does OS4 carry a decent browser?

[CHR74]

I bet there are many many old amigas buried in attics and so on.. an anti digital divide campaign from any government would led such antiques to get to see the light again.. consequent price drop and the likes

Colani1200 wrote:

CHR74 wrote:
try to pass the old amiga hardware as anti digital divide solution for the poor countries as a cheap solution?

You haven't looked at the prices for Amiga hardware recently, have you? Or are you just trolling?  :-?

[DonnyEMU]

Typical Responses!

why not Voyager?

1- is a discontinued commercial product (read defunct)

2- it is not superior than IB2.4

even the MOS native version is used only by few and only because is bundled with MOS 1.4.x

Sorry but the way lay elsewhere


1) What isn't discontinued on this platform? honestly both a-web and ibrowse have both seen themsselves rise from defunctness..

2) it is not superior? Well as a web developer I look a lot specifically at implementations and it is my personal belief (which I can back up but don't want to flame here) that Voyager's EMCA-Script implementation is far superior..  If I run all three browsers simultaneously I still also get a superior rendering of a page (barring any CSS or course) with Voyager..

I could very much argue this on technical merits and completeness.. I am disappointed with what's there on all counts across the board anywhere..

and "way lay" I'd check the spelling and the meaning of that word..

[itix]

2) it is not superior? Well as a web developer I look a lot specifically at implementations and it is my personal belief (which I can back up but don't want to flame here) that Voyager's EMCA-Script implementation is far superior.. If I run all three browsers simultaneously I still also get a superior rendering of a page (barring any CSS or course) with Voyager..

There are two problems with Voyager:

1) it does not have clipboard support (you cannot copy text from web pages easily)
2) it does not work very well with MUI4 (though, IBrowse developers are not better there either...)

I liked Voyager very much and it was always very fast browser also. Its demo version (for 68k) was also very unstable which contributed to its reputation.

[Matt_H]

Having recently had the opportunity to try Voyager under MOS, it is my opinion that it has not aged well. The MUI4 incompatibilities are severe, almost crippling of the GUI. IBrowse's JavaScript implementation appears to be mostly current as of last year, and its Flash plugin is pretty much on par with Voyager's, as far as level of Flash version implementation goes. Voyager does have the APDF plugin, which is nice, but it's obsolete compared to the latest standalone version from the MOS FTP.

It'd probably require the same amount of work as AWeb or IBrowse to get it up to standards compliance, but given that its development seems completely dormant (rather than just painfully slow), it doesn't seem likely to happen.

[Lemmink]

by CHR74 on 2007/11/25 14:49:23

I bet there are many many old amigas buried in attics and so on.. an anti digital divide campaign from any government would led such antiques to get to see the light again.. consequent price drop and the likes

This might be true for a bunch of 500 but those don`t cost much anyway. On the other hand they are as much up to webbrowsing as a 286 with an EGA card runing Windows 3.1

Amigas that have enough power to allow half way decend webbrowsing ( at leats 68040 and a GFX card ) go for no less then 200-300 EUR.

There are alot more old Apple quadras available for a next to nothing price thst are more up to the job (they even have native Netscape up to 4 already)

[uncharted]

DonnyEMU wrote:
Typical Responses!

Have you ever considered that this is actually the reason? Or can you not comprehend that your personal opinion may be disagreed with?

Speaking as an ex-Voyager user I can say that 1) is certainly a reason to not recommend it.  Not only because AFAIK it is not possible to even purchase a key anymore (the online facility I used to buy mine is certainly no-longer available), or that only one of the download mirrors is actually working, but also as the final release of V3.2 was very unstable for myself and many others.  

The stability improved greatly during the V3.3 betas, however, the last couple of releases for 68k caused various problems for people which weren't fixed before the 68k version was dropped without notice.

Voyager was by far my favourite Amiga web-browser (and one of my favourite browsers on any platform), but I couldn't recommend it here and now in 2007.

and "way lay" I'd check the spelling and the meaning of that word..

That's two words.

