Internet web browser....

[wurzel]

Sorry, but I can't agree with you on the quality of browsing the web on the Amiga. Imo, it's absolute torture.



It depends on your system - use a graphics card and it is not torture by any means. My system is a fast as my 1.5ghz laptop on basic pages.

But, CSS & Flash support is lacking, as is JAVA. Javascript pages ARE slow.

However, for the few sites I browse, IB2.4 is more than adequate.

[pVC]

At home I only use IBrowse for browsing. Mainly on Pegasos (==real fast amiga) and sometimes on A1200, 060/60, Voodoo3, 128M, 10/100 etc.

All sites I use daily work ok.. Amiga sites, tv guides, online tabloids, scene pages, bank accounts, torrent sites, etc. Of course there's lots of pages which don't show up correctly, but even then most are usable. Some sites need enabling or disabling javascript or other plugins, but they can be configured per site for permanent use.

But the thing I love surfing with IBrowse is the speed and usability of it. I just can't do things as fast on PC browsers. And you can't see the speed if you have only Zorro2 gfx card.. not to talk about AGA. And one BIG advantage is that you can surf safely with Amiga, no need to think about spyware and trojans with every click. Just go wildly

[Jiffy]

pVC wrote:
At home I only use IBrowse for browsing. Mainly on Pegasos (==real fast amiga) and sometimes on A1200, 060/60, Voodoo3, 128M, 10/100 etc.

Both of which are not quite easily obtainable. The Pegasos can't be compared to any classic Amiga performancewise, it's in a different league and alleviates much of the performancetroubles the classic Amigas have. It would certainly give you the power to not suffer the horrendous slowness of loading webpages on a classic Amiga, albeit expanded.

All sites I use daily work ok.. Amiga sites, tv guides, online tabloids, scene pages, bank accounts, torrent sites, etc. Of course there's lots of pages which don't show up correctly, but even then most are usable. Some sites need enabling or disabling javascript or other plugins, but they can be configured per site for permanent use.

Most sites I use do not work ok. They might load eventually (more or less), but as they quite often do not show up correctly, it gets near unusable. And I find configuring my browser per site(!!) totally unacceptable.

But the thing I love surfing with IBrowse is the speed and usability of it. I just can't do things as fast on PC browsers. And you can't see the speed if you have only Zorro2 gfx card.. not to talk about AGA.

Come on... The speed and usability? You can't do things as fast on PC browsers? A graphics card does indeed improve performance compared to just AGA, but comparing out of date software, severely lacking in standard(!) features such as CSS which many sites use, running on out of date hardware to modern and highly configurable browsers (Firefox 2/3, Opera 9.something or IE7 running on modern hardware is not realistic. It is not acceptable for me to have to wait, say, 30 to 60 seconds to check if a webpage loads to an acceptable/usable level or not at all. If it's not on my screen in about 5 seconds: tough luck, other site. "Ooooh! This site isn't displaying correctly! I should reconfigure my browser to be able to see it!"

I can understand there are certain niche-programs for the Amiga which are bot well designed and well programmed and do not have a real equivalent on a modern pc, but browsing the web on the Amiga can nót be compared to browsing the web on any pc.

Again, if I run IE6(!) on an old P1/133 with NT4, I can use almost any website without problems, with decent speed and without the need to reconfigure my browser per site. Adding something to display or hear some kind of multimediastream, ok, but that's about as far as I will go for a certain website.

And one BIG advantage is that you can surf safely with Amiga, no need to think about spyware and trojans with every click. Just go wildly

True, true... ;-)
Although I have to say, I don't really get annoyed about viruses and spyware with my Ubuntu 8.04 box...

All in all, browsing the web on a classic Amiga (no, the Pegasos is nót a classic Amiga) is torture. Graphics cards do improve on the severe lack of speed a lot, compared to AGA, but it still remains slow and cumbersome. Many pages do not display correctly, if at all.

I understand I do not have the fastest Amigas around, but come on: an A1200 with AGA, 68060/50 and 64 MB fastram, an A2000 with 68040/40, 64 MB fastram and CV64/3D and an A3000 with 68040/33, 16 MB fastram and CV64 should be able to run a decent browser and display the average webpage in a decent quality at a decent speed. I don't ask for perfection, but I need a certain level of usability. Which browsing on classic Amigas unfortunately can't deliver. If IE6 would run on OS3.x, I would be pleased. If it would run on any of my Amigas at a speed comparable to the average 486 running Win9x or NT4, I would be happy.  

I'm eagerly awaiting new versions of IBrowse and AWeb, in the hope it gets better. Until now, new versions of both have indeed been improvements, so all is not lost. :-)

Small addition: I expect the problem with browsing the web on the Amiga is 'just' software. The OS is great, hardware ditto and the combination should have more than enough power to browse the web. Which leaves the browsers...

If you can browse the web on a C64/128 (which I have), it should be heaven to do so on an extremely more powerfull Amiga. Or am I wrong?

[Protek]

Would it make any sense to use open source browser like Mozilla and port it to Amiga? Although I would be guessing that it would be slow on classic Amigas.

