wawa tk wrote:

alas i must say aweb doesnt make an impression to be very up to date, and beyond that, that it would be eventually updated in the future. it is also comperatively slow, to ibrowse and even to netsurf sdl port would i say.

OWB, Netsurf and IBrowse is slower for me.
IBrowse use such high CPU load, multitasking with it is a Problem.
Loading a 8 Megapixel image from HD:
Aweb: 16:90 seconds
IBrowse: 30:25 seconds

No try with Netsurf now i have applications running and cant risk crash. 

If games are why you're doing it, why do you even need Natami? Just grab an Amiga and play games (or play in WinUAE). If you want new games, get an X-Box or Playstation. There are millions of games out there. I'm surprised people still want more.

Yes, I remember the great Amiga games (don't have to remember, I have 7 Amigas and hundreds of games). But I did (and still do) much more with my Amigas than just games. Yes, I even used my Amigas for web browsing - for 6 years straight!

There seem to be two different groups of Amiga users - the ones who used it as a toy to play games when they were a kid, and the ones who used it as an actual computer to do useful things. There's nothing wrong with either group (probably depends on age), but there always seems to be a difference of what "Amiga" is to them.

OWB is with Startup inluded, OWB has no menu and no String gadget
to give in a Site. So i have to start it via CLI and it understand
the Local file in a commend.
Enforcer was disabled during test, OWB does write Hits while
startup. System was instable too because of BB2 - exec.
Btw. if OWB cant alloc memory it leaves arexx port there, window open and quit without a reason(if it cant load an image its not needed to quit).

Michael, you are really trying your to make friends, are you?

The point why some of us are working on games is that the NATAMI comes with big time improved game power compared to classic 68K AMIGAs.
And NATAMI chipset comes with new features like chunky, truecolor etc.

We are developing some example game which demonstrate these features and that can be used as teaching examples on how to code these features for ANTAMI/AMIGA.

Yes, a browser is important.

But a browser is a huge task.
You can code a very good Shoot-Em-Up game in 2 month.
But writing a good browsre from scratch takes several years.

So developing some good game coding examples to show how to use the New NATAMI features is a task which is reasonable to do.

But there is little sense in starting a new browser port.
People did already good porting work, the AMIGA community has to continue on this. OWB is a good start. Netsurf also. Support these projects.

Micheal, your wish for a good browser is sensible.
But instead pissing of the individual people here by telling them what they should do or not do.

Why don't you do something productive?

Can you code? If yes then help on improving one of the browser.
If not then donate some money for soem bounty.

BTW, I myself worked on the AMIGA browser front because I think its an important topic. But I also donated money to support the ports of other browsers.

Most of what you'd classify as productivity applications have either moved on or become eclipsed by newer applications on modern OSes. This isn't a slight against the Amiga just what happens when nothing happens Hardware/OS wise for a decade or two.

Taking some older games and seeing updated or writing new ones is relatively quick and productive. Especially in comparison to a web browser.

Andy

Andy

No, I'm not trying to make friends. I'm trying to convince people of the importance of an updated browser. I may be getting a bit blunt, but that comes from the frustration of seeing that nothing has been done about it. From what you said, it appears you are just making a game machine.

Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

Yes, a browser is important.     But a browser is a huge task.   You can code a very good Shoot-Em-Up game in 2 month.   But writing a good browsre from scratch takes several years.

That is why I am so frustrated. You (the Natami team) have known for several years that Natami is in development. Theoretically, it could have been done by now. Instead, it will take several years after Natami is released before we have a good enough browser (if ever). But we'll have a couple new games... which is good, I suppose, if you just want to play games... but NOT if you wanted to use Natami as a real computer.

Here is the reason why I think the Natami team should have been behind an updated browser: most Amiga browser programmers have abandoned 68k browser development because the 68k is just too slow to do the things that a modern browser must do. That's understandable and if I was a 68k browser programmer, I would just give up and say there's nothing more I can do. Natami, however, should be fast enough for all the CSS and javascript stuff. So, since Natami is the only 68k compatible Amiga with enough speed, it is up to the Natami team to do something. (obviously, the Natami is not ready yet, but I would have thought some team members would be programming and testing in WinUAE)

Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

But instead pissing of the individual people here by telling them what they should do or not do.

If people are pissed off by what I said, then they are far too emotional. I thought I was being pretty logical.

Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

Why don't you do something productive?

I knew I'd see a comment like this. I'm a programmer, but not even remotely related to Amiga programming. I would do something if I could. That may sound like the standard bullshit answer, but it was a standard bullshit question. ;)

Look, given we would have a browser on the Natami, would you be using it, actually? I mean, most of the potential buyers are freaks anyhow and do have a second (or first, or third) machine for "serious" work anyhow.

Writing a complete browser is a tempting, very long running task, and with little benefits for the potential user base. Back in 2000, probably, a browser would be a great thing to have because - even then - some people used the Amiga as their main machine for development, office and so on; so did I. However, we're now even ten years later, things changed. Amiga or Natami is a hobbyist project driven by individuals. This community would take years to create a competitive browser. And no, "just porting firefox" is neither an easy task.

Be realistic, and think about what Natami should be. It's not a replacement for your desktop system.

My personal interest would be rather Os development (I kinna like this boring stuff, yeah!) and probably some retro gaming. For all the serious work, I've my Linux machine(s) around.

So long,
Thomas

Its not easy to do more as we are spread very thin.
To make more progress we really need people helping us.

I hope that when the HW is out, people can use the systems and that this will bring more helping hands on board.
There are many things to do on the software front.
This is much more than 3 people can do on their weekends.

I think that its a good idea for the team to focus on HW development and on writing libs and example code on how to use the new features so that other people can learn from this.

I think when the HW is out we will relative quickly have a few software improvements imn the range of:
- Natami accelerated IDE driver
- Natami CyberGFX version
- Faster AHI also using the 24bit audio features.

The current Webbrowsers (MOS/AROS/OS4) could relative easily be compiled for NATAMI. NATAMI is more powerful than any classic AMIGA. So programs like OWB should run 2-3 faster on NATAMI, this might make them actually run relative OK on NATAMI.
And tuning these browsers for more speed will be more rewarding if people can then try/use these program on their real NATAMI machine.

I hope that people out of the commnity will take over these tasks.

Matt your compiler work is very important. I agree with you that GCC does only a suboptimal job on 68K code generation. 
Thinking of it, I should probably change my compile environment from GCC... Matt, would you like to help us in this regard?

Cheers

And I am already working on a Natami-Portal (Similar to Aminet but no replacement) as a central source for Software and Informations

Getting an uptodate web browser for Natami is very easy.
This is what you must do:

1) Transfer $50,000.00 per year for 3 years from your bank account to Stefan Burstroem's bank account so that he can quit his job and resume work on Ibrowse full-time for you.

2) Wait 1 year for a gigantically improved browser.  Wait 2 or 3 years for a browser with all the bells and whistles that you want.

one of setups i did should be still travelling around the world as a part of an art exhibition put together by "institut für auslandsbeziehungen".

as for web browser i neither see the capacity nor need to program an original solution by amiga community. even though there is an approach in this direction (merlin) that is progressing very slowly. as i said it would be a much better if someone would help artur out with porting netsurf to an established amiga gui (prefferably mui). also the 68k port should aim not only at natami but at the widest possible variety of systems in my opinion.

That's exactly what I want it to be - and for this purpose the only thing I need is an updated browser. (further OS development would be very nice too, but not as essential)

These days, about 98% of everything I do on a computer is browser based - and that includes most Office-type stuff which I do in Google Docs. The other 2% of the things I do on a computer involve  simple image manipulation, music playing, simple text editing and miscellaneous small utilities - all of which can easily be done with existing Amiga software.

At the moment, I'm using BeOS for everything - and this is only possible because BeOS has a reasonably modern browser (FireFox 2). BeOS has far less software (less useful too) than Amiga. Why am I using such an old, buggy OS as BeOS? I own and/or have used nearly every other OS ever made - and I hate them all! I could rant on and on (and on!) about the various annoyances of each one, but that's not the point here. The point is that I could do everything I need to do on Amiga/Natami if only there was an updated browser.

I understand I'm probably the only one here who wants an updated Amiga with an updated browser to use as a primary computer, so I won't post about it anymore. I can see it's not going to happen.

I would like to use NatAmi as my primary computer as well. I can not imagine NatAmi without decent, modern web browser.

Cheers

I'm helping to make games because I love them and making them and want to help show off what Natami is capible of.

I want Natami to be a full blown computer/productivity machine, for everything from spreadsheets to emails, web browsing and creating all aspects of games. (sound, graphics, 3d, code)

It will get there...we need more time, and more help.

Don't get too frustrated.  Everyones doing this with what little "free time" we can steel from our day jobs and families.  We're all contributing what we're best at.

Then, I wonder, why do you need a Natami in first place if the only component that counts is a browser? Install a decent operating system on a decent machine, and get your favorite browser then. If that's all you need, you have it already in your hands.

So what makes Natami special? You can do that right away, problem solved for you. If you insist, buy an intel machine and put a nice Amiga sticker on it.

So long,
Thomas