WebKit based browser initiative

Hey, what’s up guys ? 😉

@Petrol
Unfortunately, no news on this project from my side yet.

in the last days, Deadwood has offer his support for the porting than new version of Odissey.
If I understand the new vesion use the engine of wayfarer.
It's possibile joined the two project?

@vagappc

This is covered many times here and elsewhere - Wayfarer is written using a MorphOS objective-C based environment that does not exist on OS4. So even if the developer wanted to release the code it's of no use in porting to Amiga. Better use the OWB or Odyssey browser chrome or just start anew to make the user interface / application framework.

As for webkit, the wayfarer patches for webkit itself are on github and are open source thanks to a generous sponsor, while walkero and team get it building and running on OS4.

The compilation of WebKit is finished at a degree. I had to cut some edges to make it happen, that are not needed now, but it is pretty much done. That doesn't mean we have a browser.

I am working, among many other projects, on bringing a minimal window which will be able to load a simple html, which requires understanding WebKit API. Haven't managed to succeed on that yet.

@walkero

Kudos

@walkero

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Is there a minimal example in the webkit source tree? Maybe something using GTK that you could use as a starting point.

Hans

Given the Deadwood's willingness to help and his work already done on updating Webkit, wouldn't it make more sense to consider updating Odyssey and putting this new project aside for a moment?

@Samo
Reading your answer it's all sounds like that easy !:) Or that way or that way. And you mess webkit with browser itself (gui part), and who do what. You also point on my comment which i wrote some years ago about "near to impossible to update webkit core in Odyssey", so , i just want to clarify, so you will see amount of issues in all that "easy update":

As i told you before, updating webkit to current Odyssey is very heavy and hardcore task. At the moment when there wasn't Wayfarer (on which Jaca spend already years), it was just near to impossible for any amigaos4 developer to doing this webcore update in current Odysssey. And it's not like Deadwood easy update webkit core in current Odyssey, like you make it sounds "i told you it possible!": it possible after years of Jaca works, code of which as Deadwood says, he reuse for this update on Aros.

But, at this moment not everything easy-peasy still. The update Deadwood do, happens to not up2date webkit, but to 5 years or so old one: so many sites which not works now in our Odyssey, will continue to not work with this update too. I am sure Deadwood will update to the latest one someday, just for now it is not.

And that not all again. If you read topic on aros-exec, then you can see that 50% of browser's functionality just disabled for now. Forget youtube, players, lots of configuration things, it's all disabled because it need adaptation. Hope it will be done by Deadwood, but it will take time. Will it all be adapted to the same level as Odyssey on os4 : who know. If you ask me, it's almost like Deadwood wrote new browser on top of what we they have before..

And then, every ZUNE based aros code, always need fixes and adaptation on real MUI.

So it's not clear what way is best and what you will have in end with any of them until we not have skilled, motivated and fast working developer willing to spend his life on browser as Jaca on morphos do.

@samo79
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I am already in discussions and collaboration with deadwood in porting his work to OS4. And I already started working on it. I don't know when exactly we will have results, but I wanted to let you know that this is happening.

The goal is to join forces and have an updated browser for both AROS and OS4.

@kas1e & walkero

Ok guys, then let's wait for more progress from Deadwood, and then let's see what comes out :)

Sorry to ask a very uninformed question, but I have tried to follow this topic and searcg the site and haven't found anything. I never hear anything mentioned about IBrowse in this project. Would the guys at IBrowse be able to assist or collaborate to work on or share parts that could help with the overall browser situation for everyone? I obviously know nothing about what it takes to build a capable browser, but I like and use both Odyssey and IBrowse and womdered if there was any partnership.

Thanks

@livebyfaith74
I use both of them as well. IBrowse is a great piece of software that I love to use.

It uses its own engine to parse and render the websites. There is no partnership, for now. We are developing two quite different applications.

Also, IBrowse is a commercial product and not open source.

If the architecture separates the web browsing engine, from the Amiga GUI, which is exactly how Wayfarer does it (and Iris), then there's no reason in the future that you couldn't have a different browsers lke ibrowse and netsurf all sharing the webkit engine where it's available.

you could even let the user choose, using the ibrowse engine on aminet say, and webkit on a modern website. This would minimise the memory usage by avoiding using the webkit engine on simpler websites that work with a simpler engine.

Firefox used to have a plugin to do this on windows, letting you use the IE engine for websites that had compatibility issues.

This is a very 'Amiga' way to architect it i.e. a pluggable framework.

However there would be considerable work in defining such an interface.

@NinjaCyborg
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While different GUI visually can make a look of different browser, when you have the same core it mean the same everything in terms of rendering : same sites works, same not works, etc. Also, it will be the same issues about filesize : to support all modern stuff, webkit got huge increase in the binary in end : no more "lightweight ibrowse kind way" then. IBrowse is that small, tasty, fast and good not because of GUI only, but because it did not support most modern things, and did things different. When there will be single core, then there will be basically single browser with different GUIs. I didn't say it bad, but i surely glad to have different chooses with different gui and different cores (ibrowse, netsurf, and webkit based browsers).

@NinjaCyborg
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But you already have that. Run IBrowse in parallel with Odyssey and use the one you like with the websites you want.

I do not see it as a proper implementation, having two different engines in a browser. As you said, the complexity of maintaining that will be huge because the APIs are quite different. So, you will end up writing a wrapper for them. This is not viable.

You can still load two apps at the same time in Amiga.

Thanks for your replies.

I truly hope the community will be able to come together to provide a more capable browser for AOS. It is such an intergral part of daily use nowadays.

I love that we get new software, but a more capaple browser seems like it could make quite a difference.

Thanks to everyone involved.

Of course it is a shame that MorphOs was able to create a full-fledged browser with Wayfarer and "we" have not been able to do it to this day. It also shows once again how big the differences are between the two operating systems, even though they have the same roots.

But as already mentioned, such a browser including the latest Webkit takes an enormous amount of time and not only that, the browser engine has to be constantly updated because the Internet is developing at a rapid pace.

Odyssey was a great browser for AmigaOs4.1, but I also understand that further development was stopped at some point because it simply means too much work for a developer.

If a new browser is ever created using WebKitty, don't forget the donation button, every AmigaOs4.1 user will appreciate being able to use a reasonably modern browser

And don't be mad, that's my personal opinion....