Why porting Mozilla to Amiga??

[KennyR]

Mozilla is slow, guys. Admit it. It takes ages to load, it takes ages to surf, and it takes ages to install. Everything about it is an exercise in patience. It even comes with a launcher so it loads quicker, and the expense of eating about 30MB of your memory on every boot, which slows your system down even more....arghhh!

And no doubt the 68k guys want Mozilla too, which will take the slowness of this app into extremes. They're bound to be disappointed if they ever get it.

[greenboy]

So: are some of you recommending that IE be ported instead? ; }

[mikeymike]

@ KennyR

Mozilla is slow, guys. Admit it.

Looks pretty fast from where I'm sitting.

It takes ages to load,

Takes longer than I'd like, which is why I have it installed on recoverable ramdisk.

it takes ages to surf,

No it doesn't.  Quicker than any other browser I've used.  The exception is Firebird, which is based on Mozilla.

and it takes ages to install.

Now I'm wondering if you've even tried it.  Takes ages to install?  What planet are you from?

Everything about it is an exercise in patience.

If you're in the habit of counting nanoseconds with increasing tedium, I suppose so, but then life must be very slow and dreary to you.

It even comes with a launcher so it loads quicker,

I've never felt the need to use the launcher.

and the expense of eating about 30MB of your memory

Mozilla doesn't have a small memory footprint, it's true.  But while I've got half a gig of RAM because Win2k doesn't exactly have a small memory footprint either, I'm not complaining.

Now what is the point in the constant Mozilla bashing?  Does it achieve anything whatsoever?

[Hooligan_DCS]

Now what is the point in the constant Mozilla bashing? Does it achieve anything whatsoever?

Yes it does. It may achieve that time is never wasted in porting it to 68k or classic ppc.
Sure, if someone wants to do it, go ahead. I'll be laughing when its done :-)

I support 100% Zilla to be ported on current ppc systems. Still waiting a bit more to see what happens before I donate $20 to the pot.

[MarkTime]

Why port trolltech's QT library and not just port GTK?
if you really want widgets, that is....

in the end, that's not so important.  I've said before you can run linux/m68k in a box.  Just like you can run A/UX under fusion, you could do the same with linux.

Then you have mozilla running in a window under Amiga OS...dog friggin slow as it is...and they don't require mozilla, but you can choose from another gecko based browser...one that is a bit lighter, a little faster...still slow, of course.

Now...you get this box working as spiffily as possible and do some neat things, a-la Amithlon hiding the linux kernel...just make it a 'mozilla box'....make it as light as possible....and then write an accelerated graphics driver...thats the key point, of course, and the reason linux/m68 is so slow, is the graphics drivers are not planar.

anyway, this is a realistic way to get mozilla running under Amiga OS....running very slowly....

but running mozilla on Amiga hardware, ALREADY DONE.
running Unix in a box on Amiga OS, ALREADY DONE

speeding things up, cleaning it up, REASONABLE TASK

I like the fact, that you all are such naysayers....

[MarkTime]

btw

did I mention A/UX runs under fusion.
Amaya runs on Amiga already (has an A/UX port).

Now...amaya is buggy crap not worth the download.

nothing will make a 50MHz machine anything but
a 50MHz machine...but having a browser as good
as what other 50MHz machines once had, is still
a possibility, imho.

[Tomas]

Pentium 233Mhz - all of them equipped with 64-96MB RAM, and Mozilla is WAY slower then Explorer - I could give you lots of examples. FUD again..!

You mean starting up mozilla right? Then your right, cause internet explorer is allways running! So it dosent take long time to open another browser window since its allready in memory... IE is so heavily integreated into the OS, so its allways running.....

[Tomas]

and it takes ages to install.

haha yeah... IE is so much quicker when it comes to install  ;-)

[KennyR]

Looks pretty fast from where I'm sitting.

Try it on an 030/50.

Takes longer than I'd like, which is why I have it installed on recoverable ramdisk.

Which slows Windows by using up all its memory and forcing paging VM - AAAAAAARGHGHHHHHHHH!

Now I'm wondering if you've even tried it. Takes ages to install? What planet are you from?

A planet where things should install in under two minutes. Aren't you? Ah, I forgot - you come from a world of progress bars that fill up to 99% in 3 seconds and stay there for ten minutes. And of course, installing Windows in the first place was a matter of hours. I really don't know how you put up with this crud they misleadingly title an 'operating system'.

If you're in the habit of counting nanoseconds with increasing tedium, I suppose so, but then life must be very slow and dreary to you.

No, I count it in seconds, and this is why Mozilla is so slow to me. As a Windows user I guess you've made a life counting things in minutes, which is possibly why you can even consider Mozilla to be fast.

I've never felt the need to use the launcher.

No, you prefer to have your VM page the HD all the time using a ramdisk instead. What's the difference?

But while I've got half a gig of RAM because Win2k doesn't exactly have a small memory footprint either, I'm not complaining.

In case you hadn't noticed, the average mount of RAM for an Amiga is about 64MB, and for A1 or Pegasos about 256MB. And we are discussing Mozilla on these, right? Right?

Now what is the point in the constant Mozilla bashing? Does it achieve anything whatsoever?

Does bloated code acheive anything whatsoever? Apart from being annoying and selling new PCs?

[mrsad]

Mozilla itself is quite slow, well depending on how you look at it.
But remember Mozilla is not just a browser, it is a whole environment, what we actually want/need is to port the GECKO engine, all the other stuff included in mozilla itself is not of any direct importance.

