'Threaded' Firefox for RISC OS build released to test

An experimental build of the RISC OS port of Firefox that promises a smoother experience has been released for people to test. You'll need the latest 2.0.0.20 version and then replace its executable with the one from here. The technical bit: developer Peter Naulls has moved the browser's polling for user interaction into a separate thread to aid multitasking with the rest of the RISC OS desktop.

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Discussion

Good runimage indeed since the original one from Peter's v2.0.0.20 r8 crashes! Seems a bit faster and thus starts to go towards usability (though loading still takes ages). But visiting [link] is a quick way to kill the app. And clicking on the closing icon of a tab in the default starting page list seems to have no use; selecting close tab from the menu closes the complete window (which had three tabs open). Anyhow: good that there is still work being done. hzn on 8/9/09 9:08AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

This test release shows excellent promise. Currently firefox makes the rest of the desktop pretty unusable (on the sites you need it for, as opposed to ones that also work on NetSurf). Which means you are far better off turning on a PC as a second machine. This version appears to have no more impact on the desktop than Kinoamp. (In fact it seems to have less impact than NetSurf) which means you can leave it chugging away in the background rendering awkward sites, while you write emails or even use NetSurf for plain HTML sites. When this appears as a stable release, I think it will be the most significant improvent to date. jess on 8/9/09 10:36AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I've downloaded the threaded version and am using it presently. Not much to report so far (it's early days but it certainly seems responsive) but this evidence of Peter's continued development effort is very welcome. bucksboy on 8/9/09 2:15PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Why is only one person still working on this? Every time there's a new release, people report various bugs and it makes me wonder how one person can ever begin to start solving them. AW on 8/9/09 8:09PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Because only one person has the interest and/or time. Because there are only 4 of you who use RISC OS for browsing. Because the Firefox sources are turgid messes. Lots of reasons. Perhaps you should volunteer, rather than question it. rjek on 8/9/09 8:40PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] It's no surprise to me. Are there even more than 10, maybe 20, RISC OS programmers active? Prove me wrong. diomus on 9/9/09 12:21AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] diomus: "Prove me wrong" That's easy, just look at the csa.announce and csa.programmer groups over the past six months But a lot of those will be BASIC programmers. The number comfortable working with 100000 lines of C code will be rather fewer helpful on 9/9/09 12:00PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] And the number comfortable working with Peter Naulls? flibble on 9/9/09 12:14PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] AFAIK there are people who work with him on the GCC mailing list. AW on 9/9/09 1:16PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] This is, without doubt, the funniest and most naive thing you've said, oooh, today. I say again for you to ignore because you don't want to hear it; offer your own time rather than criticising others for having more interesting things to do. rjek on 9/9/09 1:53PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] Hobbyists who can throw together a simple app with a GUI that makes you a sad panda does not make a programmer in this context. rjek on 9/9/09 12:34PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I think there were 5 of us using RISC OS for browsing last time I checked bucksboy on 8/9/09 10:26PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

6th person here. sa110 on 8/9/09 10:44PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] It was a reference to flibble's RISC OS Browser Issue article. rjek on 8/9/09 10:50PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

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