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Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

discuss.haiku-os.org

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Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#41

Post by tialaramex »

chucky wrote: post #7
rvnx wrote: post #3

Beautiful to see such passion and great execution, especially for 20 years in a row. It's like a piece of art. I suspect the company that created BeOS actually lost the source-code and that's potentially the real reason they don't want to share, because from an economic perspective there does not seem anything of value there.

I think it's more likely the original BeOS source code contains proprietary code licensed from third-parties, which means someone would have to spend significant effort on figuring out what can and cannot be released.

Much worse, it's likely the BeOS code includes a bunch of unlicensed stuff. Be had been caught more than once "accidentally" including GPL'd code in their proprietary OS back when they existed. I doubt it's just GPL code that "accidentally" gets copy pasted into a codebase like that. If somebody has the code (e.g. from a previous job) it's getting pasted in "Just temporarily" and never being removed because there are always higher priorities.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#42

Post by smallstepforman »

Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla, and that product became Firebug (or something similar - edit phoenix, then firebird), which due to trademark conflicts got renamed to Firefox that we all know today. So in a round-a-bout way, we have come full circle after 20 years, Firefox is finally ported to the platform that inspired its creation.

Kind of poetic. We should write a 3-5-3 Haiku about this journey.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#44

Post by cdman »

smallstepforman wrote: post #42

Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla, and that product became Firebug (or something similar - edit phoenix, then firebird), which due to trade…

I guess Firebug was the original "developer tools": https://getfirebug.com/

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#45

Post by simcop2387 »

smallstepforman wrote: post #42

Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla, and that product became Firebug (or something similar - edit phoenix, then firebird), which due to trade…

It wasn't Firebug, that was a developer tool extension. It was first Phoenix which hit trademark issues, and then Firebird which hit trademark issues, which then became Firefox.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#46

Post by pjmlp »

smallstepforman wrote: post #42

Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla, and that product became Firebug (or something similar - edit phoenix, then firebird), which due to trade…

With a fraction of the userbase it had 20 years ago, thanks to everyone that keeps shipping Chrome with their applications, testing only with Chrome developer tools, and so on.

Anyway, congratulations to anyone involved in the port.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#47

Post by badsectoracula »

pjmlp wrote: post #46
smallstepforman wrote: post #42

Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla, and that product became Firebug (or something similar - edit phoenix, then firebird), which due to trade…

With a fraction of the userbase it had 20 years ago, thanks to everyone that keeps shipping Chrome with their applications, testing only with Chrome developer tools, and so on. Anyway, congratulations to anyone involved in the port.

Wouldn't 20 years ago have less people using Mozilla/Firefox since everyone was still using IE6? I remember around that time i was still encountering several (public, not internal) sites that refused to work with anything that wasn't IE6.

I think at least nowadays people try to pretend they care about web standards.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#48

Post by szszrk »

graemep wrote: post #22
DaoVeles wrote: post #8

I have said it before, Haiku feels like it is simultaneously 20 years in the future and 20 years in the past. The interface is so incredibly snappy but there is a lot of basics missing such as WiFi support. Seeing a modern browser supported does fill a big gap however. Who knows maybe one day through a series of silly unpredictable events it will be the OS of choice and running Ladybird browser in a similar fashion.

> The interface is so incredibly snappy So that feels like its 20 years in the past > there is a lot of basics missing such as WiFi support. So that sounds like 20 years in the past too Where does the future bit come in?

Future comes in at point were we actually circle back. "Black is always in fashion" kind of thing.

Ditch modern ad endpoints (a.k.a. operating systems) and go back to those distros we used 20 years ago. Accept that those don't support DRM, carefully choose our hardware (as its barely supported), and stick to it until it dies.

The thing i miss most from that time is Window Maker. I'd love to have again those tiny tiles with small graphs and buttons, but for more modern use cases.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#50

Post by Uvix »

badsectoracula wrote: post #47
pjmlp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a fraction of the userbase it had 20 years ago, thanks to everyone that keeps shipping Chrome with their applications, testing only with Chrome developer tools, and so on. Anyway, congratulations to anyone involved in the port.

Wouldn't 20 years ago have less people using Mozilla/Firefox since everyone was still using IE6? I remember around that time i was still encountering several (public, not internal) sites that refused to work with anything that wasn't IE6. I think at least nowadays people try to pretend they care about web standards.

There were some sites requiring IE6 but not that many, and the improvements like tabs were enough for people switch to Firefox where they could.

Unfortunately Mozilla’s refusal to implement process-per-tab, combined with Flash’s instability, let Chrome eat their lunch.

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