Native 68k Netsurf

[eb15]

Last time I looked for AWeb sources, the published server link I found was no longer available...  If there is open source to any of the old Amiga web browswers besides AMosaic, which I already have through AROS, I would be interesting in playing with it under the AROS build system to see if I can get it to build and run under AROS.  That should help prep for working on lighter NetSurf and/or OWB ports (without MUI or SDL dependencies).

[eb15]

My idea, and I'm not working on this is at the moment, so don't ask...

To get an idea of how fast netsurf or OWB or whatever browser could be on slow machines one could port it so it just writes to a fast-mem buffer without displaying anything, except a "loading... block in window area" and see how that times out, then work on how to transfer the buffer data to Amiga window rastport depending on how it's updated and what screen type it has to render to.  Maybe draw some best match luma levels first then add best match chroma info for some fixed pallette pens, etc. for low color screens such as a 16color workbench, or even open its own 8bit greyscale only screen and use that.  It might not be pretty, but might be usable...  Then go on to investigate profiling the underlying HTML, etc. and layout engines in more depth, options for javascript, plugins, etc.

[eb15]

If you don't like the idea of working on yet another Amiga port of netsurf, there's always other fish in the sea.  Maybe you would be more interested in porting Amaya (the w3.org HTML, CSS, and SVG editor and browser program) to your choice of interface.

[eb15]

My earlier response was due to someone legitimately stating they thought creating yet another GUI for a standard web browser engine would be to themselves a boring job.  (keeping netsurf or owb internals as a closed box unto itself)

I was expecting someone to say Amaya was outdated (and it is).  However Amaya does CSS and SVG web content creation (which could possibly be extended and updated), and had hooks to connect to a javascript interpreter, which could make it a more interesting project to a developer than just trying to hack a basic GUI wrapper program onto another generic browser engine.   Creating custom Amiga gadgetry objects that can do what the wxWidgets functions did could do be an interesting challenge and might help facilitate other wxWidget based software ports.    

Eventually OWB for AROS will be compiled for the m68k-aros platform so  someone will see how good or bad that works out to be in relation to  netsurf-m68k.  If both of those are too resource heavy, it may be possible for someone to revitalize the old AWeb sources, and graft CSS into it for an alternative.  

An other interesting idea would be to rip apart the various open source web engines, game development systems, and media content players (along with consulting available docs for the latest versions of things like HTML5, flash and pdf to gather information about their object and method support needs) and use the info to design and create a whole new GUI toolkit (and content creation apps) for the Amiga-like OSes that would support cross development between web app space and a more private platform (Amiga) app space..