Internet web browser....

[Jiffy]

Malakie wrote:
Is there an internet web browser for Amiga that is up to date and works in most environments and most websites?

Not a chance. All Amiga web browsers are severely lacking in features and are, in combination with a classic Amiga, a sure way to utter frustration. You can access some older websites, but anything more up to date (like: using CSS) is completely unusable.

The web is useless, even on the most expanded of Amigas. I prefer an extended visit to a dentist... FTP, mail, chat, and Usenet work pretty ok on the Miggy, though.

Browsing on the Amiga is nice to have done just to be able to say it can be done. Once. Not more.

[Jiffy]

xeron wrote:

Jiffy wrote:
The web is useless, even on the most expanded of Amigas.

Thats not entirely true. I quite happily use IBrowse to visit amiga.org, amigaworld.net, amigans.net, pouet.net, groups.yahoo.com, a couple of bugzilla databases, news.bbc.co.uk, etc. etc.

Sorry, but surfing the web with an Amiga is complete torture. I have a Pentium 133(!) with 64 MB, running Windows NT4 and IE6. This combination is lightyears ahead of any Amiga when it comes to surfing the web. And I don't even _like_ IE6!

The Amiga can do many things very well, but surfing the web isn't one of them. Even if the few Amiga browsers we have are able to display a site more or less correctly, it remains hideously slow (on highly expanded classic Amigas, that is).

Ofcourse, I do surf the web with my Amiga every now and then, but more out of nostalgia than for anything else. :-)

[Jiffy]

xeron wrote:

I'm not saying its as good as it is on the PC, but to say its totally useless, or torture, isn't necessarily true.

BTW, what system were you trying to browse the web on? 020/AGA?

I have an A1200 with Blizzard 1260, 64 MB fastram and an 18 GB SCSI harddrive, an A2000 with a Blizzard 2040/40, 64 MB fastram, 9 GB SCSI harddrive and a Cybervision 64/3D, and finally an A3000 with A3640/33, 16 MB fastram, 18 GB SCSI harddrive and a Cybervision 64. All of them have a range of extra (but in this case not relevant) hardware. The big boxes use a XSurf card, the A1200 uses a 3Com PCMCIA-card.

Not entirely the fastest Amigas you can find, but no slouches either and most likely better equiped than the average classic Amiga here on Amiga.org...

If I compare one of my (much beloved) Miggies to even a very old pc (the P133 I mentioned, is still in use every now and then) running something ancient like Win 95 or NT4, I hate to admit the pc gives a far better webbrowsing experience.

As my A1200, 2000 and 3000 in their current configuration are at least comparable to something like a late 486 or an early (<100 MHz) Pentium preformancewise, with a much lighter OS requiring less resources, I would expect nothing less than being able to surf the web in a way more or less comparable to an old pc running an old Windows version. And that's not possible. Not even close. Both IBrowse and Aweb are absolutely nót on par with even an old and not to great browser like, say, IE 5, 5.5 or 6.

Pages load extremely slow and very often do not display anywhere near correctly. I don't expect any of my (classic!) Amigas to be able to display Youtube-movies or any of that stuff, I just want them to be able to display ordinary (CSS-)sites in an acceptable way.

That's not to say I don't appreciate the effort of the programmers of both AWeb and IBrowse! I find it highly admirable people are still working to improve those programs and I sincerely hope they will be able to come up with a version of their respective programs which both support more up-to-date webstandards and will be able to display the average website in an acceptable amount of time on any of mu nicely upgraded classic Amigas.

Sorry, but I can't agree with you on the quality of browsing the web on the Amiga. Imo, it's absolute torture. Unfortunately, it is (again imo) the one area the Amiga is severely lacking. Games, video, music, dtp, databases, wordprocessing, programming, mail, chat, ftp: it all works great. But browsing the web? Nah...

[Jiffy]

pVC wrote:
At home I only use IBrowse for browsing. Mainly on Pegasos (==real fast amiga) and sometimes on A1200, 060/60, Voodoo3, 128M, 10/100 etc.

Both of which are not quite easily obtainable. The Pegasos can't be compared to any classic Amiga performancewise, it's in a different league and alleviates much of the performancetroubles the classic Amigas have. It would certainly give you the power to not suffer the horrendous slowness of loading webpages on a classic Amiga, albeit expanded.

All sites I use daily work ok.. Amiga sites, tv guides, online tabloids, scene pages, bank accounts, torrent sites, etc. Of course there's lots of pages which don't show up correctly, but even then most are usable. Some sites need enabling or disabling javascript or other plugins, but they can be configured per site for permanent use.

