How usable will the web be on the Pyra?

[mrpalmtop]

Hi everyone,


I don't own a Pandora but I do plan on getting a Pyra. As someone who does regularly use a Viliv N5, however, I have been wondering of late how usable the web will be on a Pyra.


On my N5 (and I suspect on the Pandora), JavaScript performance is so slow that I just generally disable it entirely unless I have to.


One of the other challenges of using the web on a desktop browser on a tiny, high dpi screen is that the fonts on webpages are usually way too small and must be adjusted for optimum viewing. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a web browser for Linux desktops which has the super fluid zooming feature that is on every tablet OS.


For those who have used the dev board, I'd love to hear an answer to the first topic: Is the full web usable?


And to anyone else, what can be done about the second issue? Am I wrong to think we could use the fluid zoom on the Pyra?

 

[TrashyMG]

I use the full desktop version of Firefox with nothing disabled on the Pandora, sure at times it can be a tad slow but not crippling in anyway. I also have an OMAP5 dev-board hitched to a 1920x1200 monitor, I can run a browser(currently Iceweasle) and 7 other applications and it's not slow in any way.

Multi-tasking won't be an issue as you can see from ED's video from Gamescon:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/a0oa27RV39M?feature=oembed

 

[mrpalmtop]

Hi TMG (is that your preferred abbreviation?). I'm glad to hear that about latency. It is a huge annoyance for me as I typically have a minimum of 5 browser tabs and at least three other programs running at all times.


I'm a tv producer and web developer so multitasking is super important to me. It's one reason I've held off from the Pandora since it has so little RAM.

 

[rygD]

I typically have a minimum of 5 browser tabs

Lightweight. 

 

[_wb_]

Pandora's RAM may seem little but it always surprises me how much you can do with it.

My Android phone has twice as much RAM (1GB) and has 4 cores, but it is barely able to do any multitasking: even loading pages in non-visible tabs does not seem to happen, and switching between the browser and other apps causes stuff to have to reload more often than not.

On my Pandora, I typically have LibreOffice running (with my work-in-progress 150 page book opened and a few smaller documents), a desktop version of Firefox with a couple of tabs open, a Terminal with a couple of tabs, and on top of that a game or compile job. There's still plenty of free RAM.

Memory is not an issue on the 512MB Pandoras. I'm pretty confident that it will not be an issue either on the Pyra.

 

[TrashyMG]

Hi TMG (is that your preferred abbreviation?).

You are the first to abbreviate it ..

 

[mrpalmtop]

I typically have a minimum of 5 browser tabs

Lightweight.

LOL. That's why I said minimum!

 

[mrpalmtop]

Pandora's RAM may seem little but it always surprises me how much you can do with it.


My Android phone has twice as much RAM (1GB) and has 4 cores, but it is barely able to do any multitasking: even loading pages in non-visible tabs does not seem to happen, and switching between the browser and other apps causes stuff to have to reload more often than not.


On my Pandora, I typically have LibreOffice running (with my work-in-progress 150 page book opened and a few smaller documents), a desktop version of Firefox with a couple of tabs open, a Terminal with a couple of tabs, and on top of that a game or compile job. There's still plenty of free RAM.


Memory is not an issue on the 512MB Pandoras. I'm pretty confident that it will not be an issue either on the Pyra.

Android is extremely inefficient due to the multiple layers between the hardware and the user. Some versions also swap out webpages to conserve memory as well. Ironically, it is Windows which is actually the most efficient smartphone OS currently being sold. It runs great in 512 MB of RAM.


With 2GB and the shared libraries of Linux, I'm sure memory isn't going to be an issue for the Pyra for many years. And based on what Trashy says, it seems the processor is up to snuff as well.


My only concern now is readability. Do you know of any fluid zoom browser that exists in regular X11 Linux? I'm not sure what the term for it is but I'm referring to the ability to easily magnify the page in a continuous process

 

[_jr_]

Memory usage of firefox is an issue on any device (there might be a difference between 32 and 64 bit versions, haven't tested that). It isn't magically using less memory on the Pandora. And Javascript performance is crap, too. But that is mostly a problem because of stupid web developers themselves. They recently improved the humble bundle pages to be somewhat more fluid, but it used to take over 30 seconds cpu time on my old corei7 laptop to open my library page (and about 5 minutes on an overclocked GHz pandora). And that's just for a glorified list of links with pictures. Instead of having the server render the data into some stupid bloated json or whatever it could just create the page with time to spare. GOG is equally successful in making the site slower (measured in CPU time) and less secure (measured in number of hosts executing javascript on the users browser) while adding nothing whatsoever. In German there is a fitting proverb

Alle in einen Sack und kräftig draufhauen. Trifft nie den Falschen.

 

[mrpalmtop]

Memory usage of firefox is an issue on any device (there might be a difference between 32 and 64 bit versions, haven't tested that). It isn't magically using less memory on the Pandora. And Javascript performance is crap, too. But that is mostly a problem because of stupid web developers themselves. They recently improved the humble bundle pages to be somewhat more fluid, but it used to take over 30 seconds cpu time on my old corei7 laptop to open my library page (and about 5 minutes on an overclocked GHz pandora). And that's just for a glorified list of links with pictures. Instead of having the server render the data into some stupid bloated json or whatever it could just create the page with time to spare. GOG is equally successful in making the site slower (measured in CPU time) and less secure (measured in number of hosts executing javascript on the users browser) while adding nothing whatsoever. In German there is a fitting proverb

Alle in einen Sack und kräftig draufhauen. Trifft nie den Falschen.

