Will be resurrected? is there a project of native browser by following the original concept?
yes a webkit (the engine of Apple safari and Google chrome) port is bing worked on for the google summer of code right now since it is a native port it should be quite nice although it probably won’t be called netpositive
(Yes, something like NetPositive is in the works)
This is good news. A small, quick native browser will be an important addition. For the big stuff, we already have Firebird (oops, Bon Echo), and NetSurf is a disappointment.
BTW, the Alpha R1 is a real pleasure. Good things, and lots of promise. It has already prompted me to send a contribution. Thank you all!
Terry Brennan
I really miss Net Positive
It just plain didnt work on some websites
But when it did, it was simple and quick
And what ? about 1 meg in size ?
Thats how software should be
can not wait for the new native browser. BonEcho is outdated and bloated. unlike the rest of the Haiku code. 
Hello everyone,
Yes I am working on a new native browser. It won’t be called NetPositive but I hope for it to feel as lightweight and fast as NetPositive, but with much better support for modern web technologies because of WebKit. I am also a big fan of Google Chrome so I plan to incorporate some aspects of Chrome in this new browser as well. In particular the multi-process architecture, the general lightweight feel of the GUI, the Omnibox, and probably the way the tabs work. Completely porting Chrome is a lot more work, which is why we aren’t taking that approach for now. Plus a fully native browser will fit in better with the system (Chrome sort of has it’s own non-platform GUI.)
Of course writing a browser is a big project so I can’t promise anything soon. But a lot of good progress was made in getting WebKit working well on Haiku over the summer because of the Google Summer of Code. My student Maxime worked hard to update my old WebKit port (from 2007) to work with the latest WebKit code, which had changed a lot over that time (heck it changes a lot each day.) We also got some VERY basic code for the browser working, but there is still a lot to do.
Given how much everyone wants this, starting this week I’m going to just focus on the browser and try to ignore as much other stuff as I can, such as Haiku bugs or any other distractions. With all the excitement over the alpha release, it has been hard to get focused and down into coding
Wow very cool. I recently switched from Firefox 3.5.3 to the beta Linux version of chrome now that flash works! Also note Google is using native GUIs (native Windows, native MacOS, and GTK+ for Linux) so a native Haiku GUI makes sense. I also tried Opera 10 on Linux which is nice but much slower then Chrome. I wonder if we’ll be seeing Opera 10 for Haiku since there was an Opera 3.X version for BeOS. Anyone in contact with the Opera folks?
I feel the only missing part of Haiku is the old Firefox 2.X browser. If Gnash gets more functional with a webkit native Haiku browser then we have usable OS. No need to waste time on Open Office since the online Google apps are pretty good and Haiku just needs to run in the native browser. More apps now days are being moved to web so the browser is by far the most important app.
How about port of Midori for Haiku? It’s small, fast, and webkit-based.
http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html
A native webkit port is underway why would you want a non native (gtk) one such as midori?
Also I doubt you could call chrome native … yeah the widgets it uses might be native but those are probably called from some cross toolkit api
I mean seriously have you ever seen a gui that hacks up the UI like chrome?
As a long time user of BeOS I would welcome any attempt by the developers of Haiku to make Netpositive the default browser. I find that while BeZilla is much better at rendering pages and is certainly more modern and feature packed, it is also bloated and as slow as molasses in January. Has any attempt been made to have Netpositive open sourced so further development can continue for Haiku???
That just is not going to happen. NetPositive is so out of date it is basically useless. Plus it is not worth it for the current owners of the BeOS code and IP to open source anything, including NetPositive.
In my new browser I intend to emulate the good aspects of NetPositive along with other modern niceties from other browsers (in particular Google Chrome.) Behind the scenes will be the very fast and fully modern WebKit engine. I hope to achieve the best of both worlds in having a modern browser capable of handling the latest web standards but also having the lightweight feel, speed and native interface of NetPositive.
So just give me some time and hopefully you will like the result
I hope the browser will use the windowtabs for tabbed browsing. And I really wish sessions is implemented too, because it’s one of the best features from my favorite browser Opera.
I’m really looking forward to a google chrome but better and native browser on haiku - i use google chrome on my windows machine for school and it is delightfully minimal if frustratingly different from everything else. then again everything else is so different from everything else on windows…
I have a query for you Mr Leavengood, will your new browser feature replicantable tabs? i know noone else probably ever used the feature but i liked being able to put a webpage on my desktop in netpositive and think it would probably be handy to have the feature there, that would make embedding the layout engine in other apps easier wouldnt it? idk, no understanding of coding on haiku (or indeed beos…)
One final thing, i would love to play around with making somesort of really amateur app with capabilites similiar to the mac app capo but though there is plenty of resources available for developing on beos there are very few available for haiku, the developer page on this site also seems geared entirely towards os, not app development. I’m sure there are haiku app development resources but googling doesnt find many for me so a bit of love on the developer page would be great.
I am definitely planning on trying to use window tabs for tabbed browsing, though I haven’t gotten around to testing the Stack and Tile patch yet (been on vacation the past week.)
As for sessions, I really like that feature of Chrome and the latest Firefox (and I assume Opera works in the same way), so EVENTUALLY I will implement that
It is a simple feature but it probably isn’t the highest priority for now.
I do intend on making the browser windows replicantable, probably a lot like NetPositive. As for embedding, the replicant would be one way to do it but eventually I think it would be good to have a BHTMLView class or something similar that wraps WebKit. This would probably be highly inspired by similar classes on Mac OS X and in the Qt framework. And of course my browser would use this class like anyone else, which will make a good test of the API.
Capo sounds really neat, and I think it would be pretty easy to create on Haiku (at least a really basic version.) I know SoundPlay was able to play music slower and even backwards (the latter was always touted as a cool feature of SoundPlay but it is probably a bit useless 
)
The main thing you would need to learn for such an app is the Media Kit, plus some of the Interface Kit for the GUI and of course the Application Kit.
As for Haiku application development resources, most of what is already available for BeOS will also apply to Haiku. So don’t ignore the BeOS resources you have found. There are some things that Haiku has added to the API, such as the layout kit and tooltips, and for those you would need to find Haiku-specific documentation. For the layout kit I wrote a basic article, but for tool tips you would need to look at the Haiku code for some idea of how to use them (until I or someone else writes an article.) Of course you don’t have to use either of these and in that case any BeOS information should apply. For example if you haven’t please take a look at the copy of the BeBook we have here on the Haiku site.