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OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Internet => Topic started by: David Kiley on February 29, 2020, 05:43:18 am

Title: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: David Kiley on February 29, 2020, 05:43:18 am
Just curious if anyone has heard anything. Still being worked on?
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: David Kiley on February 29, 2020, 05:53:02 am
I was planning to donate to it soon but wanted to check the status to make sure it's still a thing.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Dave Yeo on February 29, 2020, 07:29:56 am
They keep running into deficiencies in our build system, needed a new GCC and various libc updates. See for example https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qtwebengine-chromium-os2/issues/3 (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qtwebengine-chromium-os2/issues/3). It's coming along and I'm sure they appreciate donations.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Doug Bissett on February 29, 2020, 07:33:45 am
Well, first it is Falkon (with a "k"), not Falcon (with a "c"). They are two different browser programs. I have tried both in windows, Falcon is pretty limited. Falkon is much more capable, and seems to work okay. I also tried Pale Moon, which seemed to be pretty good (and has been mentioned as a possibility for OS/2).

Word is, that they are approaching the end of the project, but it may get held up, if they don't get the funding.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: guzzi on February 29, 2020, 09:16:54 pm
There has been quite some progress. Voice will release a status update tomorrow.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 01, 2020, 01:19:04 am
I was planning to donate to it soon but wanted to check the status to make sure it's still a thing.

Hi David,

I am Roderick Klein president of the Dutch OS/2 VOICE foundation. You can follow the update status here:
https://articles.os2voice.org, as Guzzi wrote we will release a new status update tomorrow. 

The Dutch VOICE foundation has been collecting sponsorship for BWW for this project.

This whole project is not just a matter of recompiling the web browser (running the compiler). Recently a new GCC compiler (initially released by Paul Smedley) was further enhanced by BWW. The mayor portion of the work has gone into porting the QT library framework to ArcaOS.  Portion of this is the QT webkit DLL. This  QT webkit HTML/Javascript engine is also used by Google Chrome and the Microsoft Edge browser.  The webkit DLL is done for about 40% and the QT framework is already ported. We need at least another month.

Yes some people reading might be critical that its taking longer then planned. The honest answer is that BWW has been on target on this for about 12 months and that its difficult to make an accuarate estimate with such a large project!

Any donation is welcome to keep deveopment moving forward! As I have always stated certain projects need a full time developer to work on such projects such as QT.
A large portion of the software we use on ArcaOS are using the GCC compiler and the LIBC libraries. These DLL's are used by Linux applications ported to OS/2.

I consider the Firefox 45 for OS/2 simply dead. More and more websites do not work properly and the engine is hard to update. Is the Falcon browser ideal, mayb its not.
But its going to be better up to date then Firefox 45.9.

You can make a donation here: https://www.os2voice.org/membership.html

Greetings

Roderick
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 02, 2020, 09:13:17 pm
Here is status update on the status of the new web browser.

http://articles.os2voice.org/

Best regards,

Roderick Klein
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on March 03, 2020, 04:29:48 pm
I know estimating software is problematic. I am worse than many at making estimates. Still, we must make plans.

Instead of giving a date two months hence for the browser, this time you said so for Qt 5. This is probably realistic, but past experience is that the job is quite large, and two months is not enough.

Then, after Qt is complete, then the Falkon browser will take some time to port. Is that two more months? Is July, 2020 a reasonable estimate now for Falkon?

Then, what about a reasonable debugging time for Falkon? Users will find problems that developers won't. So that will take some months to accomplish as well. Counting the debugging also as two months, it sounds like a reliable browser is about 6 months off, and funding is needed that VOICE cannot produce.

A reliable, modern browser will transform this platform. I have contributed in the past, and I intend to do so in the future. Thanks, Roderick, for organizing the funding of this project.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 03, 2020, 09:56:16 pm
I know estimating software is problematic. I am worse than many at making estimates. Still, we must make plans.

Instead of giving a date two months hence for the browser, this time you said so for Qt 5. This is probably realistic, but past experience is that the job is quite large, and two months is not enough.

Then, after Qt is complete, then the Falkon browser will take some time to port. Is that two more months? Is July, 2020 a reasonable estimate now for Falkon?

Then, what about a reasonable debugging time for Falkon? Users will find problems that developers won't. So that will take some months to accomplish as well. Counting the debugging also as two months, it sounds like a reliable browser is about 6 months off, and funding is needed that VOICE cannot produce.

A reliable, modern browser will transform this platform. I have contributed in the past, and I intend to do so in the future. Thanks, Roderick, for organizing the funding of this project.


The whole QT framework is done and tested. This QT testframe consists of (if I remember correctly about 80000 tests), all of these tests pass expect 2.
Currently the webkit is at 50% complete to compile.

The beaty is that 80% to 90% of a QT based browser fucntionality comes from the libraries above. So we are certainly expecting a way smoother development then 6 months.
Read some of the earlier newsletters for the new browser newhere some of this information is described in, please visit https://articles.os2voice.org.

Roderick
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Lars on March 04, 2020, 08:47:41 am
Is "Chromium" (mostly) the equivalent to "the Falkon browser" or is this yet another engine/component to port before the browser itself can be ported?
Plus,libraries might need to be extended/fixed that already exist which is also mentioned. That will also take some time which should not be underestimated.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Dave Yeo on March 04, 2020, 06:01:33 pm
Well the widgets should be taken care of by the main QT libs. I'd guess the only hard thing will be getting the JavaScript's JIT working correctly.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 05, 2020, 03:33:07 pm
Is "Chromium" (mostly) the equivalent to "the Falkon browser" or is this yet another engine/component to port before the browser itself can be ported?
Plus,libraries might need to be extended/fixed that already exist which is also mentioned. That will also take some time which should not be underestimated.

The chromium/webkit engine is the core engine of the browser, thats the reneding engine. If you put on top of that the UI stuff of the browser itself is QT also.
This browser is the quickest route to compiling a new browser on OS/2. And other developers could look at compiling other QT based browsers.

Roderick
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: hakuchi on March 05, 2020, 04:03:30 pm
Anyone looked into Otter browser?

https://otter-browser.org/
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Dave Yeo on March 05, 2020, 05:32:49 pm
Anyone looked into Otter browser?

https://otter-browser.org/

One of its dependencies is gstreamer, which would need porting. Gstreamer uses plugins so would take a bit more work to port then just building, sound support, using DosLoadModule() to dynamically load the plugins.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Eugene Tucker on March 05, 2020, 06:48:08 pm
Otter looks promising but the development even in Windows and Linux is very slow. FalKon is more stable.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Dave Yeo on March 05, 2020, 07:01:22 pm
The latest to do from Dimitriy, https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qtwebengine-chromium-os2/issues/3 (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qtwebengine-chromium-os2/issues/3)
Quote
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)
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: hakuchi on March 05, 2020, 08:37:12 pm
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 ...
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on March 06, 2020, 03:27:38 am
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.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 06, 2020, 04:28:30 pm
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
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: hakuchi on March 06, 2020, 09:55:50 pm

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 ...
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on March 07, 2020, 01:53:02 am
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.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Doug Bissett on March 07, 2020, 05:40:45 am
Quote
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.  :)
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Dave Yeo on March 07, 2020, 06:46:05 am
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.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: hakuchi on March 07, 2020, 10:47:56 am
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.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Dmitriy Kuminov on March 07, 2020, 04:02:13 pm
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.
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: hakuchi on March 07, 2020, 05:29:48 pm
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!
Title: Re: Any updates on the Falcon QT browser?
Post by: Andi B. on March 07, 2020, 07:38:17 pm
Quote
...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." ;-)