Is it possible to get Firefox (from bebits.com) running on Haiku? I tried the ‘BeOS R5.0.1 and later’ version and it didn’t run… 
I haven’t been able to get it to run yet and from what I’ve heard from some people who have it’s not very useful as it crashes all the time.
It seems to me IIRC that to get it running you had to create a blank profile and then use it.
It seems like the more recent builds of 2.x are having issues where it didn’t before. Maybe it’s just that Haiku has changed enough recently that the “barely working” state of Firefox has regressed into “not working now”.
I’ll have to go back and try a 2.0.0.4 build - since I think that was the last time I saw it work.
Either way, I don’t think the mouse input issues have been resolved - so you’re stuck with keyboard input only - and some rendering flaws I suspect. I’ll give it a shot ASAP and see what the deal is.
I’m looking at it when I get the time. I’ve got the firefox code compiled with debugging turned on that crashes on startup. I’ve done some investigation but haven’t come up with anything as yet. Keep an eye on bug #1427 if you’re interested.
Urias, let me know if you get an older build to run. I’m working on the belief that it’s a Haiku regression that has stopped ff working, but I suppose it may be in the ff code.
Yeah it would be nice to have a working Firefox build at some point but what I am really looking forward to is Ryan’s WebKit port and the browser that comes from that 
Ryan’s schedule is way optimistic. I wish him well and everything, but just porting the webcore engine will take quite some time. JavascriptCore has few OS-specific dependencies, being that it doesn’t involve any OS functionality such as GUIs, printing, etc - that makes it orders-of-magnitude easier to get going than WebCore. Then I don’t know how much stuff WebCore provides in terms of networking, cookies, bookmarking etc…but that may well involve a heap of work too. And then there’s the GUI - tabs, internet history, print preview, integrated search options - that will all need writing from scratch.
Firefox is available, widely used, and at least 2.x works decently on BeOS. It’s the best hope for a reasonable Haiku browser for the foreseeable future IMHO.
While that may be true, IMHO I think that Haiku should have it’s own built in browser with Haiku branding. Firefox might be a quick way to get a modern browser for us but in the longer term I think Ryan’s efforts will benefit everyone greatly.
I believe porting WebKit is Ryan’s main focus… I think he mentioned that he would like to create a basic interface but anything more than that is out of his scope for the time being. Maybe once the basics are done we could raise another bounty for the interface. I guess for now we just wait to see what comes of it and how far he gets.
Personally, I run Firefox on all my computers so I’m not against a working FF version.
Anyway just my thoughts.
What is funny about this project is so far 80% of my time has been spent on issues not particularly related to WebKit. Fighting with build tools, compilers and libraries have been my biggest problems. Also since I’m the first developer (AFAIK) targeting specifically Haiku and not concerning myself with BeOS I am a bit of a pioneer, especially with the whole GCC4 vs GCC2 issue.
My schedule is really only optimistic in the sense that I didn’t think I’d spend more time fussing with compilers and build tools than actually writing the code for the port. But I’ve learned a lot so it is all good. Things should go smoother now that I’ve sorted out most of those issues.
JavaScriptCore certainly is simpler than WebCore, but the WebKit guys have done a decent job in separating out the platform stuff in WebCore. Sure it won’t be trivial but if I can just sit down and code on it without having to stop to fight with compilers and all that I can get a lot done. Also the Syllable port has made a nice reference.
They provide almost everything you describe (except for maybe bookmarks, but those are fairly trivial in the basic case.)
Like Dennis says my September 30th deadline for the bounty is JUST for the basic port with a very simple browser shell for testing. No tabs, printing, integrated search or any of that. Of course even that deadline will probably slip, but I don’t think anyone will mind too much. My tentative deadline for a basic proper browser is Christmas. I suspect once the port is done and I’ve documented how to develop against it, I’ll get some help on the browser.
Now despite all this I do like FireFox and use it on other platforms. But it has started to feel bloated in the past year or so and frankly I will probably switch to WebKit-based browsers on those platforms I am able. In the case of Haiku I just have to do all the work to do that 
I sure hope so
Same here. It’s getting more and more bloated all the time. I prefer small, speedy apps that don’t have a large footprint. All the stuff Firefox can do is great but really and truly how many people use all of that? The only extra feature of FF I like is the extensions but I can live without them.
More of an answer than i even hoped for…
Anyways… Totally agree with words like small footprint, snappy etc.
Last post gave me idea, but since i’m not a programmer…
Why not make just that - a VERY BASIC ‘small footprint, snappy’ browser. URI entry box, back, forward, stop, refresh and that’s it. Bookmarking, tabs, flash, helper apps, google boxes, spellchekers, javas etc etc are all implemented as add-ons (extensions, plug-ins - whatever one calls them). So it NEVER gets bloated. One could just drop all excess weight and start all new if tired of the slow startups and bugs. And the main programmer(s) can just optimize and update the core browser code and leave all the excess stuff to others.
ps. I just LOVE how Dillo feels - snappy, small footprint… mmm… if only…
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma GandhiThere’s actually something that nearly fits that description already on bebits:
It’s not terribly old (last updated 5 months ago) - and has some basic HTML rendering support.
Unfortunately it does not have any network support yet - so you can only browse pages on your local disk so far.
Would be nice if we can get this little gem updated to be more functional