I really appreciate what Netsurf have accomplished: It’s nearly sufficient for my day-to-day browsing. But I do miss my userscripts, extensions, and most of all vi-style keybindings.
I really wish I could give it try but last time I used it you couldn’t even switch tabs with the keyboard. Have they added keyboard support in recent releases?
Hi, thanks for trying our little browser. I did rework the GTK frontend for this release but there may still be missing some keyboard navigation shortcuts.
Please do remember there are only a handful of us developing the browser for seven toolkits across eleven operating systems (https://ci.netsurf-browser.org/jenkins/view/Categorized/job/netsurf/) so if we do not get to it quickly it is not we are not interested, just stretched a bit thin.
Thanks; I’ll give the new version a look. It’s a shame it’s written in C because I might be interested in contributing otherwise. Anyway I wish you the best of luck.
I did apt install netsurf on Ubuntu 20.04 and tried to browse a bunch of my old-school sites (nothing fancy by modern standards: https, basic HTTP auth, some redirects here and there: gitea, static pages, etc) and netsurf segfaults on more pages than it is able to open.
The authors did great job, but C is not really an option here.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ubuntu’s packages were just stolen outright from Debian, and forced to run with incompatible linkages. I do not trust derivative distributions.
It’s very difficult to trust a project written in an unsafe language that exists primary to view untrusted content, even when it has millions of dollars behind it. When the only contribution comes from unpaid enthusiasts it’s even more troubling. I can understand a huge company like Google or Microsoft erring on the side of conservative technology but if you’re a ragtag band going up against Goliath you’ve got to make better choices to have a chance at keeping up.
Also I just don’t have that much free time, and I prefer to spend it coding in enjoyable languages. I wouldn’t code without a repl unless I was getting paid quite a lot.
Edit: not to show any disrespect; I’m just giving my reasons for declining to contribute personally.
The problem is there’s little else that’s widely available (particularly on the marginalized platforms that NetSurf courts) that’s as portable (for better or for worse, we live in Unix and C’s shadow) and performant. Not even Ada (as sibling comment says) can be trusted to be available.
Also include the fact that they target RiscOS, Amiga, Haiku, etc and you’re even more limited, without doing some yak shaving to get language support.
That all being said, the project is relatively small. An ambitious programmer with some free time could port it all to Rust, or D, or whatever other safe language for their platform of choice. And, since it’s already C, they could do it incrementally and have a working browser the whole time. Not saying that anyone should, mind you, but it would be pretty neat. :)
I frankly can’t blame netsurf for using a language that’s old, lightweight, well-understood and available for the platforms they target over, say, some immature experimental language that’s barely 5 years old and has very little in terms of successful projects made with it to show.
Also I just don’t have that much free time, and I prefer to spend it coding in enjoyable languages. I wouldn’t code without a repl unless I was getting paid quite a lot.
You’re right in doing whatever you want with your time, yet nobody has asked you to contribute, either.
Sure. If you want to write a browser in Ada, be my guest. But you’re surely not living in a bubble where you don’t know which language the parent was all about. It isn’t Ada, and there’s already a browser utilizing it, albeit only partially.
Personally, I find the real problem to be the browser acting as TCB. The web standards have got so complex it is impossible in practice to write a safe browser.
On a good design, exploiting a browser should yield no benefit. I would focus on that. Capabilities (such as implemented by seL4, the whitepaper of which is linked above) are a good building block to achieve that.
Note that while its HTML and CSS support is serviceable, its JavaScript support is not. Consider it equivalent to running other browsers with NoScript extension.
Yes, PR is definitely not our thing. Our time and effort are mostly concentrated on the code. In the past when news sites have mentioned the project we have had a great number of very vocal people with definite opinions on how we should spend our free time to implement NetSurf the way they want it.
So generally I think personally, I have certainly become less likely to mention the project in a “loud” way and just keep on keeping on. Hope it gives you some happiness anyhow, thank for your kind comments.
Thanks for the heads-up.
NetSurf isn’t yet another webkit or blink UI like most browsers are these days.
It implements its own engine, with a focus on high portability and low resource overhead.
It is thus, in practice, that I know of, the best webbrowser available on AmigaOS, FreeMiNT and RISCOS.
I really appreciate what Netsurf have accomplished: It’s nearly sufficient for my day-to-day browsing. But I do miss my userscripts, extensions, and most of all vi-style keybindings.
sent from netsurf 3.10, btw :)
I really wish I could give it try but last time I used it you couldn’t even switch tabs with the keyboard. Have they added keyboard support in recent releases?
Hi, thanks for trying our little browser. I did rework the GTK frontend for this release but there may still be missing some keyboard navigation shortcuts.
