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Firefox public demo announced

By Chris Williams. Published: 25th Mar 2005, 23:35:11.

Not April 1st

Peter Naulls is set to demonstrate his Firefox port for the first time in public at a user group meeting next month. Peter recently called on RISC OS users to pledge cash towards the development of the Firefox web browser port.

The talk will be given on 12th April at the Cambridge RISC OS User Group, which was formerly known as the Bottisham Acorn Users Group (BAUG). The user group recently changed name at its AGM, in a meeting that saw BAUG chairman David McDowell stepping down from his position 13 years after first joining the group's committee. David will be replaced by Peter, who will act as the group's chairman and secretary.

The Firefox event should be a good opportunity for punters to see the web browser in action and to put questions directly to Peter.

CAMRUG website - directions, etc.
Firefox port announced
Peter Naulls is a drobe.co.uk contributor

Discussion

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<sick but nice>CAMRUG is only a slight letter rearrangment from CUMRAG, which are normally are whole bunch of more fun, I bet.</s-b-n>

nunfetishist on 26/3/05 12:10AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I look forward to reports..!

BrianH on 26/3/05 7:14AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Sounds like Firefox is coming along nicely, I look forward to the report too.

Sawadee on 26/3/05 7:56AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

We'd like to have Peter as Grand Master at our local Freemasonry lodge... and demonstrating Firefox.

hEgelia on 26/3/05 11:44AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I hope, he is also demonstrating this on the Risc OS Expo in the Netherlands.

datawave on 26/3/05 12:48PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

If you are a non-member planning on coming, then you might care to drop me a note so I can get an idea of numbers. I can also arrange rides to and from public transport if need be.

I'm happy to give talks at other venues, but please bear in mind cost any distance. Also, if anyone would like to talk about any RISC OS subject at all at CAMRUG, then that too can be arranged.

mrchocky on 26/3/05 2:02PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I'm starting to get a real itch to try out this browser from my Iyonix. Like the majority of computer users at large I use Internet Explorer from a Windows machine in a fairly unintelligent way. I've no wish to become involved with technicalities. IE seems to do what I, an undemanding user, needs and I can focus on the content of the web rather than the browser, which, sad to say, has not been the case with my dablings with RISC OS browsers to date. I am curious to know how attractive Peter's port turns out to be to people like me for, in this respect, I'm in a similar position to a user who's looking at RISC OS afresh.

martin on 27/3/05 3:03PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

martin:

Why don't you try firefox out on your Windows machine?

ROHC on 27/3/05 7:54PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

In reply to ROHC Perhaps I will, although IE (mostly) seems to do the job fine for me and the thought "It ain't broke so don't fix it" comes to mind. Which is precicely how MicroSoft want me to think. It would be interesting to try FireFox out on RISC OS and then on Windows.....

martin on 29/3/05 1:03PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

But surely IE is broken by definition...

andypoole on 29/3/05 2:19PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

martin:

Firefox is *much* safer than IE - try it out

As you seem to use windows for browsing (god knows why... ;-)

) you are a position to see what firefox is like.

@ work I have to use windows & have been running firefox (pheonix) for ages...

ROHC on 29/3/05 3:43PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Is -9.6 the lowest rating a comment has got on drobe?

IvanDobski on 29/3/05 5:54PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

ROHC: > As you seem to use windows for browsing (god knows why...)

The reason would be that Windows has the best supported browsers of any platform. If a website is going to work on anything it is likely to run on IE. I can't think of a browser plugin that doesn't have a Windows version (other than the drawfile one :P). And, unless you are doing something wrong, IE from version 5.5 is fast and stable, Firefox a little less stable but still pretty reliable.

So, seeing as I know, does that make me God?

