Future versions of Firefox on Windows 98

[LLXX]

I agree with BenoitRen on this one. disabling scripting for ALL sites is a bad idea as that will break most sites that depend on scripts and the sites will not work as expected.

Actually, few sites actually *need* scripting, as it seems most of the time it's used for displaying ads, animations, and other unneeded items. Sometimes you can even bypass certain restrictions with scripting turned off

Also, JavaScript isn't really secure either. I wouldn't let any arbitary site use it.

Edited January 23, 2007 by LLXX

[BenoitRen]

JavaScript in Gecko (which is SpiderMonkey) is pretty secure. JavaScript in itself should be secure. You're just being paranoid.

[DeadDude]

Did anyone step up to the plate on the actual point of this thread?

I literally just waded through the garbage to try to find the answer... where the ***k is it?!

Does anyone here care enough to become part of the solution instead of complaining?

I don't program, but if there's ANYTHING I can do, sign me up dammit.

Come on people!!! Where the hell is your AMBITION?

The wrapper idea is awesome, as it is the method most of the user-created packages work... and it would be able to provide dam near 100% compatibility....

Keep ^---- that idea alive.

[Analada]

Did anyone step up to the plate on the actual point of this thread?

I literally just waded through the garbage to try to find the answer... where the ***k is it?!

Does anyone here care enough to become part of the solution instead of complaining?

I don't program, but if there's ANYTHING I can do, sign me up dammit.

Come on people!!! Where the hell is your AMBITION?

The wrapper idea is awesome, as it is the method most of the user-created packages work... and it would be able to provide dam near 100% compatibility....

Keep ^---- that idea alive.

Agreed. Count me in as well. There needs to be some mini-organization though, as otherwise it'll just end in chaos. Anyone got experience in this sort of thing to take role of Team Leader? And someone to organize a properly managed forum with definite goals, tomescales, co-ordinate check-in modules, etc.

[BenoitRen]

I intend to step up to the plate now that SeaMonkey 1.1 is out, but first the exams have to be over so I can have some breathing space already.

The project would be recognised as a Mozilla community project in the same way that SeaMonkey is.

[ivanbuto]

I intend to step up to the plate now that SeaMonkey 1.1 is out, but first the exams have to be over so I can have some breathing space already.

The project would be recognised as a Mozilla community project in the same way that SeaMonkey is.

Sounds good, BenoitRen! I'm looking forward to your work.

[athenian200]

I wonder how difficult it would be to make Firefox 3/Cairo work on Windows 98? I mean, computers only do things in so many ways. They probably had to use Windows 98 to develop Windows 2000 or Windows XP in the first place, and they all their new code was probably created from some sort of standard programming functionality. So I would think it would at least be possible to make it work, even if it was difficult, right? Especially if the computer in question technically meets Windows XP system requirements, but would run it very slowly? Or is there some reason why it can't work, something underlying and immutable that I can't comprehend? It's just that I have a 500MHz Intel Pentium III with 128MB of RAM running Windows 98SE, and I don't see why I should suddenly need a 1GHz processor just as a backup computer to surf the Internet reasonably. To me, it seems like the Internet doesn't do anything it didn't do 7 years ago in terms of the data presented, they've just changed the standards to accommodate streaming media, complex style sheets, and more graphics, and somehow made them incompatible in the process of updating them. Maybe the changes don't mean much to me, because I'm not a very visual person.

[BenoitRen]

You don't even need 500 Mhz to view the web. The thing that is heavy on resources is Flash, and complex JavaScript scripts.

Since I'm already posting, here's a progress report. Sunday I got to know that Gecko internally has code that converts values to Unicode as part of internationalisation. Yesterday I picked up a C++ book from the library, so I hope to get something done in the next few days.

[Analada]

You don't even need 500 Mhz to view the web. The thing that is heavy on resources is Flash, and complex JavaScript scripts.

Since I'm already posting, here's a progress report. Sunday I got to know that Gecko internally has code that converts values to Unicode as part of internationalisation. Yesterday I picked up a C++ book from the library, so I hope to get something done in the next few days.

When will this proposed project be carried on Mozilla's website and/or made official? I can't help but think you're going to need more than a book on C++ to write something this big and complex.

[BenoitRen]

Big and complex? I'm not rewriting the browser.

Many of the APIs that I have to catch are easy to do, as they differ from their Win9x counterparts only in that they return Unicode, instead of a WORD value.

Things like SetWorldTransform will definitely be harder, but I'll see. The least I can do is try, right? Who knows other people will get interested in helping when I produce the start of the shim library.

