NetSurf OS3.x Issues

[utri007]

I'm getting some weirdness with the bitmap font layout here, it isn't doing what it's supposed to and I don't know why.  It is at least consistent on OS4, but on OS3 how it lays out the welcome page changes every time I run it.  I suspect an uninitialised variable is getting used, but GCC warns about those and it hasn't picked anything up..

Current version doesn't display fonts at all, but you propably know that already.

Weir thing was that it displayed them on my aga machine until I enabled background and foreground. I have those disable as a default, makes it faster. Couldn't get fonts displayed again when I disabled backgrounds.

Could it be simple as problems with choises file?

[chris]

Current version doesn't display fonts at all, but you propably know that already.

edit 3 (deleted previous versions of this post!)
Should be fixed now, found the bug that was causing inconsistent layout and font sizes (and in some cases no text at all).

[utri007]

Well done nice speed up. 45 - > 35 downloading amiga.org

Why it takes 3x more time when moving amigaworld.net to amiga.org 104 seconds? It is not site depending, just surfing from site to another site takes 3x time.

With 040/AGA amigaworld.net alpha_mask is problem, changing value doesn't seems to affect anything? 1 or 100

[chris]

Why it takes 3x more time when moving amigaworld.net to amiga.org 104 seconds? It is not site depending, just surfing from site to another site takes 3x time.

I would hazard a guess that it's related to NetSurf clearing out the cache.  Try disabling the disk cache (disc_cache_size:0)

With 040/AGA amigaworld.net alpha_mask is problem, changing value doesn't seems to affect anything? 1 or 100

Probably another bug.  It certainly was working on OS4 back before I broke the 8-bit modes on OS4.

[utri007]

I would hazard a guess that it's related to NetSurf clearing out the cache.  Try disabling the disk cache (disc_cache_size:0)

Disabling disc cache makes it generally faster, even first page loaded loads/render faster.

Difference is not that big, 1.5 seconds and 10 seconds. (amigaworld.net - > amiga.org) Considering that disc cache purpose is make thigs faster that is weird. Is this something wich can be fixed or is this just something because slow disc Access?

[chris]

Disabling disc cache makes it generally faster, even first page loaded loads/render faster.

Difference is not that big, 1.5 seconds and 10 seconds. (amigaworld.net - > amiga.org) Considering that disc cache purpose is make thigs faster that is weird. Is this something wich can be fixed or is this just something because slow disc Access?

Slow disk access. Because it single tasks you get a pause when it writes out. I did make some changes to push writes to a separate process, but it caused problems as NetSurf isn't designed for that.

[utri007]

Would it be possible to make it not to clear disk cache? Or does it matter? I can live with that information that my hard disk contains images from these sites, if it makes future openings faster. Any way still bit a mystery why it takes so long, deleting images shouldn't take that much longer.

[chris]

Would it be possible to make it not to clear disk cache? Or does it matter? I can live with that information that my hard disk contains images from these sites, if it makes future openings faster. Any way still bit a mystery why it takes so long, deleting images shouldn't take that much longer.

It's not clearing the disk cache, it's clearing the memory cache - which involves writing out everything to disk (which is what takes time). If it's slowing down initial page access then you're better off leaving it disabled.

[utri007]

OK

Downloading and rendering amiga.org after amigaworld.net takes 94 seconds with disk cache OFF

Amiga.org downloads and render takes about 35 seconds, that mean that Netsurf takes 59 seconds to clear it memory cache, wich sounds a lot? Generally deleting from memory should be much faster than writing to memory???

[chris]

OK

Downloading and rendering amiga.org after amigaworld.net takes 94 seconds with disk cache OFF

Amiga.org downloads and render takes about 35 seconds, that mean that Netsurf takes 59 seconds to clear it memory cache, wich sounds a lot? Generally deleting from memory should be much faster than writing to memory???

Hmm, that doesn't sound right, freeing items from memory should be quick.

I've just tried it here and I'm not seeing this issue.

