AmiZilla Booty Splits Four Ways

[Pyromania]

For Immediate Release

September 28th, 2007

We are trying something new to stimulate AmiZilla development. The Booty is now available as a split if a team can successfully port it on their favorite Amiga OS type system. It breaks down this way:

Amiga OS 4.0 = Successful stable port of Firefox equals 25% of the AmiZilla Booty.

MorphOS = Successful stable port of Firefox equals 25% of the AmiZilla Booty.

AROS = Successful stable port of Firefox equals 25% of the AmiZilla Booty.

Amiga OS 3.1= Successful stable port of Firefox equals 25% of the AmiZilla Booty.

While it will be less money to the winner, if they are able to port to their favorite system it will mean that the technical difficulty's that some have complained about porting to 3.X are now removed. Also we believe that once one port is complete the others will fall into place. Of course if the same team did all four ports then they would get 100%. We hope this can push AmiZilla forward and not hold it back any longer. Donations are optional but always welcome if you feel this will push the contest forward.

http://amizilla.net/

Best regards

DiscreetFX Partners

[turrican3]

really thank you pyromania to take care the amiga.
And yes wee really need firfox for the amiga.
do you know if some programmer work on a firefox port for the amiga ?
And you know, i think you should do the same for openoffice.
And for vlc media player too.
And tell me is it possible to do something like wine, for launching mac games or mac apllications on amiga.
I'm really surprise than i 'm alone here to post.
Don't discourage you, i will try to find a guy who could make the job.
The most impotant think for the guy who want to make the job is to know well the 680x0 programation ? ( i will find this guy) but tel me more what you need. Perhaps i couldn't help you, but if i can i 'm ready to do it.

[Pyromania]

The answers to your questions are on the AmiZilla mailing list

[turrican3]

and where is the amizilla mailing list ?

[amiga]

Originally Posted by turrican3

really thank you pyromania to take care the amiga.
...

Now, speculating on a dead platform is called "taking care of" ?

I thank you as well Pyromania for "taking care of" the amiga
YES, Thank u my butt !!!

[Siggy999]

heheh that post made me giggle.

I'm not all that fussed about Amizilla to tell the truth. I remember when it was first brought up (yeah I been lurking that long around Ami boards). I also remember when mozilla was released for Linux - and it was pretty bloated and slow then. PC's had been pulling away from the Amiga in speed for a few years by that point and it didn't really perform that well for me then.

It's really only going to be (barely) usable by a small subset of the Amiga community anyways (Lets face it, if you don't have an accelerator of some kind and a graphics card, the web is a pretty ugly place for your average Ami...... even emulating a 'superbadass amiga' more of the web becomes unusable every year)

Even Mozilla realized it was becoming bloated and slow - which is why we have firefox now.

I think it would be more productive if folks wanting to work on a browser got behind AWeb... it's actually shown progress when all others have fallen by the wayside or never been started.

As for OpenOffice et. al. .... wait a second.. I have to hold my sides as I think they might split in two!

I used Final Writer with an 040 and 8megs of ram 'back in the day' on a A2000... and it started to bog on down in the speed dept when documents went over 20 pages.
Add all the rest of the Open Office overhead and I'd shudder to try and use it...

Doing stuff on retro machines is cool and fun (I love the C64 hosted web page for example) - but at some point you have to ask yourself is it cost effective or even worth it? I'll always love programming my Ami and playing games on it, tinkering around and keeping it running - but much the same way as those guys with steam powered vintage cars. I bet they don't drive them to work.

[killergorilla]

Some wise words there siggy.

[Pyromania]

Aweb???!!!!!!


:

[Siggy999]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Aweb???!!!!!!


:

And how far have you progressed in the past 7-8 years again?

An anthropomorphic character and a website....

Hmmmm, yeah I'm laughing too..... but not at the same thing.

[cronos]

Well said Siggy.

[Pyromania]

@Siggy999

It's a contest, I'm not the developer. Firefox is open source, anyone can join the contest. Also, no way it has been going on for 7-8 years.

@turrican3

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/amizilla/

[Siggy999]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

@Siggy999

It's a contest, I'm not the developer. Firefox is open source, anyone can join the contest. Also, no way it has been going on for 7-8 years.