Most sites I use do not work ok. They might load eventually (more or less), but as they quite often do not show up correctly, it gets near unusable. And I find configuring my browser per site(!!) totally unacceptable.

But the thing I love surfing with IBrowse is the speed and usability of it. I just can't do things as fast on PC browsers. And you can't see the speed if you have only Zorro2 gfx card.. not to talk about AGA.

Come on... The speed and usability? You can't do things as fast on PC browsers? A graphics card does indeed improve performance compared to just AGA, but comparing out of date software, severely lacking in standard(!) features such as CSS which many sites use, running on out of date hardware to modern and highly configurable browsers (Firefox 2/3, Opera 9.something or IE7 running on modern hardware is not realistic. It is not acceptable for me to have to wait, say, 30 to 60 seconds to check if a webpage loads to an acceptable/usable level or not at all. If it's not on my screen in about 5 seconds: tough luck, other site. "Ooooh! This site isn't displaying correctly! I should reconfigure my browser to be able to see it!"

I can understand there are certain niche-programs for the Amiga which are bot well designed and well programmed and do not have a real equivalent on a modern pc, but browsing the web on the Amiga can nót be compared to browsing the web on any pc.

Again, if I run IE6(!) on an old P1/133 with NT4, I can use almost any website without problems, with decent speed and without the need to reconfigure my browser per site. Adding something to display or hear some kind of multimediastream, ok, but that's about as far as I will go for a certain website.

And one BIG advantage is that you can surf safely with Amiga, no need to think about spyware and trojans with every click. Just go wildly

True, true... ;-)
Although I have to say, I don't really get annoyed about viruses and spyware with my Ubuntu 8.04 box...

All in all, browsing the web on a classic Amiga (no, the Pegasos is nót a classic Amiga) is torture. Graphics cards do improve on the severe lack of speed a lot, compared to AGA, but it still remains slow and cumbersome. Many pages do not display correctly, if at all.

I understand I do not have the fastest Amigas around, but come on: an A1200 with AGA, 68060/50 and 64 MB fastram, an A2000 with 68040/40, 64 MB fastram and CV64/3D and an A3000 with 68040/33, 16 MB fastram and CV64 should be able to run a decent browser and display the average webpage in a decent quality at a decent speed. I don't ask for perfection, but I need a certain level of usability. Which browsing on classic Amigas unfortunately can't deliver. If IE6 would run on OS3.x, I would be pleased. If it would run on any of my Amigas at a speed comparable to the average 486 running Win9x or NT4, I would be happy.  

I'm eagerly awaiting new versions of IBrowse and AWeb, in the hope it gets better. Until now, new versions of both have indeed been improvements, so all is not lost. :-)

Small addition: I expect the problem with browsing the web on the Amiga is 'just' software. The OS is great, hardware ditto and the combination should have more than enough power to browse the web. Which leaves the browsers...

If you can browse the web on a C64/128 (which I have), it should be heaven to do so on an extremely more powerfull Amiga. Or am I wrong?

[Jiffy]

pVC wrote:

You have to remember than no 68k Amiga is nowhere as powerful as P1/133 is. Overclocked 060 might come close, but even 040 is far from it.

I know a P1/133 is more powerful compared to a 68k Amiga, but the P1 I mentioned is also running a múch heavier OS (NT4) combined with a múch larger browser (IE6) than any of my Miggies, leveling the playing field a little.

I would be delighted when an Amiga browser would exist with the capabilities IE6 has, which would run on any of my Amiga's as fast as it would do on a comparable 486.

I just booted an ancient 486DX2/66 with 32 MB and just ISA-cards inside, running Win95 and IE5.5, which has been sitting in a corner for years now. Not exactly a recent setup (IE5.5 has been around since about 2000), to say the least. It's not the greatest for browsing the web and stíll it is much better than any of my classic Amigas, both speedwise and in displaying pages correctly. I find that disturbing, to say the least... ;-)

In my opinion, you overestimate your Amiga setups little in web surfing case.
<>
Edit: Oops, you had gfxcard in a3k too. I guess it's 040 and memory then.

Nah, I don't think I really overestimate my Amiga setups. I know their limitations when it comes to AGA or ZII bandwidth. I think I'm not to far off, if I compare them to a similarly configured 486 with Win95, just equiped with ISA-cards. Many things work great with my Amigas and I like it when I can put them to good use, even when I have much more powerful and up to date computers sitting in the same room. And my Amigas are still very acceptable when it comes to e-mail, FTP, Usenet, irc and stuff.

