WebKit Based Browser For OS X

[Appleuser201]

First off I want to say happy new decade, our macs have now made it into their 3rd or 4th decade and are still in heavy use.
I've been doing a lot of thinking and I very much praise the PowerUOC efforts and can't wait to see what we can do with it.
I've been thinking of something different on the side though and I hope someone can hear me out on this one. Safari 4 runs great on my 400mhz iMac, and even the YouTube page and videos load up fast (black screen though) but I can still sign into Google and use YouTube and Gmail and I can browse some websites that actually load, pretty quickly. I've had a lot of luck with WebKit based browsers on PPC.

This may be a stupid idea but what are the chances of a possible safari/WebKit based browser like we have for leopard? Tenfourfox isn't light at all on resources and PowerUOC and other tweaks make it at least usable, and pretty quick in some cases on G4 systems, but I can't get the Idea of a WebKit browser out of my head.

I know The chances are next to none of someone developing yet another new browser for PPC, but does anyone get what I'm saying? A modern WebKit ported to PPC could bring back some speed to our beloved G3 machines.
This is just a thought of course, I still love PowerUOC and Mozilla based browsers.

 

[Slix]

I've been longing for a WebKit browser for PowerPC since I started using Safari Leopard WebKit on my G4s running Leopard, because it's just so speedy. I'd love to help test this or even with some coding possibly depending on the depth of it, if someone were to pick it up. Tiger WebKit never worked for me, so I don't know if there's anything we can pull from that maybe? I have a large assortment of lower end PowerPC Macs (G3s and G4s), so I can definitely help test things out.

 

[Appleuser201]

I've been longing for a WebKit browser for PowerPC since I started using Safari Leopard WebKit on my G4s running Leopard, because it's just so speedy. I'd love to help test this or even with some coding possibly depending on the depth of it, if someone were to pick it up. Tiger WebKit never worked for me, so I don't know if there's anything we can pull from that maybe? I have a large assortment of lower end PowerPC Macs (G3s and G4s), so I can definitely help test things out.

It should theoretically be possible to port the latest WebKit to tiger PPC as it's been done before and abandoned by the same dev team that gave us tenfourfox.
Even if this browser doesn't get security updates it would be nice to have a modern fully web standards compliant desktop browser to use for non secure reasons (don't enter your bank info)

I wonder if anyone in this community would know how to or know someone willing to put this idea somewhat forward.

 

[wicknix]

You'll never get current webkit on Tiger. TenFourKit was abandoned for good reason. The development SDK for Tiger is too old and lacking too many frameworks etc for anything remotely current to build. If it was that easy, leopard webkit would have been ported to 10.4 long ago. Why do you think TFF had to stop at version 45? Your only chance of running more current webkit based browsers is on Linux/BSD (because they are current, with current dev tools). Face the facts... Tiger is oooooolllllddddd.

Cheers

 

[z970]

Face the facts... Tiger is oooooolllllddddd.

To be fair, this would equally apply to any one PowerPC machine...

 

[wicknix]

Not talking machine, but rather the OS. At least my oooooollllllddddd powerpc machines can, and are, running more current OS's, which comes with more current browsers.

Cheers

 

[sparty411]

It's sad, really. Windows 2K is lightyears more functional than Tiger is, as of this very moment, and it's quite a bit older. All of Roytam1's latest browser builds work flawlessly on windows 2K with blackwingcat's kex installed. Apples software upgrade cycle is just vicious as hell.

 

[z970]

which comes with more current browsers.

Thanks to you and Riccardo!

 

[wicknix]

The simplicity of win32 vs OSX/BSD really comes in to play there. Only like 15 patches to add back the removed xp/2k code was needed for those browsers to build and run again. All the BSD's have issues with current browsers, and since Tiger is based on ancient BSD code, well, you see where i'm headed with this...

Cheers
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Thanks to you!

Not just me. I had a hand in it sure, but there are quite a few other people involved in one way or another.

Cheers

 

[Dronecatcher]

The development SDK for Tiger is too old and lacking too many frameworks etc for anything remotely current to build.

And yet TenFourFox is built for on/for Tiger....is this because Firefox is more self contained and carries it's own frameworks? Hence the speed difference compared with Webkit?

I'd say a fully compliant Webkit based browser on Tiger (if remotely possible) isn't even necessary - just something with up to date certificates and a patch for current TLS.

@z970mp isn't the browser on your N8 updated in such a fashion - or is it just the certificates?

 

[wicknix]

@Dronecatcher : Yeah for the most part. The mozilla source tree contains pretty much everything other than the compiler and gui toolkit dev headers (gtk / cocoa / etc), which makes it quite portable.

 

[z970]

@Dronecatcher I believe it was just the certificates, but according to the Delight Belle Changelogs in the Delight App, the system SSL certificates were updated in version 6.5 (I'm on 6.6), yet curiously enough, I still can't connect to some websites using Nokia Browser 8.3; just the same as before.

Now, it's also been a while since I've used the "before", so I also can't guarantee there wasn't at least a slight positive difference in them being updated. Not only that, I have no idea to what degree of newness their updated certificates carry, so maybe it's not entirely out of the question that some of them may have already been deprecated.

I think you're right in that updating Tiger's certificates and TLS is going to prove far easier to pull off than porting over a whole new version of WebKit. Could we start with moving over, say, Mojave's certificates and see what happens?

 

[gklka]

I’d really love to see such a project. And I think it is not so impossible. Some guy ported a recent WebKit to MorphOS, which is an AmigaOS successor operating system for PowerPC (Macs even). Believe me, MorphOS has a lot more features lacking for this than Leopard. See wayfarer.icu