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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: utri007 on March 26, 2009, 01:52:26 PM

Title: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: utri007 on March 26, 2009, 01:52:26 PM
Hi

Netsurf OS4 port has made so that 68k port would be easy to make?

I really want modern web brower to my a1200 and unfortynately I'm not a coder :(

Is there any progres to port Netsurf to Os 3.0 - 3.9
Title: Re: Netsurf 68k
Post by: utri007 on March 27, 2009, 08:13:31 AM
bumb
Title: Re: Netsurf 68k
Post by: chiark on March 27, 2009, 11:15:47 AM
I would imagine the browser ported to AROS would be an easier place to start...
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: 0amigan0 on March 27, 2009, 11:49:01 AM
@utri007:

There's a modern web browser for 68k Amiga, here:

http://strohmayer.org/download.php/OWB_m68k.lha

It needs a *VERY* fast Amiga though !


Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: wawrzon on March 27, 2009, 12:03:20 PM
yeah. the current 68k owb isnt good for nuthin. it has no gui (one could make a limited one since it has rudimentary arexx interface) but it wold miss a lot of comands one would expect from a browser. except of that its dead slow, and doesnt show most of pages really correctly, since it is only a quick and dirty one.

i have looked at the sources of netsurf and it seems that it wouldnt be that hard to adopt it to os3.x. os4 is already worked on and official target. but im not a coder and even if i have set up 68k compilers on my miggy and pc it will probably be beyond my skills forever.
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: sim085 on March 27, 2009, 04:16:36 PM
Quote

0amigan0 wrote:
@utri007:

There's a modern web browser for 68k Amiga, here:

http://strohmayer.org/download.php/OWB_m68k.lha

It needs a *VERY* fast Amiga though !
So does it run on a 68000 processor? or it needs an 68030 processor to run? What does *VERY* fast imply?

Regards,
Sim085
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: Framiga on March 27, 2009, 04:31:16 PM
it crawls on a 060, if this is enough! :-)

Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: wawrzon on March 27, 2009, 05:43:56 PM
Quote

it crawls on a 060, if this is enough!

which is the least to say. but somehow owb68 behaves quite strange. sometimes it seems to wait for something while there is no 100% cpu load, on other ocassions just like at the moment (i just threw it on to recall) it seems to occupy 100% of the cpu constantly after the page has been rendered down to the very last detail. strangely the system is responsive though. world of wonders..
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: Golem!dk on March 27, 2009, 06:48:58 PM
Where did you find a modern 68k amiga?
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: amiga4ever on March 27, 2009, 07:00:51 PM
Golem: perfect response :-) Processing the HTML tags alone in a lot of today's "modern" websites would push even a 060 - if you want add modern technology such as AJAX on top of that...forget it. :-) which is why no one is going to update the 68k browsers in a usable or be able to make them usable.  i can tell you that, having worked a little on "a" 68k browser engine myself :-)
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: sim085 on March 27, 2009, 09:43:49 PM
The W3C introduced XHTML as a standard because "Today's market consists of different browser technologies, some browsers run on computers, and some browsers run on mobile phones or other small devices. The last-mentioned do not have the resources or power to interpret a "bad" markup language."
http://www.w3schools.com/Xhtml/xhtml_why.asp

So (ignoring CSS and Javascript) can't simple valid-XHTML be processed on an Amiga without pulling the whole machine down?
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: matthey on March 27, 2009, 10:38:39 PM
Quote

amiga4ever wrote:
Processing the HTML tags alone in a lot of today's "modern" websites would push even a 060


Wrong! AWeb on my '060 Amiga is about as fast as Firefox on my Pentium 4 Mobile laptop. That includes picture loading and Javascript at the same time. Loading on Firefox is "usually" faster but then there are times when the machine and browser are completely unresponsive for several seconds. This never happens on the Amiga. Sometimes slower but consistent wins the race.

Quote
i can tell you that, having worked a little on "a" 68k browser engine myself :-)


Then you didn't know how to program! I have an Amiga with a fast browser right here and it only takes one exception to prove you wrong. I hope you find my response as annoying as I found yours.
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: save2600 on March 28, 2009, 12:00:44 AM
Well spoken Matthey. As I've written before, my A2500 w/ its graphics card, 060 & ethernet seems to be as fast (or faster) as anything I've used - on the websites I like to visit. The unnecessarily opulent websites others are talking about... hate to say it, but MANY of todays sites and coding blow chunks. Look at the landscape of todays "programmers". What they are churning out is not efficient and much of it is unnatractive. Can you say MySpace? I'm generalising here, but the internet is changing alright, but not for the better. All of the popups, constantly moving graphics, commercialism, horrible graphic designs and even the search engines... yeah, they may need more processing power and modern browsers alright. But who besides a tween gives a damn about most of them anyway? I may have a touch of adult attention deficit (lol and thanks for making me that way society!), but the internet is getting more and more annoying by the year. I say today's internet is de-evolutionary to be sure. Sorry for the rant  :-P
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: CSixx on March 28, 2009, 12:33:26 AM

And such a cut and paste rant it was...

