Opera is dropping FreeBSD, it's (almost) official.

This world relay needs just a browser. My vote goes to netsurf. It has a gtk+ front end but can also run on framebuffers :beergrin. The only problem is that it dose not support JavaScript at least not jet. If only I had bunch off money to pay someone to speed up the JavaScript development.
 
taz said:
This world relay needs just a browser. My vote goes to netsurf. It has a gtk+ front end but can also run on framebuffers :beergrin. The only problem is that it dose not support JavaScript at least not jet. If only I had bunch off money to pay someone to speed up the JavaScript development.
I actually was under the impression that it had some basic JavaScript support (just based upon using it, having done no research), as when I used it a few years ago, I couldn't get eBay and Amazon to work with it. Well, when I used it a few weeks ago, they were working. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm wondering if more websites are offering a Basic HTML fallback, or if they already were and NetSurf is just able to render them properly now? It's already a very usable browser, to be honest.
 
I have Javascript disabled on Firefox and it does break many sites. However, I have noticed though that if I fiddle with the User agent and request the mobile version of the sites, it often works fine (i.e doesn't depend so much on Javascript) so you might like to try out the same thing with netsurf.

Frankly I prefer the mobile versions of the site because they not only look better on my 1024x768 Thinkpad but they feel a lot less sluggish (and also don't use up a whole processor core rendering HTML :/)

Edit: I imagine this might also work well with lynx, links or elinks.
 
retrogamer said:
taz said:
This world relay needs just a browser. My vote goes to netsurf. It has a gtk+ front end but can also run on framebuffers :beergrin. The only problem is that it dose not support JavaScript at least not jet. If only I had bunch off money to pay someone to speed up the JavaScript development.
I actually was under the impression that it had some basic JavaScript support (just based upon using it, having done no research), as when I used it a few years ago, I couldn't get eBay and Amazon to work with it. Well, when I used it a few weeks ago, they were working. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm wondering if more websites are offering a Basic HTML fallback, or if they already were and NetSurf is just able to render them properly now? It's already a very usable browser, to be honest.

Yes it has some basic JavaScript support but it's still far from complete. Thanks for pointing out that Ebay and Amazon work.

I have noticed though that if I fiddle with the User agent and request the mobile version of the sites, it often works fine

Yeah this is a nice trick.
 
taz said:
This world relay needs just a browser. My vote goes to netsurf. It has a gtk+ front end but can also run on framebuffers :beergrin. The only problem is that it dose not support JavaScript at least not jet. If only I had bunch off money to pay someone to speed up the JavaScript development.

+1

This post was submitted using Netsurf 3.0 running on OpenBSD 5.5
 
FWIW for anyone using Opera, I've just had the first instance of having visited a (Chinese hardware chip-selling) site hacking the toolbar (a new button "buy... "). Restoring standard_toolbar.ini from a previous backup fixed it handily. It also restored a modification to it that had been lost a year or so ago due to a browser crash and new reinstall of it.
 
Well, this browser (12.16) still handily without-screen-tearing-or-artifacts handles loading twenty or so tabs rapidly and reading them one-by-one without freezeups, with handy screen shortcuts, and numerous other advantages over the secondary one (Mozilla) used here. FWIW I've the following enabled
toolbars) view, status, address, start, tab
and disabled toolbars ) main, navigation, bookmarks
which seems to be what I usually always set it up. Hard to be sure since they are not in the settihgs dialog correlated to the toolbar onscreen, but one can add a toolbar and see the resulting change in the browser.
 
For some reason the right scrollbar went slightly offscreen, making browsing clumsy. Restoring the navigation bar, to the right as its preferred placement, edged the invisible scrollbar back into view, it seems. [ VS what I posted in the previous post above ]
 
Oko said:
taz said:
This world relay needs just a browser. My vote goes to netsurf. It has a gtk+ front end but can also run on framebuffers :beergrin. The only problem is that it dose not support JavaScript at least not jet. If only I had bunch off money to pay someone to speed up the JavaScript development.

+1

This post was submitted using Netsurf 3.0 running on OpenBSD 5.5

I'm with you! Netsurf will only continue to get better, because it's being developed by a bunch of RiscOS aficionados - and they're a dedicated lot.

I'm running Netsurf on Linux framebuffer as I type this. Just a couple minutes ago I went to Amazon and their pages looked pretty good. What's amazing is that without javascript, or partial javascript - whatever it is - the pages lay out perfectly. It's just gorgeous when I consider that the alternative from the command line is a clunky no-pics text browser. The fonts are not quite what I'm used to on a full-blown desktop, but they're not bad, even on the framebuffer version.
 
I should add that I'm working on a FreeBSD sdl version. It's not quite up to snuff, so I've commited temporary blasphemy, and am using the "L" word framebuffer. My WIP Freebsd version is using libsvga + sdl + netsurf.

The libsvga+sdl+netsurf stack all compiles and links fine. When it runs, it connects to sites, but I still have the black screen of death to look at. Work to do...

Edit 10/1/14:

I'm not sure what I did, but libsvga + sdl + netsurf is working now, at least at 1024x768 24. The only thing I did differently was to change the OS to FreeBSD 10.0 from FreeBSD 9.1. Looks sweet - runs great - and there's no X to be found! Yet - it doesn't look that much different than the gtk build, IMO.

This is something I might consider for a beagle or raspi setup, but heck - it's pretty nice to use on my regular PC. Haven't really considered security ramifications yet. Before I'd point the stampeding hordes to this idea, there would probably need to be implemented a clean way to drop root priviledge. Real pretty tho, I gotta say...
 
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