Why porting Mozilla to Amiga??

[KennyR]

I'm sorry, but the m86k Amiga users shouldn't expect a port of any up-to-date software from other platforms. It's about time they upgraded.

Ah, now we agree. I know 68k is too slow for Mozilla (or vice versa) and you know it. Problem is, there are 1000s of 68k users out there waiting for it who don't know it. We in #AZ get loads of requests to make ANR faster on slow CPUs like 030 and 040. Of course, we can't.

And I think it is just those people paying the cash for Mozilla. Who else would it be? OS4 can't get a port because dev materials aren't present yet. MOS people aren't going to pay because it wouldn't technically be 'Amiga' and a MOS port from this source is unlikely. Emulator people don't need a port because Mozilla runs on Windows. That only leaves one bunch of people.

[amigamad]

Im not a fan of mozzila to slow and has not got the speed or the features of opera, i prefer ie to mozzila but your right in saying it would be better than any amiga browser.opera is the best browser for ebay .I have been using opera for a year now and have no problems with sites unlke when i used mozzila .

Not that many people are so stupid that they expect their hardware to be able to run everything forever.

 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  :-o  :-o  :-o  :-)

[iamaboringperson]

why cant people port mozzila to mos if they want?

it might be difficult - thats just a challenge!

there might be other browsers - lets have as many as we can get!

it might be slow - well, people dont have to use it, do they?

i think its a great idea, and i wish anyone trying to do that success!!  :-)  :-)  :-)  :-)  :-)  :-)

[Tomas]

Thats odd... i havent had a single problem with mozilla.. Except for when visiting a site which is designed for IE only.... Then none browsers except for IE will work properly..

[DethKnight]

by Tomas
And for those who bitch about mozilla being slow, try downloading the newer versions.... It was true that the old versions was damn slow.... Try for example mozillafirebird..
Here its much faster than IE on both windows and linux

my personal experience here concurs with ya Tomas, my moz1.4 and IE bout the same speedwise, but when I tried Opera 7.11, *that* was speedy.
(too bad I detest the opera interface)

[Tomas]

yeah opera is great.. by far the fastest browser i have tried... but sadly its not open source, so there is no possibility to port it to AmigaOS  :-(

[Rodney]

I have at home a sub-notebook - a Pentium 300Mhz with 96 MB RAM, with 6GB hard drive. (It's not a powerful machine but should be enough to browse the web, don't you agree?), and unfortunately Mozilla Firebird (the "lite" version of Mozilla) running on Windows 98 (without anything else running, all tasks are killed) is DOG slow. I tried at the same machine using Redhat 7.2 + WindowMaker + Mozilla firebird - same result, although a bit faster, but still very slow.

Wow, i used a P2 233 desktop computer with 4gig hardrive, and that was more then enough for pheonix .5. I've had no problems with the mozilla apps (execept back in the day when mozilla was still operating under the milstone [M1,M2...M17 etc] release names)

And as you state, porting Qt will get us a lot fo apps, so will Mozilla. And, some of those apps will be portable across platforms. That is, you dont need to compile a lot of mozilla apps. Ie a lot of them use XUL Javascript and other web based technologies, which are interpretured.

This is a great foundation for XML webservices too. KDE doesnt give you this in my opion, where as Mozilla does, and it also gives you a great foundation for binary applications.

When you port mozilla, you'll be able to port firebird a lot easier and thunderbird a lot easier and a lot of other apps.

If you want to know what the mozilla community is creating take a look at http://www.mozdev.org/ . Thats no the only place that hosts mozilla website either...

QT is a good idae, but i'd stick with mozilla,. Im taking a guess but i'd think i'd have far more support,  commerical and volunteer. Its just better in my opinion. Has a greater user base then KTHTML etc...

[Rodney]

As for Mozilla is fast as Explorer - I'm sorry, but I have 4 machines here near me - 3 of them are Pentium II 300 and one of them is 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..!

Yes but thats prolly loading time... Sure, its goign to be a lot slower than IE isnt it. Because all the libraries that IE users are already loaded when explorer (desktop) is loaded. Yes, thats right...

The difference? Mozilla is a platform, so it has to load the libraries and what ever else, the individual application (firebird) will use.

Example, the buttons, textboxes, comboboxes fonts and whatever else IE uses are already in memory before IE is even executed.

