Madeo.co.uk

Many are longing for an integrated browser in XBMC. For whatever reason. For me it's to check my mail in the morning so I don't have to start my workstation.... My revo is always on but it can't check my mail. The problem is XBMC runs in standalone form and so nothing else can be displayed.

My fix isn't brilliant. It requires a mouse (which isn't great) - at least if you want easy navigation) and requires openbox. (you could probably find more lightweight but I have a little working knowledge of it's configuration so it was easier that way)

Basically we start openbox, then autostart xbmc on top with the launcher plugin. I run Arch linux but all of this is very much transferable

Start by install openbox on the system and a browser (I recommend chromium because it has it's own titlebars and it's really fast...) :

pacman -S openbox chromium

wget http://xbmc-launcher.googlecode.com/files/Launcher1.02.zip
cd .xbmc/plugins/programs
unzip unzip Launcher1.02.zip
rm unzip Launcher1.02.zip

Then open ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml
Delete the demo applications block (make sure you get the comment tags) - and then put in something like this.

<applications>
          <application name="xterm">
                <decor>yes</decor>
          </application>
          <application name="xbmc.bin">
                <decor>no</decor>
          </application>
          <application name="chromium">
                <decor>no</decor>
          </application>
</applications>

Notice that xbmc is xbmc.bin. xbmc* will work as well. By default apps will have decor and it's not a problem. just make sure xbmc doesn't otherwise it wont come back to the foreground properly.

To autostart xbmc wipe this file /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart.sh. I'm assuming you wont use openbox for anything else or have multiple users here... It's a HTPC setup here . Replace with this:

#!/bin/bash
(sleep 1 && xbmc) &

We don't want to load anything else than xbmc right??

Now for the last bit, the ~/.xinitrc file :

exec /usr/bin/ck-launch-session openbox-session

If you don't use openbox-session and just openbox the autostart file wont be loaded.

To autologin to openbox I use slim. Look in /etc/slim.conf and add it in /etc/inittab. This is a slightly nicer way than forcing autologin through the inittab.

now symlink all apps you want to autolaunch to somewhere within your home dir. This is because xbmc is silly and doesn't let you go back. So

ln -s /usr/bin/chromium /home/brendan/apps/chromium

Once XBMC has started go to program -> plugins -> launcher and add the applications you want as standalone apps. You can even add them as favorites to make it easier and so you can remove the program menu entry from confluence.

For xterm look at the -geom option to change the size of the terminal. if on a HDTV you may want to make the font bigger too!
To change the size of the windowed mode of XBMC see the tag in .xbmc/userdata/guisettings.xml