Thread
New Gecko Browser for OS 9
http://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/
Could be vaporware but who knows. Page is fairly recent. They might be basing it off the old WamCom and just patching up all the known security holes, which would be kind of boring.
Honestly I don't care about the security holes - who is going to be exploiting a hole that existed in Mozilla in 2003 in a version no one uses anymore except for WamCom users?
Something more exciting would be pulling down layout and speed enhancements from newer Gecko source code into WamCom.
Could be vaporware but who knows. Page is fairly recent. They might be basing it off the old WamCom and just patching up all the known security holes, which would be kind of boring.
Honestly I don't care about the security holes - who is going to be exploiting a hole that existed in Mozilla in 2003 in a version no one uses anymore except for WamCom users?
Something more exciting would be pulling down layout and speed enhancements from newer Gecko source code into WamCom.
Interesting, from reading their page it looks like they're planning to fork Geko at 1.3.1 (the last version that works on OS 9) and then backport changes from the more recent versions.
http://code.google.com/p/classilla/wiki/AAATheFAQ
According to the roadmap they plan to have a "no matter what" release out on the 1st of July and then a proper, stable release by the end of the year. Should be interesting to follow their progress!
http://code.google.com/p/classilla/wiki/AAATheFAQ
According to the roadmap they plan to have a "no matter what" release out on the 1st of July and then a proper, stable release by the end of the year. Should be interesting to follow their progress!
Just for cheap thrills just now I downloaded this and installed it on my SheepShaver 9.0.4 image, and it seems to "work". It displays sites like Wikipedia just fine and I'd swear it feels faster then iCab 3.0.5. Ironically, however, it totally can't display this forum. ;^) (Unless you do the view->style->none trick.)
On the other hand, holy cow is it a memory hog. Sheepshaver's configured with 128MB RAM and Classilla's using 80 of it. When I first tried to run it after downloading it with iCab it hung forever on the startup screen, and when I clicked on the finder I got an "out of memory" error. Clearly I should of shut down iCab first... So, yeah. I'm curious whether this is going to be at all usable on, say, PowerBook 1400's and other such machines with 64MB-ish RAM limits.
On the other hand, holy cow is it a memory hog. Sheepshaver's configured with 128MB RAM and Classilla's using 80 of it. When I first tried to run it after downloading it with iCab it hung forever on the startup screen, and when I clicked on the finder I got an "out of memory" error. Clearly I should of shut down iCab first... So, yeah. I'm curious whether this is going to be at all usable on, say, PowerBook 1400's and other such machines with 64MB-ish RAM limits.
I don't suppose I'm actually surprised by how much RAM it takes. It's just ugly. Given the niche this is trying to fill, well... just how many machines still in day-to-day use are there out there that are both powerful enough to really run this yet incapable of running an OS better equipped to handle such piggish software?
Good luck to them, anyway. I like their logo/branding, at least. ;^)
That´s not a problem of Classilla, it also heappened with Mozilla 1.2.1 (the latest official release) and with WamCom (Mozilla 1.3.1 based). It´s that ugly phpBB and occured with the change to phpBB 3.0 at many forums. I was always wondering why even 68kmla didn´t use a style which is usabele at most recent OS9 Browsers (Opera 6.0.3 also can´t display it correctly), ...
But back to Classilla; it´s a great step foreward! Many sides are rendered better and faster than with WamCom! For people like me who are only using MacOS 9 it´s a great help. About the people who are able to code around here, help them going on with developement.
Installation on an Intel machine running Sheepshaver is a poor test of the viability of a browser written specifically for the myriad of older machines capable of running MacOS 8.6-9.2.
What machine/ configuration are you using, and what RAM usage does your machine report, AVW?
What machine/ configuration are you using, and what RAM usage does your machine report, AVW?
PM 9600 (G4 800), MacOS 9.1, around 50 to 55 MB with 20 tabs opened, that´s between 5 and 10MB more than WamCom. This is my mainmachine which I use for everything, I strictly use OS 9 (and sometimes OS 8.6). Many big pages (youtube, ebay, ...) run much better and faster with Classilla. I´m verry heappy. And the best point is – developement will continue!
Hi, I'm the Classilla maintainer. I noticed this thread and decided to come by to answer some of the questions in the thread.
