I saw that basic networking works under vmware player, so wouldn’t it make testing compatibility easier if I would have the ability to download beos applications straight from any page?
As soon as there is a working free web browser that can be included with Haiku without licensing restrictions, I assume it will be done.
Right now, FireFox doesn’t work properly in Haiku and is actually quite large to include in testing images and Net+ from R5 cannot be distributed legally.
wget is included with Haiku already, you can use it to retrieve files from http/ftp locations.
Ask and you shall receive.
NetOptimist ( a Net+ clone ). Not finished, but somewhere near halfway done and should work fairly alright.
At least a good starting point.
More information here:
http://netoptimist.sourceforge.net/
Source Code is available here ( MIT License? ):
And the Bebits page too.
http://bebits.com/app/2071
I’m sure Haiku could use the source from here and work on it further. Should be good enough to even use now.
I remember hearing about NetOptimist YEARS ago … but I never tried it, and completely forgot about it 
I’ll take a look myself in a few days.
In my opinion firefox is not the, um, ideal browser philosophically for BeOS… The default browser should use Be features like translation kit and duplicates IMO… Not to forget native widgets.
All fine and good - but in the grand scheme of things, it’s got the most capable renderer and javascript engine of any current BeOS browser. This is very important in the current internet age.
As mentioned countless times, an embeddable gecko or KHTML rendering engine in a native shell would be awesome for BeOS/Haiku - but as of yet, there haven’t been any concrete options that have surfaced.
All fine and good - but in the grand scheme of things, it’s got the most capable renderer and javascript engine of any current BeOS browser. This is very important in the current internet age.
As mentioned countless times, an embeddable gecko or KHTML rendering engine in a native shell would be awesome for BeOS/Haiku - but as of yet, there haven’t been any concrete options that have surfaced.[/quote]
Personally I find Firefox as the best option and not because of what umccullough said but because Firefox being open source can, in time, be personalized for haiku. There is already a haiku theme that can be used if it’s decided to use from now on Firefox in each build.
Talking about personalization, look at KDE’s Konqueror and Gnome’s Epiphany which use just like Firefox the Gecko engine.
So first we can use Firefox with just the theme changed for the current builds and after the R1 release focus on a personalized browser but still keep the same internals as starting base.
[quote=umccullough]
As mentioned countless times, an embeddable gecko or KHTML rendering engine in a native shell would be awesome for BeOS/Haiku - but as of yet, there haven’t been any concrete options that have surfaced.[/quote]
I agree with you Urias! That would be the best solution.
Firefox is the most complete web browser out there for alternative OSes ( like Linux, BSD, BeOS, etc. and even Windows too though they also have IE7 ).
But having said that. Firefox is somewhat sluggish on BeOS because it is a posix port and on the heavy side.
Ideally it would be nice to have a web browser that is: natively coded or somewhat natively optimized and more of a mid weight version.
This all depends on the developers and how much time they want to spend but a short term solution could be to bring up to date NetOptimist and add more features to it to satisfy most users ( making it a fast, light to mid weight internet browser ).
Also, BeZilla team could work on making Firefox more native to Haiku. I believe they’re doing this with Firefox 3.
Konqueror uses KHTML…
In any case, this is what I was referring to - a native shell using just the rendering engine: either Gecko or KHTML.
For OS X there’s Safari (KHTML->WebCore derivative) and Camino (Gecko-based) - both native shells on a portable rendering engine.
“Theming” Firefox is a sub-optimal solution. Firefox is great because of all the XUL-based extensions, but it is heavy. Granted, I use it exclusively on my Windows machines now.
Yea I understand that there are practical constraints relating to firefox, which is why I said philosophically. Especially with AJAX’y stuff everywhere, it sounds crazy to think of a totally new engine. I was having gecko in mind cuz I remember reading something that the major problem with using KHTML is that the QT will have to be stripped from it…
What would be great is; to port over Apple’s implementation of KHTML (WebCore and JavaScriptCore) and meld a Net+ like interface to the frontend.
