Much appreciated too.

Considering the original platform for Netsurf, I presume there's room for optimization somewhere.

It's actually usable now on my Sam440ep. It takes a long time to load but with javascript disabled it's almost as fast as MUI-OWB at most things. I got both Lastpass and Xmarks working, so that's great.

Also, I decided to see if it could handle Paypal and all that, so I made a Timberwolf donation using Timberwolf. It worked! And it seemed appropriate

Isn't it a question of promoting what we can when we can? There's no real cost associated here and it benefits us all. Those with lack of interest can always go jump in a lake. Or just, you know, ignore it.

Last time I tried signing up, it looked like it was necessary with a Facebook account. Luckily I had an old account before they launched the service over here and I can still use that.

In settings I can enable or disable Facebook connections. Perhaps this is also possible once the account has been set up using Facebook.

...and maybe they came to their senses and allowed sign-ups without facebook since then

It does not show up as an MSD.

The iPods never did, thankfully (this is part of why they are the best players around for most people. Unfortunately it keeps us ghetto types out too).

It is trickier with flash storage based iPod devices than regular HDD devices, though. Your best bet is probably Apod or iPoddisk on OS4 Depot, but I think they are geared towards HDD-bassed iPods.

@kas1e

Does something give you the impression that we will actually GET the new shell any time soon? It was "coming soon" several years ago. While the fact that time moves on indicates that it should be closer now, do you have any indicator that it will not, in fact, be more years before it is finished?

Anyway, count me in when it comes to wanting PuTTY. I've been begging for it since the pre-release days.

I have an Antec Aria case and the PSU just stopped working. The PSU had the only fan in the case, but since it's non-standard it's not easily replaceable. Instead I have ordered a picopsu and plan to remove the original power supply, which opens up the back/top of the case quite a bit.

Considering that it's not an ultra-cramped case, should it not be enough with the built-in passive cooling, a fair amount of space and a PSU that is external?

I do have a fan that can fit in one of the PCI port slots on the back, but if I can avoid active cooling I'd much rather do that, since there are no moving mechanical parts besides the DVD drive.

@amigakit

Thanks for the report. Sounds like you had a blast and that it was every bit as good as the big European shows over the years. I wish I could have been there.

Apparently OWB development (the main branch) stalled around six months ago. As such there is little point in further development of the Amiga port as it is.

@Rogue

The modularity and simplicity stems from the way the system is structured. Libraries and datatypes that handle what you throw at them. Text-based scripts (such as startup-sequence) that makes it easier to understand what does what.

The whole structure with devices, storage and so on makes functionality tangible to me. I may not understand the specifics, but it makes it easier to understand what goes on and why, when you eventually run into problems with AmigaOS.

Sadly we've not seen as much progress with libraries and datatypes as I would have liked to see (for instance a Gecko or WebKit library for handling web pages across applications - or system-wide handling of video in the same manner we see images handled through datatypes) and I guess there are good reasons for that somewhere, even if I don't know them (as far as I know datatypes aren't ready for streams, so I guess that's part of it).

Sadly i cannot give you a good GUI example, because I don't think we've had one yet. They've been easy enough to use but either almost non-configurable or incredibly obscure to configure. It did help that both MUI and ReAction added skin (or skin-like) support, but that's not the ease of configurability I'm hoping for.

I would apply the terms to toolkits by way of simplifying again and again till things could get no simpler without breaking. Then allow things to grow as much as necessary and no more. Obviously this is easier said than done, and it's probably not the technical answer you're looking for (others can answer those better than I - and I hope they will), but if you open up the "GUI" prefs, I'm sure you can see what I'm not too keen on as a non-programmer.

On the other hand I could whip up stylesheets and basic layouts, if I were given the option to do so. The same transparency as the "simple" structure of the OS and configuration files.

To me a great strength of the AmigaOS is the modularity and simplicity. I think it is a shame that this does not extend to the neither the current GUI toolkits nor QT.

This is just my personal opinion, and I understand the motivations behind looking at QT, but I think we shouldn't look in the rear view mirror but forwards when looking at graphical interfaces.

Jolicloud was recently released with what is practically an HTML5 interface. I'm not necessarily saying we should take that route, but looking at emerging technologies gives some good ideas for potential solutions. I'm not sure taking a step sidewards is going to help that much in the long run.

@Rogue

Why not go for a high-level GUI based on scripting instead? Something that allows you flexibility and expandability.

I think that would suit AmigaOS better than QT (which may be fine, but I've only seen the ugly Gnome MacOS 9-like interfaces - there may be something better hiding somewhere).

Has anyone had any luck figuring out a way to make bookmarklets with OWB or one of the add-ons?

More specifically I am trying to get lastpass(.com) working, so I can sign in easily to many sites. There's a javascript bookmarklet that you can add by dragging to the fastlink area in browsers, but since OWB doesn't have one, I've tried adding it as a bookmark with no luck.

I saw OWBBook offered something similar to a fastlink-bar, but when I added the bookmarklet, I got a Grim Reaper. I guess it's not set up to handle non-links.

Is there a way of getting bookmarklets working in OWB? Perhaps through a persistent frame-like solution?

Another question to Joerg:

Is there anything we can do to help out in general? I don't have coding skills, and I'm currently unemployed, so the financial side is a bit iffy.

For what it's worth: I have OWB on both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.1, and while it's true that OWB feels like more native on MorphOS due to the amount of interface integration, I find that OWB on AmigaOS actually works better. It often loads sites faster than my significantly faster Mac Mini (I have a Sam440ep) and sites tend to work better than on MorphOS.

As an addition: I'll most likely keep using OWB even when Timberwolf is done. I like the performance on webcore-based browsers, and I don't need the plug-ins for Firefox.

In fact I'd be perfectly happy if I had the ability to add bookmarklets, so I could use lastpass.com from OWB.

@ChrisH

I've played around with it today, and it seems to work swimmingly. Mind you, so did beta 6 on my machine.

After some further experimenting, I find that I prefer using scanlines instead of double, as fonts look more like they did on a real CRT. It does require that you disable aspect correction, though, as it'll otherwise look really bad. It adds a tiny bit of extra performance compared to doubled. Scanlines vs doubled will surely be a matter of taste, though. I just couldn't stand looking at doubled fonts any more

I figured setting a graphics mode of 640*512 in uaerc and centering it on a 640*480 mode wouldn't be too far off the mark even if it's a PAL style resolution on an NTSC style screen. So far I've not noticed any graphics dropping off the bottom of the screen.

@ChrisH

Wouldn't exactly call this a cheap monitor (around ?450), but it is a 24" model. I'm not sure if the problem is with the monitor, the KVM or the Sam, though.

It's not that big of a change, though.

I changed to this:
gfx_width_windowed=640
gfx_height_windowed=512
gfx_lores=false
gfx_linemode=double
gfx_correct_aspect=true

gfx_framerate=2

amiga.screen_type=ask

I guess I could set up a full 7xx*5xx PAL screen and just use custom. That should fit nicely on the default 800*600.

I installed this yesterday, and I have to say it's an impressive piece of work.

It happily grabbed the roms off the first Amiga Forever cd I could find (2005) and everything worked smoothly.

Something's not right on my computer with resolutions below 640*480 (heavily dotted flicker in 8 and 32 bit modes and less problems in 16 bit mode), so I went in and changed the .uaerc to linedouble mode and a higher resolution. It's a little bit slower during fading (especially on AGA) but otherwise it seems to run things smoothly with frameskip set to two.

@ChrisH

I'm having trouble accessing the site (and as a consequence thereof the download). I can see the documentation through google's cache, but it seems the archive is not available elsewhere.