Believe me, Gecko itself is not that big and really a fast renderer.

Still, i'm tempted to port khtml myself more then porting the gecko engine though. (it has nothing to do with kde/qt, i don't even like that interface/toolkit)

[Treke]

Hi

Ok how I see the browsers  for comercial platforms :

Fast & Small: Opera
Not so fast and bigger: IE
Slow and BigPig: Mozilla

Capabilities:
1. Mozilla
2.IE
3.Opera

1st and 2nd place depends upon what you need
(e.g I don't know if you can use Mozilla as a COM component in your Win app -i guess not- but you can use  IE )

Nevertheles, the capabilities of all three browsers are far beyond capabilities of any Amiga browser.
That's why I prefer Opera on win (It rocks)
Mozilla on win is not an option (when it comes to rendering of 95% of pages, Gecko cannot challenge Opera at all )
Ups, Opera is comercial  (I mean closed source)
Why not set up a fund to pay Opera software to port their browser to AmiagOS ?
... Ups, lots of money (but a stable browser with support(?) )

Forgot the KHTML, hm, saw, never used... , but for sure it has substantial developer community behind (it means bigger power than current Amiga browsers have)

OK: My conclusion is a question:

Mozilla and KHTML are 'free to port'.
Was the Amizilla project started just "because we like Mozilla" ?

Because ,I guess, the evaluation of the man power needed to port KHTML vs Mozzilla could produce results better for KHTML. It is better to have something small, than possibly nothing ( i mean nothing maintainable)

- no meant as an offence of flamewar starter -

re
Treke

[AxE]

point 1. Edited by Argo: Personal Attack
point 2. Yes Mozilla would probably be too slow on 68k
point 3. wouldnt it be great to have a browser that supports the latest web standards
point 4. Opera is a LOT worse compatibility wise than Mozilla

[uncharted]

Tomas wrote:

Pentium 233Mhz - all of them equipped with 64-96MB RAM, and Mozilla is WAY slower then Explorer - I could give you lots of examples. FUD again..!

You mean starting up mozilla right? Then your right, cause internet explorer is allways running! So it dosent take long time to open another browser window since its allready in memory... IE is so heavily integreated into the OS, so its allways running.....

But on Mac OS X (10.2.6) IE is still many many times faster at loading.  Moz usually clutters up the whole system when starting up.  Moz is a nicer browser than IE or Safari, that's the only reason I use it.  Oh yeah and tabbed browsing.

As for the whole debate on porting, I'm all for only porting the parts we actually need like a rendering engine.  I'm always dismayed when people go on and on about poting this system or this toolkit from *nix over to amigaOS.  AmigaOS (and MorphOS) are special in that they are the most logical, intuitive  and effecient systems available.  For me tacking on everything from the world of *nix would ruin the Amiga.

[mikeymike]

Try it on an 030/50.

Are all applications supposed to run full speed on an 030/50?

Takes longer than I'd like, which is why I have it installed on recoverable ramdisk.

Which slows Windows by using up all its memory and forcing paging VM

Again, not from where I'm sitting.  399MB physical memory available.

Now I'm wondering if you've even tried it. Takes ages to install? What planet are you from?

A planet where things should install in under two minutes.

Mozilla takes less than a minute to install (and I'm not talking about installing it on my recoverable ramdisk (incidentally, that takes less than 30 seconds), but on hard disk).  Unless we're going to talk about an 030/50 with PIO0 hard disks again...

I've never felt the need to use the launcher.

No, you prefer to have your VM page the HD all the time using a ramdisk instead. What's the difference?

9MB swap in use.  399MB physical RAM available.  Hmmm.  And that's with a number of other apps/services running.

Mozilla could run easily on a machine with 128MB RAM, even if it's running Windows.  It's running with that config on my parents machine, and while it loads more slowly than it does on mine, it's not unacceptable slow to load.  Once loaded, it's as responsive as it is on my system, pretty much.

From what I've read on the amigaone mailing list, virtually every A1 buyer is equipping their system with half a gig, a gig or more RAM "because it's so cheap".

Does bloated code acheive anything whatsoever? Apart from being annoying and selling new PCs?

If it achieved nothing, people wouldn't buy it, so don't be so naive.

I'm not advocating bloated code, and Mozilla, while it is hardly featherweight, it doesn't come close to the worst offenders.  However, IMO, it is a kickarse web browser, the mailnews component is reasonable, and I like the optional Calendar component, even though that is still quite buggy, it fits my needs.

Mozilla isn't the fastest web browser to load, true.  Once it's loaded, it reloads quickly (without the launcher).  Once it's loaded, it is both responsive and fast, IMO.  It's quite a safe browser to use, plus I help out in testing/bug reporting, and see decent results in the form of a better application in return.

Look - if the people who like Mozilla thought as you do, it's obvious that they wouldn't put up money to get it ported.  However, as they're putting up money for it, it's obvious they disagree with you.  So stop trolling.  And get your facts right.

And anyway, what the hell are you going to compare Mozilla against?  Can any Amiga web browsers boast the same functionality, and standards compliancy?  No.  The only comparable contender I see to Mozilla is Opera.  If you think you can produce a web browser that can do everything Mozilla can do, just faster and better, and can run on an 030/50, I think there's quite a few people that would like to know about it.  Including me.

[mikeymike]

@ AxE

I generally agree with you, although you should try Opera 7x, I'd say it's pretty much on par with Mozilla for compatibility.

[bbrv]

Hi mikeymike...the problem with Opera is that we and you have to pay for upgrades...

R&B :-)