MX Viewer

A lightweight Qt6 WebEngine-based browser designed for displaying web content in standalone windows. Built specifically for MX Linux, this tool provides a secure, minimal browser interface with multi-tab support

Features

• Multi-tab browsing with tab management
• Security-focused design with privilege dropping and sandbox options
• Bookmark and history management via persistent settings
• Full-screen mode support
• Download management with dedicated interface
• Command-line interface with extensive options
• WebEngine integration for modern web standards support

Usage

mx-viewer [OPTIONS] URL [title]

Basic Examples

# Open a website
mx-viewer https://google.com

# Open with custom window title
mx-viewer https://example.com "My Custom Title"

# Open local file
mx-viewer file:///home/user/document.html

# Open in full-screen mode
mx-viewer -f https://example.com

# Disable JavaScript for security
mx-viewer -j https://untrusted-site.com

Command-Line Options

• -f, --full-screen - Start in full-screen mode
• -i, --disable-images - Disable automatic image loading
• -j, --disable-js - Disable JavaScript execution
• -s, --enable-spatial-navigation - Enable keyboard spatial navigation
• -n, --force-nobody - Drop privileges to 'nobody' user (root only)
• -h, --help - Display help information
• -v, --version - Show version information

Security Features

MX Viewer implements several security measures:

• Privilege dropping: Automatically drops root privileges to regular user or 'nobody'
• Sandbox options: Disable JavaScript and images for untrusted content
• Working directory isolation: Changes to /tmp after privilege drop
• Secure execution: Prevents privilege escalation after rights are dropped

Building

Requirements

• Qt6 (Core, GUI, Widgets, WebEngineWidgets, LinguistTools)
• CMake 3.16+
• C++20 compatible compiler
• dpkg-dev (for version extraction from changelog)

Build Commands

# Standard build
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

# Debug build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
make

# Release build with optimizations
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make

# Using Clang compiler
cmake -DUSE_CLANG=ON ..
make

# Fail on compiler warnings (build.sh and CI do this)
cmake -DWARNINGS_AS_ERRORS=ON ..
make

Debian Package Build

# Build Debian package
dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc -us

Arch Package Build

arch/PKGBUILD builds from the committed debs/mx-viewer_26.09.tar.xz source archive. On an Arch system, place the PKGBUILD and matching archive in one directory, then run makepkg -si. The archive version must match pkgver.

OBS uses the existing home:mx-packaging/mx-viewer package. Its _service must extract arch/PKGBUILD alongside debs/*.dsc and debs/*.tar.xz:

<param name="extract">arch/PKGBUILD</param>

Enable the Arch repository for that OBS package with <enable repository="Arch"/> in its package metadata. Commit and push the recipe before triggering the OBS source service. The release workflow keeps pkgver in step with debian/changelog when it refreshes debs/.

Architecture

• MainWindow: Primary application window with toolbar and tab management
• WebView: Custom QWebEngineView with history logging and security features
• TabWidget: Multi-tab container for managing multiple web views
• AddressBar: URL input field with focus handling
• DownloadWidget: Download management interface

MainWindow implementations are grouped by responsibility in src/:

File	Responsibility
mainwindow.cpp	Window construction, actions, menus, and event handling
navigation.cpp	Tabs, address/search navigation, session restore, and find
browsercontext.cpp	Profile lifetime, download routing, preferences, page settings, and zoom
bookmarks.cpp	Bookmark menus, bar, editor, and persistence
newtabpage.cpp, historypage.cpp, settingspage.cpp	Internal page rendering and request handling
readermode.cpp	Article extraction and reader rendering
dialogs.cpp	Browsing-data, shortcuts, about, file, and print dialogs
windowchrome.cpp, resizegrip.h, tabmenubar.h	Window layout, decorations, resizing, and fullscreen
iconutils.cpp, pageutils.cpp, mainwindowhelpers.h	Shared icon, cache, bookmark-title, and form helpers

These files implement the existing MainWindow interface; page translations retain its translation context. CMake lists each source explicitly.

Translation Contributions

• Please join Translation Forum: https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewforum.php?f=96
• Please register on Transifex: https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=38671
• Choose your language and start translating: https://app.transifex.com/anticapitalista/antix-development

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.