[Piru]

Would it make any sense to use open source browser like Mozilla and port it to Amiga?

Try a quick search of mozilla, firefox and amizilla. Considering nothing has ever come out of these projects I'd say "no". It's just too large project for the amount of active skillful developers left.

For example AmiZilla started somewhere in 2003 I believe, and now 5 years later it hasn't really progressed much. It wasn't exactly hard to predict however.

But something much simpler than Mozilla would be possible. It'd still be pretty darned slow, however.

[pVC]

Come on... The speed and usability? You can't do things as fast on PC browsers? A graphics card does indeed improve performance compared to just AGA, but comparing out of date software, severely lacking in standard(!) features such as CSS which many sites use, running on out of date hardware to modern and highly configurable browsers (Firefox 2/3, Opera 9.something or IE7 running on modern hardware is not realistic. It is not acceptable for me to have to wait, say, 30 to 60 seconds to check if a webpage loads to an acceptable/usable level or not at all. If it's not on my screen in about 5 seconds: tough luck, other site. "Ooooh! This site isn't displaying correctly! I should reconfigure my browser to be able to see it!"

For me the speed comes from many small things from GUI, OS, browser, habits etc. All counted together makes browsing much more comfortable on Amiga than on PC browsers. Some of it might just be that I don't know how to get most of the PC  browsers and haven't noticed all the features, but that's the current situation

Some examples which comes in mind quickly... clipboard handling, I can quickly copy current url to clipboard or from clipboard with single selection without selecting url field or painting url or clicking more than one click and without having to press enter after it. Copying text from pages to clipboard with single drag without selecting "copy" etc. Good scrolling options, you can scroll pages properly on all directions with mmb or scroll button on gui. It's done very well on Amiga unlike on PC browsers Switching between many programs/screens, it's instant even on very low end Amiga when even on 1.6GHz PC you can see things drawn on screen and if Windows is swapping you have to wait too much. That kind of little waits annoy you if you haven't used to them in daily use. I usually browse on Amiga without javascript, flash etc. They're easy enable or disable on the fly. On PC they're usually enabled and may even need some external noscript etc plugins to disable (which you can't do if it's not your own PC). It's faster to browse and load pages if there isn't all kinds of ads jumping on your face all the time.

Page loading is also faster on IBrowse if you think about cpu used. On Pegasos pages load faster than on PC:s I've used. On my Amiga it it bit slower, but max that 5 secs usually. Many times I don't have patience for that 5 secs either. Good thing on IBrowse is, that it shows content while loading. So you don't have to wait all pics etc loaded before you can judge if the page has valuable information for you. On some browsers they show page when it's completely loaded and THAT is annoying wait.

With your mentions about 30-60s page loads, I agree that would be totally unacceptable. Last time I surfed with anything less than 68060 it wasn't like that, but in last years the pages have become much heavier. People have forget good manners of having reasonable content on their pages... maybe it's like that on slower computers nowadays then.

Again, if I run IE6(!) on an old P1/133 with NT4, I can use almost any website without problems, with decent speed and without the need to reconfigure my browser per site. Adding something to display or hear some kind of multimediastream, ok, but that's about as far as I will go for a certain website.

You have to remember than no 68k Amiga is nowhere as powerful as P1/133 is. Overclocked 060 might come close, but even 040 is far from it.

Although I have to say, I don't really get annoyed about viruses and spyware with my Ubuntu 8.10 box...

True I might have something to say about GUI on Linux systems, but that's the other story

I understand I do not have the fastest Amigas around, but come on: an A1200 with AGA, 68060/50 and 64 MB fastram, an A2000 with 68040/40, 64 MB fastram and CV64/3D and an A3000 with 68040/33, 16 MB fastram and CV64 should be able to run a decent browser and display the average webpage in a decent quality at a decent speed.

In my opinion, you overestimate your Amiga setups little in web surfing case. AGA is the real bottleneck no matter how fast CPU you have. CV64/3D might be somehow reasonable IF it would be in Zorro3 bus. In A2000 it's in Zorro2 bus and that's bottleneck too. Zorro2 throughput is about same as on AGA (<4MB/s!), you only get better modes and little acceleration. In my experience you can't use CV64/3D in Zorro2 any better than 800x600x16bit and it's still slowish even with 060. It was huge jump for me to move from that kind of setup to PCI bus with Voodoo3. If you would have more memory on your A3000, I'd say it would be much more pleasant to have gfx card in it instead even when cpu is little slower. Anyway, I guess that most active classic Amiga users have 060 and PCI setups nowadays and it's pretty much minimum if you're looking for comfortable surfing. Even  the basic jpeg decoding isn't the lightest job for <040, so I don't know if it's possible to make any faster rendering on lower end Amigas

Edit: Oops, you had gfxcard in a3k too. I guess it's 040 and memory then.

If you can browse the web on a C64/128 (which I have), it should be heaven to do so on an extremely more powerfull Amiga. Or am I wrong?

