I’m a bit of a noob with the BeOS. I found out about it when Be released the personal version. I’ve used it lightly since. The main thing keeping me from switching to the BeOS from Windows is how difficult I find everyday tasks (lack of apps) and the interface is hard to use.
First off, the applications - I haven’t been able to find an email client that supports IMAP over SSL (for my personal mail server; I want to keep all my emails centralized.) I’ve installed/reinstalled several times (reinstalling due to partition changes or whatnot) and I think at one point I installed Mozilla and configured it for IMAP. I’d like something a little more lightweight, though - I’d prefer to use Firefox and have another app for email. I also don’t want that thing on BeBits that apparently copies the entire IMAP server to the harddrive. I think I once found an app that looked good but it didn’t support SSL with the IMAP. Can anyone recommend something?
Second, the interface is hard to use. Apart from the differences of UI’s I’m used to, it’s too small or something. This may be because I run at 1152x864, but I can use Windows with that resolution at default settings (I think) just fine. It just feels like I’m going to strain my eyes or something when I work with the BeOS gui. I think I tried increasing the font size, but it appears some apps are hardcoded for the default font size, because stuff was getting clipped in dialogs/menus/etc.
Thanks for reading. Sorry if I’m being too noobish, whiny, or annoying. (Also, sorry if my complaints have already been addressed; I did do a quick search for “imap” in the forum and found nothing.) I really like the OS, but I can’t switch until I get those issues resolved. I’m looking forward to seeing Haiku.
BeOS does lack apps, although I find it has most for what I need. MDR has IMAP over SSL support (I’m pretty sure of that), but it may well copy the whole server to the local drive (it keeps everything in sync, so if you move something locally it is moved on the server - pretty nifty). If you’ve got a huge amount of mail on a server you’re always connected to I can see why you wouldn’t want that to happen though.
The mozilla code is always improving - there are versions of firefox and thunderbird for BeOS (thunderbird hasn’t been updated in a while, but should just be a recompile). That may do what you need.
For the GUI all I can recommend is to reduce the resolution. It’s sucky that some BeOS apps have things in hard coded positions - the UI is not font sensitive so it requires devs to write a little extra code to take that into account. It is planned to have a UI layer that copes with changing font sizes much better in R2, though.
I’ve just downloaded Firefox’s source. It appears Expander can’t decompress bz2’s :(. I’m also not sure if the main Firefox tree has all (if any?) patches for BeOS. Of course, if there’s a precompiled version, I can stop worrying about that. BeBits seems to have a pre-1.0 version. I can live with that, but I prefer the latest and greatest.
I haven’t looked into your other suggestions yet. Thanks for the help.
P.S. It looks like someone’s planning to release a fully ported FIrefox 1.1 when it comes out. http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/90061.html As far as anyone else knows, will that be the latest version or is there 1.0.2 or whatever right now?
Yes, don’t bother trying to compile firefox - it actually works straight from CVS but it’s a huge beast.
Go to www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla and scroll down to the most recent post about a developmental build - that is the most recent binary build for BeOS, and is pretty good compared to a few years/months ago.
Thanks for the bz2 and firefox links. I love that BeOSy feeling of installing a small file and instantly having OS-integrated, consistent support for another archive format.
As for Firefox, “Gecko Browser” is a dumb new name for it. I was able to hack it back to Firefox (carefully edit en-US.jar in res/ or a similar path - it looks like changing the length of the file is bad, so use “Overwrite” mode or whatever and use spaces to pad, etc.) I even changed the script so the actual binary is called “Firefox” so it appears that way in the taskbar (or whatever it’s called in BeOS) and tracked down a BeOS icon and figured out how to put it into the firefox-bin.
Looks like I need to just track down Thunderbird, as that’s what I’ve been using on Windows. Anyone know where the most recent compile is?
Thanks for the bz2 and firefox links. :) I love that BeOSy feeling of installing a small file and instantly having OS-integrated, consistent support for another archive format. :)
As for Firefox, “Gecko Browser” is a dumb new name for it. I was able to hack it back to Firefox (carefully edit en-US.jar in res/ or a similar path - it looks like changing the length of the file is bad, so use “Overwrite” mode or whatever and use spaces to pad, etc.) I even changed the script so the actual binary is called “Firefox” so it appears that way in the taskbar (or whatever it’s called in BeOS) and tracked down a BeOS icon and figured out how to put it into the firefox-bin.
