Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#181

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 6:17 AM UTC

KerrAvon wrote: post #164

pjmlp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things never change, regardless of the modern C++ discussions. Apple, Google and Microsoft "modern C++" frameworks also use their own types, instead of the standard library. See Android NDK, IO Kit / Driver Kit / Metal bindings, C++/WinRT and WIL.

IOKit dates to circa 1999; it’s not “modern C++” by any reasonable definition.

Beyond discussing what Modern C++ actually means, Andrei Alexandrescu book, C++11, C++14, C++17, C++20, C++23, this only goes to show how "modern" is the C++ code from companies that should know better as WG21 members, and C++ compiler vendors.

Let alone those that aren't neither WG21 members, nor C++ compiler vendors.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#182

Post by RexM » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 6:27 AM UTC

asadotzler wrote: post #150

guessbest wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it hit trademark issues, but the reason I remember from slashdot was that phoenix was already a semi-popular open source project in the debian repository, so firefox had to be named from phoenix to mozilla-phoenix. But firefox at the time still named phoenix just ran so much better on windows than linux, it was funny.

No. Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS maker sent me an email telling us they made a BIOS web browser and our name would confuse things. Under advice from our legal support, we agreed to change the name. We changed to Firebird and the OSS database project bombed my inbox (and Mitchell's too) for a week with hundreds of nastygrams and though we were in the clear on TM, we didn't want to stomp on the little OSS project so…

Did you also come up with Sharknado in this whiteboarding exercise?

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#183

Post by grishka » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 7:42 AM UTC

dataf3l wrote: post #153

asadotzler wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS maker sent me an email telling us they made a BIOS web browser and our name would confuse things. Under advice from our legal support, we agreed to change the name. We changed to Firebird and the OSS database project bombed my inbox (and Mitchell's too) for a week with hundreds of nastygrams and though we were in the clear on TM, we didn't want to stomp on the little OSS project so…

was waterduck considered?

Technically, all real-life ducks are waterducks. Except when they're temporarily airducks.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#184

Post by amandasystems » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 7:43 AM UTC

asadotzler wrote: post #150

guessbest wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it hit trademark issues, but the reason I remember from slashdot was that phoenix was already a semi-popular open source project in the debian repository, so firefox had to be named from phoenix to mozilla-phoenix. But firefox at the time still named phoenix just ran so much better on windows than linux, it was funny.

No. Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS maker sent me an email telling us they made a BIOS web browser and our name would confuse things. Under advice from our legal support, we agreed to change the name. We changed to Firebird and the OSS database project bombed my inbox (and Mitchell's too) for a week with hundreds of nastygrams and though we were in the clear on TM, we didn't want to stomp on the little OSS project so…

You had me at “BIOS web browser”

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#185

Post by isr » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 7:55 AM UTC

cgh wrote: post #145

mrinfinitiesx wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. We were all sick of loading a website with Internet Explorer and getting 1930201 hot toolbars, blinking 'desktop buddies' and 32 new system tray icons with programs running. Phoenix saved us.

Konqueror says hello. I’m only half kidding, it was actually somewhat capable and I used it a lot. For those who don’t know, its legacy was khtml, famously forked into WebKit and Blink.

Hey, me too, back in the day. Konqueror's ui was much nicer than the alternatives. Especially the ability to open multiple panes in the same window - made browsing slashdot easier.

Shame it hasn't kept up.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#186

Post by 9point6 » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 8:17 AM UTC

amandasystems wrote: post #184

asadotzler wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS maker sent me an email telling us they made a BIOS web browser and our name would confuse things. Under advice from our legal support, we agreed to change the name. We changed to Firebird and the OSS database project bombed my inbox (and Mitchell's too) for a week with hundreds of nastygrams and though we were in the clear on TM, we didn't want to stomp on the little OSS project so…

You had me at “BIOS web browser”

I'm assuming some kind of instant-on OS feature

which if you're interested—Cathode Ray Dude on youtube has several episode series all about that weird and wonderful point of computer history

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#187

Post by shrikant » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 8:30 AM UTC

amandasystems wrote: post #184

asadotzler wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS maker sent me an email telling us they made a BIOS web browser and our name would confuse things. Under advice from our legal support, we agreed to change the name. We changed to Firebird and the OSS database project bombed my inbox (and Mitchell's too) for a week with hundreds of nastygrams and though we were in the clear on TM, we didn't want to stomp on the little OSS project so…

You had me at “BIOS web browser”

I thought Phoenix may have just made that up because they were miffed about someone in tech using their name, but no, they actually did have a "BIOS web browser"!

https://web.archive.org/web/20020618092004/https://www.xbitl...

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#188

Post by IshKebab » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 8:31 AM UTC

omoikane wrote: post #110

IshKebab wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember Windows 95 & MS Word 6 being especially snappy. I think this is nostalgia.

See for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933 - Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened? (2023-06-23) Follow up to the above by the original author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503983 - Fast machines, slow machines (2023-06-28)

They're opening Notepad and Paint, very simple apps even for the time. Try MS Word.

Also Windows NT was released in 1993 when typical PCs were more like 100MHz, so this is getting a 6x speedup from the designed experience.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#189

Post by Bluestein » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 8:38 AM UTC

blackenedgem wrote: post #154

dataf3l wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was waterduck considered?

Stormcow

Tornadocalf

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#190

Post by rvense » Mon, Aug 12, 2024, 9:12 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #179

rvense wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was kind of there. I ran BeOS for a while for fun some years after it had died, in between moving from Macs (which I grew up on in the 90's) to BSD and then Linux. My point was basically what you're saying: BeOS was not nearly where Windows was, but it was miles and miles ahead of Linux, and it provided a unified graphical OS instead of the fragmented Linux base with all its duplicated efforts. Now, it's hard to sa…

The problem with your hypothesis is that in the lead up to 2001 you have Linux as open Source, and Windows (et al) as commercial offerings. And the commercial stuff is waaaay ahead at this point. The conclusion one draws from this is that "commercial development" (which is centered around intellectual property and copyright) is progressing faster than open source. In other words it's a kinda A/B test and copyrighted…

I'm talking specifically about a graphical operating system for desktop purposes, something that people coming from Mac OS 9 or Windows 98/ME might have moved to. I think BeOS was far closer to providing that than Linux was in 2001, and that that might have mattered if it'd had been picked up and developed further as opposed to dying on the vine. I think there were a lot of people who looked into desktop Linux at that time but didn't take to it. A freed BeOS would have had a much better day-to-day alternative than Linux was, and running on cheap hardware unlike Mac OS X.

I don't really think your idea of A/B testing commercial vs. open source holds water. Look at what happened to OS X vs. Windows during the 00's, there's no comparison. There are so many other things at play.