If you’re familiar with Second Life then you’re probably aware of the ongoing attempt to integrate the Mozilla source code into the SL client to provide “HTML on a prim” (translation: a Firefox-like internet browser mapped as a texture onto a piece of in-world 3D geometry). The potential benefits for this feature – especially when it becomes interactive and not just a static rendered texture – have quite a few “virtual” businesses excited.

There have, however, been some problems. From the Second Life forum announcement:

Callum has just sent this information to interested parties:
“uBrowser is an simple Web Browser that illustrates one way of embedding the Mozilla® Gecko rendering engine into a standalone application using the LibXUL framework. The contents of the page is grabbed as it’s being rendered and displayed as a texture on geometry using OpenGL. You are able to interact with the page (mostly) normally and visit (almost) any site that works correctly with Firefox® 1.5. It’s the by-product of some work I’m doing here at Linden Lab (http;//lindenlab.com) to enable an embedded browser in our Second Life (http;//secondlife.com) software. There are only a few remaining show stoppers, such as control inputs through plugins, that remain to be fixed. We hope that with the help of the open source community and Second Life’s residents, we’ll be able to rapidly resolve these bugs. Source code, executable and build instructions are available at http;//ubrowser.com “

And now, in an attempt to facilitate their overcoming these roadblocks, from Cory Linden’s blog we have this additional announcement (Link):

So, think you can fix it? If you do, I’ll give you a private island in Second Life, including both the up-front cost and the monthly dues for one year. Note that the solution must work on Windows, Mac, and Linux — or, if we’ve fixed it on one or more platforms, on the platforms that are still unsolved.

Good old capitalist incentive. This should get things moving. Excellent.

{Image source: uBrowser}