Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: curtis on March 16, 2014, 02:34:07 AM
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Okay, I'm pretty sure this has been hashed before, but I'm going to re-open the wounds.
I've got my X-surf100 in my A3000 (stock '030-25)with OS 3.9 and 16M Fast RAM and 2MB Chip RAM.
Waiting for the payment to clear to download Roadshow and got to wondering about web browsers for the Amiga.
I see a lot of people talk about IBrowse, Aweb, and Voyager. I've also heard there is a Firefox port called Timberwolf out there.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each.
I was considering downloading Ibrowse 2.4, but finally found the site to get it and 2.4 downloads have been suspended!
At what state is Timberwolf in? Usable? Pile of excrement?
Curtis
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Okay, I'm pretty sure this has been hashed before, but I'm going to re-open the wounds.
I've got my X-surf100 in my A3000 (stock '030-25)with OS 3.9 and 16M Fast RAM and 2MB Chip RAM.
Waiting for the payment to clear to download Roadshow and got to wondering about web browsers for the Amiga.
I see a lot of people talk about IBrowse, Aweb, and Voyager. I've also heard there is a Firefox port called Timberwolf out there.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each.
I was considering downloading Ibrowse 2.4, but finally found the site to get it and 2.4 downloads have been suspended!
At what state is Timberwolf in? Usable? Pile of excrement?
Curtis
I have never heard of Voyager but after looking at it...it seems super promising to be honest O_O! Voyager to me seems the best browser available for AGA classical Amiga. Now Timberwolf is pretty much firefox for OS 4.1. So if you want the top top top line browser that can't be beat it would be Timberwolf but then you need NG Amiga for that.
If you want to get the 100% classical feel in every regard and want a browser for that then Voyager is better than iBrowse and AWeb combined.
I am curious though...can voyager run youtube? Hehe
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Timberwolf wouldn't run in 16MB and would crawl on an '030 even if it were available. Voyager hasn't been updated in a long time and it's buggy. AWeb will run with these specs and is available on Aminet and with the unofficial BoingBag 4 for AmigaOS 3.9. IBrowse would also work with these specs. Maybe you can use a web utility that keeps a history of old web pages and files. The browsing experience is not going to be good with either. Both are out of date although will usually work to some extent. Also, a gfx board would help the gfx and speed of a stock 3000.
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Ibrowse website is still alive and kicking, downloads still working fine too :-)
http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/
Probably the best browser for your setup, possible Aweb. OWB works, okay on a 060, netsurf gives you the best looking webpages but is slow even on a 060.
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I tried all of them on my A2000 030@40, Aweb looks to be a bit more responsive. A new version with patched security holes is on Aminet.
Chris
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Hi I surf the net most days on my Amiga 1200 using Ibrowse website and I think it works fine as long as you have a little patience and roadshow really puts the icing on the cake as its trouble free ,best wishes Brian.:):)
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Hi I surf the net most days on my Amiga 1200 using Ibrowse website and I think it works fine as long as you have a little patience and roadshow really puts the icing on the cake as its trouble free ,best wishes Brian.:):)
Roadshow is amazing, installed. Copied over the mediafast driver to DEVS: and restarted done.
Also easy to script so it turns off/on when using WHDLoad.
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@curtis
Timberwolf is for AmigaOS 4..
However OS4 also has iBrowse, NetSurf and many different versions of OWB, and also Odyssey.
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If you want to get the 100% classical feel in every regard and want a browser for that then Voyager is better than iBrowse and AWeb combined.
Unfortunately Voyager wasn't never that stable. I prefer IBrowse most, it has the nicest and most versatile GUI, quite stable (at least if you don't run JS all the time ;)), it was the longest in development... but with today's CSS web, they're all quite useless for general browsing. Mainly good for some Amiga related sites. And trying to surf with AGA has always been real pain... but with GFX card it was great (decade ago) :)
There are some ports of modern browsers to classics too, like Netsurf and OWB, but they're just too slow for poor 68k CPU.
The best for NG OS'es is Odyssey... Timberwolf is too unfinished currently AFAIK.
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there is also netsurf version for rtg equipped amiga on aminet,
http://aminet.net/package/comm/www/NetSurf-m68k
it is rather slow and demands newest extended ixemul.library from here since its based on sdl:
http://amiga.sourceforge.net/?showpackage=ixemul.library
there was though another amiga chipset version in the works by novacoder afair, dunno what state it currently is though, i must have tested it once on my 4000/060 i believe.