Whereas, mozilla has its own code to do that... Thats why it takes so long. But i dont think its that bad. Once mozilla is up and running, its a gem to use. i love it. I use windows at home, and i dotn use anything else but firebird. I recently having discovered the power of mozilla (XUL and javascript libraries) i think i may very well develop apps for teh mozilla  platform in the future.

[Rodney]

t's not going to alter the balance of the universe having Mozilla ported to the Amiga, nor is it going to upset anything else, so what the heck are you complaining about?

I dont think he's complaining, just telling his story, and letting people know how he feels...

[N7VQM]

ronybeck said:

Why Port it? Because it ####s on any browser the amiga has.

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.

[iamaboringperson]

i wouldnt mind working on a new amiga web browser

[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

[meerschaum]

@HeUnique

I not only think your right about mozilla...but I think if we had Qt it would bring alot more then a good browser to the amiga... I think your right on all marks..... lord knows how its going to run on an 060... I  can say one thing though... it will run with good compatability...thats about it... I dont know any other browser thats free that has nearly the compatability of Mozilla... although I'd take speed over perfect compatability any time... I'd love to see a Konqueror style browser for Amiga

I think the people putting up the money for the port/etc... are good people...they have heart...and their willing to put their money where their mouth is... but I surely hope MorphOS's default browser in a couple years is not mozilla... it would be a shame to have a browser bigger than the OS itself...

[bbrv]

Just a bright and early added note....

Opera has a very good package.  We had discussions with them three months ago.  For what they wanted and for the recurring costs it would be easier to buy Amiga Inc.  End of story.  They are just another group of young guys who think they have re-invented the world and have not ridden the wave to the beach yet....;-)

On other fronts, we have been in discussions with Bill P. since he started his bounty program through "greenboy" of the Phoenix Developer Consortium.  We are ready to significantly fund the effort, but there have to be certain professional development standards applied and it has to be done externally from Genesi.  We are too busy and we do not want to distract our internal teams from doing what they have to do.  BTW, remember we have Voyager and it needs some work to be in the mode...;-)

Just to repeat something indicated earlier....human beings do not do well with change.  People like to do what they are used to doing.  Change has to be driven by convenience/ease of use or at least familiarity (a smarter man once stated the converse: necessity is the mother of invention).  Mozillia is familiar to the market we are attacking.  If the browser looks and feels the same *and even works better* - how it does it becomes irrelevant.  All these computer, OS, and application discussions are a means to an end and not an end in theirselves.  OK, there are some fanatics who just like to look at their computers and mostly just talk about it, but this is not our focus.  We want people to be able to DO things!

This branding discussion could bring us back to the whole Amiga/Atari issue, but we will save that for another thread.

Have a great day!

Raquel and Bill :-)

[gary_c]

Whereas, mozilla has its own code to do that... Thats why it takes so long.

On my 850MHz Duron notebook, it takes just 10 seconds to start up Phoenix (now Firebird) and display my homepage (fetched from remote server via DSL). That's not too shabby, I'd say. Even with IE's being partly loaded already, it takes 9 seconds just to open and display an empty window on the same machine. (I don't use it enough to have a home page set.) And Phoenix's memory footprint is considerably smaller than Opera's, not that that should be a problem for anybody getting an AmigaOne or Pegasos. Like others have said, Firebird is much smaller than the full Mozilla and is quite fast.

-- gary_c

[greenboy]

Yes, Bill Panagouleas and I have been talking about the project since the first mention of it in public. I brought my ideas about getting involved to Bill and Raquel's attention around the 19th of last month. We had a long discussion about it, as above, and talked about better funding and guidelines.

After presenting these guidelines to Bill P, which were to ensure that all the PPC OSes MorphOS, AROS, and AmigaOS would be targeted and in the hope that good project management and development stategies  would begin to take shape, Bill agreed on the 22nd that should we participate those stipulations were indeed acceptable and desirable.

Now we are waiting to see a higher level of activity in what teams and individuals propose, with an eye on feasibility, research, non-partisanship, and with some semblance of being able to proceed with well-organized project management.

We think the availability of a recognized cross-OS, cross-platform browser has the benefit of familiarity for people from other communities as well as supplying essential browser features and higher website compatibility. It would also be nice to see people within the community sharing the effort and the potential benefits.