Over at BeBits there's some buzz as people download and try out a modded up version of Firefox titled QuickFox. "QuickFox is a 'mod' of mozilla/firefox bleeding edge. From order of importance: speed, useability, looks, reliability. It runs and loads in a RAM filesystem. It sports a fully automatic installation that will take care of everything for you. It includes auto setup on boot and shutdown to save your settings." Thanks to HaikuNews for pointing this out. As you are probably aware of by now, QuickFox is BeOS-only.
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"Overview" includes stuffs like:
* My very much halfdone rewritten NSPR(Netscape Portable Runtime). Should be as good or better as the old one though.
* Improved loading engine and java script engine speed.
Shouldn't these stuffs be done in upstream Mozilla? Are they willing to maintain these patched sources -- including NSPR! -- by themselves forever?
It would be nice if users of other platforms can benefit from "generic" improvements of QuickFox. Well, I guess, if source is there, anyone can do port...
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This is good news for me as BeOS is my preferred system as it makes my obsolete computer (900 Mhz) faster than the fastest Windows or Linux system you can get your hands on. It is also problem free.
A very bad thing has been happening over at BeBits for the past few years (www.bebits.com) and I havn't seen any discussion on it.
BeOS has no real support on Mozilla's web site as the only link is a few years old.
Likewise on BeBits the pages for the various Mozilla projects [Why are there more than a single unified effort?!?] are all out of date if you look at the "last updated" part of the pages.
Worse yet, the versions which are linked to are all very very old (.8 anyone) or don't work.
From all appearances on the various download pages, it seems that Mozilla development under BeOS died out long ago.
This is not actually the case as there seem to be small development efforts which folks temporarily post a given Firefox build on a personal web page which quickly disappears probably due to bandwidth restrictions as members of the BeOS community find the compiled version.
I have one of these myself but can't quite find where I got it from and it lists as verion 1.0+ and evaporates at a whim under use.
If I can actually convince someone out there to try BeOS, the web browser is a major sticking point and until now, from all appearances over at BeBits the BeOS appears to be dead as an alternative as there is apparently no useful way to get out on the web.
--Jim B.
P.S. Where on the internet is there a forum where BeOS discussion is currently taking place. The Usenet feed is still unusable as of over two years ago due to the spam and lunatics who still seem to be there.
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You'll find people are commited to BeOS fixes almost weekly, only alot of this isn't reported about *because* of no official release.
See dev discussions, http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/
Soon, hopefully, we might see http://www.bezilla.org/ again.
Member since:2005-08-20
"--Jim B. P.S. Where on the internet is there a forum where BeOS discussion is currently taking place..."
The Yellowtab forums are fairly active:
http://www.yellowtab.com/phorum/phorum.php?index,315
Firefox 1.03 was bundled in Zeta when I bought it several weeks ago. It works fine as far as I can tell from casual browsing. It feels "Firefox fast" to me so I don't see the urgency for "Quick Fox." Firefox is already quick. But it's good to have this project too.
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2005-07-06
BeOS is a beautiful thing, but it is too beautiful to sit on one of my computers and be useless. If only someone could do something with BeOS similar to the GeoBook...
Use older hardware (R5 ran on my K6-2 350 I used to have very nicely) and build a machine that costs around $100, put BeOS 5 on it, QuickFox, AbiWord, and a few other apps get WiFi working with it (nothing fancy just whatever cheapo card you want to include with the machine) and put it on the market.
There are plenty of people that would go for something like that.
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2005-06-29
Looks good, But I just don't get why they didn't use the Haiku firefox theme? It's avaible at addons.mozilla for sometime and was updated recently for 1.5beta...
The "usability, looks" part of the slogan implies native looking app IMHO.
Anyway... great news! Looking foward for this app/mod evolution! =]
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Considering this is entirely true, I urge extreme caution here...
Theres also this post: http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/111226.html?thread=717... from an actual BeOS Firefox dev, which is again totally accurate.
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2005-09-19
Just want to add that the 'official' Mozilla for BeOS porting team isn't in any way involved. (Official in quotations, because we aren't an officially recognised port, but our team does have the acknowledgement on this port). Mr. X. also hasn't communicated with anyone on the team.
It _seems_ (not to discredit him) like a 'regular' build of the latest Mozilla CVS code, with some of our patches in testing applied (for example, the internal drag and drop is something one of the team members is working on). I do find the line "My very much halfdone rewritten NSPR. (Netscape Portable Runtime).Should be as good or better as the old one though" a bit concerning though. One of the guys of the team was, incidentally, working on the NSPR code, and he had working code that only worked on BONE. I find it all the more strange that his Quickfox also only works on BONE.
If Mr. X. is watching, please share your improvements with us, it seems like you have some interesting ideas. (Publishing the code would be more than fine).
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I can say that with confidence as I am one of the main BeOS porters of Firefox/Mozilla to BeOS. He is using my build, he is using my list of changes, mixed with his own changes as the javascript-'hacks' and such.
The NSPR-changes for instance is mine, the DND too, but he left out the known bugs.
Anyway the build can be found here, http://bebits.com/app/2715 , our development blog here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/ and please support the real effort to make Mozilla/Firefox under BeOS fast. Here is one of the current bottlenecks http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/110110.html
/tqh, who have focused a lot on making Firefox/Mozilla fast under BeOS
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As promised, I did install this on my BeOS system during lunch.
If someone were trying attack my computer and put malware on my system I believe this is the way they would do it.
The program, takes many unusual steps in getting on your system including a zipped file which is decompressed on boot up as well as a system add-on which briefly shows up in your task bar.
Though it use software valet, it did some heavy post processing after installation and did not mention the necessity to reboot the system.
My entire desktop dissapeared on restart with two new icons in the upper left of the screen (one seems to be a directory and the other the application). The desktop then proceeded to crash about 10 seconds later.
This same scenero occured on the next reboot.
Since most BeOS apps are unzip and run, this program feels much more like a Windows program in nature with all sorts of hidden doings behind the users back.
Fortunatly it didn't affect the partitions on my HD so I will consider myself lucky.
Seeing this actually appears to be an attempt to subvert if not corrupt your BeOS system I advise anyone **NOT TO INSTALL THIS PROGRAM** (espicially based on some of the comments I saw after my original post.)
I'll attempt to remove all traces of the program with my BeOS install CD tomorrow but I really don't trust the system at all now, and it's going to be a rescue the data and then wipe. Fortunatly this was a very young BeOS system as I just upgraded my hardware and was in the process of rebuilding from scratch.
Watch out.
-Jim
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Till now Mr X was known mostly as First-Person-Shooters enthousiast. Quite incompenent in computers in general.
Like well-known type of teenagers. Also agree that confusing Java with JavaScript from man pretending to be FireFox developer is at least strange.
As some of other his comments at bebits
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yeah yeah don't hate-
there will always be haters . I don't care about this immature lot. They can do as they want.
It was actually quite funny reading some things liek 'OMG its malware etc' well I don't even know how to program.
I just didnt like some of the things like total manual installations a bunch of that crap usually you have to do on BeOS. I like the things on windows where it installs easily and automatically.
I took the things I didnt like and I fixed them, and I brought it to the internet.
And this turned out to be something worth doing, since its got popular pretty 'Quick '.
Since some people take great insult to not explicitly recieving credit, I put credit in bold for tqh on the BeBits page.
Oh and since I don't suscribe to livejournal say to them here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/111226.html#comments
that I read it and to read this.
Enjoy QuickFox 