-- Godman

Spriteman on 30/3/05 9:18AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

spriteman:"IE from version 5.5 is fast and stable" ... but vulnerable and lacking in features.

adamr on 30/3/05 10:17AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

The most important feature of IE being its tolerance of broken HTML. There are still websites about that only work properly with IE, and they recommend the use of this broweser as a cop out that avoids the need to fix the bugs. The latest oner that I have come across is the Caravan Club's new site booking facility. No RISC OS browser would work with it (although I was able to make a booking with Mozilla under ARM Linux). The W3C Validation Service indentified 240 -odd errors on that page alone. Needless to say I sent them an email.

mrtd on 30/3/05 11:08AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

mrtd: I gave up Emailing site owners about that several years ago. More often than not they tell you to sod off (usually in a roundabout niceish way)...

Generally, if a site doesn't work properly, it isn't worth reading anyway :P

andypoole on 30/3/05 11:58AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

In reply to andypoole: This is a club that I am a member of, and I was trying to take advantage of a service that I will pay for. They have recently changed their system, replacing direct booking of their sites by telephone with a centralised system via phone or web. Since the central phone line seems permanently busy (they have effectively replaced over 200 phone lines with one), they are now reliant on the website for a large slice of their "business". I did at least get a reply to my email promising to pass on my comments to the website team. Some of the comments were about the ergonomics of the site and suggested addtional facilities too, so I live in hope that something might happen.

mrtd on 30/3/05 1:22PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

IE works with most sites, sure - but only because this is what most web-developers test against. And Microsoft have been known to deliberately provide broken pages if they detect a non-MS browser.

On this PC - I, like Martin, used to use IE. But then (for no apparent reason) it broke, so I replaced it with Firefox. 's ok. Seems to work just fine.

Loris on 30/3/05 6:34PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

mrtd> That broken HTML probably exists precisely because IE is so tolerant, giving the author no indication that his code was incorrect.

adrianl on 30/3/05 6:39PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

WRT firefox and website support, I've been using Firefox on linux as my main browser for a couple of years and it's a long time since I've been unable to access any site - and that was the Argos shopping site, which simply refused to allow non-IE browsers in. However, even that's been sorted now.

Basically, if you're using Windows, use Firefox (or Opera if you prefer it). They're both far better than IE, will get you into 99.99% of websites and provide very useful extra features.

As for Firefox on RISC OS - sounds like an excellent idea, provided they can get it running at speed.

johnpettigrew on 31/3/05 12:57PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Firefox is quite quick at displaying pages and reformatting them, but it is slow to start up (I'm talking about the Windows version here) . I imagine the RISC OS version will behave similarly, but with an even longer start up time due to the lower data throughput of the ARM cups. So start it up and leave it running you think..... But.... one problem with Firefox is that it is a memory hog, and it never seems to release any memory it claims. For example, it uses 10M to start it up with a blank page, then 4MB(!) to open the Drobe home page, another 1.5MB to open this story in the same window, or 3M more in a new window. That pattern repeats for every page you open, so after a fairly short browsing session Firefox can easily be using 50+MB of RAM, even if you close all but one blank window. So RiscPC users, start scavenging those extra SIMMs now!

helpful on 31/3/05 2:53PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Well this machine's copy of firefox is currently showing this article in one tab, and a simple html page in another, and is taking up 93MB :|

andypoole on 31/3/05 3:29PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I believe the Running @ Speed idea is very good..more efficient the better, but to be honest, we all really do need to get the faster beasts..catch 22, if we dont buy the machines the will stay expensive, if they are expensive, we wont buy them

Save up! :@D

em2ac on 31/3/05 4:09PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Running on a 256 MB dual 450MHz P3 with NT4 the performance of FF is fine. So hopefully it will also be fine on an Iyonix and usable on an SA-RPC.

If the machines need to be upgraded to microsoft amounts of RAM, it'll still be far better than not have the browser available.

jess on 31/3/05 9:47PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

jess: "If the machines need to be upgraded to mirosoft amounts of RAM, it'll still be far better than not have the browser available."

I think you're right. My main machines here are two Iyonixes with 1024MB RAM and 512MB RAM, and a Risc PC with 192MB RAM. I certainly won't be complaining if a better browser appears that just happens to need a few dozen extra MB of RAM.

dgs

dgs on 2/4/05 11:53PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Wasn't that meeting yesterday? Any news?

jess on 13/4/05 11:03PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

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