Iceweasel: Unofficial Firefox port on HaikuDepot

[KENZ]

As you already know, we have the Iceweasel package on HaikuDepot since 8th December.

Thanks to @X512 and @waddlesplash improved wayland-server, it is now very stable on Haiku Nightly. Haiku Nightly has better POSIX IPC support than Haiku R1B5, so if you use Iceweasel seriously, it is recommended to use with Haiku Nightly.

Known limitations from wayland-server

• Drag&Drop doesn’t work
  • D&D support for formats other than plain text · Issue #15 · X547/wayland-server · GitHub
  • Can’t customize toolbar item
  • Can’t move tabs
  • Previously shared wayland-server has WIP implementation of this feature
  • I’ll try to work finishing this
• Flickering box around mouse pointer or moving window
  • Core problem in haiku side: #15920 (app_server: back buffer is flushed before drawing is finished) – Haiku
  • Some improvements done in wayland-server: Moving Firefox window around flickers window content · Issue #10 · X547/wayland-server · GitHub
• Numeric pad doesn’t work
• Other some special keyboard sequence doesn’t work
  • c.f. PrintScreen for screen capture, control-tab for app twitcher
  • both related to: Incorrect keymap handling · Issue #3 · X547/wayland-server · GitHub

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EDIT:

• moved version specific update info into reply
• added some wayland-related known issues on list
• input method will be supported soon

[PixelLoop]

Thank you for your great work on this!

Continuing the discussion about branding from the previous thread, this has been said:

changing branding completely requires changes to many translatable strings and it may conflict when importing upstream changes

How about solving this with a platform specific build step that does a simple command line search and replace on the string translation files?

This should avoid conflicts with upstream changes.

That being said, this really seems like a very low priority issue to me for now.

[KENZ]

Moving package update info to reply.

I’ll post what’s new in package updates here.

There is a dedicated topic for HaikuDepot packages, but I think here is more useful for reporting problems or other feedbacks on updates.

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Config directory changed in 128.5.0-5

I’m preparing new release of Iceweasel 128.5.0-5 package, that changed the config directory to Haiku’s convension, if you upgrade from older version, you need manual step to migrate profile.

Open terminal and execute following commands

rm -rf ~/config/settings/Mozilla/
cp -R ~/.mozilla ~/config/settings/Mozilla
cd ~/config/settings/Mozilla
mv firefox Firefox
mv extensions Extensions

EDIT: simpler command line

[michel]

@KENZ

mv config/settings/Mozilla/{f,F}irefox/
mv config/settings/Mozilla/{e,E}xtensions/

There seems to be something missing there. mv takes two arguments. Did you mean

mv .mozilla/* config/settings/Mozilla/{f,F}irefox/
mv .mozilla/* config/settings/Mozilla/{e,E}xtensions/

[KENZ]

No, we copied ~/.mozilla to ~/config/settings/Mozilla, after that we renamed subdirectories.

before	after
~/.mozilla/firefox	~/config/settings/Mozilla/Firefox
~/.mozilla/extensions	~/config/settings/Mozilla/Extensions

[michel]

Oh, I see. Sorry about that.

[nephele]

@michel

There seems to be something missing there. mv takes two arguments. Did you mean

To clear this up a bit: This is a bit harder to grasp feature of sh, the {f, F} will expand to both variants, one with a small f and one with a big F.
From the point of view of mv it was passed two distinct arguments.

[KENZ]

Thank you for follow-up.

I edited migration commands to simpler one.

[michel]

@nephele

To clear this up a bit: This is a bit harder to grasp feature of sh,

You gotta love this community. You ask a dumb question, and you actually end up learning something instead of getting flamed.

[KENZ]

wayland-server 0.1.20241217-1

Upcoming wayland-server package update will add input method (CJK input) support to GTK+ apps including Iceweasel

wayland-server: support input method

Big thank you for @X512 !

This resolves following limitation.

Known limitations from wayland-server

• Input Method not supported
  • Input method support · Issue #14 · X547/wayland-server · GitHub
  • Work already in progress by @X512

[christech]

If you’re not careful you might learn something everyday!

[brunobastardi]

Sometimes I even answer my own questions!

[donn]

@nephele

This is a bit harder to grasp feature of sh, the {f, F} will expand to both variants, one with a small f and one with a big F.

Yes - except it doesn’t work if there’s a space after the comma.

[jckarter]

I just installed the Iceweasel package last night, and so far it’s amazing! A couple of issues I noticed that I didn’t see noted elsewhere:

• If you try to shut down Haiku with the browser open, it looks like all of the webpage processes take turns exiting abnormally and bringing up the crash dialog.
• This might or might not be Iceweasel’s fault, but I managed to get KDL’ed in the “low resource manager” while trying to load Gmail. My Haiku laptop only has 2GB of RAM and I had a few other tabs open already as a stress test:
  
  

I’m not sure if this is just how Firefox is, or related to the other keymap-related issues noted in the OP, but using the left and right arrow keys also doesn’t seem to scroll the current page, unless I turn on the “arrow keys always navigate the page” setting, which lets me move the page around with the text caret. But overall, this is already much faster and more compatible than the other Haiku browsers I’ve tried. Great work!

[nephele]

@jckarter

This might or might not be Iceweasel’s fault, but I managed to get KDL’ed in the “low resource manager” while trying to load Gmail.

Haiku should, ideally, never enter a KDL and instead handle whatever it is gracefully, so please open a ticket for this. : )

@donn

Yes - except it doesn’t work if there’s a space after the comma.

Could be! I’ve not tested either, so I’ll take your word for it.

[brunobastardi]

Nice just tried it file by file, nice work!

Thank you very much!

We schould get back our BeOs-Award and rename it to HAIKU-Award!

[waddlesplash]

@jckarter

This might or might not be Iceweasel’s fault, but I managed to get KDL’ed in the “low resource manager” while trying to load Gmail.

This KDL was fixed recently (a week ago, in hrev58395.)

@jckarter

If you try to shut down Haiku with the browser open, it looks like all of the webpage processes take turns exiting abnormally and bringing up the crash dialog.

Are you running the latest wayland_server package? (at least 202412...)

[waddlesplash]

I pushed a bunch of kernel fixes today that should fix more memory-related assertion failures and the like on nightly builds that “Iceweasel” was sometimes triggering (most of them are in hrev58425) and streamlined certain codepaths in there, too, which may improve performance a bit.

[jckarter]

@waddlesplash

@jckarter

This might or might not be Iceweasel’s fault, but I managed to get KDL’ed in the “low resource manager” while trying to load Gmail.

This KDL was fixed recently (a week ago, in hrev58395 .)

Nice! I’ll give it another try. (edit: I am unable to crash hrev58420 after loading a bunch of tabs pushing the the system into swap, so looks like this is indeed fixed.)

@waddlesplash

Are you running the latest wayland_server package? (at least 202412...)

I’m still seeing the crashes on shutdown after updating to wayland_server 0.1.20241217, which is the latest version I saw in HaikuDepot.

[The_Ringmaster]

Absolutely wonderful work! I’ve upgraded my beta5 install to the latest nightly. with iceweasel installed. I was able to run jetstream 2 with no crashes. We are well on our way to having a fully daily driver operating system. Kudos to the team who worked on this.