here is another 32 bit browser recently appeared:
"Supermium is a Chromium-based web browser designed to support older Windows versions while offering enhanced security, performance, and customization options"
Now, said that my knowledge in porting software is near to zero and this browser fits to Windows only, it raise to me two basic user questions:
- Chromium is open source - multi platform browser ?
- does multiplatform browser 32 bit means theoretically portable in OS2/ArcaOS ?
even if I realize that both "yes" answers do not mean automatically that it can be simply ported to OS2/ArcaOS, I'd like to learn -if possible- comments from you.
https://www.supermium.org/
their contact email has a funny address : emmawatsofficial54@gmail.com
and the street address 1600 Grand Avenue, London, NW1 6XE, UK brings several companies link if you research it by Google.
Most of them shares same email address : prorevitaa@gmail.co , but some others also have emmawatsofficial54@gmail.com.
who are them ?
https://github.com/win32ss/supermium
provided by
https://win32subsystem.live/
please donate to
https://www.patreon.com/win32
......
Its a fair question and it comes up more often. But the first issue with such a port is that its missing OS/2 specific code. I do not know how much work it would be to apply the patches from a Firefox browser to get to compile or write code. (A none Firefox or QT based browser port to OS/2 is a none starter in my mind).
We have something like WINE for OS/2 called ODIN, a system that can run Windows sources on OS/2. But yet again this was last updated oooh 20 years ago. Using Wine is most likely a none starter and debugging the code will be pretty time consuming in my opinion. So we are back to porting the code as the option above.
But even when you get the platform specific code added to the current code base of any browser then the debugging starts. A compiling browser is not a warranty for a stable browser.
Now I only skimmed the pages of this browser but what do I see:
https://github.com/win32ss/supermiumThere is a V8 directory. V8 is a javascript engine also used by the current Dooble browser.
That is one of the things Dmitry is going to work on again to fix (from BWW).
So its possible if you port this browser we bump into the same V8 issue.
Also thinking more about this I think this talk about a 32 bit browser is partly, well not very helpfull. You can maybe trim the memory usage but the other issue is that webpages have become WAAAAY more complicated in terms of code your PC and how much CPU is needed to display it on your system. I am not saying a 32 bit OS is not useable with an older CPU. But a 32 bit browser still needs memory to store the webpages.
My overall assessment is that with the limited human resources we have in the OS/2 community its a waste of time to look at other browsers to port. We would simply be spinning our wheels.
I am gladd to be proven wrong. Any port would take 1 person full time and take about 1 year at least to get something workable (beta stage). And it might even be much longer!
Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE