Stainless Web Browser...

[Dronecatcher]

Looks like Stainless is now open to developers to pick up the ball - integrate LWK?

GitHub - RetroSoftwareRepository/StainlessReloaded: Revival of the Stainless web browser for old Macs, based on WebKit.

Revival of the Stainless web browser for old Macs, based on WebKit. - RetroSoftwareRepository/StainlessReloaded

github.com

 

[Raging Dufus]

I'd love to see this but I'm not hopeful. The WebKit development space for PPC Macs has only been occupied by one guy for years now, and he hasn't been able to produce regular LWK builds. Virtually all other browser development has taken place in Gecko/Goanna.

Seems WebKit on PowerPC has had it's day, sadly. Stainless was outstanding for what it was, but if there's someone out there willing to put in the work to revive it, they've yet to make themselves known. Here's hoping I'm wrong!

 

[eyoungren]

Stainless was great and I hate making everyone groan again (yeah, it's Erik on about it again) but if development is going to happen I'd rather see the resources going to Demeter.

 

[mmphosis]

Thanks for this thread. It got me looking at webkit, and Demeter, Sunrise, StainlessReloaded and Shiira. I have used Roccat as well in the past

I was able to do a very rudimentary build of Shiira 1.2 from source (Shiira 1.1 build 050920 in the About box.) From an initial look, I like how snappy it is, for example scrolling seems fast. I am using an iBook G3 500Mhz 384MB RAM bus speed 67MHz. The macrumors site does not display properly, oh well. I'll stick to TenFourFox, sluggish as it is on my meager 18 year old laptop. It is interesting to look at using webkit.

 

[z970]

I'll stick to TenFourFox, sluggish as it is on my meager 18 year old laptop.

Give PowerUOC a try.

 

[mmphosis]

Two separate observations for TenFourFox:

I read the release notes for TenFourFox and it recommends 500 MB RAM or higher. So, the slowness of the User Interface (ie. lots of spinning beachball action) is because my iBook G3 is starved for memory among other things. Typing on macrumors is painfully slow for instance, oh well.

TenFourFoxG3 Feature Parity Release 16 (SPR 1) + PowerUOC (prefs.js) appears to make things load faster! This is great.

chmod +x backup_firefox_prefs_js

#!/usr/bin/env bash
src=prefs.js
dst=~/Desktop/${src}-backups/$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H.%M.%S)
mkdir -p ${dst}
cp -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/*.default/$src $dst/

 

[mmphosis]

Stainless was great and I hate making everyone groan again (yeah, it's Erik on about it again) but if development is going to happen I'd rather see the resources going to Demeter.

Demeter

I was able to do a very rudimentary build of Demeter from source. According to the About Box, Demeter 1.5 (2008) is based on Shiira 2.x (2007). From an initial look, I also like how snappy Demeter is. For example, scrolling seems almost as fast Shiira. I am totally guessing here: the fonts in Shiira are smaller, and maybe more in line with the SDK or something which makes scrolling just slightly smoother than Demeter. Demeter, however, displays the text in a better, more accurate looking?, font. Macrumors is still borked, oh well.

bitrot

The source code for these browsers is old, 10+ years old, but I like the performance. It's a bit like running Mac System 9.x on my iBook, or System 6 or Windows 3 or Windows 95 in a modern emulator, fast. Okay, these old browsers are not that snappy, but still ...

Less is more.

 

[eyoungren]

Demeter

I was able to do a very rudimentary build of Demeter from source. According to the About Box, Demeter 1.5 (2008) is based on Shiira 2.x (2007). From an initial look, I also like how snappy Demeter is. For example, scrolling seems almost as fast Shiira. I am totally guessing here: the fonts in Shiira are smaller, and maybe more in line with the SDK or something which makes scrolling just slightly smoother than Demeter. Demeter, however, displays the text in a better, more accurate looking?, font. Macrumors is still borked, oh well.

bitrot

The source code for these browsers is old, 10+ years old, but I like the performance. It's a bit like running Mac System 9.x on my iBook, or System 6 or Windows 3 or Windows 95 in a modern emulator, fast. Okay, these old browsers are not that snappy, but still ...

Yeah, for sheer speed I prefer Demeter, which is why I go on about it all the time.

I've relinked it against LWK on my G5 and it's the only browser I have on there that can handle Youtube - despite being ancient.

I've had to give up using it though as it's just so unstable now because of the complexity of websites that it crashes more than it loads pages.