[uncharted]

@Itix & Matt_H

Does MUI4 break existing apps?

[jj]

I paid for Voyager way back when as I found it to be the best browser.  My only complaint with it was the amount of times it crashed

[xeron]

Anyway, back to "what would I use OS4 for", which was the guys question after finding that Amiga browsers aren't all that up-to-date (although I still use IBrowse heavily), I use OS4 for:

Programming (GCC)
Browsing (IBrowse)
E-Mail (Simplemail)
Playing music (TuneNet will all its plugins)
Watching video files (MPlayer, DvPlayer)
Making music (Hivelytracker)
FTP (PFTP)
IRC (AmIRC)
Instant Messaging (Jabberwocky)
Graphics (Photogenics, Personal Paint)
Emulation (VICE, MAME)

A lot of the software I use is available in native OS4 PPC versions. There is an archive of OS4 software available here:

http://www.os4depot.net

Back to the browser question, I use IBrowse a lot, but also someone has built firefox for OS4, but it doesn't quite work yet.

Also, the author of Sputnik (a browser for MorphOS) should receive an OS4 machine any day now and there is a pot of cash waiting for him if he ports it to OS4.

So, the situation may improve.

[Matt_H]

uncharted wrote:
@Itix & Matt_H

Does MUI4 break existing apps?

Voyager is the only program I've had severe problems with. In fact, I haven't noticed any problems with anything else.

There's a slight quirk with IBrowse in that large text entry boxes (like the ones used to compose messages here at AO and elsewhere) use a non-standard custom class which ends up having an unreadable black-on-black color scheme when not selected. Once selected, it's perfectly legible, though. Normal string boxes don't have this problem. I could probably solve it by fiddling with the MUI settings a bit, but it hasn't bothered me enough to do so.

[Framiga]

you can change the background colours in String> "Container" and "...activated" (note that you will need to iconify IB and de-iconify IB to see the changes ... at least here)

[DonnyEMU]

Have you ever considered that this is actually the reason? Or can you not comprehend that your personal opinion may be disagreed with?

I totally understood that I would be disagreed with going in, that was my whole point, no one was spelling out the problems.

I myself have only ever used Voyager 3.3 under emulation (yes it was a beta download), and considering the memory available in the system I have, that's probably a reason it doesn't crashes. I do value other people's opinion and wanted to know SPECIFICALLY why it doesn't work.

I'd like to see the community use their "emcascript" implementation in another browser, and specifically I do believe it renders out better in side-by-side tests. Maybe someone could ask that company to donate their code to the other projects.. This was my only purpose for asking. It's obvious that the company's website hasn't been updated in forever..

Instability is definitely reason enough for an end-user to drop use of a product, but maybe the code that works better could still be put to use elsewhere. Considering the sad state everything is in, I think we should all make use of what's there..

[hardlink]

CHR74 wrote:
ok. So what will I use it for?

Whatever you are using 3.9 for, but more polished, and some things faster. You are using 3.9, right?

[Agafaster]

@Xeron
Seconded:

I do Coding, Browsing, mailing, watch videos, play Doom, etc.

So - whats missing from IB to make it a great browser, aside from a decent Javascript engine, and CSS ?
proper support for plugins would be nice, if you like Flash on your websites...

so whens firefox due ? I'd love to have a play, but I think I'd prefer an amiga specific solution like IB (moon on a stick, I know !)

[Matt_H]

Framiga wrote:
you can change the background colours in String> "Container" and "...activated" (note that you will need to iconify IB and de-iconify IB to see the changes ... at least here)

Nope, that's only for short string boxes, like the subject heading, that were already working correctly. IBrowse has a custom class called IBTextEditField.ibcc with no associated prefs class, so there'd have to be a global prefs change to correct it.

The default MUI settings in the PowerUp version are okay, however.

[Matt_H]

proper support for plugins would be nice, if you like Flash on your websites...

It's got support now, but the associated SDK hasn't been released. I really hope they get on that, I'd imagine we'd see some pretty cool things.