First off, I noticed that the 68kmla forum default theme didn't work ... the day of release 8-o so alas that was a little late to fix. The good news is that this particular layout failure may be related one I had been tracking for awhile and unable to find a fix for, and the default theme's case is a bit simpler, so this may be a good thing. I am looking at it for 9.0.4.
With regard to the memory usage, having dug into the code, in my opinion WaMCoM was way too optimistic about how much memory it actually required. Moreover, Mozilla code is notorious for memory leaks (just look at your typical Firefox build, even on OS X, and more so on Windows) and this runtime is no exception even though it is simpler and smaller. For that reason, increasing the minimum actually greatly improves its stability; it does not handle low memory situations well. The 80MB is designed to be a take-it-if-it-can-get it phenomenon and you can cut it down to its minimum, but I would not put it below the stated minimum or you'll regret it. It really is a lot happier in 48MB than the 26ish Kai tried to squeeze it into.
There was also the question about the 1400, and I made sure to test it on mine (a 1400cs/117 upgraded to a 1400c/+G3-333 with 60MB physical RAM and virtual memory to 64MB). It runs. It takes up everything the system has, but it does run! And it's not as bad as I feared it would be even though it is no speed demon. I also test Classilla on a G3 blueberry iBook (300MHz, 576MB RAM), a TiBook G4 (867MHz, 1GB RAM) and of course on the build machine, a 1.25GHz MDD dual G4 (1.5GB RAM in OS 9, 2GB total).
For 9.0.4, JavaScript is the primary target. I have some ideas about how to backport a later SpiderMonkey, although Tamarin is probably going to require an extensive rewrite and I'm just not ready for that right now. But if we can at least clear 1.8 (Firefox 1.5), I think you will find a lot of sites suddenly start working. I want to get 9.0.4 out by Q4 2009 if I can.
Again, I repeat my plea particularly for distillers -- people to find bad sites, turn them into test cases and (hopefully) comb Bugzilla for fixes. The more people we have looking at it, the faster we can backport. I did a lot of digging in Bugzilla for this release, which comes after a month and a half of hard work, but there is still a long way to go.
Thanks, everyone, for your kind words.
First off, I noticed that the 68kmla forum default theme didn't work ... the day of release 8-o so alas that was a little late to fix. The good news is that this particular layout failure may be related one I had been tracking for awhile and unable to find a fix for, and the default theme's case is a bit simpler, so this may be a good thing. I am looking at it for 9.0.4.
With regard to the memory usage, having dug into the code, in my opinion WaMCoM was way too optimistic about how much memory it actually required. Moreover, Mozilla code is notorious for memory leaks (just look at your typical Firefox build, even on OS X, and more so on Windows) and this runtime is no exception even though it is simpler and smaller. For that reason, increasing the minimum actually greatly improves its stability; it does not handle low memory situations well. The 80MB is designed to be a take-it-if-it-can-get it phenomenon and you can cut it down to its minimum, but I would not put it below the stated minimum or you'll regret it. It really is a lot happier in 48MB than the 26ish Kai tried to squeeze it into.
There was also the question about the 1400, and I made sure to test it on mine (a 1400cs/117 upgraded to a 1400c/+G3-333 with 60MB physical RAM and virtual memory to 64MB). It runs. It takes up everything the system has, but it does run! And it's not as bad as I feared it would be even though it is no speed demon. I also test Classilla on a G3 blueberry iBook (300MHz, 576MB RAM), a TiBook G4 (867MHz, 1GB RAM) and of course on the build machine, a 1.25GHz MDD dual G4 (1.5GB RAM in OS 9, 2GB total).
For 9.0.4, JavaScript is the primary target. I have some ideas about how to backport a later SpiderMonkey, although Tamarin is probably going to require an extensive rewrite and I'm just not ready for that right now. But if we can at least clear 1.8 (Firefox 1.5), I think you will find a lot of sites suddenly start working. I want to get 9.0.4 out by Q4 2009 if I can.
Again, I repeat my plea particularly for distillers -- people to find bad sites, turn them into test cases and (hopefully) comb Bugzilla for fixes. The more people we have looking at it, the faster we can backport. I did a lot of digging in Bugzilla for this release, which comes after a month and a half of hard work, but there is still a long way to go.
Thanks, everyone, for your kind words.
