I propose a bounty that could be opened, which would be as follows:

  - Netsurf must have a MUI gui (thus getting rid of SDL), comparable (as far as customization is concerned) to that of IBrowse;

  - must have a comprehensive ARexx port.

Also, the rendering engine must be able to use Amiga *native* fonts.

The willing developer can use WinUAE as a development environment (or whatever cross-development environment he desires).

Feel free to improve this bounty draft.

Maybe Artur Jarosik (the author of the 68k netsurf port) will accept to do the bounty.

Maybe Olaf Schoenweiss can take care of the bounty set-up process.
Do u think we could use Power2people (http://www.power2people.org/) ?

* This browser needs to support CSS.
* The browser needs to support enough JS that the common websites work.
* And the browser should be reasonable fast so that browsing work fine.

 

Is an AREXX port more important than the above?
Certainly not.
 
Is a MUI interface really that important?
Could a normal Boopsi interface do the same job?
 
Does the browser really needt to be fully customizeable?
Do we really need to be able to replace the FORWARD/BACKWARD icons?
To me this is much less important than that websurfing works 100%.
 
 
I think supporting NetSurf with bounties is a good idea.
But I would set very different priorities.

* Getting JS is important

* Getting the Browser running fully stable is important

* People say the browser is not fast enough.
Is this true? Can we identify why its slow?
If yes, can this be improved?

I think we should put emphasis in the really important tasks.

Did you ever see Netsurf?
At this time it has none UI, not Boopsi, not MUI, not Reaction.
Thats the Problem. Its just a Window with graphics that
dont react as they should. You have click serveral time just to activate the URL string.

Should Natami representative contact 2 developers already working on this?

I do agree that a common interface would be useful. I also agree that current version does need some work. But in general, core ability at displaying complex pages not bad. I ran this program all day last week reading about the Chile earthquake on a variety of news sites; CNN, ABC, etc... All of the complex crap on those sites loaded and displayed pretty good in Netsurf.

Agree that it is a little slow. Other thread had a posting with specific measurements, they agree with my own casual performance observations.

I tried various UAE memory settings and can say, the more the merrier. Because of this I would like to know if anything can be done to lower its memory requirement. In my opinioln, this would be important where Natami is concerned.

Obviously these are questions for the developers so I do not expect Natami people to provide any answers. So again I ask if anyone talking with original developers?

I do not know why you are running that slow. I was able to pull up full CNN news site (with all of its mega garbage) in about 1 minute. My UAE machine not exactly a speedster, Intel Xeon 3110 (3ghz clocked to 4ghz), 2gb ram, old geoforce fx 5200 pci video. Basically it is a machine I am trying to get Amithlon to run on (different story altogether...) About all I did was crank RAM settings and video RAM settings.

I'll run more accurate tests tonight and document my UAE settings better for a post here tomorrow.

You did not understand my post, did you?

Christian Kummerow wrote:

At this time it has none UI, not Boopsi, not MUI, not Reaction.   Thats the Problem.

See, THIS IS THE POINT. It has NO GUI - so we want A GUI.

Define small and clear goals.
* We want A GUI.

Would a simple Boopsi GUI do the job also?

Don't ask for thinks that are not really needed but could take long.
Don't ask for a complex preference system that could take someone 6 month to develop if its not really needed.
And if you ask for a 6 month task then donate a reasonable amount for this.

How easy can this be fixed?
 
Ask the developed what he thinks is the reason.
Create a bounty to get this fixed.
 
Define a sensible goal.
Should render CNN.COM in about 3 seconds or less on system XYZ is sensible.
Needs to render faster than IBrowse, is not sensible.
 

I think netsurf lacks threads, thats why it's a bit too slow.

By the way, there's a new version of netsurf for 68k (http://aminet.net/package/comm/www/NetSurf-m68k).
Still no native GUI though; it seems Artur isn't very expert in MUI programming. Time to help him; two (or more) hands are better than one.
But first, I think Gunnar's right; a developer must make netsurf more responsive, by adding threads, which are missing apparently.

