Here is another video which demonstrates the latest features and capabilities of DirectFB and ilixi such as OpenGL support, accelerated compositing, application management, WebKit based lightweight browser, IPC and a notifications subsystem.

The developtment of sample applications, improvements to compositor and optimisations have been sponsored by Renesas.

For more technical information, please see the slides of presentation from Automotive Linux Summit 2012.

We are excited to announce the port of WebKit engine to ilixi. Our next goal is to improve things for inclusion in upstream.

The port uses already existing DirectFB bindings for graphics operations. Users can choose to use cairo-directfb for vector graphics as well. There are still some legacy dependencies we like to weed out so it should become a very minimal solution in the end.

Click here for more information.

We are currently working on a new look and feel for ilixi. Our goal is to create a fluid UI using minimal resources so it can be used in automotive systems with hardware acceleration. Next release will have improved stability and resource management, and feature ilixi compositor with some examples of inter-process communication.

There is also an ongoing effort to port WebKit for ilixi. This port is currently included in latest WebKitDFB tree as an optional toolkit (LiTE or ilixi).

Click on the image below for a demo which has ilixi compositor running and switching between multiple DirectFB applications.

Compositing features were realised using the new extensions to DirectFB 1.6 Surface API and SurfaceView widgets. These widgets are attached to a source surface (in this case a DirectFBWindow) and listen for update events. They forward incoming input events to the source window.

SurfaceViews are managed by AppCompositors which set their geometry and act as a tiny window manager, e.g. performing window restacking or setting opacity. The compositor maintain an AppCompositor for each client application instance and gets notified via SaWMan callbacks, e.g. a window or process is added/removed.

This is the first demo of ilixi running on beagleboard rev.C4 and beagletouch. I hope it gives you an idea how ilixi looks while running on an embedded device with a relatively small screen and without hardware acceleration.