Quote:

I'll check what needs to be done. In essence, the plugin interface should be the same as on other platforms.

I'll make the SDK available with the next release as well...

future donations:

We do have a paypal link on our homepage (friedenhq.org). Donations are always welcome!

@ hans

We do not intend to stop with Timberwolf. rc2 is due today or tomorrow (probably tomorrow). I'm already quite sure that this will become the release version.

From there on out, we'll be exploring the possibility to update to a later build of Firefox. Within the bounty, this was too much of an uncertainty to commit to, but now, after the bounty has been fulfilled, it's something we want to explore. There have been a few interesting developments in the later versions (memory footprint reduction etc) that I really like to get into Timberwolf.

@ tommysammy

I do believe you, but as I said, I don't know if it's random: or the fact that random: mounted makes the databases work. In any case, you will be able to test it with rc2, since it has a fallback random number generation in case random: is not mounted.


@ vox

Sam440 optimizations are a problem. The 440 does not have an L2 cache, and Timberwolf is really memory intensive. I'm not sure how much can be done without hardware acceleration (which is something we will also look in to)


@ samo79

It's disputable whether a final version of any software exists. There is next to no software without any bugs in it, it's mainly about how many of those bugs are there and how they affect the workings of the program.

Timberwolf will be an ongoing project for quite some time still. We're definitely going to keep working on it. And the technology behind it is going to be used for other projects as well.


@ all

If someone tells you that Timberwolf will require payment in the future, they are simply BS'ing. Timberwolf will ALWAYS remain a free program, just like Firefox is a free program. Even if sale of the program would even be possible (I don't believe it is), we would never do that. Feel free to quote me on that wherever someone tell you otherwise.

Also, regarding the bounty: Getting nearly 7000 Euro out of it was a pleasant bonus, but considering that each of us spent far more than 1000 hours on the project, it can hardly be considered a "payment". It wasn't the money that kept us going, anyway, it was mainly the fact that with accepting the bounty, we accepted the commitment. No stepping back once we started it. It helped to get the thing on track.

@ chrisH

rc2 will come out tomorrow or Friday, and it has some changes that might help.

For one, it now has the option of running without RANDOM: since someone claimed that it would create a lot of CPU load for him. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but you can either use RANDOM, or dismount it and use pseudo-random numbers. The latter isn't really secure, but better than nothing.

Secondly, the database handling has been changed. The new sqlite included with the next rc is going to have the v2 internal interface implemented (which uses memory mapped files). It's not real memory mapped files, of course, but it allows Write Ahead Logging, which might be better for CPU load (it seems to be on my system).

There's a load of other changes, too. More on that in the release notes.

We'll see how these changes help, if at all. If not, I'll come up with a possibility to do proper profiling of the whole thing to see where it burns the time.

Font sizes:

It's not that I do not know how to make fonts use different sizes. The problem is that the font is part of the theme, and part of the style sheet. Basically, the whole browser is one large web page, including style sheets for appearance.

Copy/Paste:

I know for sure this works. Do you have anythin installed that somehow modifies the behavior of the clipboard ?


Different language writing:

I'll take a look, but I can't test it myself.


Crash at quit:

Is that with several windows open ? Or only the main window ?

By the way, regarding the 100 % CPU usage.

I made a test here with a simple start of timberwolf (no arguments) showing the about:home page.

I see an initial CPU load of 100 %, which goes down to 3 % after a while. It then periodically rises again to 100 % for a few seconds, before going down to 3 % again.

During those 100 % times, i see a lot of disk activity. In fact, it's mainly accesses to sqlite databases that seem to cause the high load.

Can someone please check this/verify this ?

Answering a few more things:


GUI font size.

I'll check if that can be changed. From the look of it, it's tied to the theme, so I'm not sure it can be done.


Startup problems:

The crash on startup is as far as I can see a problem with fontconfig. I'm not sure where the problem actually comes from, but the code that initializes it is general Firefox code, so my guess is that it's fontconfig that's at fault. Maybe it's not threadsafe, which would explain the erractic behavior. I'll try to work around it in Timberwolf.

Also, in general, it's a good idea to delete all files when installing a new version. You might first want to try to leave CurrentUserProfile untouched, but if problems persist, remove that as well, just to be sure, or start timberwolf with the "-P" option and create a new profile.


RANDOM:

Note please that RANDOM: MUST be mounted. It affects all database access, which also means history, cookies etc.


Memory consumption:

As you know, we've limited the bounty to 4.0.1, since any other attempt would mean we'd be updating source code every month (FF is at 14.0 now). After the initial port, and after the bounty is over, I plan on updating it to a later source code (ideally, we can start updating to the current release then from time to time). Later releases have made attempts at bringing down the memory consumption considerably.

You might also want to check the settings, I think there was a memory cache option somewhere: If it's not in the GUI, try "about:config" in the address bar, and search for entries starting with browser.cache.memory

To address a few issues

Back button:

This works for me. it might not work if you are having trouble with the database access, because the back button basically fetches the previous page from the database. If you are running without RANDOM and from a partition that does not support the record locking, it won't work.

I had an occasional problem with it as well, when coming from another window back to the browser window (like, from bookmarks). It might be related to window activation (the window does not get the proper focus). I'll check that.


Splash screen staying:

This is only on first run, because basically, the program runs twice when you start it the first time. I consider this really a minor issue, because if you quit, the splash screen will disappear, anyway.


Scrolling following mouse:

Sorry, I overlooked that. The scroll bar does not get the mouse up event if you release the mouse button outside of the main window, so it will stick to the mouse. Will fix that in RC2


OS4.2:

I'm not the only one working on it, you know. There's a whole bunch more.


Unfreed signals:

Yeah, sound code seems to leave signals unfreed. It's a minor issue, but after trying TW on my X1000 (I usually test on a Pegasos) I noticed that also the sound code does not correctly check if the sound device opened at all. So if you run on a machine without sound card (like my X1000), it will crash on exit. Will be fixed in RC2


100 % CPU/lots of tasks:

Timberwolf resp. Firefox is extremely multithreaded. It uses threads for almost everything. In fact, when I test it on my machine I see up to 20 threads at the same time. It's useful because every thread can run on a different CPU/core, so once we have the multip-core support finished, TW will use it to full advantage...

I still couldn't get to the bottom of the 100 % CPU issue. I don't think it's an actual bug, because I see lots of activity from different parts of the browser at any time. I don't consider it a deal breaker right now, since it will not disrupt functionality. But of course, I will look into it


File system issues:

In a previous thread, I outlined the method to move the profile directory to another disk. And for the record, I use it from FFS2 and I don't find it too slow. It takes longer to startup from an FFS2 partition, but from SFS, it needs less than on my Windows PC, which I consider more than fast enough...


Stability:

You may not consider it a release candidate, but I do. I tested it extensively, and I can run it for hours without crashes or lockups. Your mileage may vary, but that's why we do a beta test at all. If you want these problems to be fixed, I invite you to post your findings to the bugtracker.


Amiga style menus/any Amiga specific feature:

As I said before, this is a port, not a native application. Right now, I focus on porting, and trust me, that is already enough work. I will add specific features at one point, like Amiga menus, AREXX and so on, but right not, I just want to get the thing finished, meaning stable and usable.


Bookmark import:

I tried importing bookmarks, naturally, and for me it works (exported from my Window installation). TW does not support OWB's format, so there is nothing I can do. Sorry, not going to happen


F11/shortcuts/documentation:

There are numerous sources for documentation on Mozilla/Firefox. F11 is a standard key for Firefox to change to fullscreen mode. If you need information, check mozilla.org or firefox.com. I will not waste my time writing documentation for TW that is not specific to TW but general for Firefox technology.


Final words:

PLEASE use the bugtracker to report any problems. I have been swamped with email and messages on forum and mailing lists. I can not keep up with that. Use the bugtracker, please, otherwise, your bug might simply be overlooked and/or ignored. Sorry, I can't check every forum or mailing list, that's what bugtrackers are used for.

I just uploaded it to os4depot.net, so it should still be in the upload queue.

But, it's Release Candidate 1. It fixes most of the medium and major bugs, and a lot of the minor bugs that have been reported on the bugtracker.

In fact, there was a fix in the JavaScript code that was pretty fundamental. The browser itself is written in JavaScript (believe it or not), so this single fix actually cures a lot of problems (for example, every problem related to the download manager and the addons manager).

To that end, I would invite everyone to review the bugs they reported and see if they are fixed.

Enjoy! We're nearing the end of the road (and hell, I'm glad when it's done)

@ samo79

I do not doubt that you get 99/100 with the acid test, but I can not reproduce that, and others confirmed to me that they get 100/100 all the time. No one else has reported the 99/100.

So I am assuming some "weird circumstances" cause it for you. Besides, there's little chance I can actually fix it because it is most likely not in the machine dependent code.

The crash is probably due to missing synchronization between subthreads and main thread. They can continue to run while the main thread is exiting (and thus, the main thread frees resources that the subthreads are still using). I'll add a barrier to the thread exit code that should prevent this.