IMHO MUI is what one expects today and is not really more
effort.

Javascript & CSS is no problem with most of the newer
opensource ports to AOS.

Regarding the speed we have to tests with a Natami LX and
then profile to see, where improvements need to be done
software-wise and where the hardware can help with further
accelerators.

I am quite confident that we will do progress in the browser
question for Natami, but it WILL take time.

CU,
Peter

his port has a gui, contrary to what has been posted here, but a mui gui would be more flexible, might work on all amiga platforms, would be free of gfx gleetches and probably more responsive.

contrary to what ive read in this thread the browser itself (ie. its sdl version of the core) is quite stable. not as stable as ibrowse perhaps. but it never brings down your system, from my experience.

as for speed issue, it could ber improved perhaps, but it is for a experienced dev to do. amiga.org has become quite a heavy duty site to load after it has been updated lately. i wouldnt expect wonders on 060/50, it can take several minutes to render a css layout. pity that it handles all sites as css, i dont know it it would improve anything if this was not the case.

That depends what do you mean with a GUI.
Just one for the URL String/Gadgetbar/Menu or for the whole Browser?
If the last, intuition may not able to do some things
that is needed for actual Websites.

For me its not importend witch GUI. You see it on OS4 or
MCP, the look of a GUI can changed(but may look wrong on some programms).
I use intuition/gadtools but mostly working selfmade Gadgets.
No time to understand MUI or Reaction, but of course
i miss some (easy)features like different colors in a Listview
or Drag/Drop with such.
The only GUI the users have complain to me was bgui - its slow
and under some conditions buggy.

Not from future, good one by the way. Anyway I did get decent results with Netsurf 68K. When I think about it, it was only slightly slower at complex webpages than Windows based Opera. I do also run a stripped version of Windows so maybe this helps?

At any rate for real 68k hardware, any browser would have to be carefully done. Basically I think an old fashioned Amiga program is required. I sometimes think that porting over certain programs from other systems to 68k does not always work the best.

Anway, maybe a new bounty would be the best way to go here unless a programmer thought current Netsurk68k could be useable.

 
Regarding the GUI:
 
A) GUI is done using SDL.
The GUI is working.
Sometimes the response on a click was slow.
I was not always sure if the browser got my input or not.
I saw no "cursor" when I did enter a text this was a bit confusing.

 
B) Window has a fixed size with no way to resize.
This is a drawback as sometimes you run into a website which would fit perfectly if you increase the window size a little bit.
I assume this could be changed.
 
 
C) Scroll bars are selfmate.
Scrolling somewhat lacks user friendliness.
There are two arrows for scrolling up and down.
Clicking them works, but they do not behave like normal applications.
Normal applications allows dragging of the scroll bar.
Normal applications react on keeping an arrow pressed down with continuing the scroll.
The behavior of the scroll bar /arrows could certainly be changed.
I think this should be no problem to do.
I very nice option would be to react on middle mouse scrool wheel and use it as input for UP/DOWN scrolling. Support for this could be added easily I assume and would increase user friendliness a lot.
 
   
I think the browser makes a good impression so far.
A MUI user interface would be nice of course.
But even the current user interface could in my opinion with little changes become user friendly enough to be a good working solution.
 
 
What do you think?

Also there seems to be a bug in scrolling certain pages.
Sometimes I the picture was not correctly refreshed.

>Also there seems to be a bug in scrolling certain pages.
>Sometimes I the picture was not correctly refreshed.

i think this was in a old version or does the version with above link have same problem

there stand its a hack, but i guess that is more because this old libs should support 8 bit and AGA.

but because Linux and windows Software today not run on 8 bit screens, its possible to drop 8 bit support

EXTERNAL LINK 
This help to get runing programs that use xlib as gtk+ and other GUI Systems
do

what libx is you can see here

EXTERNAL LINK