For who's trying to use the forum on Classilla, try changing the theme to subsilver2 in the user control panel. Uses less CSS and even reportedly works on Internet Explorer for Mac.
EDIT: Got it on SheepShaver, wasn't that slow. No web because of 9.0.4's Open Transport which does not cooperate with the aforementioned emulator. When I pressed Cmd-Shift-3, Classilla bombed 26416, which isn't mentioned on this error list...
EDIT: Got it on SheepShaver, wasn't that slow. No web because of 9.0.4's Open Transport which does not cooperate with the aforementioned emulator. When I pressed Cmd-Shift-3, Classilla bombed 26416, which isn't mentioned on this error list...
I'm curious how exactly you justify that statement. On the particular machine I tested on, which happens to be a dual-dual-core first-rev Mac Pro desktop running Linux (yes, long story, short answer is it makes life easier for what the machine does most of the day), SheepShaver with JiT enabled is faster then many of "the myriad of older machines capable of running MacOS 8.6-9.2.".
I know it's an old synthetic benchmark and old synthetic benchmarks are crap, but under Speedometer 4.02 this box scores:
CPU: 30.03
Graf: 16.00
Disk: 4.75
Math: 2528.4
PR: 13.48
The CPU score alone is just shy of eight times faster then the PowerMac 8100/80 score that's the fastest "real mac" in the machine comparison file, and according to this page on Low End Mac, which was the first hit I found looking for Speedometer benchmarks of faster machines my SheepShaver session basically ties a 400Mhz G4 Powerbook. (Other then math, on which it slaughters it.) And this doesn't seem to be an unusually good score for SheepShaver, BTW. My 2.33Mhz MacBook Pro manages to do about 1/3rd again faster then the Linux box.
I could certainly grant SheepShaver more then 128 MB of RAM to make it "more fair", but... think about how many Performa/Powermac 5x00/6x00 models there are out there with 128-160MB RAM limits and maybe it isn't so unfair as it is. Or are those machines not numbered amongst "the myriad of older machines capable of running MacOS 8.6-9.2."?
Anyway, again, just curious why this is a "poor test". Is it a poor test because having no other options would incline me to judge it less harshly? That's not very scientific. All I said was it was memory hog, which is objectively true. And yes, it true of other Gecko browsers. If I were looking at a version of Firefox backported to run on Windows 3.11 would I be any less justified in pointing out the (relatively) huge memory requirements? Most machines running Windows 3.x had 8MB of RAM or less, so I'd think it'd be fair to warn people that they might need to have a somewhat unusually well pimped-out 386 to run said Hair-On-FireFox 3.11 Alpha.
On machines that can run this I'm perfectly willing to say that from what I've seen so far it may be the best Classic OS-compatible browser there is, and that assuming there's enough people out there that still care the project is worth supporting.
And how is testing said browser on an emulator that reasonably accurately mimics said older hardware not a valid way of evaluating it? Haven't exactly made a point there, other then possibly raising a squishy argument that using the emulator somehow isn't in the "proper spirit" of the exercise.
(Emulation/Virtualization is an extraordinary useful tool for software development and QA. Need to see how what you're working on works on a machine with 1/4 the RAM and a different version of the target OS then your development box? Beats wasting power and space on a zoo full of actual hardware.)
And it has now been made known to the unwashed masses. 
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/09/220216/Classilla-a-New-Port-of-Mozilla-To-Mac-OS-9
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/09/220216/Classilla-a-New-Port-of-Mozilla-To-Mac-OS-9
I just downloaded Classilla today but haven't really played with it much. The system I'm using with it is an iBook G3 300MHz with OS 9.1 and 192MB RAM (all physical RAM, 136MB is usually available on a fresh restart).
My observations so far:
1. It doesn't seem to come with Javascript plugins so I'll have to install those manually.
2. It's not fast but isn't too slow either. IE 5 still wins for speed but the interface of Classilla seems to be better.
3. The only site I have tried so far is Facebook. It worked but didn't display "normally"--a few things were missing, many big spaces existed, and there were some problems with text display. My initial blame is on the 800 x 600 resolution of the screen but it could be something browser-related (if anyone else has tried Facebook on this browser please let me know how your experiences were).
Tomorrow I will be trying Bing, MLB Gameday, KDKA-TV news videos, and my personal website. I'll also get some plugins so these sites will be able to work.
