NetSurf 3.6 web browser released!

[utri007]

Congratulations for solving "slow down effect" of OS3.5/9 version

[utri007]

Any change for optimisations to get lost speed back?

[utri007]

@utri007 How much slower is it?

Amiga.org is now 46-48 seconds first load. Going to forums and back to FrontPage takes 26-28 seconds each time. First pages were previously fastest 20-22 seconds.

Previously there wasn't that big difference when site is cached or not.

I'm happy to help, I can try this.

NetSurf -V ram:ns.log rx "address netsurf 'slabstats'"

[utri007]

I doubt that I will be replacing the slab allocator in clib2 with TLSF any time soon. Instead, I'll work on improving the clib2 memory management system.

TLSF didn't help with Netsurf.

[utri007]

Why did it fail?

I don't know but it didn't help. There was tlsfmen.lha in aminet, wich is now deleted some reason. It was started from shell anytime according to the guide.

[utri007]

I use TLSFMem on all my Amiga's.  It was created by Chris Hodges up to version 1.6 then patched to 1.9 by Cosmos, AFAIR.  It was pulled when Chris yanked all the rest of his Amiga software, for whatever (@#*$%&(#*$%& reason.    It is a fantastic program for reducing memory fragmentation, I can't say how it reacts with NetSurf, specifically, but for just general day-to-day Amiga tasks - it's always the very first thing in my Startup-Sequence.  PM me your email address if you'd like me to fwd you a copy.

HAH Then you can say how it reacted to Netsurf. You noticed "slow down effect" youself and you were running TLSF men all the time?

[utri007]

In that case, yes.  I haven't had nearly enough coffee yet, today.  What were we talking about again?  I just tried the newest version last night after being away from it for a couple months, it seemed to work well.  A big improvement.  

Slow down effect is gone, it was actual "show stopper". Now browser is actually usefull. Now it loads first page longer than it used to, but lets see if it gets faster.

[utri007]

I made a quick test, when I had my lunchbreak.

Congratulations again to all involved. It is much faster, amiga.org downloads now 28-30 seconds with my 68060 / 66mhz. Was 46-48 seconds. Still not that fast than it used to be20-22 seconds, but with memory fragemention problem it wasn't usefull.

I also tested it with my 68040 / 40mhz. It might use little bit more ram? 2-3mb more, when amiga.org is loaded? But still useable with 32mb ram. Amiga.org loads with this system 44 seconds.

[utri007]

Does the page load time improve if you immediately reload the page (assuming that it is not simply reloaded from the disk cache, but re-fetched from the web site)?

Sorry, what I did was amiga.org - > forums - > amiga.org - > forums -> amiga.org

At least that way load time didn't improve. Load time did vary, few seconds, but I didn't notice any pattern. But as I said, test was very short.

I can't do some more testing saturday, today I'm going to get drunk.

[utri007]

Thanks. Amiga.org is diffult site to render.

Amigaworld.net 17 seconds.

[utri007]

How it will perform "low memory" situations? I was surfing with my A1200, 68040 and 32mb ram system after Netsurf is loaded there is about 11mb free ram. Ram was eated up quite fast, if surfing to other sites ie. amiga.org - > amigaworld.net -> wikipedia.org. There is no problem is just surfing one site, ie. amiga.org -> forums -> thread -> amiga.org

[utri007]

Chris: Would it be easy thing to fix iconify button?

[utri007]

Aah! Don't do that!

There definitely is a button (you can see it in all my screenshots) and it definitely doesn't work. Having a program open in full screen, on the Workbench screen, covering everything else, with no easy way to make it smaller... Sure would be nice if Iconify worked.

Do you mean that you can't do this (sse picture)

Iconify would be nice, but I ques remove button would be OK at least as an temporarily solution.

[utri007]

I made some benchmarking an results were weird? First there is no memory issue, or it is very minimal.

Test was made just refreshing amigaworld.net FrontPage. 060 and 040 tells CPU, next numbers are secons. Kb free ram is how much my 040/32mb ram system had free fast ram.

First test was amigaworld.net, no big diffrences.

CPU / SEC 060  17    14,7   15,0   15,3   15,6   14,6   14,8
CPU / SEC 040  21,9 19,9   18,7   18,9   19,5   19,1   19,2
kb free ram       3921         3882  3864            3888

Next test was amiga.org, here I got weird results. After some time my 040 is faster or equal with my 060. So slab allocator gives huge benefit to 68040 cpu, but not for 68060 cpu? After first load rendering time is less than half?

Test was made refreshing amiga.org FrontPage and last two sec values are amiga.org forums and amigaworld.  Last two kb values are free ram amiga.org forums and amigaworl.net.

amiga.org                                                                          
CPU / SEC 060 30,9  24,3  23,8  22,9   25,8   23,5    22,0     27,8      15.1      
CPU / SEC 040 65,1  25,7  26,3  22,4   24,5   24,5    24,2     34,5      19,3
kb free ram     945            927   873    907                          966       1257

Both Amigas has has Orinoco Silver Wlan card and Genesis TCP/IP stack. No reboot between tests.

[utri007]

Reproduced test so that my 4G router/wlan access point was near of Amigas, results were same. There is also a pattern, 5th refresh is slower than previous and 6th faster again.

How can slab allocator be so much faster with 68040 than 68060?