Browser situation update?

[bhoggett]

Hi folks, please do not treat this as flame-bait or use it to start flame wars - it's a genuine request for an update.

I've been away from the Amiga scene for some time now, but I'm involved in the development of an on-line browser based strategy game. This makes considerable use of CSS and some Javascript so I was wondering if there have been any significant advances in Amiga browsers over the past few months. The last time I checked none of them could handle the job.  :-(

[bhoggett]

So no advances made yet, I take it.

[bhoggett]

Hyperspeed wrote:
People who program games for Sky-TV set top boxes, mobile phones and web pages need to be rounded up and tortured.

:-)

Can't comment on the first two - though IMO people who program for them are just doing it for a quick buck rather than any other reason - but in this case it's just a question of horses for courses. It's a server based, turn based multiplayer strategy game and it's free, so a browser based interface makes sense (it reaches multiple platforms, and you don't need to install a client to play it - so you can play it from an Internet Cafe or even from work :-o. It also means that the developer can make sure the users always have the latest client without having to program multiple  applications for different platforms). The only real alternative would be a rich client, probably programmed in Java, but that still needs to be installed on the client machine - or at least Java does.

Compare that with Tales of Tamar, which supplies clients for the various supported platforms, but needs to develop and test all these clients separately with the result being that various users have access to various features depending on what platform and what version client they are running. Not an ideal solution IMHO.

I hereby give the decree for their arrest and subsequent mistreatment. Reward 50,000 magic spells, 2,000 elves and a mystical key.

Unless you throw in half a dozen fire breathing red dragons as well - in advance - they've got no chance.   :lol:

Shame that there hasn't been any progress on the Amiga browser front for years. Yes, I know a certain amount of development is happening, but the rate of progress is painfully slow, so much so that all the new features are still in the "promised" category. It could be 2008 before any of them see the light of day.

[bhoggett]

Ibrowse 2.3 was one of the browsers I tried a year or so ago when I tested the site compatibility, but since it doesn't handle css adequately it made a complete mess of the layout rendering the page unusable. Remember the old NetPositive browser on BeOS? Same problem, same result.

It's not really a question of me giving up - more a question of whether Amiga users are still locked out of the game or not. They are.  :-(

[bhoggett]

Shame updates on progress seem to have stopped since December.  The latest AmiZilla news I've seen isn't particularly encouraging in the short-to-middle term either, and I take it IBrowser 2.4 (never mind v3) remains unreleased.

Things are not improving.  :-(

[bhoggett]

The whole IB 2.4 situation is hard to comprehend. Even amateur or OSS projects set themselves a realistic release schedule. You fix the critical bugs, then as many of the other bugs in order of severity as you have time for, and then you release, even if there are more minor bugs still outstanding. You don't keep delaying ad infinitum unless the software is actually broken. Seems endemic to the Amiga scene, but I still don't understand the logic behind it.

As for sites being just vanilla HTML - well, I suppose some people wish we were still using ASCII based BBS systems on dial-up or browsing using text browsers only. The thing is everything changes and moves on to better things, and I can certainly see a case in a couple of years when people with outdated browsers are just going to find they can't access most sites on the net, be they simple web pages or fully fledged web applications or games.

We're staying well clear of any proprietary technologies like Flash or Java and we don't rely on any special hardware to enhance the display, and yet I still can't say to Amigans "Come and take a look and join us if it's your kind of thing.". Amigans don't even get the choice. That can't be good.

[bhoggett]

Or just plain and simple HTML. You can actually achieve quite a lot without using CSS, and create some really nice looking websites.

That as may be, but I wouldn't dream of trying to get our game working without CSS and Javascript. I had enough trouble getting our interface to work properly with most popular browsers, and I don't think I'd even want to make the attempt without CSS.

The web was quite usable back in the '90s, pages loaded fine with a 33k modem, while if you try surfing with a 56k nowdays it becomes almost impossible. :roll:

True, but that's usually down to unnecessary bandwidth-eating content, fancy animations and streaming, neither of which would apply to us. When our site is slow, it's usually down to our host.

Besides, one of the plans for the future is to re-write our interface into an AJAX one, which should in fact cut down on the amount of data transmitted considerably, thus speeding things up. However, if the browser can't hack CSS and is flaky on Javascript, it will probably barf on an AJAX application too.

[bhoggett]

Legerdemain wrote:
I thought one of the main reasons for coding everything related to layout in CSS was to ensure that the page worked nicely (to browse, not looking perfect layoutwise) even without CSS-support (in this particular case I do not know which site is discussed, so I can't comment on that very issue).

This would be assuming what you are trying to do is possible without CSS, which as things stand it isn't in our case.

I don't think CSS was really meant as a way to ensure sites worked nicely with browsers that don't support it. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you are using CSS (and Javascript/DOM) for your interface, it's probably because you can't do it very well or at all with HTML.

In our case the game interface "works" without CSS in that it displays. Unfortunately without CSS it cannot handle the layout properly, so it becomes unusable. Trying to duplicate everything done with CSS by using just HTML defeats the purpose, even if we could do it that way.

If, as expected, we move to an AJAX interface, that would only exacerbate the problem because AJAX relies on Javascript and CSS to avoid redrawing the page every time information changes. For us this will cut down on a lot of bandwidth usage, which is important for a free project like this.

Hence my moan about the inadequacy of Amiga browsers and the disappointment at the slow rate of progress in all of the browser projects currently mooted. We can (and do) have Windows, Linux and MacOS X users. We could easily be played on a BSD, QNX, BeOS/Zeta or Solaris system, Even on really marginal OSs like SkyOS.

But not on any AmigaOS or derivative.  :-(

[bhoggett]

So, since Sputnik is now in beta - at least for MOS users - is any MOS user testing Sputnik interested in testing our site*? You'll need to register and say hello on the forum, so only serious applicants please. PM for the details if you're interested. I want to know how well, or how badly, our code works with it.

* It's a free on-line browser based wargame based on Beyond's old 8-bit classic Lords of Midnight.