OSNews:

OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18272/Syllable_0_6_4_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:14:38 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255790 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255790 Kudos to the Syllable team.

However, plz drop the ABrowse craze a port a proper browser (FF) Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments RE: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255791 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255791 However, plz drop the ABrowse craze a port a proper browser (FF)

That's a debatable statement. Many of us (inlcuding myself) prefer WebKit/khtml to Gecko. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[2]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255793 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255793 "That's a debatable statement. Many of us (inlcuding myself) prefer WebKit/khtml to Gecko."

That's not the point. The point is that the ABrowse team will never ever be able to keep up with FF.

a.k.a: a user wants a browser with the features he has come to expect (flash, scripting, ajax, etc) rather than a slightly better rendering engine. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments RE[3]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255796 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255796

a.k.a: a user wants a browser with the features he has come to expect (flash, scripting, ajax, etc) rather than a slightly better rendering engine.

Flash support has nothing to do with the rendering engine really. WebKit supports most scripting on the web.. can you be more specific about what standard features it's lacking? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (neowolf) Comments RE[3]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255797 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255797 a.k.a: a user wants a browser with the features he has come to expect (flash, scripting, ajax, etc) rather than a slightly better rendering engine.

Scripting, AJAX, and Flash are browser-independant. Even if they DID port Firefox/Geck, they still would not have had Flash. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[3]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255808 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255808 ABrowse team? Damn, I wish!

a user wants a browser with the features he has come to expect (flash, scripting, ajax, etc) rather than a slightly better rendering engine.

Flash isn't part of the browser and is not a W3 standard, and ABrowse supports "scripting", AJAX and everything else very nicely, being based on WebKit and all.

Even if a working port of FireFox magically appeared on Syllable it would be more work to maintain that than the WebKit port & ABrowse. Seriously, FireFox and Gecko are huge, and WebKit gets us the same features in a much smaller footprint, so why bother? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments Firefox is not the be all and end all http://www.osnews.com/thread?255809 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255809 It's a great browser, but it does have limitations. Specifically, the XUL user interface isn't native on any platform. Now, it's really good on several platforms (Windows, OS X, and Linux), but that still doesn't make it native.

If you're an alternative OS it might make a lot more sense to choose an easily embeddable rendering engine inside a native GUI. WebKit offers them that opportunity. If they wanted to port Firefox, they'd have to get XUL running on their platform which is no small task - and running with near-native performance and consistency to be considered good.

These people know the API kits they've helped create and choosing WebKit doesn't loose them much, if anything. WebKit is arguably better at scripting, ajax, and HTML rendering than Firefox. And, as people have pointed out, flash has nothing to do with it being Firefox or not. Safari on Windows and Mac does flash fine. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (saterdaies) Comments Very Impressed http://www.osnews.com/thread?255814 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255814 Just downloaded and loaded up the live cd. I must say, it has exceeded my expectations. I've been following this project since the AtheOS days and have been pulling for it to follow through on its potential. It looks like they stand to do just that.

- Tried it out on a Dell GX620 and all the hardware seems to work. Network, video, hard drive detection, sound. All looks good. The default video resolution was a bit low but that was easily changed.

- Was able to set up ABrowse to use my company's proxy and get out to the internet proper. That was a very pleasant surprise.

- Doesn't really need to be said, but the system was very responsive.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to test out a broader range of applications (whisper, contact, coldfish, etc). Maybe when I get home. I did notice a couple rough edges in the UI but at this stage, it's not setting off any red flags. I'm more than happy to let that slide when the progress 'under the hood' shows through as clearly as it has over the last few iterations.

Overall, excellent work, Syllable devs. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MechaShiva) Comments RE[3]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255816 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255816

That's not the point. The point is that the ABrowse team will never ever be able to keep up with FF.

a.k.a: a user wants a browser with the features he has come to expect (flash, scripting, ajax, etc) rather than a slightly better rendering engine.

