NetSurf 3.9 web browser released

[chris]

NetSurf 3.9 features support for CSS Media Queries (level 4) and improvements to JavaScript handling. Also included are many bug fixes and improvements. We recommend all users upgrade to NetSurf 3.9.

Download for AmigaOS 4
Download BETA for AmigaOS 3.5+ (check version before downloading as it has only just been uploaded)

[chris]

I haven't made any OS3 specific changes since the previous discussion. Also I haven't fixed whatever was broken because nobody actually told me what needed fixing (the discussion fizzled out before coming to any concrete identification of the cause of the crashes)

[chris]

As I mentioned in my previous post, this version of NetSurf is very slow for me on AMIGA.org.
I get alot of busy pointer activity as the browser is trying to render the main list of posts as well as individual threads.

Just for comparison, I tried my other Amiga web browsers ...
AMIGA.org is very slow on Origyn Web Browser 3.31 (Pukapuka), AWEB APL 3.5.12 and IBrowse 2.4.

Better on NetSurf 3.8
Better on TimberWolf 4.0.1 (RC3).
Best on Odyssey Web Browser 1.23

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redfox

Are you running it on OS4?  Maybe try switching JavaScript off?
If it's not that I'm curious to know the cause.

There is mention of it being slower on OS3 but I figured that was because it is buggy on OS3 anyway.

[chris]

@redfox
Can you go into prefs and check that cache native bitmaps is set to "scaled". I think the option is in the rendering tab.

[chris]

I've just remembered that there is a patch I put on locally for 020 optimisation. This won't have that. I'll have to push it to master.

[chris]

I've just remembered that there is a patch I put on locally for 020 optimisation. This won't have that. I'll have to push it to master.

Next build after 4720 hopefully will have the speed back again.

I'd completely forgotten I'd made a local change which never made it to the repo.  I think I was warned off it because the compiler should be built with the correct default options, but as nobody could tell me how to do that I never managed to figure out how.  Hence this optimisation got a bit lost 

[chris]

I just installed the latest build 4769. But I must say that I could not notice any speed improvements (Aminet 35 seconds, amiga-news.de 110 sec).
Have you already added the optimisation?

Yes, and all the libs look to be rebuilt 

By the way: Is there any changelog for each single build?

Yes, you can get them by clicking the build number on Jenkins. eg, https://ci.netsurf-browser.org/jenkins/view/NetSurf/job/netsurf/4818/ is the info for 4818.

[chris]

Weird thought, how about a long listing of features in the engine, where you could enable/disable stuff? So you can, at your choosing, break and/or speed up the loading of a website.. :p

I think that's the "Enable JavaScript" toggle in the menu.

Incidentally, scaling has now been moved to the core. Not sure if it has affected speed, but there's a chance that it now isn't trying to do floating point maths at times when it may have before.

[chris]

Yes, the render.library did the trick Thanks... The Errormessage allways said, that guigfx.library is missing.... but after installing render.library everthing is working....

That's because guigfx needs render but NetSurf only needs guigfx, it doesn't know about render.

but extreamly slow! 3.7 is 4 times faster....

The source code is available if somebody actually wants to try fixing this issue rather than just whinging about it on a forum.

As it happens, it appears that I've used -m68020 everywhere and although I don't recall changing this, at some point in the past I'm fairly sure I used one of the more compatible options.