NetSurf 3.4 released!

[Acill]

Great explanation Chris! Thank you for thanking the time to do that.

[Dandy]

i doubt anyone will accept your proposal, especially that its based on imho incorrect information, that chris version is better suited for real amigas and arturs for uae.

O.K. - ist juist a minor difference, but at least it is a difference: I did not propose, I just suggested...

And as far as I understood utri007, he didn't say "better suited for", but "works nicely with emulators" and "is targeted to real Amigas"...

right, artur develops on uae and with uae in mind, but i have run his browser on an amiga too, including aga version.

Very good.
In case you also tested Chris's version on the same "real Amiga", you should be able to tell us which of them feels more responsive on a "real Amiga"...

right. it woukld be better to join the forces and have on e binary for all.

Yeah - why not.

even if i would prefer to build the gui against mui instead against reaction in this case.

Why not support both GUIs and let the user decide which one he likes more ("skins")?

so, have you got arturs netsurf running on your system, by now or what?

It turned out that I tried to start Arthur's version with no success. Confusingly enough, his version also has the version number "3.6 dev".
No, I have not succeeded yet to get it running.

And to be honest, after learning that it doesn't have a GUI and will only run from a command-line I don't feel very inclined to test it.

i might check current version here on uae/aros68k, but usually it works out of the box.

Here I have to contradict.

The "3.6 dev" version CANNOT "work out of the box", as SnoopDos clearly showed me that some files were not in the drawer where they should have been according to SnooDos, e.g. the file "Resource.map" is in "Resources" - not in "Resources/de/" and "Resources/en/", where the system is looking for it upon start.

I had to copy it over manually in order to get an "O.K." instead "Fail" in SnoopDos.

then you can test chris his version, which is a bit more fiddling with as i remember. because it is still in experimental stadium.

"More fiddling"? "Experimental Stadium"?
I would only expect a "dev" version to be in "experimental stadium", e.g. "netsurf 3.6 dev".

All other, earlier versions should run stable, or did I get something completely wrong?

i cant test it here currently, since it isnt compatible with plain 3.1 plus class act and i dont have a 3.9 setup with me.

I have all OS versions - ranging from 1.2 up to 4.0 classic.
I mainly use 3.9 - 4.0 is just an "experimental Installation", as 4.x classic doesn't support my hardware configuration sufficiently (just USB 1.1 instead of 2.0, just 10 mBit NIC mode instead of 100, limited Mediator support and so on).

[Dandy]

Yes, it's the frontend.  ... I manually built the current "3.6dev".

The version command there will show 3.3602 (which is why release versions are +.60000)

Thanks for explaining!

[utri007]

Dandy: Arthur's fork has GUI, he made one for it. I ques thats why Netsurf team is not so keen about it. It is hevily modied to different product. It doesn't have MUI gui, just custom build GUI. How ever it has a MUI gui for preferences window.

About Chris' Netsurf it doens't have any fiddling. Download it and install it. Only thing is those render and guigfx libraries to sys:libs. It uses standard amiga intuition so just one version for all systems. Minium AGA or RTG

Known problems :

-Tabs are unstable and closing them most likely crash browser.
-Iconify button doesn't work.
-Memory framention / leak. Slow down effect after few pages. Some simplier sites works like charm like http://amigahistory.co.uk/
-AGA has color problems at least with some jpg images.
-Reaction GUI doesn't always refresh.

[chris]

[On Reaction and MUI]
Why not support both GUIs and let the user decide which one he likes more ("skins")?

You can't just "plug in" MUI instead of Reaction.  If you wanted to use both you're re-writing at least 50% of the code, and if you want to switch between them you have an additional layer of abstraction.  It could be done, but it's certainly not something I'll be doing.

It turned out that I tried to start Arthur's version with no success.
[...]
And to be honest, after learning that it doesn't have a GUI and will only run from a command-line I don't feel very inclined to test it.

That's not what I said

The "3.6 dev" version CANNOT "work out of the box", as SnoopDos clearly showed me that some files were not in the drawer where they should have been according to SnooDos, e.g. the file "Resource.map" is in "Resources" - not in "Resources/de/" and "Resources/en/", where the system is looking for it upon start.

I had to copy it over manually in order to get an "O.K." instead "Fail" in SnoopDos.

Please, no, don't do that.  Those fails are correct and normal.  If you copy files around like that NetSurf is going to start looking for other files in places where they aren't and there's no telling what will happen.

That resource structure should not be fiddled with, it is searched in a specific manner and missing files in certain locations are expected and dealt with.

"More fiddling"? "Experimental Stadium"?
I would only expect a "dev" version to be in "experimental stadium", e.g. "netsurf 3.6 dev".

All other, earlier versions should run stable, or did I get something completely wrong?