So I assume you feel as though Safari and Konqueror should also be dropped in favor of Firefox? They are KHTML based too. In fact, the iPhone should immediately drop iSafari and move to Gecko too. Right? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments =) http://www.osnews.com/thread?255819 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255819 Always when I read about syllable news on OSNews I found it very interesting. But I think the time has come to test it on my machine, because it sounds more and more interesting for me =) Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SK8T) Comments RE[4]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255828 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255828 "So I assume you feel as though Safari and Konqueror should also be dropped in favor of Firefox? They are KHTML based too. In fact, the iPhone should immediately drop iSafari and move to Gecko too. Right?"

You obviously didn't read my post. I think comparing the resources of Apple and Syllable is kinda lame. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments RE[5]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255830 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255830 "You obviously didn't read my post. I think comparing the resources of Apple and Syllable is kinda lame."

Exactly!
Apple got the resources to maintain a port of Firefox. We don't! Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BurningShadow) Comments RE[5]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255832 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255832 Yes, Apple have far more developers, time and money than we do. Which is good for us, because we get to use the result of their work in ABrowse. So we don't need the same amount of developers, time and money. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments @predictor http://www.osnews.com/thread?255834 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255834 You seem to be missing the point. I will be very explicit (redundant to previous posts) ABrowse uses Apple's WebKit rendering engine, so the only part written by the Syllable team is the interface, all of the RENDERING code is written by Apple/KDE. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Seth Quarrier) Comments RE[5]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255835 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255835

You obviously didn't read my post. I think comparing the resources of Apple and Syllable is kinda lame.

So do I!! That is precisely why I'm making fun of you, because that's what you're doing -- who do you think maintains Webkit? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments RE: Very Impressed http://www.osnews.com/thread?255852 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255852 I'm glad you liked it. We try quite hard to get Syllable to run on a wide a range of hardware as possible, and it's no coincidence that my ability to track down and acquire hardware has been honed to a fine skill. As it happens my build machine is a Dell GX280, which is very similar to the GX620: I think the SMBus controller is the only item left which is not supported by Syllable.

I hope you'll take the opportunity to try out Syllable on your home computer. We always appreciate any feedback and bug reports.Edited 2007-07-16 21:35 Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments nice http://www.osnews.com/thread?255855 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255855 seems mostly nice, except networking didn't work (dhcp problems?) Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments RE: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255857 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255857 Gecko has very good standards support, but it's beginning to annoy me. Gecko uses more RAM than WebKit and since YEARS (!) there are some hefty performance penalties on websites with fixed background graphics. And since more and more website seem to use such graphics, that bug becomes more evident to me every day. See http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html ... On my older iBook causes scrolling with a Gecko browser 100% CPU consumption. A WebKit browser like Safari or Shiira scrolls though the same page with 60-70% CPU consumption.

Don't even ask about MySpace. A bitch to browse with a Gecko browser. Smooth with Safari.

After Safari for Windows was released an Apple claimed it to be the fastes webbrowser on earth, a bunch of people ran benchmarks to proof that FF is really faster.
Honestly: I don't care what benchmarks say. I don't notice a differnence on most sites. But as I said, there are some websites that perform very bad with Gecko.

I'm glad they ported WebKit.
Next step Gnash? Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KugelKurt) Comments RE[6]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255859 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255859 Have you applied for a account to webkit.org's SNV? Maybe you could send the patches for the Syllable port to them? (If you didn't do that already.) Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KugelKurt) Comments Dashboard Widgets? http://www.osnews.com/thread?255865 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255865 Now with WebKit ported, will you add some kind of Dashboard like functionality to an upcoming Syllable release? Most Dashboard widgets are just HTML+CSS+JavaScript. Some Opera Widgets should work as well. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KugelKurt) Comments RE[7]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255870 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255870 I'm going to smack the next person who calls SVN.. SNV!! Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BSDfan) Comments RE[8]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255885 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255885 LOL. I'm flashing back to the shenanigans bit in Super Troopers. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments RE[2]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255899 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255899 I'm pretty frustrated with firefox as it is right now. It's the absolute most resource hungry application I run, and it's non responsive to boot!

It needs to go on a diet and it needs more competition. I certainly hope the work here will help fix some of the bugs seen in the webkit port to linux.

On another topic, trying to figure out which architecture syllable runs on...I guess it only runs x86 32-bit? Any work on 64bit?

