Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?

[Dave Yeo]

The latest to do from Dimitriy, https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qtwebengine-chromium-os2/issues/3

With LIBC and GCC fixed, the string functions build fine now. Next stops besides pthread TLS are these (all expected):

    LaunchProcess (launch_posix.cc), need to use spawn2 instead of fork there.
    UnixDomainSocket (unix_domain_socket.cc, sync_socket_posix.cc, some alignments to features missing on OS/2).
    URandomFD (rand_util_posix.cc)
    Condition and lock variables (condition_variable_posix.cc, lock_impl_posix.cc, might be related to pthread as well).
    Metrics code (histogram.cc, process_metrics.cc)

[hakuchi]

Otter looks promising but the development even in Windows and Linux is very slow. FalKon is more stable.

Some how Haiku-OS guys have managed to make it work on Haiku-OS ...

[Neil Waldhauer]

Otter looks promising but the development even in Windows and Linux is very slow. FalKon is more stable.

Some how Haiku-OS guys have managed to make it work on Haiku-OS ...

Go ahead and post your Otter for OS/2 port. We need a new browser.

[Roderick Klein]

Otter looks promising but the development even in Windows and Linux is very slow. FalKon is more stable.

Some how Haiku-OS guys have managed to make it work on Haiku-OS ...

Go ahead and post your Otter for OS/2 port. We need a new browser.

?? Currently the Otter browser can also not be compiled as the webkit.dll is being finished by Dmitry  for OS/2/ArcaOS.
I think I asked Dmitry already months ago if the Otter browser could be compiled on OS/2.  I do not remember his answer.
I asked him to respond in this thread.

The bottom line is that 80 to 90% of the browser functionality is in the QT and Webkit.dll. The rest if browser depended.
I think the discussion which browser should be ported by BWW is now a passed station. It has been known for months which browser was targetted.
If good *technical* arguments could be given why the Otter browser should be selected.

I think as it stands now for the community a new browser is better then nothing. I have already been stating this for years the Mozilla Sea Monkey and Firefox browser would die on OS/2.
And that is happening now.  I personally need to boot in Windows more and more often because a website no longer works in Firefox 45.9 or the website page is not displayed correctly.

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

[hakuchi]

Go ahead and post your Otter for OS/2 port. We need a new browser.

Nah. I develop only forum posts that gets snarky replies ...

[Neil Waldhauer]

Nah. I develop only forum posts that gets snarky replies ...

Well, then play to your strengths. I agree with Roderick; if Otter is actually a better choice, then maybe it is worth a look.

[Doug Bissett]

if Otter is actually a better choice, then maybe it is worth a look.

I haven't looked at Otter (but I will). It doesn't really matter which browser they pick, as long as they keep it up to date, and it is actually usable. I am not very impressed with Falkon (in windows), but it does work, for most things, that I have tried. It is about 1 year, since they updated it, which is not a problem, as long as it doesn't become a target for the bad guys.

I expect that some of the decision is made because of licensing, but probably just as important is ease of porting. It appears that BWW may have made a bad choice for ease of porting, but that seems to be behind them now (hopefully). Others are free to port whatever they think might work.

The race is on. 

[Dave Yeo]

Bitwise didn't have many choices for porting.
Mozilla 52ESR, which would have been pretty well the end of the line for Mozilla based browsers though there are various forks that we could have followed, hard to say how hard that would have been. Dmitriy, like so many, seems to have burned out on developing Mozilla as well.
QTWebkit where they have experience and once done, any QT based browser shouldn't be too hard to port. As Falkon is the official KDE browser, it does make sense as the first to port. QTWebkit has the advantage that the QT people are currently it in sync with Blink, hopefully they keep doing it.
Blink, which is what Chrome, Edge etc are using. It uses the GTK toolkit (on Linux) which would have been a big job porting and would likely have looked ugly.
Apples Webkit, which no one besides Apple and those forced to use it uses.

At least with the QT toolkit, we get quite a few other programs and as long as upstream keeps it up to date, hopefully keeping our port up to date won't be too hard. The speed of changes in browsers makes it really hard for minor platforms.

[hakuchi]

Well, then play to your strengths.

Will do, Sir, will do!

I agree with Roderick; if Otter is actually a better choice, then maybe it is worth a look.

Just to clear that I didn't say "Drop everything and change!", just mentioned this one since it seems rather good as is. I have no idea about what difficulties there might be porting it and developing it. I'm no developer.

Why I mentioned Haiku-OS was to reply this "nay saying" apparently without experience and support for the claim. It's up to those who are actually doing things to decide what and what not use and do, right?

Everyone is entitled to have their opinions, of course. I don't have, since mine would be irrelevant, since I'm not actually doing things.

[Dmitriy Kuminov]

Hey Guys,

Otto Browser uses the same web engine as Falkon: Qt WebEngine. It's chromium based and it's what I'm currently hardly working on. Both Falkon and Otto Browser can be built once Qt WebEngine is ready.

Note that Qt WebEngine is not to be mixed with Qt WebKit which was a web engine used in Qt 5.5 and earlier versions (including Qt 4). Qt WebKit is Apple WebKit based and while it can still be built with Qt > 5.5 with almost no effort (we did that for Qt 4 already), it's quite useless. All current Qt based web browsers have switched to Qt WebEngine since long. Qt WebKit is deprecated and it lacks many modern web standards so it's a dead end.

[hakuchi]

All this "this engine and that engine and those and whatnot" among all the tracking and advertising and consumerism has made ones mind wander a lot towards the RFC 1436 and truly compatible, easily portable content consuming ...

Anyway, keep up the good work Dmitriy and thanks for the insight!

[Andi B.]

...and it's what I'm currently hardly working on.

I think you meant "...and that's what I'm currently working on (very) hard." ;-)