AOS 4.0: Download Free Alpha Version of Origyn Web Browser

[Trev]

@amiga_3k

The person nagging probably couldn't get it to compile on his own. All that comment really says is that WebKit is portable code, which isn't a bad thing. In theory, Firefox is portable, too, but it looks like writing the system glue for WebKit is a much simpler task.

[Trev]

Well, sure, but then it couldn't do things like allocate memory, spawn threads, access the network, or draw images on the display--in other words, a pretty useless web browser (but perhaps still better than the Amiga's current choices). ;-)

The current WebKit source, including all tests, is over 200,000 files. I haven't looked at the OWB source, though, so I don't know how much of it was used.

Anyhow, if was as simple as running make, someone would have done it years ago.

Perhaps the maintainer of OWB and the dude working on "Traveller" will put their heads together and come up with something that compiles and runs on all Amiga-like operating systems. It's doubtful, but you never know. The lack of a universal GUI toolkit makes it less than enticing, I'm sure.

EDIT: And in case you didn't catch that, the "glue" is the bit that connects the portable code to the system-specific code. A library like ixemul is a good example, but really anything that translates a generic call like "create_thread" into something like AddTask or CreateProc qualifies as glue. In general, it's a term used to describe any component or logic that connects two or more disparate components.

[Trev]

Oh, I agree with you there, but there's nothing wrong with a proof of concept. I think the author was pretty clear about the pre-release nature of the project. Still, there isn't exactly a standard for look and feel in the Amiga world. Most professional applications just pop up on their own screen and do their own thing. One could point out the various style guides published by Commodore/Amiga/whomever, but there are very few Amiga users that don't try to modernize their operating environment by making it look more like Windows, CDE/KDE, Mac OS X, or some other environment.

With regard to hobbyist projects like this, there's really no return apart from the joy of the project itself and the encouragement of one's peers. Negative reinforcement only discourages hobbyists from continuing their efforts. (For example, Poseidon, while a commercial product, probably wasn't paying Chris' bills. It only took one naysayer re: TLSFMem to ruin it for everyone else.)