Will 3.x ever get a modern browser

[sean_sk]

I have very few issues using Netsurf with a Vampire 600 V2 and most web pages render more or less correctly. Some pages can take up to 2 minutes to render but who cares. When I'm chilling out in front of my A600, which is happening more and more often these days, I'm not really in a hurry for web sites to spontaneously flash up on my screen.

[utri007]

Originally Posted by Dynamic_Computi

I use my Amiga 4000 in the web all the time - but I just go where I know it will work fine with iBrowse 2.4 - Aminet works great with it, and even Gmail is functional. I just live with the limitations. I tried Netsurf with my 40 MHz 040 and 80 MB of RAM and it was unuseable. To be honest, I tried Netsurf on my Quad Core PC with 8 gigs of RAM and it was still hardly useable. and you won't be able to register it until 2050, it may be a moot point.

Did you try Netsurf by Chris Young or SDL/Framebuffer fork by Arti? I mean difference is big when trying it with real Amiga. It requires about 10mb less ram and is 2x faster. I used to have 68040 40mhz with 32mb ram and Netsurf was (slow) but useable sites like this. Rendering this site took about 30 seconds.

I didn't even know that there is a Windows version of Netsurf? It Works very well with 800mhz/1gb ram OS4 machine.

Originally Posted by comraider

I would love to use a 68k Amiga as my daily driver again. But I don't see a path forward. Even Vampire is way too slow, and even if Netsurf is optimized, it is crippled with not nearly enough RAM for modern websites. You might as well just VNC into another computer and run Chrome or something.

?? I think that you are also tried SDL/Frambuffer fork, not actual Netsurf. With 32mb ram it has problems, but it Works with easy sites, with 64mb ram it doesn't have any problems. SDL/Framebuffer version is nice for WinUAE, but with real Amiga it has it problems. Also it's settings has made for UAE in mind.

[nolunchman]

Everyone has made valid points.

I have been convinced that 3.x will not get a native web browser.

1. The Amiga (even with the fastest accelerator) is too slow
2. The 3.x OS is limited by memory and architecture
3. A web browser is too much for a single programmer to handle
4. There isn't enough interest or resources in the talent pool to develop a highly compatible browser
5. The community would not finance such a project because it's a lost cause

Although it casts the amiga community in a rather uninspiring light, it pales in comparison to the fact that the same community have kept an obsoleted computer alive for 2 decades.

But there is still hope, as every true amiga enthusiast must have that spark in his nature.

I threw an idea out in an earlier post and the same solution has been mentioned in one flavor or another by others and it fits the spirit of the amiga community.

It is simply to offload the task to a device that has the resources.

And it's very Amiga.

1. It is pragmatic. "Mikey will eat it, he eats anything." Let a black box do the heavy lifting whilst I save some lemmings.
2. It's tech based. Nothing gets an amiga guy going more than a whisper of CPU cycles, MFLOPS and bitplanes. And Magic Workbench.
3. It's clever. A cool application of tech, maximum return with minimal effort. Borderline lazy. That's really being amiga.
4. It's affordable. Cuz amiga enthusiasts are cheap asses. Certainly more cost effective than a Warp4040 card from the previous century.

There will have to be some pretty trick programming to make the experience seem more than a webcam pointed at some remote computer's browser, but amiga programmers are very good at banging on hardware and making things work that theoretically should not. I'm sure the demo scene has given them some unorthodox tools.

And I say all this with a bit of confidence because earlier today I stumbled on a page describing the very hardware required for the solution. Like, to a T.

Of course, the link is on another computer, but I nearly $h37 a brick as I read the spec list. Maybe someone here has seen it as well.

[gregthecanuck]

A web browser on 3.x? I think the Vampire V4 would be something of a minimum (512MB RAM, faster processor, ...).

There is a lot of room for improvement in the current software stack:

• polled I/O tcp/ip
• non-optimized data types (some AMMX acceleration has started)
• use better compilers [bebbo's gcc port]
• improve anemic disk i/o

On top of that I think Netsurf is good compromise in between full-fat browsers (ports of firefox, webkit) and lighter browsers (Ibrowse, aweb).

Like all things Amiga this process will happen a step at a time. Maybe in future Vampire generations we will see an ASIC. That would make a huge difference... but that is not a near-term thing. In the meantime as I noted above there is a lot that can be done to optimize the current stack.

[Korodny]

To those of you that keep mentioning Netsurf as if it was a valid alternative: have you actually tried to use it on a modern system (where it's not limited by CPU or RAM ressources)? I ran the Linux port a while ago - and it was a horrible experience.

Originally Posted by nolunchman

It is simply to offload the task to a device that has the resources.

And it's very Amiga.

Hiding a second, completely independent computer inside your Amiga case that does the actual work, then upgrading your Amiga for shitloads of money so it's fast enough to retrieve the other computer's desktop display over a network connection and show it in a screen resolution that was all the rage back in 2001 - and all of that just so you can impress the occasional visitor with the size of your fake penis?

I'm not sure I'd describe that as "very Amiga".

