Timberwolf Progress Update

[Iggy]

As I intend to continue to use Fab's OWB, Timberwolf is of little significance to me. Without improved Flash support, how many new features does this package bring to the table?
I use Firefox under OSX and Windows, but I don't understand the argument for implementation under Amigoid OS'.

BTW - Thanks for all the improvements to OWB Fab.

[jorkany]

Has anyone bothered to contact Hyperion to see if they will allow Timberwolf to be ported to there chosen platform? There seems to be allot of speculation being tossed around as if they won't release it?

The bounty license says that they have to forfeit the source code if they do not show active development or release a new version after initial release within a 12 month time frame.

In other words as long as TIMBERWOLF is being developed.... i.e. TIMBERWOLF on AmigaOS, TIMBERWOLF on AROS etc etc etc.

Just my two cents worth.

Timberwolf is not a Hyperion project.

[takemehomegrandma]

@AppleHammer

Fab is one of the developers of MorphOS, and he is also the developer of Odyssey (previously known as Origyn Web Browser) for MorphOS.

While this browser builds on several open source frameworks, it's not a simple port of something, there is a lot more to it than that. A great deal of work has been put into this project since it started in January 2009 (I think), and this has resulted in a completely new, unique and truly FABulous web browser, that can easily replace Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Chrome on the mainstream platforms, but it is heavily inspired by Ibrowse, done in a 2011 level kind of way, using MUI4, etc, which is making this browser *the ultimate dream browser for any Amigan*. And Fab isn't asking for any money for this. There is no bounty, no registration fee, etc. In fact, in the readme you can read this as a *feature*: "- No PayPal donation needed"!

This doesn't stop Fab from releasing his work as open source, so it can be ported to other systems, like OS4. There is already a porting project going on that will bring the Odyssey browser to the OS4 platform, and to the best of my knowledge, Fab has even helped the OS4 port by giving advice, suggestions, etc.

IMO, this is good spirit!

Then we have the Friedens, who decided to cash in on the former Amizilla bounty, a bounty that originally had as condition that the port should be open sourced so that it would be open for all flavors of Amiga (even AROS and MorphOS), and this is what many people donated to. They are now making some kind of port of the Firefox web browser. They have even managed to change the timberwolf bounty conditions to make it quicker and easier to cash in the money by locking the bounty on an old version of Firefox.

This seems to be "just a port" of the open source Firefox Web Browser, with necessary "Amiga adjustments", hence it probably is heavily based on other peoples work that was released as open source with the ambition/spirit that their work should benefit many, on many platforms. But despite this, the Friedens obviously don't want others in the Amiga world to get access to their Amiga specific part of it, so they are determined to protect everything they can in order to prevent this.

I'm not saying they are doing anything illegal, I'm sure they have right to do this. But is it good spirit?

[takemehomegrandma]

@Fairdinkem

I dont think anyone had intention to port Timberwolf... so in my opinion this open vs closed discussion is useless.

Timberwolf on MorphOS would be completely redundant.

And as soon as Odyssey is ported to OS4, timberwolf will be redundant there as well...

[takemehomegrandma]

BTW - Thanks for all the improvements to OWB Fab.

It was just updated to version 1.14!

...and it was renamed to Odyssey to keep it from being confused with the OWB ports on OS4 and AROS (so please use the new name to avoid confusion).

Unfortunately, it is still possible to shorten it to OWB though! :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Fairdinkem]

Timberwolf on MorphOS would be completely redundant.

And as soon as Odyssey is ported to OS4, timberwolf will be redundant there as well...

Wow REDUNDANT..... thats a big call.... Don't get me wrong I am a MorphOS user and I think OWB from FAB is excellent as there was need of a decent modern browser due to the lack of development of traditional Amiga browsers i.e. iBrowse etc. OWB fills in the gap but it certainly is not a solution to the need for a full fledged completely modern and fully capable internet browser on all Amiga platforms (AmigaOS, AROS, MorphOS etc) in my humble opinion, despite how awesome Fabs work has been. I instigated a thread on AMIGAWORLD calling for the development of OWB for AmigaOS or the port of Fabs OWB because Joerg had dropped the ball with regards to developing OWB beyond it's current state, and Timberwolf looked to be not eventuating any time soon. I totally welcome and applaud Kas1e, Fab and the team for porting OWB to AmigaOS and I will use it but when Timberwolf arrives it will be hard not to choose it with all it's functionality and compatibility with certain sites that I frequent that OWB does not support plus the plugin features are so powerful.

[Fairdinkem]

Timberwolf is not a Hyperion project.

Frieden brothers what ever.....