It would benice if they and other OS projects actually put some hard information like that into their FAQs or hardware compatibility lists.Edited 2007-07-17 04:24 UTC Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bnolsen) Comments RE[8]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255905 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255905 What, you mean it's not called Snubversion? Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments RE[7]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255908 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255908 One of the WebKit engineers has already got in contact via. the mailing list and offered us SVN access etc. Arno is the WebKit maintainer, so hopefully he'll take them up on the offer. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments RE[3]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255910 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255910

I guess it only runs x86 32-bit? Any work on 64bit?

Yes. There has been no work on x86-64 yet, and there is some work that is needed to the kernel before it could even begin properly.

It would benice if they and other OS projects actually put some hard information like that into their FAQs or hardware compatibility lists.

Sorry about that. It was on our "About" page but I've recently been working on the website and having yet moved that information to our FAQ. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments RE[8]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255911 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255911 Gawd, that was just a typo. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KugelKurt) Comments RE[4]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255916 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255916 Absolutly correct, not only are FireFox and Gecko huge, but they are also a PITA to support on alternative platforms*. The main devs focus on Windows, Linux and Mac, and they don't write the code portable at all:
* almost no abstractions or interfaces, just macros depending on platform
* force new dependencies which in some cases arn't even viable on alt. OS'es
* more 'hacking' than coding

IMO WebKit seems to be more aware on all of the points above as well as actually encouraging ports.

*) In fact, I'm not even sure there will be a Firefox 3 on BeOS. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TQH !) Comments RE[3]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255917 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255917 It will never be responsive in it's current state. It's single threaded in the way that one thread handles rendering (incl animations), messaging and receiving input. This is never good and when you start to open a few tabs or windows it degrades and shows. Notice that it's totally unresponsive for a short while when opening a new tab. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TQH !) Comments RE[5]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255919 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255919

force new dependencies which in some cases arn't even viable on alt. OS'es

That's certainly one of my biggest bug-bears, and you're right: Gecko and Firefox have them in spades. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments RE[5]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255920 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255920 "Absolutly correct, not only are FireFox and Gecko huge, but they are also a PITA to support on alternative platforms*. "

The Haiku folks made it work without that much effort. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (predictor) Comments RE[6]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255923 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255923 "The Haiku folks made it work without that much effort."

You're right on the first part of your claim, but wrong on the end. Yes they do (thanks guys!). But with *much* effort.Edited 2007-07-17 09:30 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoudoin) Comments RE[6]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255925 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255925 The Haiku folks made it work without that much effort.

Haiku didn't have to do an awful lot about Firefox itself; it already ran on BeOS r5 and Zeta. And since Haiku is binary compatible with r5, it was only logical for Firefox to eventually run on Haiku. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[6]: OK http://www.osnews.com/thread?255951 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255951 The Bezilla-team, which is not directly connected to Haiku, is responsible for the BeOS/Haiku port of Mozilla's products. It just so happens that I am one of them, and probably the one that knows Firefox best of those. AFAIK we are the only port of Firefox that is moderatly successful and at a very high price in invested time.

Here are a few wiki entries I started:
http://wiki.bebits.com/page/BuildingFirebird
http://wiki.bebits.com/page/BuildingCairo

And here is our dev. blog:
http://community.livejournal.com/bezilla/ Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TQH !) Comments weird http://www.osnews.com/thread?255952 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255952 its funny that so many people are complaining about firefox being slow and whatnot, because wasn't one of the original goals to not turn into mozilla in terms of performance. Wasn't that the whole point of the fork? Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (broken_symlink) Comments RE: weird http://www.osnews.com/thread?255971 http://www.osnews.com/thread?255971 Well you can't have something speedy if the backend isn't optimized. Gecko is huge and I think Mozilla.org should rethink which way they are heading with the rendering engine. Things should be optimized there first then focus on other things like the UI, later.Edited 2007-07-17 12:57 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 12:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (apoclypse) Comments RE: weird http://www.osnews.com/thread?256305 http://www.osnews.com/thread?256305 I thought there were two main problems that justified firefox:
1) people wanted just the browser and not have this super big suite where a browser crash will bring down the email

2) mozilla's UI was too bloated and confusing. Now, unbloating UI doesn't necessarily mean less memory but it makes firefox easier to use. Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ari-free) Comments