After a bit of downtime, I've gotten around to upload a new screenshot and make a small update over at amigabounty.net.
We're closing in on a new test version. Still a bit of tweaking to do, but it's looking quite good in the meantime. Currently, only software compositing is supported, but it still is usable (it's actually better than the original 3.5 release).
There are some issues left that mostly affect popup windows. During the "normal" operation, there is no rendering errors. You can get the preferences window, there are no more black boxes in the window, and no flickering during scrolling.
All in all, I think people will find this to be a big improvement over the last version.
BTW, I post this from Timberwolf on the AmigaOne X1000 ;)
Seriously, if you do want to contact me write me a mail. You're more likely to get a reply then.
There are some issues left that mostly affect popup windows. During the "normal" operation, there is no rendering errors. You can get the preferences window, there are no more black boxes in the window, and no flickering during scrolling.
Yeah, that what i mean when ask :)
Btw, just for learning purposes: those bugs was because of cairo, or just because of code-porting of firefox ?
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All in all, I think people will find this to be a big improvement over the last version.
Btw, current public version use HW-accelerated cairo and compositing or not ? I mean did i understand right, that current public beta are use HW-accelerated cairo, but the new one, will not use it , and because of it will be a bit slower in rendering ?
Do you think it could be possible to implement a bit more native GUI already in this first Alpha version ? (expecially menus)
Alfkil did it quite easily for his QT port so maybe it could be possible also on Timberwolf
Also how about the real speed ? Ok you say a bit slow, yep currently i think it's quite normal for that HTML5 videos but how about "normal" navigation ?
Once released can be already usable on a slow hardware (like Sam440 for example) ?
The drawing code has changed substantially between 3.x and later versions. This is reflected in Timberwolf as well, none of the original drawing code remains in 4.0 (except the mouse pointer handling code).
As rogue said, the HTML renders correctly. Same applies for dialogs (preferences, error console and the like). Popup windows, like the menus and some of the hint boxes, are sometimes rendered empty (window opens, but there is no content). Unfortunately, this works when I do a debug build (but the debug build is far too slow to be usable, the optimized build is about ten times faster). This is something I will be looking into later.
Speedwise, you can compare it to the MUI OWB for OS4. In some areas, it's actually a bit faster (when lots of "complex" graphics are rendered, like, lots of transparency and blending going on). Scrolling is faster on OWB, but as I said earlier, the current Timberwolf does not use any hardware acceleration, but basically just draw in back buffer/blit to screen (although it does of course only blit damaged regions). However, it is not jerky, it's perfectly usable, and I expect it to be really smooth once I rewrite the layer manager in TW4 to use hardware compositing.
The new TW4 rendering now also uses a new method of propagating screen updates. The original one used intuiticks to cope with asynchronous updates. The new one passes messages around to inform of updates in the graphics output, and thus, when the page is fully rendered (and no animation is going on), the CPU load drops to zero.
Do you think it could be possible to implement a bit more native GUI already in this first Alpha version ? (expecially menus)
I don't think we'll add it to an alpha version, but it's something that I do want to implement. Firefox does support the use of custom menus (Mac versions need this). However, the menus need to confirm to certain standards, like being able to show custom images and nesting depth. The former is possible with Amiga Menus, but I'm not sure about the latter (it's been ages since I've last written more complex intuition code).
In general, I want as much Amiga-specific features as possible.
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Also how about the real speed ? Ok you say a bit slow, yep currently i think it's quite normal for that HTML5 videos but how about "normal" navigation ?
See my other post, it's comparable with MUI OWB. I test it on the Pegasos, and with an optimized build, it's perfectly usable. I have not tried it on a Sam yet, I'll have to check. And I know someone who will surely test it on his BlizzardPPC :|
Btw, just for learning purposes: those bugs was because of cairo, or just because of code-porting of firefox ?
The Firefox code assumed hierarchical windows like in X or Win32. We had to emulate that, and the black boxes where essentially caused by a bug in the way that we handled this. It's neither Firefox's code nor cairo that is to blame for that.
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Btw, current public version use HW-accelerated cairo and compositing or not ? I mean did i understand right, that current public beta are use HW-accelerated cairo, but the new one, will not use it , and because of it will be a bit slower in rendering ?
No, the current public version never used hardware acceleration for Cairo. They only rendered into main memory and blit to screen. The only hardware acceleration in it was scrolling.
@samo79 Quote:
Do you think it could be possible to implement a bit more native GUI already in this first Alpha version ? (expecially menus)
It's difficult to say. See, as they are currently, Amiga menus are somewhat limited. There is a limit to the number of levels of submenus that a menu can have, which other systems do not have. Firefox supports native menus, but they have certain constraints. We'll try to get this working, but there is no way of telling right now.
What we will definitely try to do is getting the same basic layout as the Windows version, i.e. there are no menus at all and most of the functionality is in the orange button on top.
We'll also try to get a more Amiga look and feel. Currently this employs the default Firefox 4.0.1 style.
