NetSurf OS3.x Issues

[chris]

Tested, it seems to disable png images? Somebody else should test this also. Even in startup page has a png image, if it is trashed problem is with all AGA users. I tested it without FBLit didn't help.

Which version of datatypes.library do you have?  And picture.datatype whilst you're checking version numbers?

Bad that speed is degraded so much from summer version.

I doubt I can do much about this unless you can point to some glaring error I've introduced several months ago.  I have no idea what state the bitmap code was in in that build, I only tried it here in a new build but I know I had been changing the bitmap code inbetween.  Probably there was some quick hacky code I'd put in for testing and replacing it with a working implementation has slowed it down.  Also note that fonts aren't being cached, there are so many different parameters for each open request that I'm not sure how to keep track of them... or if it is even neccessary.

Am I right but time calculator is now in bottom of Windows and it is "displayed" outside of window, so that it is not visible?

It should be in the window border but border gadgets appear to be completely broken in OS3.  I've added a non-border status bar in the new build (usual place).

Could it be possible / easy to make so that quitting is fast any time? If Netsurf is doing somethin, it doesn't allow quiting, it can take minits before it quits.

It's single tasking, so if busy you have to wait.

There a still some display / rendering problems, like amigaworld menus.

Yes there are, exactly the same amount as in the early builds, as I've made no attempt to fix them.
The bitmap font layouting is slightly broken too.

[chris]

OK, I think the image problem (and the aw.net menu bar corruption) is related to the tiled rendering, and caused by the same bug which causes the previous page to show through on the amiga.org homepage.

I don't know how to fix this though.

You can turn off tiled rendering by setting the tile sizes to the same as your screen size (or 0, possibly).

btw, I'm pissing about with this on an (emulated at real speed) 020/AGA and it's perfectly usable.  It's only the fetching/processing speed that is annoyingly slow.

[utri007]

What ever you did for it last summer, you did it right. It was twice as fast than it is now.

Downloading amigaworld.net takes 45.4 seconds (22 seconds) and surpricingly my 040 amiga does it same time 45.9 seconds.

I can log on to the amigaworld.net, but it takes about a 5 minits. Also after that there is starange screen corruption. See attached picture. Nothing like this hasn't happened before with this version.

Is it possible to make it stop, at least downloading page?? After that Quit would be fast?

My datatypes.library is 44.47

PS. May I suggest that you fix what you can? Not spend too much time to those problems, wich takes too much energy. It could be possible that you found solution one day, it is perfectly useable now. Maybe you could fix preferences? Note also, that you are best to say what to put users/choises file

[chris]

Downloading amigaworld.net takes 45.4 seconds (22 seconds) and surpricingly my 040 amiga does it same time 45.9 seconds.

I can log on to the amigaworld.net, but it takes about a 5 minits.

Shows up in 15s here (using NetSurf's timer).  It logged in quick, and then infylooped during layout (bitmap font layout bug).  5 mins would probably be because of a timeout.

 Also after that there is starange screen corruption. See attached picture. Nothing like this hasn't happened before with this version.

That's the same plotter bug again.

Is it possible to make it stop, at least downloading page?? After that Quit would be fast?

Acting on the close gadget click already happens as fast as it can.  If it is doing heavy layout work it doesn't necessarily yield to the GUI very quickly.  All the layouting, downloading and GUI events happen on the same process.  Most people don't decide to quit a web browser whilst it is still downloading the last page they requested!

My datatypes.library is 44.47

And picture.datatype?  You're using OS3.9, right?  That at least explains why the datatypes loader doesn't work.

Maybe you could fix preferences?

Yes, that should be relatively easy but time-consuming as I'll need to go through and figure out what it doesn't like by trial and error.

Note also, that you are best to say what to put users/choises file

The defaults should be sensible now.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Utri007 - Thanks for the tips, and for the link.  I've been following along on the thread unfortunately have been too busy to respond.  In any case, with the new download and those options in-place, it is a big improvement in performance on my system.  25-35 seconds for amiga.org, 3-6 seconds for google.com (I reloaded these pages a couple times), etc.  Scrolling is also significantly faster.

Unfortunately more complex pages still seem to take an age ("fetching, processing").  cnn.com took almost three minutes to load.  Wikipedia took 673 seconds (and boy was it ugly in all Topaz font).  But hey, we're getting there.  Also we're now in a realm of pages that IBrowse can't even load - I tried bankofamerica.com, for example - IBrowse just throws an error about "outdated encryption" or something along those lines.  NetSurf at least loaded the first page of it.  

