Just thought I'll share a bit since there was a bit of speculation in this thread.

Work is ongoing on a port of a fairly recent stable branch of WebKit. I do have a mostly working standalone jsc (JavaScriptCore command-line tool) and am now working towards making sure its testing suite fully works. WebKit has changed quite a bit since Orygin's days, enabled by improvements in C++ itself. The current port is generally only possible because we've stepped up our game with the SDK during the last two years (new binutils, gcc7-9, new perl, etc) so even though I'm working on WebKit on my own, this is really a Team effort - so far most of the crashes have been fixed in the compiler and or libnix (by Piru) and not by changing the WebKit source code itself.

The next step will now be to compile WebCore (that's where the layouter is, etc) and then port WebKitLegacy. Porting WebKit (previously known as WebKit2) makes no sense on MorphOS. The idea is to generally have a very simple class being able to display HTML first and then extend it with all the necessary interfaces - this is similar to the changes in OWB I've made to make it possible for it to be used in Iris.

Once that's done I'll be able to start on a browser application itself, isolated from WebKit & co.

And to make one thing clear: I've no intention of supporting things like the Inspector or media playback. There's no way these things will ever be fast enough on PPC to be satisfactory.

@ Jacadcaps - Thanks for the informative explanation regarding Webkit/WebKit2/Webcore/JavaScriptCore, which seems to me yet another beneficial addition of your approach to keeping us all well informed, which I personally am really grateful for. Nice to know you and others in the Dev Team have seemingly already made some progress, and thanks again for this timely update.

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I won't be missing the Inspector, but... do you mean I won't be able to watch YouTube videos on MorphOS?

The Inspector is quite useful sometimes to see into websites inner workings, or extract data that you couldn't get at otherwise, such as embedded images in the page(s). I take it I would still be able to run any older versions of OWB to gain the usefulness of the Inspector from those versions of OWB, as an alternative to any replacement browser you and the Dev. Team complete, just for such purposes?

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Same for YT playback.

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I won't miss the inspector either, but I surely would miss the media playback, because YouTube and other videos are still playing just fine for my needs on overlay modes even on Mac mini 1.5GHz, which I use as my main setup. I would think that videos would play even better on G5 systems... so definitely going to miss this and forces to go to two browser daily use, which makes things more clumsy. It wasn't fun in old days to use IBrowse + Sputnik combo etc when new browsers weren't yet as usable as IBrowse, but were needed to render some pages...

And does media playback include audio playback too? That isn't demanding and I'm using Bandcamp and other sites regularly too...

But of course it's better to have updated engine/browser even wihtout media playback than get stuck on all fronts... so I'll take it without media playback too, but still bit of a shame if it's not even an option to get that later...

I forgot to ask - will this custom build to create, what will be, our new browser once-and-for-all free us of the 'memory lock' we suffer from with OWB where memory does not get released as the program is used until it is closed/quit?

Along the same line of thinking as jPV has questioned ... will we still be able to download videos from YouTube and other sites, as before, via the right context menu to view them via MPlayer as a separate downloaded video file, even if that cannot be done while on the webpage being viewed at the time? Surely that option can/should be retained!

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It might. There's quite a few memory management functions in WebKit that are not enabled in Odyssey - namely all the stuff Apple did for iOS devices, esp. when they were still 32bit. So we should be able to flush background tabs, etc when memory usage is too high. It remains to be seen how effective this would be though. Safari on my old iPhone 5C would sometimes crash on out-of-memory on some heavy pages so I don't think it'll be much better.

As for YT downloads, that means supporting user scripts. Dunno. There's nothing to retain since this is a completely new project, not an update of Odyssey. Some things (media playback included) may simply arrive in the years to come.

@ jacadcaps

- 'memory-lock' - as long as you work as much of your 'magic' as possible - that's all that can be expected I suppose

- 'YT' - if you can support what you can enable from the first release and develop what else is possible, and within the capabilities of the hardware, again that's all that can be expected

- it's all a big ask of you anyway, and I'm sure you, and the rest of the Dev Team, are up for the challenge for us all anyway. I appreciate what you've (all) done already, and can't wait to see what a newer browser has to offer, to try to keep pace with the race amongst mainstream browser development, and thanks for the insight into your initial work already.

JavaScriptCore's testapi test suite passing all tests on MorphOS now. I'm looking into getting most of WebCore to compile and reading up on how WebKitLegacy is structured (that's the part that mostly needs to be written from scratch for MorphOS).

Currently also dealing with a dead/unstable G5, which is stealing quite a bit of my spare time.

Feel free to donate via https://paypal.me/irismail if you want to support my efforts.

Here goes a little donation. Not so much but take a few beers while doing so great work.
Thanks for the info and support.

I will send you a donation in the next few days - it's not going to be a loan !!
[EDIT] -> Donation now sent 2-March-2020

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So what will it be called?

