Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => General Internet News => Topic started by: Pyromania on August 10, 2008, 10:24:01 PM
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A few of you have noticed that a new AmiZilla website was launched recently. The talented artist that created it did a great job. AmiZilla has been a catalyst for change in the Amiga marketplace and an inspiration to all. AmiZilla shocked the Amiga market and even received wide press on Slashdot, Mozilla forums and many other news sites when it was launched in 2003. Many were caught off guard that an Amiga effort could bring in over $10,000 in donations, the Amiga is suppose to dead right?
The Amiga is not dead, the AROS Bounty system, MorphZone Bounties and many other bounty systems were all inspired by AmiZilla and went on to collect thousands of dollars. DiscreetFX did not consider this competition to AmiZilla, in fact we embraced it and put lots of money into AROS Bounties, MorphZone Bounties and many others. The small community that is Amiga proved that it was not giving up and it was willing to pay for quality software to be ported to the Four Headsmen of Amiga.
A paradigm shift occurred in the Amiga market and has been going on ever since. Amiga owners don't mind reaching into their pockets for quality software vs having no software at all. The sad news in all of this is that the dream of AmiZilla has still not been reached. Firefox proved that it is difficult to port and it will take talented programmers time to do it. Progress was made, a CVS was setup, NSPR was ported and other little models of Firefox but the main goal has not been achieved. Talented developers also gave us Sputnik for MorphOS and OWB for Amiga OS 4.0 & 3.9. Their skills are appreciated because the Amiga had no CSS capable browser. The blunt truth of the matter is that programming is hard and developers need to be paid for their time and work. Over $10,000 in bounty collections in the Amiga market is a great achievement but unfortunately it is not enough. Without Firefox running on the Four Headsmen of Amiga we are not taken seriously and miss out on the wealth of plug-ins and respect the web based platform that is Firefox would give us. Even small unknown operating systems like SkyOS have Firefox.
So we have a two new goals for AmiZilla, $15,000 & $20,000. At these higher bounty levels maybe Linux developers will get interested and run an Amiga virtual machine and or even buy an EFIKA running MorphOS 2.0 and or a used system running Amiga OS 4.0. Even a virtual AROS system is free to setup and use on most environments. Maybe an old Amiga developer that feels inspired and loves Firefox will return to Amiga programming to collect the bounty. We don't care how it gets done we just want it completed to help the Amiga marketplace. To help the contest reach a new level we have added another $1000 to the bounty. To reach a goal of $15K & 20K we will also need the help of others that believe in the dream of Firefox for Amiga OS, MorphOS & AROS.
Best regards
DiscreetFX Team
Links
New AmiZilla Website (http://www.amizilla.net)
The Four Headsmen of Amiga (http://aladdin4d.blogspot.com/2008/08/four-headsmen-of-amiga.html)
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Congratulations.
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Nice, i like the site, perhaps it just needs another slashdotting?
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Quote from FAQ: Amiga One and Pegasos system sales can go thru the roof! I
Now thats just hilarious. One can't even buy neither of them anymore :roll:
Website itself is clean and nice.
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@hooligan
Thanks for pointing this out, obsolete information has been removed.
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Nice site really, but I don't see any updates of the progress so far. :-?
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This is definitely a much better layout than the old site, which (to me at least) seemed like just a bunch of random links thrown together in a variety of different font sizes. For DiscreetFX this is definitely a much better site. However, there are a few problems with this AmiZilla site, especially if you're trying to attract Linux developers.
First of all, why is this not a completely separate site from DiscreetFX? I know DiscreetFX is the host for the project, but when I click on the "Home" link for example it takes me to DiscreetFX with no clear way of getting back to the AmiZilla site - yet the URL still shows amizilla.net. Seems cheap at best, shady at worst. Why not separate this site completely from the "corporate" site, with the exception of a persistent link on AmiZilla saying something like "Sponsored by DiscreetFX? In fact, why an Amizilla Site/Section at all - why not just Sourceforge?
