http://www.osnews.com/story/13781/3D_Browser_Built_Upon_Firefox_1_5 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:49:44 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?98846 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98846 Simply awsome! This shows that Gecko rendering is far superior then thought.
Hello? Where is IE7? Bring it on Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TusharG) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98847 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98847 A lot quicker than I thought.... quite amazing really..

just gave it a quick 5 mins run and I am impressed Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (muggsy) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98848 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98848 The linux desktop is really going 3d these days! Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (yanik) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98850 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98850 This is absolutely useless, but very cool. A pity that it doesn't support proxies at all though - it means I can only see our intranet with it here. Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (richmoore) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98854 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98854 I guess this is the future of Web browsing, but...

But considering the hussle that javascripts, DirectX, and Flash, bring to the Internet users, that could represent also a danger. Maybe more than a benefit...

Unless, until the future time when the average desktop of every Joe is a Pentium 6 6000 Mhrz-128bits, or an AMD 5500 Mhrrz 256bits...

Then with such powerfull hardware, FLash etc. , will be less annoying.

But do not worry... another technologies will arise to f--k you up, while navigating, and to show the power of the market system...

I mean, the 3D browsing looks a very attractive technology, and the work of this guy looks pretty nice to me..., but as usual it will be used ultimately by the "Big Dinosaurs" to impose their "way"to the market and the masses... And it will likely to be without your consent as a user...

...or hopefully not... ????

Angel Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Angel--Fr@gzill@) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98857 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98857 Maybe you were sarcastic... You do know this is Windows Only... Right?

Even if this was just a ref. to the Mozilla code used... it's all based off the source from Netscape... witch at the time was a Windows/Mac only product. Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jamesrdorn) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98858 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98858 To what I understand, pages are rendered as textures by OpenGL, so Gecko haven't much to do with it.

As for IE7, these effets are probably doable with Aero Glass, but why would they bother. The utility of browsing 2D in 3D is debatable... It's a nice technology demo, but that's about it. Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Wrawrat) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98867 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98867 i guess you do not understand that this is only demo application for libxul. how might this be the future if it does not add anything useful to browsing experience? or did i miss something in that app? :] Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hyper) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98868 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98868 Okay I know there are gaps in my Netscape history, but I clearly remember using netscape 3.5 on a Unix box,and going home to use netscape 3.5 on my win 3.1 box.

Was it with Netscape 4? Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Peragrin) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98869 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98869 Yes, it's good... but it's not rocket science... It's almost like Firefox rendering the website to a Textures (like a PNG) and them the program on top of that displaying this renered texture in a simple 3D cube.

I'm sure they have their reasons to choose Firefox the be the basis of their browser, like everyone that uses Firefox for example, but still, it's something that could be done with IE (even current and old ones) and probably with other browser engines.

That said, I hope this study bring some good additions for 3D interfaces. =] Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JrezIN) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98874 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98874 Every version of Netscape has had releases on Linux, Unix, or both.

There was never a version 3.5, though. Edited 2006-02-24 15:03 Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jeremywc) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98877 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98877 huh...

" i guess you do not understand that this is only demo application for libxul. how might this be the future if it does not add anything useful to browsing experience? or did i miss something in that app? :] "

Well.. Not sure who is who do not understand...

It's pretty obvious to me that in the future (not the long one ...) browsing will be made in 3D...

Everything or almost will finish being 3D and interactive. We only have to wait for the appropiate hardware to be created, that will allow the 3D sotfware of the near future to run smoothly...

But, I wanted to remark that it will not be done without the annoyeances that undoubtly those new technologies will bring with them... Like we have to stand the annoyances existant in Flash, Javascript... today !!!

Appart for that, is a step in the right direction.. that's to say: progress... Whether it is libxul, OpenGL, Mesa, DirectX or whatever...
(...Hmm, No, Not whatever. DirectX No, sorry... )


Angel Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Angel--Fr@gzill@) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98881 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98881 I agree that in general, the use of browsing 2D in 3D is typically minimal. However, according to the article, he made this so that people can access web sites from within an mmorpg, SecondLife specifically. I think that sounds pretty cool. Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dmdavis) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98893 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98893 Maybe you were sarcastic... You do know this is Windows Only... Right?

Oups, no I didn't know. Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (yanik) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98903 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98903 Yes, it's good... but it's not rocket science... It's almost like Firefox rendering the website to a Textures (like a PNG) and them the program on top of that displaying this renered texture in a simple 3D cube.

Not 'almost'. That's exactly what's going on ;-) Fri, 24 Feb 2006 17:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kamper) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98905 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98905 No. I think the only .5 version is 4.5

/me remembers good old time of NS 3.0 Fri, 24 Feb 2006 17:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fredb1974) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98906 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98906 Ok if this is considered good i should slap someone...

Rotating the entire texture gets weird and greened out and cant see anything....

Also its DOG SLOW! Lord if i had to browse in that i'd slit my wrists Fri, 24 Feb 2006 17:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cchance) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98911 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98911 I see your quite correct. It must of been netscape 3.0

either way I was right about the cross platform ability Fri, 24 Feb 2006 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Peragrin) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98918 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98918 It wasn't slow for me. With the flag effect turned on, it was still almost as fast as Firefox and IE are normally for me. I found that the 3D didn't make up for the lacking features in the browser though, so I returned to firefox (which is what I expect most people to do). Fri, 24 Feb 2006 18:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rm6990) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98944 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98944 I looks good and all that, but...

This is REALLY bizarre! I see no usee for this other than the old "I did it because I could". Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jedd) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98950 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98950 If someone did something which seems to look nice for him and for some other people why do you care so much if it has any use for YOU ? Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Lamego) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98954 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98954 RTFA

From article
How?

I wanted something cross platform since our client is available for Windows, Mac and Linux (alpha version) and ultimately this has to work on all of them. I wanted a way to be able to create and move around various pieces of geometry. There had to be a way to "pick" points off of the geometry in 3D space accurately. I wanted some GUI that would facilitate movement, allow entry of URLs and provide a place to display feedback - progress and status text for example. Eventually I settled on a combination of my own code for picking, GLUT for window management and rendering and GLUI for the UI. There are a couple of minor niggles but for the most part, things worked out really well. Thank you to the developers for making my little a bit easier. Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (somebody) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98958 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98958 "Rotating the entire texture gets weird and greened out and cant see anything...."

I had the same problem with a Radeon 7000/VE card and as soon as I fired up IE to do something else, Microsoft Update informed me there was an updated driver for the card; I DLed it and rebooted and the problem went away. In general the documentation says this is an artifact of the 3-pass system the author uses to render the texture to OpenGL, but could be a symptom of not enough power/memory in your card. Note I said "could be."

Most impressive part of the demo: Leave the image on a flat surface, but rotate it 180 degrees so it's completely backwards. Now navigate to a website with a text entry field in a form and enter some text. Select it. The selection cursor works, even backwards. Fri, 24 Feb 2006 23:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snozzberry) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98960 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98960 This is absolutely useless

For now, yes, but it could spawn a lot of other UI design and functionality in a browser. Like say for example, an expose like functionality (a la FF Reveal extension) , a cube (a la compiz cube plugin) functionality and a lot more. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (locohijo) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98967 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98967 Now if this kind of thing was scriptable via javascript THAT would be cool.

Imagine having the ability to apply OpenGL effects to divs and break navigation components out into separate 3d objects.

It would be like the matrix! Sat, 25 Feb 2006 01:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (math0ne) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98977 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98977 Though this might be cool, I personally don't look for such features in my browser; I'd rather have a browser that can render 2 pages side by side of the same web site, much like adobe reader when you use Views>Page Layout>Continous-Facing. I have a big monitor that can show 2 pages side by side (23" widescreen) and I feel it's unconfortable switching it to vertical position just to have extra view of a long web site and back then to portrait to see a movie. I think most of developers out there don't really take advantage of real cool hardware and try to integrate their codes with the best available hardware; Do they expect all users to have 15" monitors like the ones they code on? I don't know!
My advice to developers who ran out of juice, to set with some users and brainstorm together. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 03:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hraq) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98978 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98978 blah blah blah... the technology is fun, the users are already whining... the point is, the library is mature for other applications.. nobody cares that "i don't think i need this". Those aren't programmers, those are half-assed users bitching that their illegal movie torrents aren't downloading fast enough. Those ppl aren't part of the target audience. Taking the mature lib and making use of it in this way is taking OS software and showing that it can be used for other applications. This type of application of the OS libs shows that the libs themselves have matured. But definately not the OSNews crowd. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 03:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rdwtux) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98980 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98980 uh... did you read the part where it was made clear that it is a proof of concept and that it isn't intended to replace your regular browser? Or maybe the part about it being a good guide for developers looking to embed the gecko engine in their own application?

Sorry the application that was intended to help other developers didn't meet your end user experience. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (monkeyhead) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98986 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98986 Wake me up when it supports ActiveX. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 05:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ApproachingZero) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98989 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98989 The "future" is here, go look at SecondLife (what this demo was made for). It is a 3d world with integrated tools for creating content. It is absolutely amazing what people have done with it. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 06:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (subterrific) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98992 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98992 What about getting AIDS too ?

ActiveX are like HIV : a plague which kills your computer. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 07:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fredb1974) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?98996 http://www.osnews.com/thread?98996 It may be useless, but that's a UI issue, not a technical one. Allowing one more graphical thing to be offloaded to the video card is a good thing.

Now, someone with actual vision on how it could be used needs to come along, see it, and go, "ah, ha!", figuring out how it can actually help. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 09:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cerbie) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?99006 http://www.osnews.com/thread?99006 > Every version of Netscape has had releases on Linux, Unix, or both.

Not true - Netscape 8 onwards is a Windows-only app (and requires IE to be installed!) and therefore pretty irrelevant nowadays. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 11:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rklrkl) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?99095 http://www.osnews.com/thread?99095 As already pointed out, this was done by corporate developers for the Second Life virtual universe. So not useless at all. Sat, 25 Feb 2006 19:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mikehearn) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?99198 http://www.osnews.com/thread?99198 It wasn't good (and not very old either). The browser went downhill right after the "gold" edition of NS2. IE3 was much faster than NS3 on my 486.Edited 2006-02-26 00:02 Sun, 26 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kmarius) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?100799 http://www.osnews.com/thread?100799 check this 3D browser based on IE. it's called the SphereXPlorer.

www.spheresite.com Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (duskyyyyyy) Comments