[chris]

I've put a new build up.  Potentially a bit quicker again, but quite likely also completely broken.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Eep!  Sorry I've been a bit AWOL from this thread.  Life got in the way, including now working on replacing the front end on a friend's car that they totalled.  Haven't had much time for tinkering.  

In any case, downloaded this most recent version today.  I tried changing the font to XEN, then I tried changing it to XHelvetica (I was getting really tired of looking at Topaz).  Didn't seem to make much difference in performance so I took those lines out completely.  Looks much nicer with the default fonts, anyway.  

I also tried changing the redraw_tile_size settings.  Tried 10x10 and 200x200, but it seems like the 100x100 values still yield the best balance.

I'm not noticing the alpha issues on amigaworld.net I saw in utri007's screenshots.  But then again I don't have AGA, either.

One thing new I did notice was an output window popped up that said "Timeout was reached" when I tried to load Wikipedia.  I think this was one of the sites that took like 600+ seconds to load during some previous testing.  Is this something new you've added?  Is the timeout value adjustable?

Edit:  I just tried Wikipedia again.  749 seconds, ouch.  Could it be because it redirected my http:// to https:// ?

Is there any chance to get "iconify" working?  I'd love to be able to minimize this thing to quickly get to other icons on my Workbench.

Overall performance seems better each time (other than on Wikipedia).  Here's a few screenshots; thanks, Chris!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I tried loading Facebook since I saw somebody asking about it on the amigaworld.net thread.  It let me log in, but wouldn't let me get very far without Javascript.  Then it gave me this error on the "mobile" site:

Edit: Dang it.  It did actually load the mobile Facebook site, eventually, after I clicked through a dozen error messages or so.  But by that point I'd already clicked on the "close" box for Netsurf, too.  So wasn't able to get a screenshot before it closed out.  

[utri007]

You don't have any problems when you surf from site to site, amiga.org - > amigaworld.net? Rendering / downloading amiga.org takes 35 seconds and amigaworld.net takes 29 second, but when going first amiga.org after that amigaworld.net downloads / render 104 seconds.

Is netsurf still killing your Network if left open?

[utri007]

Tested 21st day version.

A1200 040/AGA

Very unstable. Locks Computer in random point, two times it didn't display anything, some times it loaded start page, once I got part of amiga.org displayed. One time it said please insert volume workbench in any drive and amiga freezed.

No gurus or erros, just freezed amiga.

A1200 060/RTG

Works better no lock ups. But lots of random weirdness. Once I typed amiga.org address after amigaworld.net address, it started loading and fetching, said it ready but page didnt change. One it displayed amiga.org after amigaworld.net quite fast, but it was still loading and fetching some 60 seconds.

Installed Miami to see does it make diffrence to AmiTCP/Genesis, no diffrence. Network dies some point.

This version has some weird issues, something wich seems to be very random.

[chris]

Edit:  I just tried Wikipedia again.  749 seconds, ouch.  Could it be because it redirected my http:// to https:// ?

I don't know why Wikipedia takes so long.  I assume it's the CSS processing but it seems insanely long.

Is there any chance to get "iconify" working?  I'd love to be able to minimize this thing to quickly get to other icons on my Workbench.

Umm.. possibly.  Are you definitely running NetSurf on the Workbench screen?  As the iconify gadget options don't say they are new, so it should work... but only on the WB screen, if NetSurf is on another screen iconify isn't available (for boring reasons).

Very unstable. Locks Computer in random point, two times it didn't display anything, some times it loaded start page, once I got part of amiga.org displayed. One time it said please insert volume workbench in any drive and amiga freezed.

No gurus or erros, just freezed amiga.

When you find the code that is randomly overwriting memory (or re-using freed pointers?) please let me know.  I'll give a hint: it's somewhere in the OS3-only code, as there are no such problems on OS4.

Unfortunately debugging such things on OS3 is virtually impossible.  Enforcer might give some clues, but as I have no way of figuring out where the offset is pointing to in the source the only way I'm likely to fix this is by accident (or another pair of eyes looking over my source code for silly errors).

btw, it has got worse because I'm allocating some memory in pools now, so the chances of NetSurf overwriting memory NetSurf has allocated is increased.