Which brings up another point - is the AmiZilla project on Sourceforge related to the AmiZilla site in some way? Keep in mind, Sourceforge actually has tools to maintain a project, unlike amizilla.net.
Why does the content section fade away and then fade back in when clicked? Pointless.
The very first paragraph in "Overview" is a huge turn-off. Yes, back in the 1990's, MS was trying to screw Netscape, Netscape became free, AOL bought them, etc. etc. Ancient history, get over it. In fact there seems to be a running anti-MS sentiment throughout this site. Do you want Mozilla ported to the Amiga or do you want to gripe about MS? Why bring MS into the picture at all? MS is mostly considered irrelevant these days. Stuff like this just looks kooky.
The "FAQ" section. Ditch the anti-MS rhetoric, nobody cares, it sounds amatuerish at best, kooky at worst. Focus on the Amiga and why bringing Mozilla to the Amiga would be a good thing.
"Rules". The rules are at odds with the FAQ. In the FAQ it says that the base OS should be 3.9 and above. Yet in the Rules it says 3.1. By the way, how does one get ahold of Amithlon or a DraCo to test? Answer: one does not. How about: Compiles and runs on OS 3.9. At this point you might want to think about taking what you can get.
Overall the site is an improvement, but I don't think this will address the problems that have kept AmiZilla stalled for years. If you think money is the problem it might be time to consider that everyone who would have donated to the project already has donated to the project. Sure, a few might toss in a few more bucks, but it's already at $11K and that hasn't been enough to jump start the project, so it might be time to think about why this isn't moving. In think this statement from the FAQ maybe sums it up:
"AmiZilla can be a catalyst to many great things for Amiga. Most computer users use their machine 80% of the time for web browsing, it is the single most important application to them next to e-mail. You don't need a 3 Ghz Pentium 4 to browse the web!"
Well, "most computer users" don't give a rats ass about the Amiga, in fact they probably have never heard of it - not that it would make a difference at this point. True, you don't *need* a 3Ghz machine to browser the web, but so what? People have been using the web for years without a 3Ghz machine *or* an Amiga, so this doesn't make AmiZilla more relevant for them. And many Amiga users these days aren't browsing the web with an Amiga, either. If you stop looking at the Amiga platform as something that "needs to come back" and look at the reality which is, it's a hobbyist platform, then you might find a way to sell AmiZilla to some developers. But don't be surprised if nobody bites. Sure, the bounty is a nice plus, but it's been sitting there for years, everybody who is likely to take up the cause knows it's out there, clearly the bounty isn't the problem. Personally I think it's a dead project, but if you want a suggestion then identify the components that make up Mozilla and try to attract attention into getting those ported first.
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but when I click on the "Home" link for example it takes me to DiscreetFX with no clear way of getting back to the AmiZilla site - yet the URL still shows amizilla.net.
Yes this was confusing. I hit HOME aswell and tried to find back to mainpage. HOME-button should point to www.amizilla.net instead of http://www.discreetfx.com/index.html
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great!! i am gonna donate some money :)
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Whoohoo a new website! That's what we need! Hurray!
... whatever ...
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Your right jorkany, anti MS stuff has no place on the AmiZilla contest site. MS has done some serious damage to other software developers and the IT industry over the years but it has nothing to do with porting Firefox to Amiga type systems. References to MS will be removed. Amizilla.net is the site for the contest only, Sourceforge, the mailing list and other places is where the developers get together about the project. The complete link list is on the AmiZilla eGroup for your reference.
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Why would anyone start to work now, just
because the bounty is higher?
10.000 USD has been alot of money all along.
Money is not the problem here. You won't get
Firefox released, just because you raise the
bounty.
And why would anyone donate to what seems to be
a dead and maybe impossible project?
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No one is required to donate ironfist.