Looks like I need to just track down Thunderbird, as that’s what I’ve been using on Windows. Anyone know where the most recent compile is?
Thanks a bunch,
Scintill
I’m just guessing here, but I suspect the name “change” is a branding/licensing issue. Unofficial builds of FireFox are probably not allowed to use the official FireFox branding. Once Mozilla again builds an official port of FireFox for Haiku/BeOS, this problem will most likely go away.
If you go back to the blog page, we are having a discussion about the name issue.
To get the name to be firefox you have to --enable-official-branding when you configure the build. The mozilla foundation don’t allow you to do this unless you agree to their terms - one of which is having any changes from CVS authorised by them. Our development builds have a lot of in-progess patches in them so that is not something we can agree to. Hopefully major releases (1.1 etc) will be officially branded.
As tb100 says, we have a lot of ‘improvements’ in our builds. I don’t expect to ever release a straight from CVS build, as there is a quite big delay to getting them submitted in CVS. (It’s actually one of the big reasons we’re moving so slow, we spend a lot of time waiting and trying to pursuade ppl to add it.)
To get the name to be firefox you have to --enable-official-branding when you configure the build. The mozilla foundation don't allow you to do this unless you agree to their terms - one of which is having any changes from CVS authorised by them.
Which makes absolute sense - Branding is marketing and quality-control affects marketing as well – if Mozilla didn’t put these licensing terms around their FireFox branding, then any shmuck could hack away at FireFox and release an “unofficial” build that appears 100% official to a normal user. This release could have unforseeable security and quality problems causing the entire FireFox product to gain a poor reputation as a result.
I’m just stating this before people go on a rampage about Mozilla’s licensing, and how it’s not “open”. Mozilla does have to protect their brand names, afterall – that’s what they’ve worked so hard to build over the last couple years.
Ah, I suppose I agree with them for forcing the “Gecko Browser” name on you if it’s an unofficial build.
And speaking of unofficial builds… My Firefox doesn’t seem to be working in a few ways. When I right-click a link and choose to open in a new tab, it makes a new tab but doesn’t navigate to the link. Also, it fails on trying to download a lot of stuff from BeBits. I suspect this may be something about the way BeBits does the downloads - they all seem to have a URL on the BeBits server, and presumedly it redirects the browser to the real host. It works great other than that. Also, if it makes a difference, keep in mind that I renamed firefox-bin to Firefox, added an icon to the binary, tweaked the launcher script, and maybe some other stuff. It’s possible I created those bugs. If someone has time, maybe they could look into it. Otherwise, I’ll probably just grab the 0.9.3 Firefox off BeBits.
I’ve not heard of those problems being reported by others. I’d suggest you just live with the Gecko Browser naming (redownload it and don’t touch anything!). The 0.93 on bebits was compiled from just CVS - it is WAY behind with BeOS-specific stuff and much more buggy.
Delete your profile folder before trying again with a fresh build too - just delete the /boot/home/config/settings/Mozilla directory.
On the naming issue - we may go for “BeFox” for our unofficial builds. Better than “Gecko Browser” anyway.
Thanks tb100. I just blew it away and reinstalled (without changing it) and it seems to be working. The BeBits download issue is probably harder to reproduce, so if it does pop up again, I’ll say something.
I found out about it when Be released the personal version. I’ve used it lightly since. The main thing keeping me from switching to the BeOS from Windows is how difficult I find everyday tasks (lack of apps) and the interface is hard to use.
(Also, sorry if my complaints have already been addressed; I did do a quick search for “imap” in the forum and found nothing.) I really like the OS, but I can’t switch until I get those issues resolved. I’m looking forward to seeing Haiku. 
I was able to hack it back to Firefox (carefully edit en-US.jar in res/ or a similar path - it looks like changing the length of the file is bad, so use “Overwrite” mode or whatever and use spaces to pad, etc.) I even changed the script so the actual binary is called “Firefox” so it appears that way in the taskbar (or whatever it’s called in BeOS) and tracked down a BeOS icon and figured out how to put it into the firefox-bin.