@turrican3

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/amizilla/

I first came across posts talking of porting mozilla under the name of Amizilla in 2001. That's 7 years.

Or, if you like, we can go from your own post:
(http://www.amiga.org/modules/news/ar...p?storyid=2220)
"A new AmiZilla marketing campaign has been launched. " of course 'a new' does imply there was 'an old'... so if we go from there that's 2003... that's 5 years.

With no working product.

So - you really have nothing to laugh at as far as Aweb is concerned.... it's still miles ahead in that they actually HAVE something working.

I'll stand by my opinion happily - I'm using Firefox right now - and if I were to use my Amiga to browse the web, I'd rather have something working to it's strengths and making the most of what it can do rather than a 'nearly-kinda-sorta' lookalike clone anyways.

(for the record - even though I expect flames for this - I think a projected release date for anything resembling Firefox for the Amiga is the 11th of never - I straight up think it not only won't be done - but can't be done.. And by Amiga I mean 1000 - 4000... I'm not one of the 11 people in the world that can run OS4 or the 15 that own AmigaOnes)

[Pyromania]

Links for turrican3

AmiZilla Resources List

V1.3 13 Dec 05

Useful links for the AmiZilla project:

Here's some good overviews on the AmigaOS- it's from the AmigaOS4
site, but can be generally applied to AmigaOS3.x, MorphOS and AROS:

http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.bi...=view&id=11&I\
temid=

http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.bi...=view&id=16&I\
temid=

http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.bi...=view&id=18&I\
temid=

AmiZilla homepage: http://amizilla.sourceforge.net (and info on
setting up a dev environment)
Amizilla DiscreetFX Bounty site: http://www.amizilla.net/
AmiZilla Yahoo groups page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amizilla/
Amizilla SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/amizilla

Amiga OS Programmers' site: http://utilitybase.com/
Amiga OS4 Programmers' site: http://amigadev.amigaworld.net/
Reaction Programming forum:
http://amigadev.amigaworld.net/modul...=viewforum&f=7
Reaction simple example: http://thomas-rapp.privat.t-online.de/about.lha

AROS/OS3/OS4/MOS Abstraction Headers and Macros:

http://os4depot.net/share/developmen...di_headers.lha

Examples about how to create a shared library:
AmigaOS3: http://main.aminet.net/dev/c/CLib-SDI.lha
MOS:
http://www.lehtoranta.net/tutorial/library_examples.lha
OS4: Afaik OS4 has its own tool to make easier the
creation of libraries.

IDE: http://amidevcpp.kilu.de/
Cross-Compiling Setup on Windows:

http://www.bruzard.de/download/AmiDevCpp_Setup_v04.exe
Crosscompilers for win&linux: http://www.zerohero.se/cross/index2.html
SDK for AmigaOS3.9:
http://www.zerohero.se/cross/files/n...cludes.tar.bz2

Arexx Introduction: http://w3.goodnews.net/~ehoffman/AREXX.txt
Arexx on AmigaOS4:
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.bi...=view&id=15&I\
temid=0&limit=1&limitstart=2
Arexx on the web:
http://www.amigau.com/c-programming/...arexxlinks.htm
Arexx Tutorials and Code Samples:

http://www.amigau.com/c-programming/arexx/arexxtut.htm
Arexx Tutorial:
http://members.cox.net/midian/tutorials/arexx1.htm

WinUAE Amiga Emulator (requires *legal* ROM image):
http://www.winuae.net/
Amiga Forever (commercial legal Amiga emulation for those without a real amiga
for the ROM):
http://www.amigaforever.com/
LouiSe's hardfile for UAE may be useful too... it has gcc and Geek Gadgets
installed:

http://www.innoidea.hu/subsites/amig...les/gcc111.zip

CVS and OpenSSH:
http://sourceforge.net/docman/displa...035&group_id=1
How to get source with CVS: http://amizilla.sourceforge.net/cvs.html
GREP tutorial:
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/unix/grep.html

