NetSurf OS3.x Issues

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

NetSurf is not 100% stable on any of the classic platforms.  There's a thread here with over 600 responses where many others have already posted screenshots.  Take a look at these:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=794444&postcount=623

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=794183&postcount=612

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=794194&postcount=616

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=794201&postcount=617

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=794024&postcount=574

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=794029&postcount=579

I've only tested up to I believe it was 3.2 or 3.3, don't know if it's gotten any better under the latest 3.4 DEV, I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

In any case, your best bet for a browser on classic systems is still, sadly, Ibrowse.  Which actually wouldn't be that danged bad of a browser if it could be updated...  *sigh*

Also recommend the WarpDT's for better performance:  http://www.warpdt.co.uk/
(you can still register those as the author is still active in the community)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Oldsmobile_Mike : Prety much every link you gave is about Chris trying to port Netsurf to OS3.x. It is not even near to be useable, though it had some promising features already. It doesn't lock Computer, it has a real gui, it requires quite few memory, uses standard system libraries, etc. It is not publicly availlable.

Sure it's publicly available.  Here's Chris's 3.3 right here on Aminet:  http://aminet.net/package/comm/www/netsurf

Not sure where 3.4 went, I recall seeing links to it somewhere a few months ago, but haven't had time to dig into it any further.  Or maybe my memory's just playing tricks on me, lol.  

Edit - disregard that last, 3.4 is Artur's.  Google to the rescue again!  

Edit again - Chris's 3.3 on Aminet is for OS4.  Remind me again why I hate NetSurf?  You can still get his version for classic systems though, otherwise how would I have gotten it?  :banana:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

The 3.4 version is the one I have tried. So its not working for anyone? Strange its even an option to download if that is the case.

It's still very, very, very beta.

The fact that there's like 50 different versions (okay, I'm exaggerating that number by a bit, but not by much) doesn't help ease the confusion any.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

So Ibrowse is still the best usable browser on a 3.x machine?

IMHO, yes.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

from this perspective it would be certainly better to have a target platform and developer within the original source tree and not an unsupported fork, as chris proposes. but as it is the fork is working and chris target is not. and there is none to help with it, including you. so go figure.

I, for one, would pay good money if everybody could just work together toward a good, 68k/3.9-compatible browser.

Doesn't look like I'll be spending that money any time soon!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

How about something like ELynx?
After roughly an hours work I've got a mostly working 68k binary.

ELynx is text only?  Interesting idea though, if it's more compatible with modern websites than any of the current Amiga offerings...

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

It works great on my A1200 040/PPC OS3.9 128MB Voodoo3.

In less than a minute I got this:

Nice!  That is better output than I've ever seen on anyone's screenshots.  What version is this?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Whelp, figured I hadn't tried Netsurf since I upgraded from an '040 to an '060, but still no love.

First I tried the old 3.4 DEV version that I had on my hard drive.  Then I tried the version from Chris's post #9.  Guess I need to find that text file command again to fix the graphics, but aside from all the font errors on loading being gone (and the crash when not loading from the ram drive), not much difference.

How the heck do you guys get yours to look so good?  :confused:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

The dev one sucks no matter what.  I can onlg get Chris version working on 32 bit screen modes. 24,  8 or 16 looks like yours Mike.

Dang it!  So I guess in addition to an '060, you need a Mediator.  Since AFAIK no native Amiga graphics card supports 32-bit screenmodes.  Bummer.  

I normally run my Workbench in 16-bit.  Tried it in 24-bit, no significant difference.  Added "friend_bitmap:1" back into the choices file, that helped.  Note that it has to be without the space, "friend_bitmap: 1" (with a space after the colon) doesn't work.  Geeze is this program sensitive, lol.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Do you think that Chris' NetSurf would work with HIGHGFX: Super-High Res Laced in, say, in 64 colours? :rolleyes:

I assume you're joking, right?  :roflmao:

The dev one sucks no matter what.  I can only get Chris version working on 32 bit screen modes.

He's not saying "32 colors", he's saying "a 32-bit screenmode".  In other words, something you need a very powerful graphics card to use.  