@ mechanic

This bug you describe is most likely also caused by the main thread exiting too early. It should be fixed with the barrier I described above.

@ MickJT

Yes, sorry. I'll get back to you asap, but the recent days/weeks have been hell.

@ samo79/swoop

I have fixed most of the download problems now, including saving to RAM Disk: and the problem with "cannot save :filename" thing. As far as I can see the Download manager is the only problem that remains. You'll be able to see for yourself once RC1 comes out.

The download manager complains about a malformed file specification when it's not open, but works when it is open. I'm currently looking into that.

@ redfox

I'll look into this. For me, it works unless I release the mouse button outside TW's window. I need to look into the window assignment anyway since there's also a problem with popups opening combo boxes and similar


@ Rob

Using a video layer might work, but I'm not sure if the internal player supports that. I'll have to check it. I didn't have time to look into that yet

RAM is a problem, but I have hear from people using it with the pager enabled on 256 MB machines.


@ vox

I didn't say "next version". For now, I will try as much as I can, but there are limits

By the way, since the new beta is out and it contains substantial fundamental changes, would you please verify your bug reports and if they are no longer valid, please close them. If not, just leave them open, and I'll deal with them

Quote:

Yes.

If not, we'll make it run.

The version coming with Timberwolf does not have the Amiga surfaces. It only supports image surfaces. You could in theory use it, but you would not be able to produce software that is compatible to the system version of libcairo.so.

I guess we'll have a new version of cairo sooner or later, since there was a recent updated that is supposed to speed up the path rendering. Besides, AmigaOS 4.2 will contain gallium, as was announced, and Cairo can use gallium directly so it can be made fully hardware accelerated, including anti-aliasing etc.

Quote:

They aren't. It's Rogue and me that are porting Firefox

Quote:

See the bugtracker, there's a enhancement I put in myself that will deal with that, basically handling right Amiga and CTRL as the same key

@ swoop

You don't have to put anything there, it's just if you want to have the profile data saved on a different partition because your disk with Timberwolf on it is JXFS (which does not support the record locking necessary for sqlite3).

If you want to modify your user-startup with an appropriate assign, remove the assignment from the "Timberwolf" script, and add something like this to s:user-startup

assign CURRENTUSER: workbench:some_dir_on_wb

Note: Do not modify s:startup-sequence, it might be modified by installation of AmigaOS updates.

@ raziel

ok, disregard my other mail then ;)

By the way, you can install the browser in a different place than the CurrentUserProfile. Basically, the browser just looks for a "CURRENTUSER:" assign and creates it's profile data and database there. So with a bit of manual tweaking of the startup batch file, you can move it anywhere you like.

@ raziel

did you try to bookmark something with the normal bookmarks menu ? I didn't test the star thing a lot, so maybe it's an issue with this specifically...

Try enabling the bookmarks toolbar, then visit a web page and drag & drop the webpages icon (in front of the URL bar) to the bookmarks toolbar, and see if that works...

@ samo79

Drag and drop is in as far as it can be implemented. As I said, the drag & drop system is alien. Basically, it works like a temporary clipboard, not a "tell me a filename to open" like with Workbench icons. This requires additional functionality. I might do that in the course of later "amigafications" in Timberwolf, like adding ARexx ports, native menustrip etc.

The opening of windows is fixed in the sense that it no longer opens a window as a small 1x1 + frame sized stamp and then moves it. It will be created as hidden and then moved to the place where it was created before being shown. What place it is required to go it not something the window code can influence, it will simply get the command to open. This position comes from within the code of the original Firefox tree, so there's no telling why it does that. I'll look into this particular effect (I've reopened the bug on the tracker).

Download might or might not work... it does for me, but I think there's still a problem with relative file names and file names with spaces. However, I also didn't claim that it would work. The release notes state what was changed, nothing beyond that was done for this version.

As I said, this version is supposed to be "feature complete" to the extend what is possible on current AmigaOS. What remains to be done is bugfixing and occasional optimization, but the feature completeness was my current goal. Some bugs were fixed along the way as a side effect, but I did not directly address any other bugs. This is what I will be doing in the near future.

@ Raziel

I would suggest deleting everything under the CurrentUserProfile drawer (that is, the .mozilla and Mozilla drawer).

The problem is that once timberwolf is started without RANDOM, and the databases have been created, some vital information is not processed and bookmarks can no be stored. Deleting the whole profile should help.

Otherwise, you might want to start timberwolf with the -ProfileManager command line option. This will start the program with a small window where you can select or create a new profile. Create a new one, and continue starting with this one. Then try saving bookmarks.

Let me know if that worked