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.  :-(

[Managarm]

As far as I'm aware, there's no CSS support in any Amiga browser and Javascript implementation does exist, but is not comprehensive.

[bhoggett]

So no advances made yet, I take it.

[cecilia]

ibrowse and aweb continue being worked on but they don't have ccs capability yet.

[Argus]

Not sure about AWeb but I read somewhere Ibrowse v3.0 will support CSS though it's going to be OS4 PPC only

[Hyperspeed]

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

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

[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.

[Argus]

Ibrowse 2.3 is usable, but gets bogged down on javascript laden sites.  It is otherwise pretty good all things considered, even supporting SSL for encrypted sites.  Give it a try before you give up.  I'm typing on it right now.

[futaura]

I read somewhere Ibrowse v3.0 will support CSS though it's going to be OS4 PPC only

Not sure where you read that, but at this stage there is no intention of going PPC only - see the FAQ

[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.  :-(

[Argus]

@futuara

Whoops!  I stand happily corrected hooray!

[uncharted]

No change really.

This project is the most promising as far as CSS and modern browsing is concerned.  A great deal of progress seems to have been made.

[Argo]

Isn't there a beta due out soon for the KHTML project?

[koaftder]

I seem to get some diverse browsers on my site.

Sorry for being off topic here... But since conversation related to amiga and browsers, i thought i would share. It's nice to see amiga entries in your apache log from time to time. Ive never put an amiga on a network, so none of thoes are from me.

#    Hits    User Agent
1    692    12.75%    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1. Gecko
2    501    9.23%    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Ge
3    341    6.28%    Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET
4    313    5.77%    IBrowse/2.3 (AmigaOS 3.9)
5    231    4.26%    Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows XP)
6    210    3.87%    msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
7    192    3.54%    Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8
8    190    3.50%    Wget/1.5.3.1
9    178    3.28%    Amiga-AWeb/3.3.161SE
10    172    3.17%    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; es-ES; rv:1. Gecko
11    166    3.06%    curl/7.14.0 (AmigaOS) libcurl/7.14.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8 zlib/1.2.2
12    133    2.45%    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1. Gecko/20
13    131    2.41%    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1. Gecko
14    118    2.17%    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gec
15    110    2.03%    Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/2005

[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.  :-(