Why porting Mozilla to Amiga??

[Rodney]

I have at home a sub-notebook - a Pentium 300Mhz with 96 MB RAM, with 6GB hard drive. (It's not a powerful machine but should be enough to browse the web, don't you agree?), and unfortunately Mozilla Firebird (the "lite" version of Mozilla) running on Windows 98 (without anything else running, all tasks are killed) is DOG slow. I tried at the same machine using Redhat 7.2 + WindowMaker + Mozilla firebird - same result, although a bit faster, but still very slow.

Wow, i used a P2 233 desktop computer with 4gig hardrive, and that was more then enough for pheonix .5. I've had no problems with the mozilla apps (execept back in the day when mozilla was still operating under the milstone [M1,M2...M17 etc] release names)

And as you state, porting Qt will get us a lot fo apps, so will Mozilla. And, some of those apps will be portable across platforms. That is, you dont need to compile a lot of mozilla apps. Ie a lot of them use XUL Javascript and other web based technologies, which are interpretured.

This is a great foundation for XML webservices too. KDE doesnt give you this in my opion, where as Mozilla does, and it also gives you a great foundation for binary applications.

When you port mozilla, you'll be able to port firebird a lot easier and thunderbird a lot easier and a lot of other apps.

If you want to know what the mozilla community is creating take a look at http://www.mozdev.org/ . Thats no the only place that hosts mozilla website either...

QT is a good idae, but i'd stick with mozilla,. Im taking a guess but i'd think i'd have far more support,  commerical and volunteer. Its just better in my opinion. Has a greater user base then KTHTML etc...

[Rodney]

As for Mozilla is fast as Explorer - I'm sorry, but I have 4 machines here near me - 3 of them are Pentium II 300 and one of them is Pentium 233Mhz - all of them equipped with 64-96MB RAM, and Mozilla is WAY slower then Explorer - I could give you lots of examples. FUD again..!

Yes but thats prolly loading time... Sure, its goign to be a lot slower than IE isnt it. Because all the libraries that IE users are already loaded when explorer (desktop) is loaded. Yes, thats right...

The difference? Mozilla is a platform, so it has to load the libraries and what ever else, the individual application (firebird) will use.

Example, the buttons, textboxes, comboboxes fonts and whatever else IE uses are already in memory before IE is even executed.

Whereas, mozilla has its own code to do that... Thats why it takes so long. But i dont think its that bad. Once mozilla is up and running, its a gem to use. i love it. I use windows at home, and i dotn use anything else but firebird. I recently having discovered the power of mozilla (XUL and javascript libraries) i think i may very well develop apps for teh mozilla  platform in the future.

[Rodney]

t's not going to alter the balance of the universe having Mozilla ported to the Amiga, nor is it going to upset anything else, so what the heck are you complaining about?

I dont think he's complaining, just telling his story, and letting people know how he feels...

[Rodney]

@ bhoggett

Could you be more precise when you say its slow? Are you refering to load time, render time, UI slowness?

Loading time is deffinatly an issue, but one that your not prolly not ever going to solve, as for the reason i have previously suggested.

I dont know any render slowness or UI slowness (appart from the earlier version of mozilla). Once Firebird is up and running, i think its great. I used pheonix on a P2 233 and i took maybe 20-30 seconds to load, but i love it so much that its worth a 20-30 second wait.

The only browsers your gunna get that load fast on an Amiga are those that use the intuition libraries and other amiga libraries needed to make a browser.

Opera will use its own libraries, but it will load fast because being the fastest browser is its main aim. That is, standards compliance is a second goal compared to speed.

Mozilla may be slow, but its Open Source, which means its going to be around for a long long time. Also, its only slow whilst loading the program, there after, i dont think it could be better.

And if you didnt want anything but a browser, just give the money to AWEB, but i dont believe giving them the money will get their product out the door any faster, so theres no advantage.

Basicaly, mozilla is a good choice, for those reasons, and for the other reason is your getting more than a browser, and i think that is really important.

Although if you had to do it without the extra mozilla stuff then you'd have to rip out gecko and use the Amiga libraries to interface with Gecko. That way, you get your standards compliant browser, but with the speed you want. Im my opinion, if your not going to go the whole mozzila hog, then thats your other best option!!!!