My build is somewhat experimental but 3.5 is pretty stable, and anything marked "dev" is as stable as you'd expect (ie. wavering between fine and entirely non-working).

[wawrzon]

@dandy

i have tested chris version quite a while ago and at that time it was magnitudes slower than arturs one. according to what im reading here, it has changed, which i hope. still there seems to be a performance problem related to clib2 it is usually linked against. also there are other open issues as mentioned by utri. therefore it should be considered experimental development version. you shouldnt get disappointed if something doesnt work at this time.

what concerns frontend, arturs version has a gui and doesnt usually need to be started from shell. as i said id prefer mui to have it easily portable between amiga platforms, but as chris said its a lot of work starting over and i dont expect him to pic up this task, nor anyone else to be honest. so id try to support reaction frontend at this time.

what concerns arturs netsurf, you likely need to assign netsurf to the directory you have put it in. that would excplain snoopdos reporting resource files problems. i will try to confirm this in a while.

[wawrzon]

okay.

im downloading arturs version 3.6 dev
https://dl.orangedox.com/E9aVebH0KVgPZ8C4jR

linked from here:
http://ami-soft.blogspot.com/2016/07/netsurf-36-development.html

it appears that at least the rtg binary is ixemul dependant.
you ll find ixemul v63.1 here:
http://amiga.sourceforge.net/

no assign necessary as it seems. netsurf open window and the local start page, however i didnt get it to go online. may be that i need to edit some setting since im using aros. it might expect amitcp or something like that.

[Dandy]

...
About Chris' Netsurf it doens't have any fiddling. Download it and install it.
...

I did.
Then I tried to start it - system crashed!
I rebooted and started SnoopDos before trying it again.
The last action SnoopDos recorded before the system froze was reading "FONTS:helvetica/15" with result "O.K.".

Furthermore a nice picture appeared on the screen before the crash telling: "NetSurf Initialising" or something along those lines - but it said it is the OS4 version???

Do you have an idea what could could be going wrong here?

[wawrzon]

you might try to run chris' netsurf executable from shell wit option -v for "verbose" iirc:
netsurf -v

and post here, where it crashes in debug output.

btw. the splash telling you its os4 version is simply because it is still in beta and none took care of it, i dont think you might be able to run a ppc executable on 68k even half a way;)

[utri007]

Where / wich version you downloaded?

run netsurf from shell netsurf -V forward log to somewhere so that you can send it to Chris.

[chris]

FPU?  It shouldn't need one, but I've not figured out how to stop GCC from insisting on building for it.  I need to force it to use -m68020-60 -msoft-float.

[apj]

FPU?  It shouldn't need one, but I've not figured out how to stop GCC from insisting on building for it.  I need to force it to use -m68020-60 -msoft-float.

I have removed -m68020-60 and it worked.

[chris]

I have removed -m68020-60 and it worked.

Something not quite right there, then.  I don't really want to build for plain 68000, which is what that will do.

(it has just made me realise the other libraries are probably 68000/nofpu and NetSurf is building 020-60/fpu rather than the other way round though)

[Dandy]

Where / wich version you downloaded?

The one you linked in your posting #8 in this thread.

run netsurf from shell netsurf -V

Did that.
Lots of text lines appeared and disappeared very fast in the Shell - too fast to read anything, followed by a system crash with black screen.

forward log to somewhere so that you can send it to Chris.

How can I save a logfile?

SnoopDos writes into a buffer (RAM), which can be copied to clip, pasted into an editor and then can be saved to disk.

But as soon as the system crashes, everything is gone - before I get to the point where I can copy the log buffer to the clipboard, paste it into an editor and then save it to disk.

I was thinking of redirecting the shell messages to HD - but then the system would crash in the middle of the writing process, which might kill my HD.
Obviously I do not want to risk that!

[OlafS3]

No bashing, everything I said is true. You are too sensitive with this. Arthurs fork works very nicely with emulators.

I'm not involved Netsurf any way, my opinion is just what I have read and based experience with both versions. Even very early versions of Chirs port feels much more "amigish", than arthur's version. Arthur's version locks Computer for long time, wich hasn't happened ever with Chris version. With emulator Arthur's version fast as wind, no problems at all. Memory requirements of Arthur version are now decreased, wich is good, but it is still unuseable with 32mb ram. I could make a Chris version to start with 16mb ram, but it would be unuseable.

Artur makes a great job offering something at all... there are not many coders left you know, bashing the few remaining ones is not very helpful. I could also say Chris version is useless because based on reaction that was only available on 3.5/3.9. Many people use more plain systems and do not want to install 3.9

[wawrzon]

I was thinking of redirecting the shell messages to HD - but then the system would crash in the middle of the writing process, which might kill my HD.
Obviously I do not want to risk that!

you might launch a resetfest RAD: and redirect the output to a file there.