Being a MorphOS2.4 user that is always thinking of ways to grow our small number of users, I was just wondering if we should worry about how the completion of Timberwolf might negatively impact the future sales of MorphOS2.x licenses? There are still many old Classic Amiga users out there that have not made the jump, or transition to a "Next Gen" Amiga system. They are still sitting on the fence waiting to see which "Next Gen" Amiga system is going to turn out to be the best, or maybe just as important, which one is going to end up with the most users and developers to create content and new programs and games.

Will the completion of Timberwolf make any difference? Is there anything that can be done to minimize the impact, if any?

Does the MorphOS Development Team have the time and energy to compete with Hyperion's developers and provide a comparable web browser, or will OWB be sufficient competition, coupled with MorphOS2.4's better performance?

Is all of this nothing to worry about, since we have OS4emu and possibly will be able to run Timberwolf through emulating OS4.x?

It is 2am and I think I should go get some sleep and not think about MorphOS any more tonight.

@amigadave

Quote:

No, it wont. If there was Firefox port for MorphOS, it would not make any impact either.

I see no reason why a slower and more bloated browser than any WebKit based ones would make any impact, at least for those who care about things other than the name.

OWB 1.5 has a spoof feature.

I never understood all the buzz about Firefox. It seems ppl see it as kind of holy grail.
Look, OWB renders most of all pages not contaning Flash or Java correctly. And it provides a reasonable speed. Also it has some features for convenient usage like tabbed browsing, a hotlist, a downloadmanger, some cookie settings and tis and that. I don't see the point what Firefox may offer else? Flash, Java, not by FF itself!
Plus, the FF I use on Linux (okay, my fault I use Xandros on the Eee and was yet too lazy to replace it with somethig of quality...) is a big disapointment (I am used to Opera). It is not what I call fast (Opera is fast!) and crashes frequently, it even manages to bring down the entire system on a regular basis (Linux that is, not MorphOS!).
The only things I miss in OWB, beside a flash support (which will come to a certain extent),is an even stronger adaptation to the OS style. E.g. I would like if the editor would behave like a MorphOS editor class (e.g. shift-cursor left to move the cursor to the leftmost position). I strongly doubt Firefox will bring those features.
The only thing firefox brings is some hot air. But there are parts in Amigaland that prefer the fuzz over substance. For those FF will cater well. The others just work and enjoy.
What I really would appreciate is a further development of Sputnik. I recently used Sputnik more frequently again (because of the editor) and atually liked it. It very light and fast, I even configured OpenURL to use Sputik as 1st choice to speed up things.
I think Sputnik makes a good alternative to OWB. The first one is very fast and a bit more 'Morphish', the latter is just plain powerful.
But if a FF port for MorphOS would be available, I surely would download and testdrive it. If it would perform better than OWB, nice, if not I would move it to NIL: in a split second... But I would never encourage to start a port. Way too much effort, for probably little or no gain.
- end of rant

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Not in any way at all.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 11.06.2011 - 08:10 ]

@Zylesea

IMHO Marcik could send his sources to Fab so he can take a look and see if something could be reused for OWB. Marcik could release the sources if he doesn't plan to update it.

Firefox would be a nice thing to have although thanks to Fab efforts OWB is a great browser and I don't miss Firefox much.

[ Edited by Crumb on 2009/11/24 18:00 ]

I'd rather have Opera...

I use Firefox at work and OWB at home. The things I miss from Firefox on the Vista machine at work wouldn't suddenly appear on MorphOS with a Firefox port. I like the progress being made with OWB. I think if OWB on AmigaOS4.x was as advanced as Fab's version there wouldn't be anywhere near as much excitement over the Timberwolf project.

OWB is more than great!
Firefox is just a name.

Maybe for a satirical laugh OWB on MorphOS ought to be renamed to something fancy?
(sorry, just my warped sense of humour )

[ Edited by Ruud on 2009/11/24 19:43 ]

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Something with timber? How about "Woody Woodpecker"?

woody2.jpg



Or Wild Woody Woodpecker (WWW):

tn_profile_WOODY_WOODPECKER_SMITTY_HALF_SIZE.jpg

OWB is far better than firefox : MorphOS version of OWB can RESUME download. Even Firefox 3.5 don't resume download natively. What a shame !

For me personally, OWB for MorphOS is more than enough, it's fast, reliable and has a good handling. Firefox is just a name, even on x86 i try to avoid Firefox where possible. But, to be honest, FF also has some good features i would like to see in OWB (like an in-build RSS reader).

@takemehomegrandma

Yeah that's the idea!
Or how about "Lumber Jack"?

Lumberjack_Song.jpg

I think "We need FF in amiga" was really a "We need an up to date web browser in amiga" (just to short it down). I don't think when most of us said that were really thinking only in firefox...

Although new software is always welcome, and I would like to have a FF port, I think it is not a blocking factor now we have OWB.

Even when the first beta os sputnik came, the "We need FF" situation became easier...

I would say, that it is just not that FF is a name... it was more like a concept we needed; an up to date browser...

Well, i think the browser situation on OS4 and MorphOS is quite different. "Our" OWB is very good and well suited for every-day-browsing, whereas the OS4-OWB is quite limited and slow. No wonder that (OS4) users aren't satisfied yet.

Quote:

True...

I'm not satisfied yet. OWB works great on both Mos & OS4 for me but they feel equal slow here. They both renders pages quite fast but it fails when it comes to scrolling

@SMF

Any link to a particular page you consider slow? Also, i suggest running OWB on its own screen with 3d layers disabled (it gives quite a boost in scrolling).

[ Edited by Fab on 2009/11/26 4:37 ]

@Fab

Ohh will test that! i tought 3d layers would speed it up and did not even think about that. All i have tought about yet is that maybe i still need to start mos with the ramdebug command?

There are ofcourse pages that are slower than others, http://www.aftonbladet.se is probably one of them, thats where i go when i want to test the quality of browsers. the page is so bad so if the browser works good there it works everywhere :)

Anyway, ATM with 3d layers enabled/os4 scrolling isn't as instant in OWB as it is on browsers i have tested on other platforms. It's far away from dead slow but it's something i really hope can be improved

IMO it won't have any impact. Yet, it'd be interesting to see a working flash with HW support and PB G4 and iBook support, which will of course probably happen sooner or later

Timberwolf for AmigaOS 4.1 will not affect MorphOS users. It must surely be a long term project and Fab will have plenty of time to improve/complete OWB. At the end, it will just be a different rendering engine.

Maybe some people with both MorphOS and AmigaOS will choose to run one over the other but those people are few.

IMHO, OWB is good but it would be so much better if the font system could be fixed. I have nice TrueType fonts but I cannot find a good general configuration for nice looking pages on the majority of sites. MorphZone looks very bad in OWB. I cannot browse pages in other languages, e.g. Japanese coded in UTF-8: OWB fails to render text.

@koan

What about reading readme to see how to manage fonts? :)
I guess you didn't install WebCore fonts, and Japanese fonts are certainly supported once you add them.