After several days of playing with MorphOS I am happy to say that there is one application which has a potential to completely be on par with the alternatives from other OSes. That application is OWB (Origyn Web Browser). This is very important because browser arguably seems the most important application these days and it will be more and more important in the future (see how Google is pushing Chrome and basing the whole future OS around it).

First of all, OWB It's pretty fast (especially considering the Mac Mini hardware) and, equally important, JUST WORKS. I haven't experienced any issues with web sites I am using (with 2 exceptions).

Here are my remarks:

- When closing the app, I am always bothered with "Are you sure?" window. At least, have a checkbox "don't ask me again" and then remember what I want. It's really annoying to reply "Yes" all the time (I cannot imagine closing this accidentally but maybe I am wrong so at least have a preference). I see "Confirm Closing" setting in the Settings but this would be an additional nice touch and attention to detail which users notice.

- Same thing with "Previous session detected. Continue?". It's nice to give me the choice but also have "remember this forever" checkbox so I am not bothered all the time.

- When opening a new window, have it shifted down and right a bit so it's clear that there is a new window now. Opening it at the same x,y position and with the same size is a bit confusing. I always end up moving it a bit.

- I understand the issue with playing videos (YouTube and similar) and I hope it gets fixed soon so I don't need to install an additional plugin to enable something which is essential these days

- Google search box is too small and the URL text field is too big initially. Widgets in the bar should be adjustable by dragging them so I can adjust the size (Safari does this excellently). In particular, I am expecting the vertical line between the Google button and the Add button to be draggable (I was actually surprised it was not since visually it appeared to be). And, yes, mu Layout is set to be Dynamic Grid but still I cannot adjust this. Maybe I am missing something but the point is it's not obvious as it should be.

- Printing should be embedded in the browser menu (I know I can save as PDF and print but...)

- Viewing PDF pages should be automatic and embedded into the page. Right now I need to confirm save to RAM (or another destination) and then a separate window (PDF-viewer) is opened. Again, Safari does this great. I understand there is "Close Download Window" in the settings, but this could be a bit more polished and seamless.

- I use MobileMe. OWB works GREAT with pretty complex MobileMe site except one weird thing. I cannot read my email over the web. It displays the list of emails but when I click on any email message it asks me to authenticate. I type in my MobileMe username and password but it asks again and again... infintie loop of dialogs. Could be something funky in the way Apple does this or maybe a bug in the SSL part of the browser itself. Not a big deal because not many users of MorphOS are using MobileMe I think but currently it prevents me from using MorphOS for email (since I still have issues with YAM and SimpleMail which I explained on a different thread)

- Vanguard financial site has one part inside when you log in which is rendered as a blank area. Even older versions of Safari had problems with that one so I suspect it could be fixed in the latest WebKit distribution.

- Stealth mode would be nice. Basically you surf but there is no trace of your actions. Useful when you give browser to someone else to play with and you don't want it to pollute your cache and stuff browser remembered for you.

- I could not find options to define the size of the disk cache and deleting the cache

- Are dots in the lower-right corner represent the threads that load content? Nice. Oh, I see, I clicked on them and got a network activity window. Low-level but I like it!

It's hard to find anything else in my opinion. The browser is top-notch and probably the best MorphOS app I tried so far.

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It is there already in the settings (GUI settings). You can chose no request at all, ask me if there is more than one tab open or ask me every time.

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Whatever your Browser/OS is, a plugin is always needed to play Flash content.

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There is no cache support in OWB.

[ Edited by Jeckel on 2010/1/14 13:01 ]

> Whatever your Browser/OS is, a plugin is always needed to play Flash content.

Yeah, maybe I was not clear. It should be installed/bundled by default.

Excellent browser, I hope it keeps improving.

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Yes, I should have added that for latest version but totally forgot about it. You can find related session options in Settings->privacy, like "show session requester", "delete session at exit" or "save session".

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Yes. I didn't add a balance object until now because the builtin class didn't allow saving the state, so I need to write my own class for that (or use an external one, i'll see). It would also be used for the lateral panels objects.

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Would need yet another plugin for that. :)

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WebKit has a private browsing option, which i haven't checked yet. I'll just have to evalutate it first, and wire it to my own extensions (like session recording, history saving, form saving, ...).

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It could be either some cookie issue, or just some user-agent sideeffect. If it's the latter, you can change user-agent to a more known browser in Settings->network.

Thank you. Regarding MobileMe, Carsten also suggested this to me via email:

"Check the mark Security/Ignore SSL errors"

I will try both ways (and the other stuff people recommended) when I get back home to the MorphOS machine.

Ah, in that case it might just be a case of outdated certificate. You could update the ca-bundle.crt file yourself if wanted (though i don't remember if this file is provided directly, because i generate them with the curl dedicated tool).

FWIW, none of these two suggestions helped with MobileMe. If i ignore SSL errors, it just waits forever. Spoofing get's rid of the initial warning screen and that's it.

I am not sure what do you mean by updating the certificate manually. I assume, since I don't have any specialized tools that I would have to somehow copy the MobileMe certificate from Mac OS X Keychain into the cert bundle file which OWB is using?

[ Edited by mihailod on 2010/1/14 19:07 ]

Well, that SSL suggestion only makes sense if you explicitely get a requester from OWB stating certificates aren't found. If you don't get that, it's another issue, unrelated to SSL.

OK. So no such message is shown. I only get an infinite loop of browser login dialogs. Web login goes fine and I am already logged in to the site but it seems that there is an additional layer of security which gets activated when I click on an email message and that layer is invisible on Safari but somehow makes OWB go into this "infinite loop" state...

If I can enable some debugging and send you the request/response stuff happening behind the scene I am willing to do that.

- Rendered pictures should be draggable out. I know I can right click and save as but drag out is much more convenient.

- Google text field should give Google suggestions. Sputnik already does this...

[ Edited by mihailod on 2010/1/15 18:56 ]

An easy one: if I am typing in OWB (like now), hide the mouse pointer -- it can only obstruct what I am typing or looking at. Yes, I got used to this in Safari and find it really nice (Safari can also hide the mouse pointer on demand if you press the [esc] key). Once a mouse movement is detected, show the pointer where it used to be before hiding.

My issue so far is one with Facebook. I get an 'error 60: peer certificate cannot be authenticated with known CA certificates'

What do I need to do? I couldn't see anything obvious in the prefs. Tried spoofing as Opera, no change.

It's still documented in the readme. Just check "ignore ssl errors", or update the ca-bundle.crt with up-to-date certificates.

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It has nothing to do with OWB. It is a general system behaviour you can set within the mouse preferences panel (MorphOS preferences -> Mouse).

> It is a general system behaviour you can set within the mouse preferences panel

Wow, OK, thanks, will try playing with that...

I also want to openly thank Fab here for making MobileMe work in OWB 1.7beta !!!

'Ignore SSL errors' worked just fine, thanks! However I do understand why there was interest in hacking more RAM into the Efika

Still, the fact that Facebook and mafia Wars basically work in this browser on low spec hardware with unknown OS is pretty fantastic! Kudos to the developers.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 15.05.2011 - 09:13 ]

> hard-drive space to be used as system RAM,
> but it seems to me that *that* would really be slow!

How about trying this but with a solid state drive, i.e. an inexpensive USB stick?

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On the Efika you're stuck with USB1.1.

Ah, OK, did not know that... It is much slower (was it 40x theoretically or something?)... dunno... maybe still worth trying... Especially since these USB drives are so cheap...