GTK home page: http://www.gtk.org
GTK API documentation: http://www.gtk.org/api
GTK Tutorial: http://www.gtk.org/tutorial
GTK/GDK v2.6 source code:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtk+/2.6/
GTK/GDK v2.8 source code:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtk+/2.8/
GLib v2.8 source code:
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/GNOME/sources/glib/2.8/

MUI Homepage: http://sasg.com/mui/index.html
MUI API docs: http://sasg.com/mui/autodocs/index.html
MUI Tutorial: http://www.ezcyberspace.com/gcc/

X11 docs: http://www.x.org/X11R6.8.2/doc/manindex3.html

GTK->MUI status:
http://homes.hallertau.net/~oli/amiz...tk/status.html
GTK->MUI SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-mui/
GTK->MUI Screenshots:
http://sourceforge.net/project/scree...roup_id=141931
GTK->MUI Demo code and compiled exes (68k):

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/g...s.lha?download

NSPR documentation: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/nspr/index.html
Porting NSPR to a Unix Platform:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/nspr...ing-guide.html

For anyone wanting to work on the NSPR projects, you'll need
512mb Ram to compile AmiZilla (at least initially), or access
to a machine with 512mb ram for compiling.

Configuring and Building AmiZilla:
http://amizilla.sourceforge.net/build.html

Mozilla project: http://www.mozilla.org
mozillaZine (Mozilla news): http://Mozillazine.org/
Configuring Build Options:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs..._Build_Options
Build Instructions:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Build_and_Install
Building Mozilla on Linux: http://www.x.org/X11R6.8.2/doc/manindex3.html
Mozilla Coding Style Guide:
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/mozilla-style-guide.html
Mozilla Hacker's Getting Started Guide:

http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/coding-introduction.html
Mozilla C++ portability guide (very important):

http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/portable-cpp.html


History:

V1.1 12 Nov 05 (Ants)

V1.2 25 Nov 05

- UAE links and columnised... (RobinC)


V1.3 13 Dec 05 (Ants)

- Put Amiga links together
- History moved to bottom of page
- Mozilla Build and Config Instructions
- Cross-compiler setup
- SDI Headers and Macros
- Configuring and Building AmiZilla
- Arexx
- Os4 Programmers' sites:

[Pyromania]

The continued damage Amiga Inc. has done to the Amiga market has hurt many projects including AmiZilla. They run their company like a joke and it makes it hard to attract more developers to the platform as long as their in charge.

[Interceptor]

the damage to the amiga market is caused by the amiga being old and obsolete.

just get over it, it's done.

[DrBong]

Would be nice if people here would live and let live. It's not like Pyro is a serial killer FFS. Would love to see a few more of you nay-sayers actually do something positive for the Ami community (real users and emulator users) for once, instead of shoot others down all the time just because it doesn't directly benefit you. Wish the Ami community had more 8-bit retro spirit in developing/supporting hobby and small commercial projects.

[Siggy999]

Originally Posted by DrBong

Would be nice if people here would live and let live. It's not like Pyro is a serial killer FFS. Would love to see a few more of you nay-sayers actually do something positive for the Ami community (real users and emulator users) for once, instead of shoot others down all the time just because it doesn't directly benefit you. Wish the Ami community had more 8-bit retro spirit in developing/supporting hobby and small commercial projects.

To address the first - I offered an opinion on Mozilla as a whole, and where I thought developers pursuing web browser development would do the most good (ie. on a project that actually has something that works on the Amiga). Mr Pyro simply put forward a snide comment, which I think was unfounded. It was directed at people who, unlike his project, actually HAD something to show - and HAD done something positive for the Amiga community.


To address the second:

http://retronom.blogspot.com/

http://underground-arcade.englishtns....com/index.php

Nuff said on that.

Personally I don't think there should be a prerequisite for anyone to present their opinion on a subject. Especially when they back up the basis of it with facts. Sometimes the facts aren't what folks want to hear, and thus occassionally conversations become heated.

[DrBong]

@Siggy
Wasn't necessarily talking to you directly, but to people who regularly pop up in these sort of threads to troll. amiga is one of the nay-sayers I was talking about and he was the first one to make a snide comment (as he has done in quite a few other threads of this type).