I'm also hoping an FTP client will become available for this browser. I use FireFTP to update my website and am pleased with it and would love to see something compatible with Classilla in case I want to store something on the site from my old iBook (namely photos and MS Access databases, since the iBook is my Photoshop Elements machine and is also my Office 2000 computer via Virtual PC). (I'm not really a huge fan of Access but use it for the sake of compatibility with PC users, who haven't really adopted FileMaker).
My observations so far:
1. It doesn't seem to come with Javascript plugins so I'll have to install those manually.
2. It's not fast but isn't too slow either. IE 5 still wins for speed but the interface of Classilla seems to be better.
3. The only site I have tried so far is Facebook. It worked but didn't display "normally"--a few things were missing, many big spaces existed, and there were some problems with text display. My initial blame is on the 800 x 600 resolution of the screen but it could be something browser-related (if anyone else has tried Facebook on this browser please let me know how your experiences were).
Tomorrow I will be trying Bing, MLB Gameday, KDKA-TV news videos, and my personal website. I'll also get some plugins so these sites will be able to work.
I'm also hoping an FTP client will become available for this browser. I use FireFTP to update my website and am pleased with it and would love to see something compatible with Classilla in case I want to store something on the site from my old iBook (namely photos and MS Access databases, since the iBook is my Photoshop Elements machine and is also my Office 2000 computer via Virtual PC). (I'm not really a huge fan of Access but use it for the sake of compatibility with PC users, who haven't really adopted FileMaker).
Just a heads-up: Classilla 9.0.4 (assuming I don't have a total meltdown and my MDD build system is still chugging) should be out November 1st. This is not a huge leap forward but there are still some significant layout, JavaScript and security updates. However, I'm being bitten by a serious deficiency in the repaint code for OS 9 in Mozilla which was never fixed xx( (I have a test case for the interested which will work fine on OS X 1.3.1, but not OS 9 1.3.1, Classilla or WaMCom), and this kiboshed a big layout update I was hoping to land. I haven't figured this out yet, and I don't want to delay the release until I do, so I'm shipping the old layout engine with some fixups -- more on that later. One of those fixups is for this very site, and while it doesn't fix the rendering 100%, it makes it useable.
And, I do have an on-topic surprise for you guys which I successfully got to build on my PowerBook. Now to update it to its latest source (about 25% done) and then I'll have done my part for the 68K community It's not Classilla, but I think you'll enjoy it. 
(Oh: this post was done with 9.0.4, natch. Eating my dog food.)
And, I do have an on-topic surprise for you guys which I successfully got to build on my PowerBook. Now to update it to its latest source (about 25% done) and then I'll have done my part for the 68K community
It's not Classilla, but I think you'll enjoy it. (Oh: this post was done with 9.0.4, natch. Eating my dog food.)
A/UX 4? Cyberdog 3? Port of After Dark to OS X?And, I do have an on-topic surprise for you guys which I successfully got to build on my PowerBook. Now to update it to its latest source (about 25% done) and then I'll have done my part for the 68K community
FWIW, I still think you're crazy. It's a good crazy, but crazy nonetheless.
Okay, I have nothing more to add to it before shipping, so I'm shipping it.
The consolation prize for layout, since I can't solve that update bug yet, is the fixup renderer. In fact, with fixups on, while 68Kmla may appear weird, it is now totally useable and everything shows up. Even in its base mode without fixups on things still look a lot better. But I really, really want to get the overflow branch added back into Classilla because it renders this site 100% plus a lot of others -- but it ruins too many others to be useable until I fix that problem. >
Try surfing here with and without fixups: Cmd-Shift-X toggles.
Anyway, enjoy. I got about 50% done on my secret 68K project, too. A few more weekends and I should have something for you to play with.
www.classilla.org
The consolation prize for layout, since I can't solve that update bug yet, is the fixup renderer. In fact, with fixups on, while 68Kmla may appear weird, it is now totally useable and everything shows up. Even in its base mode without fixups on things still look a lot better. But I really, really want to get the overflow branch added back into Classilla because it renders this site 100% plus a lot of others -- but it ruins too many others to be useable until I fix that problem. >
Try surfing here with and without fixups: Cmd-Shift-X toggles.
Anyway, enjoy. I got about 50% done on my secret 68K project, too. A few more weekends and I should have something for you to play with.
www.classilla.org