Well.. I guess C64 browsing skips pretty much stuff and it can't be ever visually acceptable,

True. But you can browse the web using a 1 MHz 8 bit computer with 64 KB ram. It's lousy, slow, doesn't support a lot and it is indeed only acceptable from a viewpoint of nostalgia and the huge 'look at this!'-factor, but it cán be done. And if it is (more or less) possible on a C64 (or an MSX, for that matter), it should be (more or less) usable on a reasonably expanded classic (68k) Amiga.

but if you want Amiga to support everything in modern web.. it might not be enough. It's balance with speed and supported things. But of course we hope that we'd get more modern options. CSS has seem to become the most important feature missing, but would require writing current engines from scratch

I don't expect it to support everything in the modern web, but I would expect a decent 68k Amiga (68040 and up, with RTG-card and, say, 32 MB or more) to perform about on par with a 486 or even an early P1 (<100 MHz). Unfortunately, the 486 with ISA-graphics wins hands down... :-(

CSS-support would be a fantastic improvement, though.

And yes, if there is ever a new update to either AWeb or IBrowse, I will install them happily. :-)

[Jiffy]

Malakie wrote:
From a technical standpoint, the Amiga and its networking capabilities are easily up to par for Internet browsing.  The problem has nothing to do with the Amiga hardware itself.  In fact an A500 or A1000 (with appropriate ram and networking additions could handle net traffic with ease.

The problem does come down solely to software.  And not just someone writing a browser.  It comes down to someone writing a browser for the Amiga!  There is a big difference in an app written using PC standards and Amiga standards.  You code a browser based and actually USING Amiga hardware (custom chips etc) as it was intended and designed and you can blow away any PC browsing experience.

I agree completely. The hardware of Amiga in general is more than capable to run decent software for displaying graphics and texts simultaneously. Heck, that's what the whole bloody machine was famous for! Especially the more expanded Amigas (I am again referring to my own Miggies) can be easily compared to perform like a fast 486 or an early P1.

Unfortunately, the Amiga world now only exists in the form of a few thousand hobbyists, which is not exactly in the same league as the tens of millions of pc-users. Although I expect (just a guess, but I don't expect to be very wrong on this one) the percentage of Amiga users who are capable programmers is far higher compared to the pc market, it is a matter of sheer size: there are not many Amiga programmers left, let alone ones who are capable of programming a capable browser. The current ones who are more or less usable (AWeb & IBrowse) lack important features, features which are so much important as to almost disqualify both programs as realistic alternatives to other (Windows/Linux/OSX) browsers.

I sincerely hope the remaining programmers working on the current versions of both Amiga browsers will be able to produce a decent upgrade for their programs. An upgrade which will be both usable on nicely upgraded classic Amigas when it comes to speed and be able to display the average website correctly.

And to be honest, although I realize the limitations of AGA (I really love my 1200) I fail to see why it would completely cripple any browsing experience. AGA is, although old, a very capable chipset which can display graphics nice and fast. You can use all kinds of graphics software with it and to this day be amazed at the quality and speed of it and then people are trying to tell me it's almost impossible to display a lousy webpage with some teenie-weenie pictures splattered across without grinding a pretty hefty 1200 to a halt because of AGA?

Again, if it is possible to (more or less) display a frakking webpage on a 1 MHz 8 bit computer with 64 KB ram, I expect the same page to be displayed immensely superior in terms of quality, speed and usability on a 50 MHz, 32 bit computer with 64 MB ram and tons of extra hardware. And although that webpage is indeed displayed in a better quality, the difference is not as big as I would expect it to be when comparing the hardware. The same webpage is displayed múch faster, in higher quality and with many, many more features with much less errors while viewing it on a lousy 486 running a piece of crap like IE6! I frakking hate that 486 just for being able to display a bloody website correctly and with an acceptable speed which my A1200/2000/3000 can't! ;-)

[Jiffy]

wurzel wrote:
I think you're nmissing something very fundamental. The CPU has to decode the graphics first, before they can be displayed. Jpgs especially, take a lOT of processor time and that's where the slowdown is. It's nothing to do with the actual displaying, it's the preparing of the data to display. And even thougb I have an 060 with 196mb RAM, displaying jpgs using WarpDT is still considerably slower than on a PC.