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AmiZilla Resources List
Useful links for the AmiZilla project:
Here's some good overviews on the AmigaOS- it's from the AmigaOS4
site, but can be generally applied to AmigaOS3.x, MorphOS and AROS:
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=11&I\
temid=
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=16&I\
temid=
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=18&I\
temid=
AmiZilla homepage: http://amizilla.sourceforge.net (and info on
setting up a dev environment)
Amizilla DiscreetFX Bounty site: http://www.amizilla.net/
AmiZilla Yahoo groups page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amizilla/
Amizilla SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/amizilla
Amiga OS Programmers' site: http://utilitybase.com/
Amiga OS4 Programmers' site: http://amigadev.amigaworld.net/
Reaction Programming forum:
http://amigadev.amigaworld.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=7
Reaction simple example: http://thomas-rapp.privat.t-online.de/about.lha
AROS/OS3/OS4/MOS Abstraction Headers and Macros:
http://os4depot.net/share/development/misc/sdi_headers.lha
Examples about how to create a shared library:
AmigaOS3: http://main.aminet.net/dev/c/CLib-SDI.lha
MOS:
http://www.lehtoranta.net/tutorial/library_examples.lha
OS4: Afaik OS4 has its own tool to make easier the
creation of libraries.
IDE: http://amidevcpp.kilu.de/
Cross-Compiling Setup on Windows:
http://www.bruzard.de/download/AmiDevCpp_Setup_v04.exe
Crosscompilers for win&linux: http://www.zerohero.se/cross/index2.html
SDK for AmigaOS3.9:
http://www.zerohero.se/cross/files/ndk-3.9-includes.tar.bz2
Arexx Introduction: http://w3.goodnews.net/~ehoffman/AREXX.txt
Arexx on AmigaOS4:
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=15&I\
temid=0&limit=1&limitstart=2
Arexx on the web:
http://www.amigau.com/c-programming/arexx/arexxlinks.htm
Arexx Tutorials and Code Samples:
http://www.amigau.com/c-programming/arexx/arexxtut.htm
Arexx Tutorial:
http://members.cox.net/midian/tutorials/arexx1.htm
WinUAE Amiga Emulator (requires *legal* ROM image):
http://www.winuae.net/
Amiga Forever (commercial legal Amiga emulation for those without a real amiga
for the ROM):
http://www.amigaforever.com/
LouiSe's hardfile for UAE may be useful too... it has gcc and Geek Gadgets
installed:
http://www.innoidea.hu/subsites/amiga/developer/FILES/HardFiles/gcc111.zip
CVS and OpenSSH:
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=14035&group_id=1
How to get source with CVS: http://amizilla.sourceforge.net/cvs.html
GREP tutorial:
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/unix/grep.html
GTK home page: http://www.gtk.org
GTK API documentation: http://www.gtk.org/api
GTK Tutorial: http://www.gtk.org/tutorial
GTK/GDK v2.6 source code:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtk+/2.6/
GTK/GDK v2.8 source code:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtk+/2.8/
GLib v2.8 source code:
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/GNOME/sources/glib/2.8/
MUI Homepage: http://sasg.com/mui/index.html
MUI API docs: http://sasg.com/mui/autodocs/index.html
MUI Tutorial: http://www.ezcyberspace.com/gcc/
X11 docs: http://www.x.org/X11R6.8.2/doc/manindex3.html
GTK->MUI status:
http://homes.hallertau.net/~oli/amizilla/gtk/status.html
GTK->MUI SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-mui/
GTK->MUI Screenshots:
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=141931
GTK->MUI Demo code and compiled exes (68k):
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gtk-mui/gtk-mui-examples.lha?download
NSPR documentation: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/nspr/index.html
Porting NSPR to a Unix Platform:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/nspr/tech-notes/porting-guide.html
For anyone wanting to work on the NSPR projects, you'll need
512mb Ram to compile AmiZilla (at least initially), or access
to a machine with 512mb ram for compiling.