Edit:  For your amusement, here's Netsurf on an 1152x900x256-color Workbench.  About the best I can do with my graphics card.  It took 53 seconds to load this page with an '060.  Scrolling around was painful.    Also, why all the chip mem usage?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

For me seems that you confuse Chris ja Artis's versions.

Chris version "works" with 8bit, 15bit, 16bit and 24bit screens. In other words as a minium it requires AGA Amiga.

Download link?  It's very confusing which version is which.  

Edit:  Added a pic to clarify.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Mine is the one on the left. The minimalist interface is intentional, there are lots of options in the menus. It is possible to add a hotlist bar by moving items into the hotlist folder, although I don't know whether that works under OS3.

The graphical problems I could do with some help with. The font spacing issue irritates me, so some pointers on how to fix would be useful. I think I need to query OT_SpaceWidth and advance manually when encountering a space, but I couldn't get much sense out of it when I tried. From a user POV, installing and using a different CG font might also work.

Thanks Chris!  I wish I could help with the graphical problems, but aside from Commodore 64 BASIC and a JAVA class in college, I'm afraid I'm useless when it comes to coding.  

Any idea what the one on the right is?  The person who posted that screenshot said they "had it running in less than a minute".

I was thinking the one on the left was Artur's, and the one on the right was yours, also because the one on the left says it's "3.4", and I thought I remember you saying 3.4 "isn't released yet, and utri007 said Arthur's version is "the no gui version".

Bah, I'm so confused!  :roflmao:


Edit:  On a side note though, when I pulled up www.google.com in yours, it looked damn good!  I was kind of taken aback by how good it looked, honestly.  Wish every site rendered that well!             (10:30 minutes in this video)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I get a 404 error on this link.

Same.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Utri007 - Thanks for the tips, and for the link.  I've been following along on the thread unfortunately have been too busy to respond.  In any case, with the new download and those options in-place, it is a big improvement in performance on my system.  25-35 seconds for amiga.org, 3-6 seconds for google.com (I reloaded these pages a couple times), etc.  Scrolling is also significantly faster.

Unfortunately more complex pages still seem to take an age ("fetching, processing").  cnn.com took almost three minutes to load.  Wikipedia took 673 seconds (and boy was it ugly in all Topaz font).  But hey, we're getting there.  Also we're now in a realm of pages that IBrowse can't even load - I tried bankofamerica.com, for example - IBrowse just throws an error about "outdated encryption" or something along those lines.  NetSurf at least loaded the first page of it.  

Aminet also works and I was able to download files (yay, new version of Peter K. icon library!    )

I concur with the bug about it freezing up now, however.  As a test I left it sitting at one page for about an hour while I went off and did other things, and when I came back to it it was completely frozen.  Wouldn't exit, wouldn't refresh, etc.  The system was still operational, I could load other programs, but no sign of life from NetSurf.  Had to give it the three-finger-salute to shut it down.

More testing required...


Chris - any possibility of reaching out to any of the original IBrowse dev team?  I know at least Oliver Roberts was still active in the Amiga community, with his WarpDT's (which are great, btw).  I vaguely recall hearing something about him having an update for SSL, as well.  Perhaps he could help you with your datatype issues, at least?

Just a thought.


My .02 cents, it is a real shame what happened there.  They had a great browser, and then just  Doesn't make sense to not even be accepting registrations anymore, since I'm sure at least a few people would like to pay for it rather than download a pirate copy...  


Another probably obvious question for Chris - since this is built off NetSurf source, there's no possibility of you ever going commercial with it, is there?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Possibly - I didn't know such a thing existed.

I've just uplaoded a new version with some of the text layout problems fixed.  It's still broken (missing text on the welcome page!) but shouldn't go into an infinite loop any more.

I think this is the one he's referring to.  Long thread about it here:  http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=67649

And download here:  http://aminet.net/package/util/sys/layers

Is http://www.unsatisfactorysoftware.co.uk/index.php?pg=netsurf  is the best place to download your latest builds?  Thanks!