Aminet also works and I was able to download files (yay, new version of Peter K. icon library!    )

I concur with the bug about it freezing up now, however.  As a test I left it sitting at one page for about an hour while I went off and did other things, and when I came back to it it was completely frozen.  Wouldn't exit, wouldn't refresh, etc.  The system was still operational, I could load other programs, but no sign of life from NetSurf.  Had to give it the three-finger-salute to shut it down.

More testing required...


Chris - any possibility of reaching out to any of the original IBrowse dev team?  I know at least Oliver Roberts was still active in the Amiga community, with his WarpDT's (which are great, btw).  I vaguely recall hearing something about him having an update for SSL, as well.  Perhaps he could help you with your datatype issues, at least?

Just a thought.


My .02 cents, it is a real shame what happened there.  They had a great browser, and then just  Doesn't make sense to not even be accepting registrations anymore, since I'm sure at least a few people would like to pay for it rather than download a pirate copy...  


Another probably obvious question for Chris - since this is built off NetSurf source, there's no possibility of you ever going commercial with it, is there?

[utri007]

Chris as a Oldsmobile_Mike  said, I would also hapily pay for a working solution.

Oldsmobile_Mike : I don't belive that there is no way that we could never use our 68k amiga for general web browsin, not even if there where CSS capable iBrowse. What would make me happy would be possibility to download files, if needed without going to another machine.

Did you try new build or old build with those swicthes?

[utri007]

You can turn off tiled rendering by setting the tile sizes to the same as your screen size (or 0, possibly).

How I do that, it should be tested. If porblem is only with tiled rendering, maybe it could be disable as default?

Is it possible to make it stop, at least downloading page?? After that Quit would be fast?

Acting on the close gadget click already happens as fast as it can. If it is doing heavy layout work it doesn't necessarily yield to the GUI very quickly. All the layouting, downloading and GUI events happen on the same process. Most people don't decide to quit a web browser whilst it is still downloading the last page they requested!

Think that this would be useable now, when Netsurf doesn't work 100% right. Like those time outs with loging amigaworld.net. If I try to close browse, it quits after 5 minits, when it gets time outed.  Also with such a limite raw CPU power, it is easy get a situation where browser is occupied several minits. Of course if this is hard or imposible to do, then situation is what it is.

I also doubt that Oldsmobile_Mike problem is related to time outs?. For me it just terminated lan/web and didn't react anything. Could it be that Netsurd tries to do something and there is no time out for that?

[chris]

I concur with the bug about it freezing up now, however.  As a test I left it sitting at one page for about an hour while I went off and did other things, and when I came back to it it was completely frozen.  Wouldn't exit, wouldn't refresh, etc.  The system was still operational, I could load other programs, but no sign of life from NetSurf.  Had to give it the three-finger-salute to shut it down.

Yeah, that's the infinite loop layout bug.  I hate that code so much I'm not keen on fiddling with it.

Another probably obvious question for Chris - since this is built off NetSurf source, there's no possibility of you ever going commercial with it, is there?

No.

[utri007]

Picture.datatype is 45.17

Reinstalled Netsurf and noticed that it is slow, amigaworld render took 80 seconds. I made changes to choises file, it was fast again.

My choises file is :

theme:PROGDIR:Resources/Themes/Default
pubscreen_name:Workbench
window_simple_refresh:1
redraw_tile_size_x:100
redraw_tile_size_y:100
use_diskfont:1
font_sans:Topaz
font_serif:Topaz
font_mono:Topaz
font_cursive:Topaz
font_fantasy:Topaz

Should friend_bitmap be ON or OFF? 0/1 or totally removed from choises file?

How do I do this : You can turn off tiled rendering by setting the tile sizes to the same as your screen size (or 0, possibly).

[Tygre]

Dear all!

I still have to install OS 3.5 (or 3.9) to test the new versions of NetSurf following Chris' advice but I wanted to support the proposal below:

Chris as a Oldsmobile_Mike  said, I would also hapily pay for a working solution.

+1

I would happily donate to Chris or a bounty or...