Configuring and Building AmiZilla:
http://amizilla.sourceforge.net/build.html
Mozilla project: http://www.mozilla.org
mozillaZine (Mozilla news): http://Mozillazine.org/
Configuring Build Options:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Configuring_Build_Options
Build Instructions:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Build_and_Install
Building Mozilla on Linux: http://www.x.org/X11R6.8.2/doc/manindex3.html
Mozilla Coding Style Guide:
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/mozilla-style-guide.html
Mozilla Hacker's Getting Started Guide:
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/coding-introduction.html
Mozilla C++ portability guide (very important):
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/portable-cpp.html
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I still don't get how a reptile can have breasts :-?.
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Even small unknown operating systems like SkyOS have Firefox.
Yet for $10,000 it couldn't be ported to the Amiga. Pretty much says that it'll never be ported, eh? I don't think that more money is going to make it happen.
Anyway, I'd prefer WebKit to be ported and a small Amiga-like webbrowser created around it.
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@Hattig
Webkit is awesome too! Firefox will be ported, it is only a matter of time.
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A paradigm shift occurred in the Amiga market and has been going on ever since.
Your Ken Nordine may vary.
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The paradigm shift was people donating money to have software developed/ported to Amiga type systems. Before AmiZilla you did not see much of this.
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I was going to (yet again) post my views of the matter, but jorkany did so good of a job, why bother... ;-)
Needless to say the project is quite dead. Wishful thinking or repeating "it will get ported" doesn't actually get anything done, developers do. There is so much work involved that the bounty should be something around 10x for anyone to take semi-serious look. And even then, the totally unrealistic bounty rules make it nearly impossible to complete anyway.
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The site looks nice, Bill. jorkany did have some good points, but I'm registering an "ouch!" in sympathy. ;-)
I'd still love to see FireFox on the Amiga, but I'm reminded of running Internet Explorer on my old iPaq. I finally broke down and bought an 802.11b SDIO card to browse over my local wireless network. And what do you know, Apple releases the iPhone/iPod Touch a few months later. I haven't touched the iPaq since. While I think FireFox will eventually make it, just as WebKit has, I worry that the user experience will be anything but stellar.
EDIT:
I agree with Piru re: the rules. There's some pretty crazy stuff in there. It's hard enough to get a few hundreds lines of code shared between the Amiga variants, let alone a project the size of Mozilla.
Trev
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@Piru
Let's live in dreamland and assume I win the lottery.
How long would I need to pay a small team of say 4 developers to achieve such a task and would $250k cover it?
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@Trev
Firefox is open source software and in the spirit of open source anyone is welcome to write up a better set of guidelines/rules. Submit it to us and if everyone likes it we can update our guidelines no problem. AmiZilla is a contest sponsored by DiscreetFX to help Amiga OS, MorphOS & AROS. Unlike a certain company we will not name we don't mind helping Amiga type systems move forward and be successful.
@ajlwalker
You should ask the developers on the mailing list that question.
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@ajlwalker
How long would I need to pay a small team of say 4 developers to achieve such a task and would $250k cover it?
Lets just say they would likely get better paid doing regular programming work.
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I don't see this mentioned often but here we go:
One nasty side of money being involved in a project is that it can also have negative effects. This would be so large project that it is unlikely that one single person could complete even part of it. The team members can get into nasty fights over how the money should be split, and different teams will keep the source to themselves in fear someone else might use it and get ahead (with GPL project that'd mean no betas to outsiders.. or anyone could request src).
As soon as someone gets to arbitrarily split the money, things will go sour. Friendships have ended this way.
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@piru
It almost sounds like you have some experience with these kinds of problems. :-D
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@Piru
There is so much work involved that the bounty should be something around 10x for anyone to take semi-serious look.
What work is involved?
If it were running on a X server, what difference would that make to the amount of work required?
If there was a GDK/GTK port, what difference would that make to the amount of work required?
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@ jorkany
I'd prefer the Rule to be: Compiles and runs on OS 3.1, as not everyone has 3.9- most members of the AmiZilla Team don't for example.
Ants
AmiZilla Team Co-ordinator
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@Ants
But isnt Firefox a bit to heavy for majority of classic Amigas? My Firefox now consumes 92.5mb of memory (which itself is fking hilarious.. lightweight my ass)
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Yes, it's doubtful you'll have a full-featured Firefox running in 2 megs (or less) or RAM.
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The new AmiZilla website looks absolutely fabulous.
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@ hooligan
Well, AFAIK you can have 512M RAM on WinUAE?
And running on OS3 is really just a neutral base so it can be ported to OS4, MOS and AROS- everyone knows the 3.x API, and can get the docs for it.
-Ants
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Run Firefox on WinUAE while at the same time running Firefox on Windows can be done by pressing alt+tab once? That does not make sense my friend, not at all :crazy:
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@hooligan
WinUAE as a dev environment.
Actually, providing a WinUAE base configuration as a condition for the bounty makes sense for classic development, as it's accessible to almost everyone. It should be possible to put together a pre-built image and build system, a la AmiKit, that prompts for the Workbench 3.1 disk images during installation.
AROS is open but constantly changing, so it would be difficult to define a baseline.
I'm exagerating, but I think the Amiga OS 4 community is something like this: 0.01% - developers with OS4; 0.01% - developers without OS4; 99.98% - prospective users (some of which probably don't even use their PowerPC hardware). Would be developers do not have access to hardware.
MorphOS, at least, is viable in the sense that developers have ready access to hardware.
All that said, Amiga OS 4 should probably be off the table as a target platform until hardware becomes available.
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Its for this particular reason why the Amiga failed (3rd paragraph). A browser for 3.x based systems? Oh god, please, MOVE ON. Ditch those old, under specced systems.
Support whats there. Sputnik? Maybe give him some more $ to port that to OS4 (if it isnt already), setup a bounty for THAT project. Help a browser that exists NOW to advance the real operating systems that are in place, not some ol-timey rinky-dink system.
Remember Amiga games? What, do you think everyone ran A500's w/512k ram? Try A500 w/1,2,3 megs, A2000's with 8megs, some with graphics cards.
Good luck, this project will never be completed on a 3.x system.
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First, kudos to DiscreetFX for AmiZilla site and the Firefox port initiative.
This forum often has too many naysayers - for a forum which is dedicated to Amiga enthusiasts I find that a bit strange sometimes.
Yes, porting a modern browser seems like an impossible task but that's what makes it so appealing :). Compromises will have to be made.
I agree that running Firefox on a machine with less than 8MB of ram is not viable. Even if it was possible, memory available after launching the browser would be minimal.
You can think of a single Firefox tab as a 1MB "footprint" in memory. This means that a fully featured firefox could not drive (realistically) more than 1-3 tabs on an Amiga (with 8MB ram). As an experiment, I am writing a plugin (for a PC) which will eliminate the need for multiple tabs (which consume extra memory). The basic idea is that a tab can be represented in two ways: as a memory buffer or as a file (in the file system). Memory buffer won't work on an Amiga because of memory constraints. "File buffer" would work nicely (with a hard drive, of course). This measure alone reduces the need for RAM. I often have a large number of tabs open and think that memory footprint of Firefox is pretty big under heavy use. It does not have to be because I am working with 1-2 tabs at most and the rest are just consuming ram :)
It is difficult to estimate how big or small the core of ported Firefox would be. Amiga's binaries tend to be very compact but that alone cannot guarantee a small footprint. Once again, I am thinking of a file-system based memory management model which would allow dynamic loading (and unloading) of components. Yes, this is a bit tricky but not impossible. I have built (and still do!) applications that utilize the same concept on a PC with great success. Each user has its own "usage pattern" for each application and that means that only a few key components are loaded in memory at any given time - which results in very good performance (=low ram consumption).
