Release NetSurf


ptitSeb

Serial Porter
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
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Age
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Location
France, near Lyon
Here is NetSurf, a lightweight Web browser coming from RiscOS
preview1.png

Not much to say. This version doesn't include Video support with gst-streamer. I may try to add it, but the point here was to keep it as lightweight as possible.

History log
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Build 08
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  • Using latest sources
Build 07
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  • Never published, repo issues
Build 06
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  • Using latest sources
Build 05
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  • Using latest sources
Build 04
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  • Using latest sources
Build 03
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  • Fixed Icon
  • Using latest sources
Build 02
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  • Reduced GUI font size
  • SearchEngines are now selectable
Build 01
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  • Initial build
 
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Thanks, this loads much quicker than firefox, and loads web pages in a flash.

There does seem a fair bit of rendering weirdness compared to firefox with scripts off, but perhaps that's due to user-agent differences. I did manage to navigate all of the pages I tried so far, with only one case of having to guess which blank button did what I wanted.

Also, do you know how to add search engines to this? A web search hasn't been very enlightening.

But in terms of your work, this port is speedy and rock solid in my testing thus far. Thanks!
 
Not sure how to do that but I have seen the ressource file that is embeded in the binary, so I can add a Web Search engine for everyone if needed.
 
Thanks, this loads much quicker than firefox, and loads web pages in a flash.

There does seem a fair bit of rendering weirdness compared to firefox with scripts off, but perhaps that's due to user-agent differences. I did manage to navigate all of the pages I tried so far, with only one case of having to guess which blank button did what I wanted.

Also, do you know how to add search engines to this? A web search hasn't been very enlightening.

But in terms of your work, this port is speedy and rock solid in my testing thus far. Thanks!

The rendering weirdness is because Javascript, etc. isn't fully supported by it yet.

EDIT: Can you please get the tabbed UI that Mac OS X uses to run on the Pandora instead of the GTK one (unless it provides tabbed browsing)?
 
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The rendering weirdness is because Javascript, etc. isn't fully supported by it yet.
Not in this instance, I believe, which is why I mentioned it. For example, in firefox you turn off all javascript/plugins and visit this page, you can see the 'Music and featured items' box and the 'Broadcasts box' somewhere below 'more episodes':
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0872905

On netsurf, both those boxes are plain white. According to the CSS they should be a kind of dark aquamarine colour, and then contain further divs that define the words therein. Theoretically, it may just be a CSS colour problem, as all the text inside there is meant to be white.

According to the netsurf docs CSS isn't completely supported yet, so that may be the problem here, although those docs do claim to have been last updated some five years ago, so who knows exactly what CSS is implemented yet.

Edit: Seems you can't select text in netsurf, which is my usual firefox approach to detecting hidden text. And PDF saving seems to not be enabled in this building. But saving the page as text shows the text for those boxes is rendered in that format, so it's probably just getting the colours wrong.
 
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Hi all :)

Thanks @ptitSeb for porting NetSurf to the Pandora, it looks like a good browser for our tiny machine: fast, responsive, light on resources, etc...

Some things don't work though (even with javascript enabled), like posting on these boards. This is where Otter comes in handy ;)

Cheers, Magic Sam
 
For all thoses issues, it would be good to test on a regular Linux / PC / RiscOS machine using an official NetSurf release to see if they are specific to my port (I may have missed something) or generic to NetSurf.

NetSurf is one of the few (only?) Web Browser still in developpement that is NOT based on the same WebKit/Gecko/WebEngine engine, that's why it's truly lightweight (but also less compatible).

Note: PDF saving is indeed disabled at compile. Not sure of the dependancies here, and not even sure it's available on Linux. I'll check later...
 
In Windows, it saves a pdf right to the desktop.
In Debian, it asks (save, save-as, cancel) and shows the Download window.
 
Not sure how to do that but I have seen the ressource file that is embeded in the binary, so I can add a Web Search engine for everyone if needed.

If you will be doing another build, adding duckduckgo as a search engine would be good. I've set their html query page as my home page already, and that seems to work in netsurf fine. This type of GET-type url works:
Code:
https://www.duckduckgo.com/html?q=[query]
The actual site is driven by POST type forms though, with a hidden 'kl' = 'en_us', and the query text in 'search_form_input_homepage', but having written that it occurs to me that maybe the GET-type url will probably be more stable.
 
1. The tab bar is included. Its just disabled by default and can be enabled by checking the appropriate checkbox in the Appearance tab of its Preferences.
2. Is it possible to assign keyboard commands to switching between the tab on the left and right side of the currently selected one?
 
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Hi all :)

@ptitSeb : I'll try to post on those boards from NetSurf 3.2, which is available in Debian 8 x86_64 repositories.

If that doesn't work, I'll try to compile NetSurf 3.7 (Dev) from source.

Cheers, Magic Sam
 
I'm posting this from netsurf 3.6 running under Arch.

It has no caret, but seems to accept input just fine, even though you can easily get lost on a big message.

I also note this build has options to search using a whole host of search engines. Here is the line for ddg from that SearchEngines file:
DuckDuckGo|www.duckduckgo.com|http://www.duckd...://www.duckduckgo.com/favicon.ico|fixme:Their ico upsets the current implementation


Now, lets's see if this actually posts...
 
Those are both reproducible on the Pandora build, but both kind of unimportant. The former just means if you accidentally reload the search page before hitting enter/submit, it'll forget what you've entered - but just don't hit reload then and you'll be fine. And the latter is true, but the plain html page works just fine. Unless you really need its javascript functions (like autocomplete) that should be fine for us all.
 
I have rebuilt and repackage.
The SearchEngines are selectables now. There is a good quantities already, but if you want to add some more, look in appdata/netsurf/home/netsurf/SearchEngines
I have also reduced the font size of the gui, with the same method as with inkscape (look in appdata/netsurf/home/.gtkrc-2.0)

Build 02
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  • Reduced GUI font size
  • SearchEngines are now selectable
 
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