Always happy to receive feature requests in the https://bugs.netsurf-browser.org tracker
Please do remember there are only a handful of us developing the browser for seven toolkits across eleven operating systems (https://ci.netsurf-browser.org/jenkins/view/Categorized/job/netsurf/) so if we do not get to it quickly it is not we are not interested, just stretched a bit thin.
Thanks; I’ll give the new version a look. It’s a shame it’s written in C because I might be interested in contributing otherwise. Anyway I wish you the best of luck.
A shame? I think that’s part of the appeal.
Why is it a shame?
For C++ and Rust, there’s established browser projects. This one is in C.
I did
apt install netsurfon Ubuntu 20.04 and tried to browse a bunch of my old-school sites (nothing fancy by modern standards: https, basic HTTP auth, some redirects here and there: gitea, static pages, etc) and netsurf segfaults on more pages than it is able to open.The authors did great job, but C is not really an option here.
3.9 hasn’t segfaulted on me, not even once.
Arch packages.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ubuntu’s packages were just stolen outright from Debian, and forced to run with incompatible linkages. I do not trust derivative distributions.
It’s very difficult to trust a project written in an unsafe language that exists primary to view untrusted content, even when it has millions of dollars behind it. When the only contribution comes from unpaid enthusiasts it’s even more troubling. I can understand a huge company like Google or Microsoft erring on the side of conservative technology but if you’re a ragtag band going up against Goliath you’ve got to make better choices to have a chance at keeping up.
Also I just don’t have that much free time, and I prefer to spend it coding in enjoyable languages. I wouldn’t code without a repl unless I was getting paid quite a lot.
Edit: not to show any disrespect; I’m just giving my reasons for declining to contribute personally.
The problem is there’s little else that’s widely available (particularly on the marginalized platforms that NetSurf courts) that’s as portable (for better or for worse, we live in Unix and C’s shadow) and performant. Not even Ada (as sibling comment says) can be trusted to be available.
Also include the fact that they target RiscOS, Amiga, Haiku, etc and you’re even more limited, without doing some yak shaving to get language support.
That all being said, the project is relatively small. An ambitious programmer with some free time could port it all to Rust, or D, or whatever other safe language for their platform of choice. And, since it’s already C, they could do it incrementally and have a working browser the whole time. Not saying that anyone should, mind you, but it would be pretty neat. :)
People do more insane things, like using systems affected by the confused deputy problem, when seL4 exists.
I frankly can’t blame netsurf for using a language that’s old, lightweight, well-understood and available for the platforms they target over, say, some immature experimental language that’s barely 5 years old and has very little in terms of successful projects made with it to show.
You’re right in doing whatever you want with your time, yet nobody has asked you to contribute, either.
There’s a lighteight, widely supported, safe, and proven language. It’s called Ada. It’s also a part of GCC.
Sure. If you want to write a browser in Ada, be my guest. But you’re surely not living in a bubble where you don’t know which language the parent was all about. It isn’t Ada, and there’s already a browser utilizing it, albeit only partially.
Personally, I find the real problem to be the browser acting as TCB. The web standards have got so complex it is impossible in practice to write a safe browser.
On a good design, exploiting a browser should yield no benefit. I would focus on that. Capabilities (such as implemented by seL4, the whitepaper of which is linked above) are a good building block to achieve that.
Note that while its HTML and CSS support is serviceable, its JavaScript support is not. Consider it equivalent to running other browsers with NoScript extension.
This sounds more like a recommendation than a negative to me, since I do most of my browsing with NoScript enabled!
There’s JS improvements on 3.10.
Have you tried it, or are you speaking from experience with previous versions?
I haven’t tried 3.10 yet, so I am speaking from the past experience. But it also matches what they are saying themselves.
Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an actual release page, so I linked directly to the front page (which has the information on the right).
It’s not much, but there was this announcement in the dev maillist.
The one thing they clearly aren’t good at is PR. This project would be much more well-known if they improved on that.
Yes, PR is definitely not our thing. Our time and effort are mostly concentrated on the code. In the past when news sites have mentioned the project we have had a great number of very vocal people with definite opinions on how we should spend our free time to implement NetSurf the way they want it.
So generally I think personally, I have certainly become less likely to mention the project in a “loud” way and just keep on keeping on. Hope it gives you some happiness anyhow, thank for your kind comments.
Yeah, comments like:
Always amaze me.
Another favourite of mine that is common:
I had to go to Downloads > Linux > Change Log to get this.
Wow. This is much better. I do wonder why their front page announcement doesn’t link this.
If anyone wants to see the change log, I found it with a bit of digging:
https://bugs.netsurf-browser.org/mantis/changelog_page.php
This isn’t a changelog, but a list of closed bugs.
For a changelog, see this, found by sams above.
I wonder how hard it is to get this working on SailfishOS since that needs a good native browser.
An AppImage or similar would be perfect. I’m sure many more people would give it a try if building it wasn’t a requirement.
It’s great to see NetSurf being developed in any case!