I am wondering now how many people out there would feel comfortable with looking at Firefox source code and sharing some thoughts here on the forum about memory management and individual components of Firefox.
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There are lots of misassumptions in the amizilla webpage, first of all the one about being not considered serious if we haven't our own port of Firefox. Firefox is just another web browser and I personally can think that we would be taken more seriously if we had OpenOffice instead. Someone else can think this about Mono and so on. Firefox has proven to be heavy, difficult, too much tied to features that only "modern" operating system have. On the contrary, some effort on WebKit has already been made and gave us at least some first-stage modern browsers.
Just look at what the only Robert Norris brought to AROS with his "Traveller Preview" or what Andrea Palmatè did with OWB. Webkit is no technically inferior to Firefox and is more viable for an Amiga port, so why insisting on the huge beast? Porting Firefox for the simple pleasure of "having it" is practically meaningless, if the average Amiga machine still working can't run it at all, or with terrible compromises. All those money could be spent in a better way to bring us a modern, portable, light amiga browser that could work on every amiga platform, form 3.1 to 4.1, MorphOS and AROS. More than 5 years without any concrete result should suggest that money are not the issue, here.
AmigaOS 4.1 has Cairo, which is a underlying graphic library well suited for Webkit. Robert Norris ported it to AROS too and, starting from this effort, it shouldn't be so dramatic to port it to MorphOS and other amiga dialects: maybe spending all those money for a more realistic project, as like as continuing and completing Robert's work, might be a better idea.
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@paolone
This is a great idea (WebKit and Cairo) but it opens an additional "can of worms": AROS, which has limited compatibility with Amiga.
However, if WebKit runs on AROS I am wondering now why it does not run on Amiga already (API compatibility). I have to take a look at that project, provided the source code is available under AROS.
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Many people make good points about what is and isn't viable.
However, the problem as I see it is that this bounty has been built up under the premise it will be ported to all these "platforms".
Can you ethically decide to change the target "platforms" without returning the money do the donors?
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about "changing the platforms"...
The AmiZilla site clearly states that ported browser should "compile and run under Amiga OS 3.1". Since AROS is API-compatible with OS 3.1, browser should run under AROS as well (and probably better, with more memory). In fact, an AROS "box" may prove to be a great development environment.
Where do you see the conflict of interest?
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@Trev:
The problem with modern browsers are not in the applications itself, but in the contents they have to handle. Once you succeeded in placing a "beast" like Firefox in 2 megs of RAM (dreams sometimes never come true...), you need to allocate twice of them, minimum, to open a single and light page.
So you need either a) a *huge* amount of RAM (128 megs or above), or b) virtual memory. You can have "a" only on modern hardware running AROS, MorphOS or AmigaOS 4.0, or either under UAE emulation. You can have "b", and for now only theoretically, with AmigaOS 4.1.
Then there is another little problem for AmigaOS: threads. You need them in order to open different kind of contents (music, animations, images, text, javascript, and so) at the same time and, in the end, I haven't either talked about Java.
In the end, there is the graphic API of 3.1 which needs heavy improvements to meet the bare minimum standard to handle a browser properly, and it's the motivation why Robert had to port Cairo to AROS and Andrea had to use SDL to render pages.
@ Codenetfx
AROS compatibility with AmigaOS 3.1 APIs is not perfect but far better than what most people think. In the last months it has improved slightly, and if it's true that there are still many things to do, it's also trye they are far less than they were months ago. Just look at the status page to have a better idea:
http://aros.sourceforge.net/introduction/status/everything.php
There are also some guidelines for coders willing to write their application taking care of compatibility between different Amiga platforms:
http://shinkuro.altervista.org/amiga/guida/english/index.htm
All in all, main compatibility poroblems are between Zune and MUI3.8, but they can be worked around.