Yes to Oregano 3 | Drobe.co.uk archives

Yes to Oregano 3

By Chris Williams. Published: 5th Apr 2005, 17:28:15 | Permalink | Printable

So much for 'don't ask, don't tell'

It would appear that the answer to the straightforward question, "Will Oregano 3 happen?" is "Yes". Richard Brown of OreganoUK, the RISC OS distributor of Oregano 3, confirmed to users today that Oregano 3 will happen, although he neglected to give any further details. Rome wasn't built in a day, remember.

Less than a month ago, Richard asked punters to email OreganoUK if they wanted to see version 3 of the Oregano web browser. Thanking all those who replied, Richard added that the survey (which is now closed) received "a very good response with constructive comments from various people". Oregano is developed by Oregan, who sell the browser's core to the likes of Sony and other big businesses for use in embedded applications.

OreganoUK have also changed name to GeneSys, which might sound familiar to you.

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RISC OS web browsers compared

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Discussion

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Its starting to feel like the 'old days' again, lot's of software being developed and plenty to look forward to. The markets buzzing with excitment once again IMO. Wakefield MMV is going to be exciting i'm sure :-)

leeshep on 5/4/05 9:20PM
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Goody!

TonyStill on 5/4/05 10:11PM
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Excellent news.

leeshep: Yes, I hope this inspires/encourages other developers to go at it too

hEgelia on 6/4/05 9:05AM
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When will people realise that pouring money into the bottomless hole that Oregano appears to be, probably won't result in a browser that is any more usable. After being burnt by Castle with their promised free upgrade from Oregano1, I'm amazed that people still throw money at Oregano.

nikgare on 7/4/05 12:38PM
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When did Castle promise free upgrades from Oregano1? I think they promised free upgrades *of* Oregano1 (which there were) but then development of that stopped and Oregano2 was developed instead. Hence a chargeable upgrade. No software company could ever promise free upgrades forever.

helpful on 7/4/05 1:31PM
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... and on the *upside* Castle are offering 350 Quid off the Iyonix (up to May 5th) as mentioned on another news portal (tib cough, cough

.

So that should help offset the cost of the browser upgrade and get a really fast real RISC OS computer for less than 900 quid.

AMS on 7/4/05 1:37PM
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If it's anything like as nice as the PC version that was demonstrated at the South West Show then I'll definitely be buying a copy or two. Give 'em a chance, it'll be worth it.

niftybit on 7/4/05 1:37PM
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nikgare:

I can understand your frustration if you feel you were burnt by the lack of upgrades to Oregano 1. However that doesn't mean O3 won't be a useful product.

My own experience as an Oregano 2 user is very positive. It remains practically the only browser I use at home, in spite of having Netsurf and a PC with Firefox etc.

Netsurf is great, and whilst the sites it can render it renders better than O2, the latter seems to succeed with a broader range of sites in my experience. Firefox on the PC renders everything flawlessly, but I find it desperately slow, even compared to O2.

If O3 is an advance on O2 then it will be a benefit to the platform. All IMHO!

flypig on 7/4/05 1:41PM
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helpful: When JB said that the upgrade to O2 would be free. And yes, he did actually write that. And now they have washed their hands of the whole Oregano fiasco! And I have never said that software companies should supply all updates for free for ever, just that maybe they should honour their comitments.

What makes anyone think that O3 will ever be "finished", and not just end up as a rough beta, like O1 and O2 have done? Maybe we should start saving up for O4 already, once the bera of O3 has been and gone.

nikgare on 7/4/05 1:55PM
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nikgare: what makes you think any RISC OS browser will ever be "finished"?

NetSurf has at least a few source changes every day, and the Mozilla source (from which Firefox is built) sometimes has as many as 100 changes in one day.

mrchocky on 7/4/05 2:12PM
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mrchocky:

Hence the quote marks. Reliable printing would have been nice, so would fully functioning cookies... This list just goes on and on. I find it unbelievable that some people still think that a good browser will appear out of the Oregano fiasco. After paying over 50 quid for a bug ridden O1, I was expected to pay another 50 quid for another bug ridden browser, which arguably is now better than the first. And now people will be expected to pay again!

nikgare on 9/4/05 11:21AM
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I don't think there was any expectation - like any product you can choose to purchase it or not. But software development is expensive, especially on what is one of the most important and complex applications on any desktop system. I don't think there's any doubt that O3 will be much better than O2 - we've seen it in demo, etc. Whether or not it's your cup of tea, or an appropriate solution is another matter.

And if it isn't, what are you propsing to do to support/fund/fix the current situation?

mrchocky on 9/4/05 1:03PM
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mrchocky: >I don't think there was any expectation I expected the software to work, it didn't, and then I had to upgrade to the next version for another 50 quid. Thankfully I didn't waste my money on O2.

>And if it isn't, what are you propsing to do to support/fund/fix the current situation? Companies not lying about software development?

nikgare on 9/4/05 3:03PM
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If the software didn't work as you expected then there was plenty of time and cause to get a refund in both instances.

And I'm sure you could accuse many RISC OS companies of "lying" when software development (a difficult and expensive process as I've indicated) didn't turn out exactly as expected. But you answered the question I asked you, which was about your behaviour.

My main point is that whinging about what we do/don't have without any constructive suggestions or plan of action is both tiresome and unhelpful.

mrchocky on 9/4/05 3:28PM
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mrchocky: >My main point is that whinging about what we do/don't have without any constructive suggestions or plan of action is both tiresome and unhelpful. I originally stated that I find it hard to believe that people still expect O3 to be any better than its predecessors. I'm sorry if this is whinging, tiresome or unhelpful.

About the most constructive thing I can say atm is don't spend any more money on Oregano, donate it to help your Firefox port.

nikgare on 9/4/05 4:27PM
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nikgare: If O3 offers nothing over O2 then no-one will spend anything on it. It certainly will be better than O2, otherwise there won't be any point in it being released. Wether or not it'll offer enough improvements for you is what you should really be asking, and since both O1 and O2 had demo versions I expect O3 will too, so there's no excuse for anyone to spend money on it then complain that it doesn't do what they need.

SimonC on 11/4/05 10:20AM
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nik gare: I'm sure O3 will be significantly better than O2. But if your original point was to do with ongoing development once released, I also look for an improvement over the situation with O2, where 18 months passed without /any/ changes or improvements whatsoever. While I accept what Peter N says about the difficulty of browser development (he should know), there is a difference between saying to the market: 'Here it is; take it or leave it, warts and all' and 'Here it is, and we will be supporting and improving it on an ongoing basis'. I can think of a number of RO developers who fall into the latter category -not all commercial ones, either- Oregano unfortunately falls into the former category, but this was not made clear at the time of the original release of either version (both of which I bought, and use). I hope when O3 is released it will be made clear whether we can expect a continuing process of improvement, bug fixing etc 'free of charge' or whether it will be a question of waiting (and paying good money) for O4.

George

bucksboy on 11/4/05 12:07PM
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I also bought the rather incomplete Oregano 1 browser at the time purchasers had been told that they would eventually receive an update/upgrade. This is years ago and it never happened. Instead, Oregano 2 was released, which I evaluated and found unusable (much more than O1). I don't expect very much from Oregano 3, but I don't think it will change my attitude to this product.

maus on 27/4/05 2:25PM
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maus: How was O2 much more unusable than O1? Apart from taking too long to start up, that is. The very first versions of O2 had some serious problems, but they were sorted quite soon. I'm with you on what upgrades you'll get, though. Just don't expect to get new features along the line, whatever claims they make, and decide on that basis whether or not to get O3.

SimonC on 28/4/05 11:46AM
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