Oldsmobile_Mike : I don't belive that there is no way that we could never use our 68k amiga for general web browsin, not even if there where CSS capable iBrowse. What would make me happy would be possibility to download files, if needed without going to another machine.

Same here, I cannot believe that, in 2016, we could not have a decent Web browser or high-end 68k Amiga. At least something that renders okay most pages and allow "normal" uses...

Of course, your "normal" is that my "normal" :laughing: but you get my meaning and, besides, Oldsmobile_Mike's screenshots look quite "normal": Wikipedia, Google, Aminet... all these sites are probably regularly used by most of us...

Cheers!

[utri007]

I checked Chris' home page, there is no donate button.

[chris]

Picture.datatype is 45.17

Ta.  So the bitmap scaling should be working correctly (not that I've noticed any problems with v44), it's just the datatypes linking up that won't work.  I should be able to work around that, but it's not a priority as I don't think it'll solve anything.

Reinstalled Netsurf and noticed that it is slow, amigaworld render took 80 seconds. I made changes to choises file, it was fast again.

My choises file is :

theme:PROGDIR:Resources/Themes/Default
pubscreen_name:Workbench
window_simple_refresh:1
redraw_tile_size_x:100
redraw_tile_size_y:100
use_diskfont:1
font_sans:Topaz
font_serif:Topaz
font_mono:Topaz
font_cursive:Topaz
font_fantasy:Topaz

That can only be down to your choice of fonts; Topaz is always going to be faster for a number of reasons.  The rest there are defaults (actually the top two are added by the install script).

You can see your running config by visiting about:config

Should friend_bitmap be ON or OFF? 0/1 or totally removed from choises file?

Whatever works best.  1 is the default.  If that works, I'd leave it like that as it could makes blits faster.

How do I do this : You can turn off tiled rendering by setting the tile sizes to the same as your screen size (or 0, possibly).

redraw_tile_size_x:0
redraw_tile_size_y:0

0 will either turn it off or make NetSurf crash.  Please let me know which!

I checked Chris' home page, there is no donate button.

Actually there is, although it took me a while to find it.

[utri007]

Tile size y/x 0/0 doesn't work it has miniums and maximum size.

But I noticed that from menu Browser - > Images and disable background images, solves prety much every display problem. Even Amiga.org looks about right. Menu text are readable etc. nothing is in wrong place etc. Even logging to amigaworld.net doeasn't take more than 87 seconds, or is this just a coinside?. Hope this helps.

There is no config under the about, there is a credits and license.

You have hidden that donate button very well in your home page.

[chris]

Tile size y/x 0/0 doesn't work it has miniums and maximum size.

Set them to your screen size then.  There's definitely no maximum (or at least, the maximum isn't any smaller than the screen)

But I noticed that from menu Browser - > Images and disable background images, solves prety much every display problem. Even Amiga.org looks about right. Menu text are readable etc. nothing is in wrong place etc. Even logging to amigaworld.net doeasn't take more than 87 seconds, or is this just a coinside?. Hope this helps.

No, probably not.  A lot of the background images are repeated tiles - on OS4 I use layers.library's backfill functions to tile plot very efficiently.  On OS3 I can't do that, so it's probably my old slow (and seemingly broken) code.  That would certainly explain some of the performance problems.  I don't know why it fixes the rendering, but that's interesting useful information, thanks.

There is no config under the about, there is a credits and license.

I mean, browse directly to "about:config"

You have hidden that donate button very well in your home page.

It's only there because some people were asking, and it's on the most relevant page!
If you donate then it's for work already done, not future progress.  But, actually, the feedback is more motivating and useful than donations.

[utri007]

I tested tile size 1024/768 it didn't work OR was so slow that my patience ended. It didn't gave any errors like 0/0 did.

No, probably not. A lot of the background images are repeated tiles - on OS4 I use layers.library's backfill functions to tile plot very efficiently. On OS3 I can't do that, so it's probably my old slow (and seemingly broken) code. That would certainly explain some of the performance problems. I don't know why it fixes the rendering, but that's interesting useful information, thanks.

Would use of Thomas Richter's back port of OS4 layers.library help and make things significantly easier?

[chris]

Would use of Thomas Richter's back port of OS4 layers.library help and make things significantly easier?

Possibly - I didn't know such a thing existed.

I've just uplaoded a new version with some of the text layout problems fixed.  It's still broken (missing text on the welcome page!) but shouldn't go into an infinite loop any more.