We'd be so much more productive, if the web was still entirely static html pages... [rolleyes]
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: save2600 on March 28, 2009, 01:44:14 AM
Oh c'mon, I'm not talking about static web pages. And not sure what you mean by a "cut and paste" rant. These are my own observations. I haven't really followed the thread Re: Wayne switching servers, if that's what you meant. That sounds like a necessary deal anyway, if not just for the sake of security. All I'm saying is that there is nothing -new- on the internet that would compel me to continually upgrade my browsers and/or computers.  And when your old haunts "upgrade" and force you to do likewise, the results are usually mediocre or disappointing. Security would be the only issue that I'd make concessions for. Sad commentary though when that's at the forefront of your thoughts. But, kind of back to the topic, even with modern browsers, I purposely and often turn off Java because of the blatant annoyance factor. Java: another great example of how technology is not being utilised productively. I'm not saying every site mind you, but a very large percentage of the ones I visit (news quickly comes to mind) are more tolerable with the scripting turned off.

Computers are getting faster and faster, yet the internet browsing experience is getting slower and slower. I fail to see how MySpace is "productive". It's annoying as hell and I simply avoid that culture. But a greater example and of practical use would be MapQuest. That is as slow as molasses these days and it does nothing better, nor are there any more features to it than a few years ago. If there are any, I certainly don't see or use them. I realise they changed their format slightly, but certainly not for productivity's sake.  
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: Matt_H on March 28, 2009, 02:02:42 AM
This (http://home.kpn.nl/spijk336/browser/home.html) just turned up at Amiga-news.de (http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2009-03-00063-DE.html).
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: wawrzon on March 28, 2009, 02:11:30 AM
@save:
you might just as well ignore this thread. calm down. none will come to your house and take your beloved outdated web browser away if an alternative would appear. from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, if i dare to quote.
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: save2600 on March 28, 2009, 03:22:35 AM
Quote

Matt_H wrote:
This (http://home.kpn.nl/spijk336/browser/home.html) just turned up at Amiga-news.de (http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2009-03-00063-DE.html).


Interesting project. I just gave it a try on both Mac and my A2500. Opens up the terminal in Mac's 10.5 and seems to want to run. Threw it on the Miggy and had to adjust the stack size waaaaay past 8192 in order for it to "run". It's dog slow, even on the 060/Picasso and unless I'm doing something terribly wrong here, brings my system to a near hault.

@wawrzon:
Not worried about obselescence. Just getting tired of the planned nonesense is all. ALL of the problems I have been experiencing the past 10 years have been on the PeeCee and  Mac platforms. No real complaints using *any* Amiga browser as the expectations are that much different. They are what they are(IBrowse being the best for classic 68k systems IMO). And most of them navigate much of the web just fine. With each "advancement" of Safari on a 2.1ghz G5, the internet experience has gradually gotten slower and slower. I expect an OS to bring a system to a crawl after a while, but the latest Safari 3.2.1 is what I've been noticing poor internet experiences with lately. Firefox and Camino are not much better.  
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: brianb on March 28, 2009, 04:23:04 AM
I found browsing using AWeb on my A1200 w/ '030 at 50MHz a painful experience.  But it was fun to setup...

I find it interesting to see the positive results with people using an '060.  Makes me wonder about future upgrades...
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: stefcep2 on March 28, 2009, 05:23:07 AM
FWIW I agree that many of the current internet "features" hinder rather then enhance the web experience.  I rarely turn flash on and 95% of what i actually use or need from a web page is the same as it was 10 years ago: ie reading text, downloadind files, banking and forums.  Sure i might download the odd video, but thats just playing back a file.  So why does it seam the its taking as long to do these things when the hardware is 100 times faster and bigger?
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: utri007 on March 28, 2009, 07:12:59 AM
Many people has said that netsurf would be realistic for 68k amigas, it eats lot a less memory than owb and it would be many ways easier to port
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: number6 on March 28, 2009, 02:10:18 PM
@save2600

In case you want to learn more about this project, the author/creator of Merlin browser is now posting
here (http://www.amigans.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2667&forum=3)

#6
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: number6 on March 28, 2009, 02:10:28 PM
(double post)

#6
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: matthey on March 28, 2009, 02:11:11 PM
Quote

brianb wrote:
I found browsing using AWeb on my A1200 w/ '030 at 50MHz a painful experience.  But it was fun to setup...

I find it interesting to see the positive results with people using an '060.  Makes me wonder about future upgrades...


I've used AWeb and Ibrowse running on a 2000 with 030@50MHz, and CV64/3D and thought it was pretty usable speed. AGA is very slow compared to a gfx card and eats cpu time. My main Amiga uses a CSMK3 68060@75MHz + Voodoo4/FastEthernet + 15k Ultra SCSI HD. I have some of AWeb, like the image decoders, compiled for the 68060 but not the main program yet. I think a fair amount more speed can be found in the code as well. I do believe a well written clean browser with most modern browser support (like CSS) is capable of running on high end classic Amigas with good speed.
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: wawrzon on March 28, 2009, 02:25:39 PM
@number6: frankly everything i see is the author of os4 netsurf port posting.
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: number6 on March 28, 2009, 02:30:43 PM
@wawrzon

Post #13
Merlin Browser Development.

#6
Title: Re: Modern web browser for 68k amigas?
Post by: wawrzon on March 28, 2009, 02:33:05 PM
to clarify, i dont stress on flash or java although it would be nice to have such options. just something to render regular hps in proper layout and fill forms online. owb is able to do it on os4 while it doesnt support java or flash. for me it is reasonable minimum. and since ibrowse is fast enough on my 060 a4k i dont think css capable browser is impossible for 68k.

@number6: ah, ok.