NewSense & tolkien: thank you!

I've absolutely no idea how it's going to be called.

After the "odyssey", we can make a "journey" on internet 😉

--
/me'll make a donation too for this insane project!

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"Journey"? Maybe Voyage? Hey, how about "Voyager?" :D

Now, seriously. If we're in the Greek mythology zone - there's been another epic journey: Jason and the Argonauts, in pursuit of Golden Fleece. So I propose "Argo".

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I propose Wayfarer.

Well there was an endless stream of name-suggestions before Fab went for Odyssey so just wait a few minutes till TheWolf posts a link to that thread ;)

How about Steven? :p

Wayfarer sounds like a constant source of typos and mispronunciations, I like it!

Was able to compile the whole of WebCore last night, which brings the thing to being about 95% done in terms of # of sources compiling for MorphOS. Mind that this doesn't mean I'll have a browser soon ;) The next step is writing a WebKitLegacy layer - this is the part that Fab mostly got from Orygin. Hopefully it'll take no more than a couple of weeks to have a simple webframe working.

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Well, since Iris is probably struck from the list...



...how about Helix?



Or Columella?





Regarding "going places" (like Odyssey and Voyager), with reference to the space shuttles (because of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Star Trek: Voyager" and also because of "Sputnik", the MorphOS browsing legacy):

• Discovery (Also "Star Trek: Discovery")
• Challenger (developing and maintaining a web browser is a challenge , though the name is kind of stained with tragedy, and not the easiest word to spell)
• or Endeavour (difficult to spell for non-English).

Less real space ships:

• Falcon (from Star Wars: Millennium Falcon)


• Enterprise (Star Trek. No, second thought: strike that! Too dorky, even for me! )
• Firefly (From the TV-series with the same name which actually had a rather cool atmosphere. It takes place on Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. And more important: It could also connect to Firefox and the MorphOS logo (butterflies fly) at the same time. I suppose a really cool logo could be made with this (butterfly, flames), signalling it's a MorphOS browser.)

General movement, going places, etc:

• [Web] Strider
• [Web] Walker (also reference to a famous Amiga HW project, which like the comics character "the Phantom" was mythical and seen by few. The Phantom's "civilian" name was Kit Walker. Web Kit. Also there was "Walker, Texas Ranger", the Rangers "were going places" traditionally, and Chuck Norris is a mythology by himself )
• Expedition (think Safari, Internet Explorer)

Ah well, going away to do something useful now...




Edit: Shouldn't the ul/li HTML-elements linebreak?

Edit 2: Hmm, "Firefly" kind of grows on me...


[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 27.02.2020 - 13:47 ]

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Actually Iris probably originates from Greek mythology too :) It's a goddess who's "messenger of the gods". So maybe some other goddess would do too?


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I don't think I like these... :)

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Yeah, maybe.. one of my favourite series. But is it good or bad when it sounds like a Firefox port? And there are some software with the same name...

And one fictional spaceship too: Lexx ;) But it doesn't sound that cool as a browser name as it was as a serie I guess :)

I think Wayfarer is a good candidate, sounds cool, and surprisinly little used name for any software when googling a bit, so it would be quite unique.

Unless there would be some idea with a better MorphOS connection.. mBrowse, MWB (MorphOS Web Browser), or something like that :)


[ Edited by jPV 27.02.2020 - 14:56 ]

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Didn't know that. Well, gods/goddesses of Greek mythology then:

Zeus
Hera
Poseidon
Demeter
Athena
Apollo
Artemis
Ares
Hephaestus
Aphrodite
Hermes
and either Hestia or Dionysus

Several already used Amiga related names there. And this of course relates to Odyssey as well. Kind of popular to use Greek mythology in Amiga contexts, yes?

Someone has compiled a list of Norse mythology names here. Thor was used for an ancient newsgroup/mail reader if memory serves me right?

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Not even "Discovery"?

Eagle is another non-fictional space craft. "The Eagle has landed", the first to bring man to the moon. In the Apollo (Greek mythology) program, using a Saturn (Roman mythology equivalent of the Greek Kronos) V rocket.


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"Helix" is also used in several contexts for fictional space ships, so not only part of the ear in human anatomy...


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Hmm, maybe, but kind of a complex word. Not as complex as "Odyssey" though...

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Yes, it was pretty decent program.

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No, sorry, I just think about "Discovery channel" all the time when reading that.. and Bloodhound Gang's The Bad Touch song starts to play in my head immediately :D Just can't think it as a browser name...

If I'd have to pick one of those now, it would be Challenger, because it kind of would try to challenge the main stream browsers etc. But would the tragedy part be too negative issue with it :)

Although Discovery could be a nice name without my own associations, but I guess it needs some time to digest it... maybe that would be possible :P

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Would it be too close to Helios?

@ jPV

Well, now I've got it!

Here it comes:

[drum roll]

-> The Browser