I have search the net high and low looking for a Java HTML renderer and the results have been, well, less than pleasing. I thought I'd ask my faithful readers if there are any that I've missed. This is what I've been playing with so far:

  • The Swing HTMLEditorKit,
  • Jazilla, a resurrection of RenderX and the Javagator.
  • WWE, a new one just released
  • WebWindow and ICEBrowser, commercial toolkits.
  • SteadyState's CSS parser
  • If anyone has found a toolkit that I haven't mentioned, or perhaps another way of looking at the problem, (say embeding Mozilla through JNI) then I'd love to hear about it.

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Posted February 3rd, 2004

Tagged: java java.net