[magnetic]

takemehome

Dont forget not only did FAB due original OWB morphos port for Free, but he shared sources with Os4 guys AND even helped them in the porting!

Do you guys think that hyperion guys will help anyone port to morphos? doubtful..

[takemehomegrandma]

OWB fills in the gap but it certainly is not a solution to the need for a full fledged completely modern and fully capable internet browser ... in my humble opinion, despite how awesome Fabs work has been.

What does Firefox have that Odyssey doesn't? The only thing I can think of is the plugin feature, and it remains to see how much of a plus that will be on ppc/OS4 anyway. Back when I used Firefox on Windows (before I dumped it in favor of Webkit browser because Firefox being sooo sloooooow and feeling so bulky) I never had the need or want to even look at plugins.

Odyssey on the other hand, is a genuine Amiga browser, that everyone who used Ibrowse takes to their heart immediately, i.e. every Amigan out there. It's always based on the very latest webkit etc, so its HTML5/CSS3 capabilities is top notch. I think this is what will make Odyssey win over an old version of Firefox. I think Amigans will prefer the Amiga browser, especially if it's faster and more capable (which it most certainly will be), no matter the plugin feature of firefox, which honestly isn't that important...

Remember that it's not the crappy ODW on OS4 we are talking about, it's Odyssey...

on all Amiga platforms (AmigaOS, AROS, MorphOS etc)

At least Odyssey is open source, so anyone can port it to the other Amiga platforms. Timberwolf OTOH isn't...

I totally welcome and applaud Kas1e, Fab and the team for porting OWB to AmigaOS and I will use it but when Timberwolf arrives it will be hard not to choose it with all it's functionality and compatibility with certain sites that I frequent that OWB does not support

I have yet to find a site that Odyssey don't show just as good as any of the mainstream browsers on other platforms. If you do, let Fab know and he will look into it, I'm sure of that.

Odyssey *is not* ODW you know, so don't base your opinions of it based on that crappy ODW that's available for OS4.

[takemehomegrandma]

takemehome

Dont forget not only did FAB due original OWB morphos port for Free, but he shared sources with Os4 guys AND even helped them in the porting!

Do you guys think that hyperion guys will help anyone port to morphos? doubtful..

I *didn't* forget...

[Framiga]

ear, ear! porting OWB was a huge task while porting FF was/is trivial?

eh, eh, eh ... you guys never cease to amaze me! :-/

[Fab]

ear, ear! porting OWB was a huge task while porting FF was/is trivial?

eh, eh, eh ... you guys never cease to amaze me! :-/

Well, maybe you should ask yourself why?
The FireFox GUI is entirely built on the XUL layer, so it's indeed much less work to port FireFox. You "just" implement the os-dependant layers like thread/mutex, memory, filesystem, network, input events, windowing system, ... (noone said this work was easy, but the very same work was also done with WebKit/OWB), and then everything above it is for "free", unlike WebKit/OWB where the whole GUI had to be implemented on top of the WebKit framework. But the drawback of the FireFox approach is that you also get a quite alien GUI with embedded menus and so on, not in a very amigaish style (though you can skin FireFox fortunately, but not everything can be done to mimic the original AmigaOS GUI).

So I have no problem saying porting FireFox is less work.

In fact, my guess is most of the work in FireFox/Timberwolf went into having a hardware/accelerated Cairo (to get a descent performance, since everything relies on it) and fighting against some details like event propagation through windows in XUL (clashing with AmigaOS design), and possibly some network stack issues (like thread safety for DNS resolution).

[Framiga]

why didn't you ported it yourself? i'll try to tell you why ... free choises.

What i can't get is why a talented coder like yourself, needs to bash someone else effort.

Leave this low things to the above "clown". It wont help you nor your OS of choise.

[Karlos]

@the bickerers...

For pity's sake, listen to yourselves.

There was a time when having more than one application for a given task was seen as a good thing. For years we had no modern standards compliant browsers and it sucked. Now we have several based WebKit (OWB/Oddysey) and soon gecko Firefox/Timberwolf). There's also NetSurf.

This is a good thing (tm).

[takemehomegrandma]

@the bickerers...

For pity's sake, listen to yourselves.

There was a time when having more than one application for a given task was seen as a good thing. For years we had no modern standards compliant browsers and it sucked. Now we have several based WebKit (OWB/Oddysey) and soon gecko Firefox/Timberwolf). There's also NetSurf.

This is a good thing (tm).

Did anyone say it's bad?

[Fab]

What i can't get is why a talented coder like yourself, needs to bash someone else effort.

And where do you see bashing? I only said what kind of work it represented in both projects.