I don't think I'm missing anything fundamental. Again, I am NOT comparing any of my Amigas to any recent pc, I am comparing it to both a P1/133 ánd a 486DX2/66, also in my possesion. I have had that particular 486 since 1993. The 486 is equiped with an ISA-videocard, an ISA-networkcard, 32 MB ram, two 540 MB PIO-0 hard drives and is running Win95 with IE5.5. Hardwarewise, my Amigas are superior to this particular 486 in almost any respect. OS3.9 runs circles (speedwise) around Win95. The 486 is definitely slower than the P1/133 with NT4, but still displays almost any webpage at a more or less decent speed and in an acceptable quality. My Amigas (1200, 2000, 3000) trump this particular 486 with almost any software I use on them, whether it be games, graphics, DTP, wordprocessing, spreadsheets, utilities and the like. The sole part in which they are _completely_ inferior is when it comes to webbrowsing.

Please notice, I am nót comparing my own Amigas to a dualcore AMD cpu running at 3.2 GHZ with 2 GB ram. I am comparing them to a 15 year old 486, equiped with an OS which arrived on the market in 1995, running a browser from the year 2000. I don't think that comparison is unfair. My Amigas have more memory, faster harddrives, equally fast or faster cpus and have an OS requiring less resources than the 486.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the JPGs you mentioned, which, ofcourse, have to be decoded by the cpu first before being displayed, also have to be decoded by the 486 before they can be displayed. Is a 486DX2/66 thát much faster than a 68060/50 when it comes to decoding JPGs?

Having said that, as I said earlier on, my Amiga is easily as fast as my 1.5mhz laptop, on non-graphics pages, if not faster.

I would certainly hope your Amiga (whether it is expanded to the brim or plain vanilla) is at least equally as fast, if not faster, than your 1.5 MHz laptop. What is it? An overclocked SX64? :-D

All in all, I come to the conclusion that you find the webbrowsers on a classic Amiga to be of an acceptable quality, both speedwise and in displaying pages correctly, while I do not.

The speed is, imo, extremely lousy and many pages will not display correctly, if at all. The current browsers lack speed and features and unfortunately can't even be compared to a 15(!) year old pc.

I can put any person behind that old 486, start IE5.5 and they're able to browse the web, every once in a while muttering that is much slower than their own pc at home but still getting things done. If I put them behind my A1200, 2000 or 3000 and boot either AWeb or IBrowse, they will not mutter anymore, they simply will stop trying after a few minutes as the lack of speed makes it unworkable, while many websites they visit are only functioning partially, if at all.

I am not including non-classic Amigas such as the Pegasos, as I do not have any experience with them, although I fully accept they are immensely superior (speedwise) compared to a classic Amiga, which will ofcourse improve the usability of browsers on the Amiga, although the lack of features of both IBrowse and AWeb isn't affected by the extra speed Pegasos offers.

The current browsers for the Amiga lack speed and features. The Amigahardware is more than capable to handle the amount of data the average webpage throws at it, the OS is small, speedy and effective, but the current browsers are not up to their task in their current versions.

As I mentioned before in one of my previous posts: I would be extremely happy with a webbrowser with about the same features as IE6 (or even IE5.5 for that matter), running about as fast as IE6 would do on a 486DX2/66.

[Jiffy]

stefcep2 wrote:
Your web browsing experience on your Amiga does depend on your hardware and your web browser.  

Ehrm... Is this serious? We're talking about computers here... Ofcóurse it is depending on your hardware and your web browser! What else would it depend on? The temperature of my cup of coffee?

i used to use ibrowse 2.4 on an A4000 68060 cv64 1024x 768 16 bit screen with a high speed zorro serial port.  I did not have a site i couldn't use that involved getting text, picture and gifs, filling in forms, passwords, even banking .

I find that highly unlikely. No site you couldn't use? There are huge amounts of sites that require the support of CSS to be able to use them. No CSS-support is no functioning website on your screen, period. And a serial port, albeit fast? What year are we talking about? Five, ten years ago? Websites were different then. My Amigas have been connected to my router through either a PCMCIA-nic (3Com509) or a XSurf card for years now, so bandwidth is no issue. Most sites expect you to have a broadband connection and I can't blame them. Websites today are different compared to websites 10 years ago. They are larger and more complex.

I am not asking something extreme. I have several decent Amiga setups, capable of outperforming a comparable 486 and P133 on many tasks with relative ease, except(!) when it comes to webbrowsing. Amiga browsers suck when comparing them to IE6, both when it comes to speed and even more so when it comes to displaying sites without to many errors.

