Wayfarer 8 - End of an Era.

After spending weeks getting WebKitGTK 2.46 to compile and then work, it's time to move on. Wayfarer will no longer have its WebKit core updated past the current version. The past 2 releases I've had to effectively fork more and more of the functionality since WebKit removed the Legacy/Win/Cairo target and started removing its dependencies, of which Wayfarer needs quite a bit. While 2.46 mostly works, I've been unable to track down the breaking change that causes most pages to fail sooner or later. Could be JavaScript, could be WebCore, could be caused by the fact that I've had to change the compiler since WebKit started using C++23 features and aggressively optimising parts with SIMD code. WebKitGTK moving to Skia for rendering doesn't help either. Meanwhile, the gap between the performance modern websites need and what our aging G4 and G5s can deliver keeps widening.

So where does this leave us? Well, the engine is still modern enough that the pages that currently work will continue working for a while, likely several years. Meanwhile, I intend to focus on providing a Linux/macOS hosted browsing service that will be able to render pages in Wayfarer as transparently as possible. And so, the next Wayfarer version will have an option to either load a page locally or remotely via CEF/Chrome.

Well, this was sooner than expected... But understandable, and as you said current engine will work quite ok for some years to come. And even keeping Wayfarer building/running with the current engine must have been a PITA so far. Thanks for your work!

Oooh... this is very sad news but I totally understand it.
I want to thank you for all that work.
But this just goes to show that MorphOS really needs to change the CPU architecture. In the meantime, I enjoy it almost every day.

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That would barely solve the performance issue and we would be back to square one within a few years.

Wouldn't tackle the compiler/infrastructure issues. For that you will need a full "nix" OS either external (which is what jaca seems to suggest) or as a foundation for MorphOS (aka QBox).

That's very sad to hear. Nevertheless Wayfarer stays the best webbrowsing experience you could get on MorphOS. Maybe you could make capsulated Web Apps, like you've done with the Webkitty part in Iris?

Something like a MorphOS Discord client, a bandcamp or itch.io interface app?

Perhaps at some point in the future the servo web rendering is usable enough for a decent browser. It got a WebRender backend for OpenGL accelerated drawing but also a software renderer as fallback. The project strives to be more cross-platform compatible than others and also gained more traction in recent years.

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I am monitoring alternatives, but none of them are mature enough to be able to replace WebKit.

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Would this be the way that AmiFox is using ?

a bug strange :when i search a adress that doesn t work with google

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I hope not

[ Edited by analogkid 21.10.2024 - 12:50 ]

It wouldn’t be WRP but the underlying tech would be the same (Chrome).

What about using some kind of VNC?

But you can already use that ... Just using TwinVNC to connect to my MacM1 here ;)

I mean it in a way, that VNC will just load the content of the website rendered on an externel server. Wayfarer will just act as a GUI around it.

I wonder why Amifox did not go that route. Standard VNC works even nicely on an A500+ with 020 CPU and Plipbox.