Well.. I guess C64 browsing skips pretty much stuff and it can't be ever visually acceptable, but if you want Amiga to support everything in modern web.. it might not be enough. It's balance with speed and supported things. But of course we hope that we'd get more modern options. CSS has seem to become the most important feature missing, but would require writing current engines from scratch

[Tenacious]

Just my humble 2 cents worth, I find IBrowse to be responsive on the sites I visit.  I normally run with Javascript OFF, which greatly improves usability.

I even prefer my Amiga browsing experience on sites like A.org, eBay, Yahoo, Wikipedia, etc. to booting my new XP laptop and using it.  

[Malakie]

LOL   You can actually Browse on the C-64!!   Never knew that.. so cool!  It is STILL my favorite computer ever of all time.  Wish I still had one to be honest.  I also had an SX-64 and loved it.. Man how I wish I still had one.

Anyhow, it is to bad more high end developers are not still around and working on Amiga projects.  Ultimately that will be the cause of the true end if that does not change.  If no one writes code, the machine is useless.

I would prefer to browse the Internet on my Amiga but alas based on the comments, it appears that is just not to be.

Malakie

[Tenacious]

Gee Wiz!

Don't take any one's comments as gospel (except maybe mine, grin).  It's clear A.org members represent the entire spectrum of expectation. We have no shortage of negativity here. It's often shocking to me how people go on at great length about how limited, out-of-date, poorly concieved, under-powered, unusable, hobyist-only, games-only, collectable-only, unworthy of serious consideration, etc, the Amiga is.  All this on a site founded to promote and celebrate what a unique and relevant experience operating an Amiga can be.

Experience it for yourself!

You will then be more useful and better informed.

[Malakie]

Tenacious wrote:
Gee Wiz!

Don't take any one's comments as gospel (except maybe mine, grin).  It's clear A.org members represent the entire spectrum of expectation. We have no shortage of negativity here. It's often shocking to me how people go on at great length about how limited, out-of-date, poorly concieved, under-powered, unusable, hobyist-only, games-only, collectable-only, unworthy of serious consideration, etc, the Amiga is.  All this on a site founded to promote and celebrate what a unique and relevant experience operating an Amiga can be.

Experience it for yourself!

You will then be more useful and better informed.

Heh... believe me I realize this.  I also agree with you that it is ironic in the sense of what people say here and on other sites.  As long as the two systems I do still own function, I will keep using them for many things I do in computing.

I have been absent for quite a while and am trying to catch back up on things.  I must be coming across as a newbie..  other than being way behind on news, the latest software and so forth, I am a long way from being new to the Amiga in any fashion.   There are some areas I have fallen behind on in terms of what is happening, the latest and greatest and what does and does not work.  Simply trying to catch up.

In fact, I could probably safely say I have had more inside experience with Commodore and the Amiga than many around.  I say that because I was part of the Commodore and Amiga team from the mid 80's to early 90's.  Working for Commodore was pretty nice especially since it happened to be my favorite computer company starting when the vic-20 came out.

It worked out great in terms of my careers as well.  I started in the US Navy, got hurt, was recruited by CBM, worked there, also started small Amiga dev company.. then  Amiga and CBM died, went back to work for government in law enforcement, got hurt again to where I am pretty much out of the game and am now sitting here typing on my computer keyboard trying to catch up on all that I missed, all that has changed and where things stand.

Malakie

[Terse]

It’s always funny to see threads discussing iBrowse as if it’s actually possible for a new user to obtain it.

[Tenacious]

@ Terse

As far as I know, you still can't get new registrations.  I would find this frustrating if I didn't already have one.


@ Malakie

Sorry.

[Malakie]

Tenacious wrote:

@ Malakie

Sorry.

What ya apologizing for?   ;-)   You didn't say anything wrong at all.. Just letting you know I am versed to save you some typing!   :-D

[amigadave]

Piru wrote:

Would it make any sense to use open source browser like Mozilla and port it to Amiga?

Try a quick search of mozilla, firefox and amizilla. Considering nothing has ever come out of these projects I'd say "no". It's just too large project for the amount of active skillful developers left.

For example AmiZilla started somewhere in 2003 I believe, and now 5 years later it hasn't really progressed much. It wasn't exactly hard to predict however.

But something much simpler than Mozilla would be possible. It'd still be pretty darned slow, however.

Who the hell screwed up the Internet and made it so demanding to view it in the first place? (no need to answer rhetorical questions)

Wasn't there also an attempt to port Opera?  I thought it was supposed to be a light weight browser when it first came out.

Maybe there would be more interest today than there was in 2003 since it is obvious that AInc. or any other company is NOT going to provide an Amiga browser, the community is going to have to do it.  I guess I should just go join the Open AWeb team and see what way I can help.

[AeroMan]

Malakie wrote:

LOL   You can actually Browse on the C-64!!   Never knew that.. so cool!  

You can browse on the MSX too with graphics !!. But there's a cheat to do it.... Anyway, it's cool!!!

http://uzix.sourceforge.net/uzix2.0/index.php?page=scrsht&lang=us

[Piru]

Wasn't there also an attempt to port Opera?

No, Opera is a propietary project.