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I love Netsurf, but it will probably be too slow on your setup. Stick with Ibrowse (2.2). If you have a Mac emulator set up, you can try iCab running under MacOS. Timberwolf and OWB are best avoided unless you invest in 060 and/or ppc.
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if you want the top top top line browser that can't be beat it would be Timberwolf
Really? You ever used it? It's unusable on my OS 4 machine (A1XE) takes about 3 minutes to load up and consumes 100% of the CPU the entire time it's open, when quitting it crashes and brings down the system with it. It's far from a browser that "can't be beat" and is really still just an early Alpha (that may never get finished). Odyssey is much superior in every way for OS4 and MorphOS.
For 68K Amigas, IBrowse is still the best of the bunch although very outdated and limited to 30 minutes use as they are no longer accepting registrations for it.
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Hi Curtis,
If you purchased the X-Surf 100 (http://www.amigakit.us/product_info.php?products_id=1156) from us, check the EasyNet CD, there will be AWeb Browser on there. Hope this helps!
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I really hope that some one could port Netsurf to 68k Amigas, Chris has done lots of to keep that possible, with his OS4 port.
Netsurf is only realistic "semi modern" web browser for real 68k Amigas.
Current version is based to frambuffer frontend, wich is meant to be debugging and no gui systems.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56813&page=3
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I have used netsurf a lot on 68k
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For 68K Amigas, IBrowse is still the best of the bunch although very outdated and limited to 30 minutes use as they are no longer accepting registrations for it.
Yes, iBrowse is still the best... I use it on two different machines everyday! Takes some tweaking of cache settings for best results. Install AmiSSL too.
... limited to 30 minutes
Not true... Google is your friend! :)
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Ibrowse website is still alive and kicking, downloads still working fine too :-)
http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/
Probably the best browser for your setup, possible Aweb. OWB works, okay on a 060, netsurf gives you the best looking webpages but is slow even on a 060.
Yes, the Ibrowse website is up, but downloads for FULL version and purchase of 2.4 are not.
Curtis
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The "demo" and "full" versions of IBrowse are the same download. A keyfile unlocks full functionality.
It's a real shame they still haven't resolved the purchase problem. Sometimes there's news on the IBrowse mailing list...
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AWeb, if I recall, comes with OS3.9, but it's an older version, and I think one of the official boing bags had an update for it (official boing bags meaning 1&2).
There is a rather broken version of OWB for m68k I've tried at one point, and it was horribly unstable. Netsurf really is the best 'modern' browser for the Amiga 68k. I've noticed that it seems a lot slower than it is, because it waits to show anything before it's rendered. The trick most browsers do to make them seem faster is to start showing things as they're loaded, but netsurf doesn't do that, it waits the 5-15 seconds (for me) to then show the page is loaded, but it loads the whole thing.
It actually is fairly fast, though I'm running it on a 060/50, with tons of ram (well, in Amiga terms, I have 380mb~ of fast ram.)
For most day to day use though, I use IBrowse, 'cause it actually works while doing other things.
slaapliedje
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What I love about iBrowse it that it doesn't seem to use (almost) any chip ram to display pages. The more fast ram the better! You can load 20 web pages into tabs and AmigaOS could care less! Each page, in it's own tab, seems to be nothing more than a page cached in fast ram. None of this slows down the AmigaOS. And it seems to me that not any one "heavy" web page slows down any other web page when switching between tabs. Load up 20 tabs of pages on Internet Exploder and you're at a crawl - even on Win7! The only thing I've noticed is that if you have a bunch of tabbed pages open and you "Iconify" or minimize iBrowse, it will take a long time to re-render it all when you un-iconify - and sometimes make the system unresponsive. Other than that, you can't kill the system with webpages! It's actually quite interesting to watch the way iBrowse works - it just doesn't use up any ram hardly at all - and what fast ram it uses is only about 200/300 K per site - amazing.
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I could be wrong about this, but doesn't IBrowse also basically do what Chrome was so praised for, in that each tab basically runs under it's own process? It certainly feels that way, especially, as you say, that one heavy website doesn't cause the rest of it to slow down.
I wouldn't know about IE, I only ever use it to download Firefox :D
slaapliedje
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Not sure if each tab is a separate process but it sure seems that way as one tabbed page won't kill another.
And who thought up that "multi-connection" process? Brilliant! With today's internet speeds and fast bus hardware you can crank up the connections as high as you want! Some websites respond great to multiple packet requests and will simply flood each connection with data! It's cool to watch! If modern browsers used that scheme I think the ISP police might knock at your door... hahahaha.
I LOVE Firefox on my Mac Mini I know that!
I just use IE on Win7 cause, well, it's there... and it's just a tool. No entertainment happens at work ya know!
