Otter Browser is running much more smoothly

I just wanted to provide some feedback after running a ‘pkgman update’ just now. Something somebody did - either in the Otter package, the intel_xtreme driver or the Kernel has made Otter Browser faster by at least a factor of three. Scrolling on this forum would make the ‘Haiku’ bar at the top of the site jump up and down at about 20Hz. All that is gone now and it scrolls smoothly. Everything in Otter is much smoother including YouTube videos. Testing continues.

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I upgraded last night and Otter seemed a little bit faster to me as well. But I don’t remember if Otter package got updated or not. Certainly intel_extreme does not run in my case because does not detect my card so it’s just VESA.
It also has happened that sometimes is fast and quick at the beginning and then slows down as I use it.
Certainly it seems that memory it uses keeps increasing the more you use it and does not seem to be released when you close tabs. But I resolve that by just restarting it if it ends up eating too much system memory (which is far from frequent with the kind of usage I am doing).
I will keep an eye on the performance aspect, thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

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According to the Otter-Browser homepage, the latest stable release is 13 months old. On Haikuports, the latest touch to the recipe is 6 months old.

Their latest official weekly binary is on October 2019. Development on their site seems active. I don’t really know in which version Haiku port is based. I think I have seen a Haiku Otter package update in recent months but I am not totally sure.

HaikuDepot is 1.0.01-8, which I believe meshes with the October 2019 release.
If you feel adventurous, you can download and build the latest dev one, which is 1.0.81-dev.

It works for me, but it will say my profile directory is low on space (4kb). I have no idea how to point it somewhere else at the moment (the HaikuDepot version does not give that warning).

But there was a qt bump and a qt-webkit bump recently, which can affect the rendering speed.

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On the strength of this thread I decided to give Otter a go, and installed it.

On my Thinkpad T61P (from 2008) it runs very well. Up until now I have been using Webpositive, and I support Pulkomandy’s efforts to improve and refine Web+. I am sure that having a native browser is the right way to go, and the program continues to improve.

However, at this point I prefer Otter. From my so far rather limited testing it seems to be as stable as Web+ (which is pretty stable until it runs out of memory), but Otter has three features which put it ahead, as far as I am concerned.

First, it supports passwords, which is great. Second, it has a refresh button; and third (a very minor point) it has the new tab icon in the conventional place (not on the far right of the tab bar, like Web+).

On which subject, Web+ refers to tabs as windows for some reason, which is confusing.

For me, password support is the deal-breaker, and having it in Otter puts Haiku one big step closer to replacing Windows.

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I’m using Otter and Web+ side-by-side. For example, Otter doesn’t work with github (“Merge” button etc.), Web+ doesn’t remember the login for these forums and doesn’t render many icons.

So does Web+, it’s just to the far right. Not totally convenient, I’d prefer the Stop button becoming Refresh once a site has loaded. There may be a ticket for that, I forget… Personally, I use ALT+R which is easily reached as I keep my left hand hovering over ALT + Q/W/R/S/C/V anyway.

Tip: You can double-click into the emtpy space to the right of the last tab to open a new one.

I assume you mean in the context menu. That comes from WebKit and may or may not be easily changed. I think we also have translation troubles of those WebKit context menus.

It is not hard to add the B_TRANSLATE calls to the single file where the strings are conveniently grouped together and then add the catkeys to KapiX tool, I think. Just need someone to submit hte patch :slight_smile:

Thanks for those tips. I had looked and looked for a refresh button, but never found it.

You mean to just replace the WEB_UI_STRING* macros in webkit/Source/WebCore/en.lproj/Localizable.stringsdict with B_TRANSLATE_COMMENT?

I’m trying out Otter with Google Maps - haven’t found any comparable mapping service, and for me WebPositive can’t take two steps with that and survive (the immediate problem is that everything goes black when the map redraws at a different scale.)

Anyway, I mention it by way of passing on a tip - if you need to “drag” with mouse, it’s tricky but there’s a possibility you can make it work. I can’t make it work to save my life in this text entry window, but in a maps window, Otter may notice a double click with the left mouse button, and you may be able to prevent it from being taken as a plain single click by holding a modifier key at the same time. I can’t pretend to understand what’s going on here, but it seems to be very unreliable at noticing single click events.

I imagine this is one of the reasons we enjoy native applications better - the input devices are less likely to be lost in the layers. Too bad the modern web browser is such a massive enterprise.

Press F5 to refresh Web+

Shortly after these posts, Haiku stopped loading Otter. I assumed that the problem would be sorted out quickly, but it hasn’t happened. Should I submit a bug report, or is it up to Otter?

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send a report, it is working to me, or try to erase the config file.

Run checkfs /boot to see if there are any file system errors.

Bugreport should go to https://github.com/haikuports/haikuports/issues

If no one report bugs, they usually don’t magically fix themselves. If something does not work, report it. And even better, report it quickly so it’s easier to investigate the recent changes (in Haiku sources, or maybe on your machine) and understand what happened.

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Sill crashing out for me on load under Haiku Nightly hrev54459 - will report a bug / update a bug if exists. Frustrating - this is otherwise such a good browser!

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I found that both Otter and Web+ love memory. The more the better.