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Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

discuss.haiku-os.org

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Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#211

Post by tivert »

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…

> 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...

I see no mention of that on the Firefox Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#212

Post by tivert »

jwells89 wrote: post #89
llm_trw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had bloated UIs in the 80s and 90s, it's just that what's come after is so much worse. Try using the old analog control systems where responses are basically instant. It feels like the controls are reading your mind.

Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000. Same for Windows 2000 on my parents’ PIII 750Mhz Dimension 4100. The only time anything felt slow is when a significant amount of data needed to be loaded from their hard drives. Not all machines were like this though, we also had a Compaq Presario with some kind of Celeron running 98SE and that thing did feel slow more often than not, especially aft…

I think the rule (at least while Moore's law was in force), was UIs start out boated but become fast as the hardware catches up. For instance, your example:

> Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000.

You were using a UI that (at its core) was built for 1984 machine, with sixteen additional years of hardware performance improvements.

Every once in a while I boot up a Mac from 1989, and Mac OS is definitely not snappy on it.

I think if you want speed, you need to find something built for a system far more constrained than the one you're actually using. The choices the developers made to make the system merely usable under those constraints will make it fast once they're removed.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#213

Post by 10729287 »

coolcoder613 wrote: post #160
hodapp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you one of them? I am curious what the experience is like trying to use it as anything like a daily system.

I am, although I do not use it as a daily driver, I have bare metal installs on two different computers. In my experience, it is very snappy, and always fast, except for some browsers, and wifi support for my specific wifi cards is there, and works fine, although not perfectly. In regard to using it as a daily system, browser-wise, especially since Firefox has been ported, it works well enough. Webmail can be used fa…

I would have loved to use it as my daily laptop one year ago but it lacked a password at login. Is it still the case ?

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#214

Post by zzo38computer »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #17
beretguy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t need vertical tabs. I need native support for tab groups like Firefox USED TO HAVE. Even safari on iOS has tab groups.

Sidebery supports tree style tabs so tabs opened from a specific site are nested below that tab. Is this what you want? Or something like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/ or https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr... ? I can't remember firefox ever having something like tab groups. When was this/How was this implemented. Seems like a feature which I would have liked/used Edi…

I would like that tabs and tab groups and MDI and related stuff like that, would be a feature of the window manager rather than the browser. (The application program (e.g. browser) may need to tell the window manager which window the new one is created from, but I would design the operating system to do that.) This way it can be used with many programs and can be used consistently with different programs and does not require add-ons; it also allows to do e.g. split-screen, to use MDI instead of (or in addition to) tabs if the user wants to do, etc.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#215

Post by jwells89 »

tivert wrote: post #212
jwells89 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000. Same for Windows 2000 on my parents’ PIII 750Mhz Dimension 4100. The only time anything felt slow is when a significant amount of data needed to be loaded from their hard drives. Not all machines were like this though, we also had a Compaq Presario with some kind of Celeron running 98SE and that thing did feel slow more often than not, especially aft…

I think the rule (at least while Moore's law was in force), was UIs start out boated but become fast as the hardware catches up. For instance, your example: > Mac OS 9 felt pretty darned fast on my 400Mhz iMac G3 back in 2000. You were using a UI that (at its core) was built for 1984 machine, with sixteen additional years of hardware performance improvements. Every once in a while I boot up a Mac from 1989, and Mac O…

That makes a lot of sense, and I agree. Perhaps a good baseline to develop against today to produce a similar result on modern hardware would be something like a Core 2 Duo or Core i5-750 and Geforce 9600 GT.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#216

Post by coolcoder613 »

10729287 wrote: post #213
coolcoder613 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am, although I do not use it as a daily driver, I have bare metal installs on two different computers. In my experience, it is very snappy, and always fast, except for some browsers, and wifi support for my specific wifi cards is there, and works fine, although not perfectly. In regard to using it as a daily system, browser-wise, especially since Firefox has been ported, it works well enough. Webmail can be used fa…

I would have loved to use it as my daily laptop one year ago but it lacked a password at login. Is it still the case ?

Yes, it is still single-user. Have you considered a BIOS or bootloader password?

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#217

Post by 10729287 »

coolcoder613 wrote: post #216
10729287 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have loved to use it as my daily laptop one year ago but it lacked a password at login. Is it still the case ?

Yes, it is still single-user. Have you considered a BIOS or bootloader password?

I didn't, thinking it would be too weak but you're probably right. Will give it a try today for my last day off for summer !

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#218

Post by ahartmetz »

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…

> We had two columns of names, forces of nature and animals and were pairing them up.

Nice. Now I wonder if the ~0.8? era extension "Firesomething" was directly inspired by that whiteboard. IIRC it randomly combined two components from lists.

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#219

Post by coolcoder613 »

10729287 wrote: post #217
coolcoder613 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is still single-user. Have you considered a BIOS or bootloader password?

I didn't, thinking it would be too weak but you're probably right. Will give it a try today for my last day off for summer !

That's great, let me know how it goes!

Re: Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS

#220

Post by simcop2387 »

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…

Ah neat, I didn't realize it was the bios maker that was behind that one, I thought it was the IBPhoenix product, it's been way too long since all that happened and I think it's all gotten jumbled in my memory.
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