Why porting Mozilla to Amiga??

[Waccoon]

Also note that each version of Mozilla performs differently.  I used v1.0, v1.1, and v1.2, and they were all horrible.  I recently tried v1.4b, and it is MUCH better than it used to be.  The Mozilla team especially cleaned up the menu rendering code, so I no longer have to hold down the mouse button to open a menu.  I can actually click, now.  

Now that I'm using the significantly faster version, I've grown quite attached to it.  I still think there's too much fluff in there (CSS really sucks, and is truly a plague upon the world).

Loading speed is a big problem, but I'm sure the total codebase for Mozilla is significantly less than IE.

When people talk about porting "Mozilla" to the AmigaOne, are they talking about the whole browser or just the rendering engine?  As a browser, Mozilla's interface is a real mess, which is why I've created HTML link pages for my favorite sites, instead of using bookmarks.  Again, too much fluff.

Off topic:  I think browsers should implement vector rendered skins.  All the skins I've seen for Mozilla are too damn small, even at 1280x1024!  In fact, I'm very disappointed that Flash is the only real vector technology widely used on the Web these days.  Flash rules.   :-D

[Waccoon]

why not there is ethernet and a web browser for a c64 and i have seen 3.5 ide hard drive and adaptor on a sinclair spectrum +3 not sure why though

Ah, but that's not the original hardware, is it?

"Sure, you can run this software, but you'll have to buy a $200 IDE adapter!  Or, just buy yourself a PC mobo and CPU with integrated IDE for the same price!"

Hum, 68K port of anything = *SNICKER*

All in all - developing a web browser must be the ####tiest programming job around, trying to follow the "standards" of webduhsigners and IE/Moz, and at the same time satisfy the websmurfs.

Indeed.  The problem I have when designing web pages is that IE does some funky stuff with layout, like adding that shouldn't be there, especially when using FORMS within TABLES.  It's really annoying.

Mozilla has problems, too.  Try defining a button style with a border of 1 pixel, and Mozilla will make buttons with 2 pixel borders.  In this case, IE does it properly, and Mozilla doesn't.  There's a lot of text handling that Mozilla does horribly, actually.

I wish browsers were designed like page layout software and not word processors.  HTML was originally designed only to layout text, and is a horrible, horrible graphics layout format.  It's much like Windows.  It just kind of evolved to fit the role.  It was never designed for page design.  People use it only because it is a standard.  A really bad standard is better than nothing.

Writing a browser from scratch is no easy feat, and that's a combination of horrible computer science and serious design flaws in HTML.  Macros are much more important than CSS support, for crying out loud, but browsers don't support that in raw HTML, now do they?  It sickens me to see my Perl scripts throw up 75K of HTML because of all the repetition.  That consumes a LOT of bandwidth, and there's no way for me to cut down on the size without clipping out all my FONT and COLOR tags, which makes my BBS layout practically unusable.

I haven't worked with XML, yet, but first impressions tell me it is just a modernized clone of HTML.  More capable, but still, with the shorcomings of HTML.  Plus, you need a browser with a codebase of, like, 10 megs just to show a stupid webpage.  It's insane how badly this technology is running amok.

Blah blah blah...

Then why not spend the money on development of native Amiga browsers? Call me a purist but, in my view, porting Moz/Firebird/whatever taints the Amiga platform.

Well, we can spend gobs of cash trying to keep up with ever-changing and inconsistent PC standards (and failing miserably), or we can actually use their code and modify it to our needs.  The whole point to having a central CVS is to ensure that all the ports can get updates and bug fixes frequently.  Write a new, native browser from scratch, and you'll end up with another AWeb or IBrowse.  Besides, Amizilla doens't have to be an exact clone of the PC version.

Of course, hardly anyone can agree with what makes the Amiga an "Amiga", so making Mozilla more "Amigish" will certainly start a war.   If you want to deal with that, feel free to make your new, special Amiga browser.  :-D