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Also how about the real speed ? Ok you say a bit slow, yep currently i think it's quite normal for that HTML5 videos but how about "normal" navigation ?
I've compared it to MUI-OWB and found them to be roughly the same speed. OWB is a bit faster in scrolling, but Timberwolf seems to be a bit faster in other graphical effects like blending (slideshows that blend one image into the other seem to be less jerky on Timberwolf)
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Once released can be already usable on a slow hardware (like Sam440 for example) ?
No idea. If OWB works, I'd venture to say Timberwolf will, too. It might be a memory hog, but so far, I haven't run into an out-of-memory situation, and I only have one gigabyte in my machine and pager disabled.
Personally, I was quite pleasantly surprised about the speed. After all, this doesn't even use hardware acceleration at all, and still I could be using it for my daily browsing needs. There are a few quirks (like some textboxes refusing to activate, missing refresh in some of the popup boxes), but basically these quirks are what keeps us from releasing a new public version now. Even stability is good. I had tested it a lot today and only got one or two crashes.
Edit: I have extensively tested this page http://www.armedzone.com/, and found that it was perfectly usable, even fluid. And that page has a lot of special effects.
Seriously, if you do want to contact me write me a mail. You're more likely to get a reply then.
and I only have one gigabyte in my machine and pager disabled.
I have 512 MB in my Pegasos, and it still works without resorting to paging, even on big pages. I don't know what the exact memory footprint is, but I think it is comparable to the Linux version.
I don't think we'll add it to an alpha version, but it's something that I do want to implement. Firefox does support the use of custom menus (Mac versions need this). However, the menus need to confirm to certain standards, like being able to show custom images and nesting depth. The former is possible with Amiga Menus, but I'm not sure about the latter (it's been ages since I've last written more complex intuition code).
In general, I want as much Amiga-specific features as possible.
Thanks for reply, you are right, AFAIK some time ago you already told me about "this certain standard" and our limited OS4 menu, perhaps this may be an opportunity to finally improve our limited OS4 menus soon ?
Maybe time arrived to look and improve them, maybe just maybe for the update 4 or directly for the AmigaOS 4.2 ?
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See my other post, it's comparable with MUI OWB. I test it on the Pegasos, and with an optimized build, it's perfectly usable. I have not tried it on a Sam yet, I'll have to check. And I know someone who will surely test it on his BlizzardPPC :|
Well looks promissing then, great
@Rogue
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Personally, I was quite pleasantly surprised about the speed. After all, this doesn't even use hardware acceleration at all, and still I could be using it for my daily browsing needs. There are a few quirks (like some textboxes refusing to activate, missing refresh in some of the popup boxes), but basically these quirks are what keeps us from releasing a new public version now. Even stability is good. I had tested it a lot today and only got one or two crashes.
Hi Rogue !
Do you consider a sort of "collaboration" with the TheFourFox guys, don't know if they can help us or if they can have some interesting sourcecode but atleast some PPC code regarding hardware acceleration can be grabbed and used also on your Timberwolf version, more info at:
I also curius about mediaplayer inbuild in the FF (that one, which handle html5 audio/video). Can it handle audio as well for now, or only video ? And if both, how fast is it ?
I assume it will be slow (because on work done on the mediaplayer itself, just porting over the plain ffmpeg libs or whatewer). I.e. no overlay for fullscreenmodes and other fancy stuff which will make it works fast and good on even 600-800mhz ?
Btw, that "subclassing of menus" limits was already discussed some months ago here, in the QT thread, when alfkil want to implemnt native amiga menus. And we all forces to "time to implement submenus into our intuition or whatever". But as stop-gap, Alfkil still add it , with just one notice "sorry, only 1 sub-level of menus is possible". And, by the way, almost all the apps are have 1 sub-level of menus. Not so offten 2 , but imho for such project as TW, those few menuses where is 2 levels, can be tweaked to just 2 menus per 1 sublevels, except one with 2.
And no images in menu also not so cool, but that definately something to implement in reaction (by Rigo ?:) )
WoW!!! that's great! seeing timberwolf in action is wonderfull!!! and seeing the gui interface of youtube running on timberwolf under amiga os even more!!!!! :D
I don't know why people are demanding loads of extra features for the first (proper) TW release. Do they actually want to see TW this year, or would they like to wait another year?!?
"Feature creep" should be avoided at all costs. I am quite happy to see a basically functioning release, even if it lacks some spit & polish. After all, I am happily using the first release of the OS4 port of MUI-OWB, and that has it's share of little quirks (not to mention being way behind the official release).
"Nice to have but not necessary" features (e.g. cosmetic stuff like Amiga-like menus) can be added later.
I now await someone to say first release of TW should be based on FF 7.0, instead of the current FF 4.0.1 :(
Because the embedded menu is quite crap on AmigaOS and also it never worked (decently) on Timberwolf 3.5 so i would be sure that almost them can be usable now, they are an important factor, not cosmetic at all
I don't ask for the 8.0 port, i just ask for a minimal GUI interface that we can use in meantime (while we wait for a mature release), just to be sure that we can use it normally
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