CSS Validator sources were published as a new project at EclipseLabs.

This project adds a W3C CSS Validator as a WTP build-time validator (i.e. the validation markers will be shown only after the CSS file is saved in the editor). It should be compatible with any WTP-based IDE though I only tested it with vanilla “Eclipse for JS developers”.

…but is also a set of cross-platform widgets.

This is my shot at embedding WebKit into Eclipse SWT:

QWebView embedded in SWT/Win32

QWebView embedded in SWT/Cocoa32

This effort is quite different from SWT/Qt as it does not intend to provide whole SWT on top of Qt – my goal is to compliment “native” SWTs with Qt widgets. I believe Qt is a great complement for SWT as:

1. It has uniform cross-platform API – meaning developers can provide consistent functionality on all major desktop platforms.
2. It has native look-and-feel – Qt relies on native APIs. My tests had shown that embedding Qt into SWT is more stable then embedding Swing into SWT.
3. Qt provide a lot of well-tested ready to embed components – QWebView integration is my primary focus right now. It was fairly straightforward to embed full-fledged WebKit browser into Eclipse workbench. I researched other WebKit “bindings” like the Cocoa’s WebKit and it looks like Qt provides most comprehensive APIs of them all.

This project will become an open-source project on one of the OSS hosting sites. I see following issues with the project:

1. It will be LGPL project. Qt is LGPL and my code statically compiles to some other LGPLed Qt code. There isn’t really a lot of options. LGPL means that no Eclipse Foundation project will ever be able to leverage it. Note: WebCore and JavaScriptCore (they are primary WebKit components) are both released under LGPL meaning that any WebKit binary will always have LGPL code.
2. Huge size and distribution problems. I have little C++ and Qt experience so I was unable to statically link JNI DLL to Qt libraries. Qt dynamic libraries introduce both distribution and size concerns.

Current state and future directions:

1. The code will be published after I expose more QWebView APIs to SWT clients and will improve the build configuration.
2. I plan to focus on QWebKit functionality like QWebInspector and QWebPage
3. Research other Qt components that are attractive to SWT crowd (native combo with images)?

Help wanted:

1. Build configuration to produce binaries as small as possible.
2. SWT/GTK port – I am completely unfamiliar with GTK development so I haven’t even started looking in this direction. It shouldn’t be hard – both Win32-specific and Cocoa-specific parts are a few dozen lines long.