[TravisO]

Who knows other people will get interested in helping when I produce the start of the shim library.

You won't be able to get people interested unless you have a functioning example, even if it's buggy or slow. You have to "wet their tongue" before they'll want to drink.

[athenian200]

Yesterday I picked up a C++ book from the library, so I hope to get something done in the next few days.

That's not going to work out... I tried to do that a few years ago. I thought it wouldn't be so difficult, so I went out and tried to learn C with a book. I figured I would start with a simple command line program that outputted a string of text. That was the first example in the book. I understood it, and compiled it. Then it told me about declaring variables, and about how to take input from the keyboard. So I created four programs, each of which took two numbers as input, and either added them, subtracted them, multiplied them, or divided them, and displayed the output. I tried to go further, into making the program branch, to make one program that allowed you choose from a menu whether you wanted to add, multiply, subtract, or divide, but it got too complicated at that point. My ultimate goal was to create a simple text editor that opened whatever ASCII file you specified after its name, allowed you to edit it, saved if you pressed Ctrl-S, exited if you pressed Ctrl-X. I never got past the four calculators.

Note that I can create menus that allow selections to be made in MS-DOS Batch files, but I just couldn't do that in C. I've looked through C source code before, and its a nightmare of workarounds, defined functions, endless libraries, and dependencies. I once edited a libc5 Tetris program designed for Linux to work on a more current one, however. All I did was view the compiler output, see what functions were undefined, and searched for them on the internet. In one case, a function had been renamed, so I just took VIM, and had it replace all instances of the old name for it with the new one. In another case, the path to the library had changed. I edited the path in the include headers of the source files. GCC compiled it, and it ran. I was lucky it didn't involve any actual programming. I've been using computers since 1994, and I know how to create batch files, edit my autoexec.bat and config.sys, compile programs on Linux using standardized commands, and edit the registry. I also picked up on Latin rather quickly. Trust me when I say that the people who program in C are vastly more intelligent than I could ever hope to be, and I'm not sure you're smarter than me. Since I can do everything but program, I imagine their IQ would be about 30 points higher than mine.

[BenoitRen]

I already know C. I picked up the book to learn what C++ has added, and to learn about #define.

I've been programming since I was 12 (though in recent years I'm more involved with the web). I like to program. So it can't be said that I'm some newbie who thought he could mash something together just by picking up a book.

[athenian200]

I already know C. I picked up the book to learn what C++ has added, and to learn about #define.

I've been programming since I was 12 (though in recent years I'm more involved with the web). I like to program. So it can't be said that I'm some newbie who thought he could mash something together just by picking up a book.

Well, I guess you are smarter than me, then. I just thought since you said you were going to pick up a book that you hadn't programmed before. So, right now I'm using a nightly build of Firefox 3.0a2 on Windows XP (which I'm running on my primary machine, with a 2200MHz processor), but it doesn't seem that different, except that it has implemented support for a couple of rarely used web standards it didn't support before. The implementation seems pretty good, though.

I have never actually programmed anything, but if the thing that will make Firefox incompatible is the Cairo graphics library, and more use of Unicode, wouldn't simply porting that library, and changing the source code to use the Unicode libraries available for Windows 98 solve all the problems?

[oscardog]

I already know C. I picked up the book to learn what C++ has added, and to learn about #define.

I've been programming since I was 12 (though in recent years I'm more involved with the web). I like to program. So it can't be said that I'm some newbie who thought he could mash something together just by picking up a book.

Well, I guess you are smarter than me, then. I just thought since you said you were going to pick up a book that you hadn't programmed before. So, right now I'm using a nightly build of Firefox 3.0a2 on Windows XP (which I'm running on my primary machine, with a 2200MHz processor), but it doesn't seem that different, except that it has implemented support for a couple of rarely used web standards it didn't support before. The implementation seems pretty good, though.

I have never actually programmed anything, but if the thing that will make Firefox incompatible is the Cairo graphics library, and more use of Unicode, wouldn't simply porting that library, and changing the source code to use the Unicode libraries available for Windows 98 solve all the problems?

The person does not need to reinvent the wheel, but modify it to go round. I hope firefox do not close the trunk down which enables people to modify its source, and enable another up to date browser to function on 9x. In my opinion it is better to try and fail than to never to try at all, if this person who is attempting to extend our os`s lifespan by allowing a choice of a web browser then I wish them success.

Edited February 7, 2007 by oscardog