An Amiga is simply not up to the task of displaying 2018's WWW. Given that an Amiga is (at best) 1992 technology with some 1997 aftermarket upgrades, that's not a big deal as far as I'm concerned. Trying to somehow force it to handle today's tasks is not doing it a favor IMHO - it reminds me of those actresses that we remember as hot chicks from the eighties who occasionally show up on TV episodes these days looking like horrific science experiments because they're not allowed to age gracefully.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Korodny

Hiding a second, completely independent computer inside your Amiga case that does the actual work, then upgrading your Amiga for shitloads of money so it's fast enough to retrieve the other computer's desktop display over a network connection and show it in a screen resolution that was all the rage back in 2001 - and all of that just so you can impress the occasional visitor with the size of your fake penis?

Bahahahaha

[Allen1]

Originally Posted by Korodny

Hiding a second, completely independent computer inside your Amiga case that does the actual work, then upgrading your Amiga for shitloads of money so it's fast enough to retrieve the other computer's desktop display over a network connection and show it in a screen resolution that was all the rage back in 2001 - and all of that just so you can impress the occasional visitor with the size of your fake penis?

I know DamienD already quoted this, but that is a brilliant way to look at the situation

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Korodny

An Amiga is simply not up to the task of displaying 2018's WWW...

That actually applies to any PC more than 3 months old (update schedule for Firefox), as well as millions of cell-phones and other devices that don't have hyper-fast CPUs, Gigabytes of RAM and ridiculously large high resolution screens. Yet people still manage to get on the Web with 'outdated' web browsers on 'obsolete' PCs and 'underpowered' devices, even thought they are not 'up to the task'.

Trying to somehow force it to handle today's tasks is not doing it a favor

Trying to make the Amiga do everything a modern high-end PC does is surely impossible, but that doesn't mean we can't do some of the things we want. The OP asked for 'rendering a modern web page in 24bit with 30fps video' and 'a browser experience that I could live with'. We can already do 24 bit and video at 30fps. Putting the two together shouldn't be that hard. How difficult can it be to make a browser that supports CSS and TLSv1.x?

I am impressed by what IBrowse 2.4 can do with less than 1MB of code and a few megs of RAM. Would adding some more 'modern' features really blow it up? Or could the Amiga do more with less and prove just how bloated and inefficient those other systems are? We will never know if we don't try...

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Korodny

To those of you that keep mentioning Netsurf as if it was a valid alternative: have you actually tried to use it on a modern system

yeah i did it. natively on my windows, wasnt much impressed as well, and therefore i think 10 years old webkit as aros owb doesnt fall short in comparison. but it is maybe still an option on amiga or amigalike sytems in comparison to aweb or ibrowse.

[nolunchman]

Originally Posted by Korodny

Hiding a second, completely independent computer inside your Amiga case that does the actual work

then what's a vampire?

but i don't want to argue any further than that. everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I am clearly aware that what I want is frivolous and pointless in the long run, but some people like jumping out of planes without parachutes or launching a convertible into space. To each, his own.

getting back to the original topic, the hardware i mentioned a few posts ago is spec'd out as follows:

fits Amiga 2000, 3000 and 4000 (Zorro 2/3 compatible). the 500/1000 guys will surely find a way to make it work.

feast your eyes on this:
Xilinx 7 series FPGA
RTG up to 1920x1080 32bit
AGA support (scandoubler)
Dual 666MHz ARM Cortex A9 coprocessors to offload computing tasks like JPEG, MP3 decoding and graphics acceleration
1GB DDR3 RAM (hopefully has a couple extra slots)
Ethernet interface (I'm assuming 1GB since it's on the board itself)
SD Card interface

Drivers, firmware and schematics will be open sourced

I couldn't find any more information than that, but it's even more than I hypothesized (I would have been happy with a single additional ARM processor). This guy really wants to impress his friends...and so do I.

expected release in Jan/Feb

If that didn't just perk up some ears and raise some eyebrows, I don't know what will.

[comraider]

Originally Posted by nolunchman

getting back to the original topic, the hardware i mentioned a few posts ago is spec'd out as follows:

Is this the board from MNT to serve as a successor to the VA2000 video card?

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

am impressed by what IBrowse 2.4 can do with less than 1MB of code and a few megs of RAM. Would adding some more 'modern' features really blow it up? Or could the Amiga do more with less and prove just how bloated and inefficient those other systems are? We will never know if we don't try...

CSS and TLS isn't the bottleneck for the modern web--JavaScript is. Even some contemporary cheap laptops or bargain-basement Chromebooks struggle mightily with websites. Our feeble Amigas just don't stand a chance--and that's fine, because they weren't designed to. If a heavily souped-up Vampire or similar board can provide the extra juice to make it possible, then that's great.

[nolunchman]

Originally Posted by comraider

Is this the board from MNT to serve as a successor to the VA2000 video card?

That would be the one. Do you know anything more than the what's on the web site?

At least that's half of the solution. We have to see what cores will be made available for it and how creative people get the extra ARM cpus.