You are so right about that. I've been programming in JavaScript since the 1990s and it's ridiculous how lazy today's JS programmers are nowadays.

I wish someone would outlaw all these crappy, bloated frameworks as well such as Bootstrap. They suck and are ruining the internet for people in emerging markets and with old hardware.

 

[rygD]

Do you know of any fluid zoom browser that exists in regular X11 Linux?

Can you give an example of what you mean?  I often use Opera, and it zooms well for me.  I can either use + and - or click to get it where I want.  On my Pandora I use QupZilla, and it zooms fine for me.

 

[mrpalmtop]

Do you know of any fluid zoom browser that exists in regular X11 Linux?

Can you give an example of what you mean? I often use Opera, and it zooms well for me. I can either use + and - or click to get it where I want. On my Pandora I use QupZilla, and it zooms fine for me.

I'm talking about like on Android, IE 11, or iOS when you pinch to zoom. It is a complete smooth process as you adjust your fingers' distance from each other.

 

[_wb_]

It is theoretically possible to implement pinch to zoom on the Pyra (the hardware should support it at least).

I personally don't really like to put finger grease on my screen, so I would probably just use discrete zoom steps (e.g. Ctrl +/- in most browsers).

In principle, we could also map the right nub to "smooth zoom". Although I would prefer that nub to be "smooth pan" (2D scroll), and the two new action buttons (Ins and Del) to map to continuous zooming (that is, the longer you press them, the more it zooms in or out).

The browsers I care for are open source so if they don't already have such functionality, it should not be too hard to hack it in.

That said, I think websites that require lots of zooming in and out on a small-screen device are just poorly constructed. Websites should all have a responsive design.

 

[WizardStan]

It is theoretically possible to implement pinch to zoom on the Pyra (the hardware should support it at least).

From what I understand the touchscreen driver is going to supply it, it should just be an event that your application listens to, same as a mouse_move or key_down events, or whatever.ED said that a long long while ago when he was first sourcing stuff and it may have changed though, so we'll just have to wait and see.

I would probably just use discrete zoom steps (e.g. Ctrl +/- in most browsers).

I vote both. It zooms by discrete steps but the actual zooming animation is fluid, and the steps are logarithmic in nature such that the first step zooms in 50%, the second 25%, the third 10%, etc...

 

[Grench]

I have a Galaxy Note II with a 5.5" screen in the same resolution (1280x720) that has been proposed for the Pyra.  Although it is a bit larger (5.5" to 5" or 5.2") the web viewing results should be similar.

When viewing web pages I prefer to put the GN2 in landscape and use the standard non-mobile versions of websites with very little if any need to pinch/zoom for clarity in reading.  Occasionally I'll need to zoom in on a particular area of the screen for selections.

With the 800x480 4" screen on the Pandora things are a bit tight.  I expect the 1280x720 5" (or 5.2") screen on the Pyra to be about perfect for web use.  Memory and CPU power will likely be overkill for that application.

 

[klapse]

Buttons to smoothly zoom would be way better than pinching, imho. Evening discrete (non smooth) scaling would be fine for me, if it were triggered with dedicated buttons on the controller.

 

[mrpalmtop]

Buttons to smoothly zoom would be way better than pinching, imho. Evening discrete (non smooth) scaling would be fine for me, if it were triggered with dedicated buttons on the controller.

Unless I misremember, the screen is only single touch so therefore pinch-to-zoom would not be possible any way.

I'm more concerned that the ability to smoothly scale the page exists at all since so many websites are not responsive and their text is frequently too small on small high-dpi screens. The Pandora doesn't have this issue as much because the dpi is so much lower. On the Pyra, 12 points will be much smaller physically than it is on the Pandora.

Do any open-source browsers have smooth zoom though? I'm not aware of any that do, at least on Linux. I know Chrome on Windows has it but I'm not sure about the Linux version. It may also be dependent on multitouch as well which could be a problem for a single-touch resistive screen.

 

[TrashyMG]

Unless I misremember, the screen is only single touch so therefore pinch-to-zoom would not be possible any way.

It's planned to have a custom rudimentary resistive multi-touch layer that will allow pinch zoom and such. 

 

[mrpalmtop]

Unless I misremember, the screen is only single touch so therefore pinch-to-zoom would not be possible any way.

It's planned to have a custom rudimentary resistive multi-touch layer that will allow pinch zoom and such. 

Oh that's great!

So then the problem remaining for this feature is whether or not code exists somewhere in a regular Linux browser. Based on this page: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16976512/does-linux-support-multi-touch-screen it would appear that Chromium does have the code for it. Not sure about the other browsers.

 

[WizardStan]

It's not a second layer, most* resistive screens can easily support dual touch with some caveats.

When you touch a resistive screen in two places what it actually detects is a box: it knows you're touching two opposite corners of that box, it just aren't sure which, and additional touches will either be lost inside the box or make it bigger. Either way, knowing that you're touching two corners of a box is enough to detect pinch zoom and rotation.

In theory the Pandora could do that as well, I think. Not all resistive touch layers can, but most that I'm aware of can physically: the problem is usually coaxing the software to give you what you want.