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Yes, the Ibrowse website is up, but downloads for FULL version and purchase of 2.4 are not.
Curtis
It is the full version that you can download, just limited to 30 minutes. When you buy the key you can then use it for aslong as you like.
Other than the time limit there is no other limitation.
As for purchasing the key, it's very easy to find a key in a matter of a minute or two.
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I could be wrong about this, but doesn't IBrowse also basically do what Chrome was so praised for, in that each tab basically runs under it's own process?
Sure does, it doesn't even call it a tab. When you right click and select the open new browser it opens up a "tab".
It has some advanced features like java and even flash. With AmiSSL even secure browsing.
NetSurfAGA/RTG is better at rendering modern sites but still prefer Ibrowse speed wise anyway.
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So here's the question... does anyone know if IBrowse has a separate library for it's rendering engine? And if so, could we try to reverse engineer it and then update it to support newer HTML standards? Or would it be easier to just start writing a new browser from scratch?
I know AWEB is open sourced, but from reading up on that, the code is such a frightful mess, that most of the people who have looked at it gave up on trying to improve it.
Realistically, I think having an MUI based one would be the best approach, and that's exactly what IBrowse is. But since development has ceased on it so long ago, and you can no longer legitimately buy the key, it'd be nice if they just opened the source on that (though I think it's been tried before).
slaapliedje
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IBrowse 2.5 there is already ready, but as you can see since then nothing has changed http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2009-11-00041-EN.html "sick people"
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Always about money. So tired of Amiga "developers" beating a dead horse and picking the bones of a rotted carcass. Pathetic...
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This might be the way to browse internet on 68k Amiga:
http://pici.picidae.net/
It makes image map from any web page using webkit engine with clickable (!) urls.
http://i.imgur.com/CgIqlm4.png
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Artur
NetSurf 68k port author
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The idea of trying to use an entirely image-map-based website on an Amiga should inspire even more of a hysteric screaming fit than the idea of trying to use one on a modern computer. Evil! Eeeevil!!!
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Ha ha, I saw the article about that (or maybe just something similar) on OSNews. Only thought I had about it was "great, isn't this like the Dash on Ubuntu where you would search for local things and it would send your searches to Ubuntu's servers to then send onto amazon?
Guess it'd work okay for just stupid sites you're browsing, but I wouldn't use any that you log into.
slaapliedje
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http://www.osnews.com/story/27632/Surfing_the_modern_web_with_ancient_browsers
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I actually really liked voyager. So much so i paid for a key file. Was easily the best browser on classic but as others said buggy and crash prone. I wonder where my keyfile is lol. Didn't it have ppc libs for it , memory going
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http://www.osnews.com/story/27632/Surfing_the_modern_web_with_ancient_browsers
now that is interesting
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That is very nice..
Hope it gets ported to Linux (GTK) soon-ish.. ;-)
Can't wait to test it, but no OSX here..
desiv
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Netsurf really is the best 'modern' browser for the Amiga 68k. I've noticed that it seems a lot slower than it is, because it waits to show anything before it's rendered. The trick most browsers do to make them seem faster is to start showing things as they're loaded, but netsurf doesn't do that, it waits the 5-15 seconds (for me) to then show the page is loaded, but it loads the whole thing.
Could be a couple of reasons:
a) The Framebuffer frontend sucks
b) NetSurf doesn't have a dynamic layout engine (yet), so if you load a page with images that don't have their sizes specified in the HTML, you might find it waits to do layouting until it knows the sizes of everything.
On the OS4 frontend it definitely can display pages before all the images are loaded. I wouldn't expect the Framebuffer frontend to be any different in this regard, so it's probably (b).
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A long time ago I always favoured Voyager. It felt robust and fast, although at the same time it was prone to bugs!
IBrowse has always been a fully featured browser, as has AWeb. It's always been good to have a choice.
As mentioned above, Netsurf is really worth trying out too if you want to view more modern websites.
See what you like :D
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It is sad that there is no prober version of netsurf for 68k AMigans :( Chris has made a quite lot work to keep 68k version possible.
Framebuffer is meant to be used for debuggin and no gui systems. Another point is SDL used with current 68k version of Netsurf.
What Netsurf team thinks about it is quite obivous, they don't accept it to here : http://www.netsurf-browser.org/downloads/
About speed : > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUrkzRAc5zs
It does display imges when loading and it is fast with Atari Falcon
Another possible semi modern web browser would be highwire
http://highwire.atari-users.net/index.php?section=snap&entry=1
http://sourceforge.net/projects/highwire/