CSS and TLS isn't the bottleneck for the modern web--JavaScript is.

I thought java was on its way out as well? I don't even enable it on my browser anymore...

[Amiga4000]

Originally Posted by comraider

CSS and TLS isn't the bottleneck for the modern web--JavaScript is.

OMG thank you for pointing this out! I wanted to weigh in on this thread but I knew I would go on a crazy, endless rant about JS. JS is the scourge of the internet! PERIOD! I use FF with JS turned off most the time 'cause there's no way I can even begin viewing a JS Ad infusioned website even with 8GB of memory on my Mac. It makes me go insane!!! What really toasts my balls the most is that many of the usual sites I visit (news, weather, history etc...) go full JS on me about once a week. The site then becomes totally unusable!

There is NO browser that can handle the amount of JS shoved down the throats of the user these days. As a matter of fact, you could probably get by using a P4 CPU with the web still if it weren't for JS. Yea, I need a new computer? WTH! My computer is sooo slow! Why? What a crock of sh!t the web has turned into!

NO! You don't need a new computer! I use many old computers to go to certain website that have no JS what so ever and they load very fast! I even have a DOS machine thaty is usable!

Take iBrowse for instance.... It works great even on my A1200 with an ACA accelerator.We just need it to get updated securtity. You can already turn off JS easily. What iBrowse would REALLY need is an Ad Blocker!

OK, I gotta quit now or I'll go crazy! There should be a a world wide initiative to ban JS forever!

Oh yea, and one more thing.... modern sites don't use tables anymore (I built hundreds of sites back in the day - everything nice and tidy in tables) which makes the content jump all over the place while loading. I STILL fall for trying to hit the volume control on youtube before the page is loaded! ARG!!!!!

[comraider]

Originally Posted by nolunchman

That would be the one. Do you know anything more than the what's on the web site?

At least that's half of the solution. We have to see what cores will be made available for it and how creative people get the extra ARM cpus.



I thought java was on its way out as well? I don't even enable it on my browser anymore...

Java is dead for the web, Javascript on the other hand runs almost every modern website and web app.

[treqie]

Instead of talking about the bar being a modern fully featured browser and how impossible that is.. I would be kinda fine with a "bit less shitty experience" update. ;p

[utri007]

Originally Posted by Korodny

To those of you that keep mentioning Netsurf as if it was a valid alternative: have you actually tried to use it on a modern system (where it's not limited by CPU or RAM ressources)? I ran the Linux port a while ago - and it was a horrible experience.

I use it as a main browser in my AOS4 machine. It is 800mhz, but limits are not met with Netsurf. Experience is nice, but I don't try to watch videos, or log on to my bank, or anything really meaningfull. Just reading some news and downloading files. I interested, what you mean "horrible experience".

Note that Amiga OS3 version is updated every time when someone add code to repository. Logs here : https://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/log/ Autobuild scripts updates Amiga version automatically.

https://ci.netsurf-browser.org/builds/amigaos3/

Seems that Chris has made changes amiga specified sources about four hours ago.

[gregthecanuck]

@thread

Just for grins I installed the latest Websurf (3.8, 29 August) on my Windows 10 PC. 4GHz processor, SSD, lots of RAM.

This web site's home page takes about 5 seconds to reload in Netsurf. Near-instant in Chrome. Next... forums.amiga.org: about 6 seconds in Netsurf, near-instant in Chrome.

Conclusion: Netsurf is slow. Using it to judge potential performance of other browser candidates may not be such a great idea.

Please note I am not criticizing Netsurf in any way. This is just an observation on performance.

[utri007]

Originally Posted by gregthecanuck

@thread

Just for grins I installed the latest Websurf (3.8, 29 August) on my Windows 10 PC. 4GHz processor, SSD, lots of RAM.

This web site's home page takes about 5 seconds to reload in Netsurf. Near-instant in Chrome. Next... forums.amiga.org: about 6 seconds in Netsurf, near-instant in Chrome.

Conclusion: Netsurf is slow. Using it to judge potential performance of other browser candidates may not be such a great idea.

Please note I am not criticizing Netsurf in any way. This is just an observation on performance.

I had never tested Netsurf with Windows, so maybe it is time to test it.

Eab.abime.net loads/reloads here 0.6/0,8 seconds
forums.amiga.org loads/reloads 1.7/2.3 seconds

with 3.0ghz / Win 10. So wondering whyt it took 5 and 6 seconds in your machine? Tested same version of Netsurf.

When I start Netsurf with my Amiga it uses about 11mb ram. With Windows it uses

12mb ram

and for a comparison purposes, starting

Firefox requires 220mb ram,
Chrome 345mb ram
Edge 104mb ram.

Conclusion Netsurf uses 10-30x less ram than modern webrowers.

[oscillik]

How many extensions are you running in those other browsers though? That needs to be taken into account where RAM usage is concerned

[kolla]

How much RAM and processing power does modern SSL need for all the https?
If I remember correctly, the binary of AmiSSL4 for 68k is around 4MB, but is the code re-entrant, and how much RAM does it consume per SSL connection?