That would basically summarize the “Nirvana” project - but it hasn’t been terribly active:
The nirvana project is interesting for the future but for the moment any open source browser would do just fine because it will only be intended for testing and presentation. It’s purpose would be just to keep someone who is testing haiku for the first a longer time in it. If every nightly build has an internet browser people will spent at least more time in HAIKU, searching for a page or just playing around, maybe noticing other features. Like this maybe their interest in the os will grow.
How about Themis? It’s not that active now 
http://themis.sourceforge.net/faqs.php
(http://themis.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/themis/trunk/themis/)
But as part of Haiku-OS no but if some one made a distro yes.
What would be nice thoue are building tools etc and a bigger partion than 100 MB
OS without web-browser is not an OS today. But I think that default OS browser shouldn’t be this massive customizable monster (like FFox). It should just let u do maybe basic browsing and get u to stuff that u want to download. Get u to FFox, and from there on u can maybe use that, if u want to. Also it is needed to read all sorts of documentation on local machine. On my linux-box i use FFox to surf the net, but documentation i read with dillo. And if i need just quickly to find something from net i use dillo or links2. No tabs, no sessions, no extensions, themes etc…
Maybe porting Dillo or Links2 would be a good thing to Haiku? They are light, open and do the basic job. Links2 browses the web better but Dillo has better interface, imho.
Btw. i think there’s already a port of links2 to Beos, maybe that could be used as a starting point? Just add nicer GUi…
http://links.twibright.com/
http://www.dillo.org/
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma GandhiRyan Leavengood is working on a WebKit port for Haiku through a bounty that has already raised over $600.
http://www.haikuware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=39
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http://www.nerfd.biz - Online Software & OS Store
Indeed, thanks for mentioning it Dennis. I hadn’t seen this thread here, but after reading the various posts I think in the end you will all be satisfied with my solution.
A modern browser is a complicated beast, and it is not a viable option to create your own renderer and JavaScript engine these days, at least not with nice open source alternatives like Gecko and WebKit. I feel WebKit is more in the spirit of Haiku which is why I decided to port it. I made this decision before the bounty was created, but the bounty is a great bonus.
I will take a look at Themis and NetOptimist to see what might be useful in their code, but in general I plan to create a new browser. Most of the work will be in porting WebKit, but once that is done a lot of what makes a browser will be there.
I plan to keep the browser fairly lightweight and simple, but at the same time good enough to replace Firefox for most purposes. Firefox is a great browser and I’ve used it since it was called Phoenix, but it seems with each release it gets more bloated and slow. After playing with WebKit-based browsers which are very fast and lightweight feeling, going back to Firefox can feel unpleasant.
I will try to provide updates on Haikuware as I make progress on the port, and I hope to deliver a nice new browser by this Christmas. I hope you all can be patient as I have a day job like most Haiku volunteer developers 
Regards,
Ryan Leavengood
I am actually really excited for this port that Ryan is working on. I have also been using Firefox since about version 0.9 and while it is a great browser for windows and Linux I agree with Ryan that it’s not really “in the spirit of Haiku”. Hopefully this new project will produce something that others will eventually take an interest in and maybe include it in Haiku as its native browser (of course this is just me so the folks with the appropriate authority will make the call).
Thanks for the hard work Ryan and if you ever need a tester or if there is anything I can do to help let me know.
PS the bounty is over $750 now.
Cheers!
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I’m going to vote a little web browser that could. It is for Debian Linux (used in Fluxbuntu 7.10) and its very small.
Kazehakase is the name of this 1.3MB browser, it may not be like Firefox or Opera with all its nice features. I must say I was surprised with what it could do. It’s still below a 1.0 version and the programmer is Japanese. check it out at:
There is a port in the works by mmu_man for NetSurf. See here:
http://joomla.iscomputeron.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1078&Itemid=2
NetSurf screenshots:
http://www.netsurf-browser.org/about/screenshots/
It’ll be nice to have something lighter than Firefox to use for basic web browsing.