Browsing with an Amiga is not funny: it's always a question if a site I want to visit will function or not. On the 15 year old 486, I do not have that problem... It's not the hardware: the Amigas I have (much) more powerful compared to the 486. Ergo, it's the software holding my Amigas back.

email retrieval and sending is faster on Amiga than on PC.

That might be so, but I wasn't denying that either as it wasn't part of the discussion. Email works fine on the Miggy, although I hardly ever use it. I like YAM, but as it doesn't support IMAP-folders, I hardly ever use it. I'm eagerly awaiting the 2.6 release... Still Q4, 2008?

i think i would happy if amiga had css support, but i couldn't give a stuff about flash or real player video's, just a waste of bandwidth and a colossal waste of technology

Same here. CSS is vital. Any browser nót supporting CSS is completely out of date as there are literally millions of websites requiring it. Any type of videosupport or animation (flash, real player, whatever) is not required by me, although I have to say it should be included nonetheless, with the option of switching it off: switch it off when you have a classic Amiga and want to be able to have decent speed, switch it on when you use something like Pegasos, A1 or the like which are fast enough to not stumble and fall over the extra data which has to be transfered.

Still, I fail to see why AWeb and IBrowse would be as slow as they are compared to a 486. People have mentioned that it's the lack of RTG (forgetting I have RTG-cards in two of the mentioned machines) or it's the ZorroII bus (forgetting I compared it to a lousy 486 with ISA ánd my A3000 runs a CV64, which only operates in ZorroIII-mode), the lack of memory (the A1200 and 2000 have twice as much ram compared to the 486) or a slow cpu (a 68060/50 is slower than a 486DX2/66? Really?).

The Amigas I have (and use, as a hobbyist) have some pretty hefty expansions and are more than a match compared to a bloody ISA-based 486DX2/66 with 32 MB ram and two crappy PIO-0 drives. When standing side-by-side, the 486 tramples any of my Amigas when browsing the web. It is faster and displays more pages correctly. And therefor I hate its bl..dy guts! ;-)

[Jiffy]

Framiga wrote:
"No CSS-support is no functioning website on your screen"
wrong! bad displayed (of course) but perfectly useable.

Wrong. Without CSS-suppport, it is certainly badly displayed and _may_ be usable in certain areas sometimes, depending on how heavily deformed the layout is without a functioning CSS-system. But there's a very good chance you're missing areas of that particular website. This can be because the lay-out is so badly f*cked up, you just overlook certain areas, but it can also be because certain parts aren't displayed at all.
 

Did you meant Flash/java based pages perhaps?

No. If that was the case, I would have called it flash or java...

I find it a little peculiar people are relentlesly trying to convince me either I have a lousy Amiga setup or my demands concerning webbrowsers are to high as they work perfectly fine for them.

Sorry, but I stand by my claim: the current browsers which run on on a decently expanded 68k Amiga  (AWeb & IBrowse) are not able to perform equal to a humble 15-year old 486 based pc when it comes to speed and the ability to display the average webpage. Classic Amigas are lousy for browsing the web.

There are literally millions of sites using CMSs for maintaining their content (even I use one), the majority of them using CSS for their layout. They are ranging from small personal websites to larger corporate ones. Amigabrowsers do not support that (and other, imo less important stuff) and therefor  can not display those pages in a usable fashion. A completely {bleep}ed up layout is not usable. I immediately admit the level of usability relies on how much the layout is {bleep}ed up. Some sites might be usable to a certain extent, others are not usable at all.

Again, as I have now said many times over: I do not expect perfection, I do not expect blistering speed and I do not compare my Amigas with current computers. I want the average website to be displayed in about the same way with about the same speed as a 486 does while running IE5.5/IE6. My Amigas are at least equal in hardwareperformance to my 486/P133 and even surpass them on many levels. OS3.x is much more responsive and needs much less resources compared to Win95/NT4. And still, both the 486 and the P133 trample my Amigas when it comes to browsing the web. Yes, certain pages display correctly on the Amiga, but many others do not.

The Amiga hardware I have and use is good, both in design and in speed. So is the OS. It outperforms equally old pcs with ease and sometimes even much newer machines with many things. But not while browsing the web.

My conclusion: the current Amiga browsers are not up to their tasks. They maybe were good a decade ago, when many current webtechnologies didn't even exist and webpages were much lighter, but in 2008 they severely lack in performance and features and can't even be compared to a (not to good) Windowsbrowser which has been in existence for about 8 years now...