With respect to AWeb.....Pyro is right (even though you didn't like the manner of his response). Open source development has been quite slow and will never reach any great heights IMHO (which is fine- the open source devs haven't made any great promises and it's traditionally been a browser for low-end Amigas). IBrowse craps all over it (javascript implementation included) for mine, but unfortunately it is without a distributor at present (which probably means development has slowed even more than usual). Overhauling code of the existing Amiga browsers to implement necessary features for modern use is most likely a lot more work than what would be required to port an existing browser or framework from another platform. I think the relatively quick progress made with the development of Sputnik and OWB (based on Apple's WebKit) lends some support to this, although they have a fair way to go before becoming usable in a modern sense. Bounties may provide some incentive for hobby devs, but obviously with mammoth tasks like developing/porting browsers it can't be the only incentive if success is to be realised. The guy who ported Mozilla (and Firefox too IIRC) to RISC OS machines like the Archimedes and Acorn PCs is a classic example. He did the port solely off his own back without any bounties to begin with.....so the aim of AmiZilla isn't as preposterous as some make it out to be.

[Siggy999]

In regard to Aweb, and in particular my comments about it - are absolutely correct.

I never said it was great - good - or the be all and end all - I said it existed.

Amizilla does not exist.

By your own definition if it did, it wouldn't reach great heights because it is open source as well. I didn't mention IBrowse, or any other browser because it doesn't fall under the scope of the conversation, which is the development of open source browsers - not the discussion of best browsers for the amiga.

I could say that Aweb in this regard 'craps over' Amizilla because it can load a page, its a matter of perspective.

As for porting - I've tried porting things to the Amiga and Amithlon - I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. Porting from one modern OS to another isn't any basis for comparison either. Any porting to the Amiga will have to overcome the restrictions of what is now an archaic OS and obsolete hardware, and all the restrictions and challenges that go with it.

Porting programs to the amiga isn't preposterous, making it do things beyond the scope of it's engineering isn't either.

I used an example of the C-64 serving a website - that is cool - but lets not say 'Yeah.... next we'll port Apache and soon we'll be streaming live video!'

Which is exactly how I view the concept of web browsing and the Amiga.

In summary I think given limited developers and an ever shrinking community I'd still advise anyone that way inclined to join a project that actually exists and has made progress over one that has discussed things for many years but not produced anything.

That simple.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by Siggy999

Amizilla does not exist.

By your own definition if it did, it wouldn't reach great heights because it is open source as well.

Erm, OWB (Amiga 68K/OS 4.x) and Sputnik (MorphOS) are essentially open-source browsers based on the Webkit/KHTML frameworks.

As for porting - I've tried porting things to the Amiga and Amithlon - I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. Porting from one modern OS to another isn't any basis for comparison either. Any porting to the Amiga will have to overcome the restrictions of what is now an archaic OS and obsolete hardware, and all the restrictions and challenges that go with it.

The work on OWB and Sputnik (I'm guessing you haven't heard of these?) and the RISC OS port of Mozilla (to Archimedes and other Acorn machines) probably suggest otherwise. I'm not hanging my hat on any of these browsers reaching modern standards on Amiga platforms BTW.

In summary I think given limited developers and an ever shrinking community I'd still advise anyone that way inclined to join a project that actually exists and has made progress over one that has discussed things for many years but not produced anything.

I can see where you're coming from, but that's not really what bounties are about. I'm sure if the AmiZilla people had access to competent coders, then they'd be putting them to work on a Mozilla port rather than send them off to work on AWeb or whatever. Bounties are designed to offer potentially interested coders an incentive to realise the aims of the task that has been set. Obviously the money on offer hasn't been able to achieve that in the case of AmiZilla. If it's just a matter of giving the bounty to a current Amiga browser in development, then I'd be choosing IBrowse or OWB over AWeb. I've used them all (on real Amiga hardware), and IBrowse and AWeb ever since they were released. AWeb is quite a ways behind IBrowse at present and OWB looks more promising in terms of the progress that has been made in the short time it has been available. AWeb has had a lot of updates since going open-source, but the advances over V3.2 (the last commercial release) have been modest at best. Nuff said.