Only in small amounts, it's quite expensive and can be wasteful if not used well. If I have a stubborn bug that I've been chasing for awhile I'll have it do a targeted session, but I haven't found it much better than Opus for this work.
-
Hello Guest! We're hosting a challenge to welcome vintage Intel macs to the MLA during the month of July! See this thread for more information. -
We've made some quality of life improvements to the Trading Post. More info here.
MacSurf — a real NetSurf-based browser for Mac OS 9 (CSS3, ES5 JS, native HTTPS)
- Thread starter ptricky
- Start date
dunno about "obsolete" -- web standards are generally designed to be backwards compatible and degrade gracefully
it's not like this project is aiming to keep up with the latest multimedia, 3D accelerated canvas, enterprise grade requirement shenanigans
I would chalk down the death of the Mozilla fork projects to the severe difficulty of working in the Mozilla code base
just my 2 cents... keep up the great work @ptricky !
MacSurf 1.68 "macQJS" is out
The big one this release: MacSurf's JavaScript engine has been replaced. Duktape (ES5) is gone and MacSurf now runs macQJS, a QuickJS port that executes modern ES2023 JavaScript natively on a PowerPC running Mac OS 9. Real sites' real scripts run without being dumbed down first.
Headline changes:
Requires a Power Mac G3/G4, Mac OS 9.1–9.2.2, CarbonLib 1.5+.
See the full release notes and download here: https://github.com/mplsllc/macsurf/releases
You can also download it from the non ssl version of macsurf.org.
If you run into any issues please let me know so I can get it fixed! In many cases it runs much better on real hardware vs emulation so results will vary.
The big one this release: MacSurf's JavaScript engine has been replaced. Duktape (ES5) is gone and MacSurf now runs macQJS, a QuickJS port that executes modern ES2023 JavaScript natively on a PowerPC running Mac OS 9. Real sites' real scripts run without being dumbed down first.
Headline changes:
- New JavaScript engine (macQJS / QuickJS, ES2023) — modern JS runs as-is; the old ES6-to-ES5 transpiler is retired
- Text input actually works with a visible blinking cursor, click-and-drag selection, Cut/Copy/Paste, and Tab between form fields
- Logins stick and signing in to a site now keeps you signed in
- Near-instant startup with the about ~17-second launch delay is gone
- Bookmarks menu, a Downloads manager (HTTPS downloads now work), and working window Maximize. Minimal but a start.
- Faster pages with image and font disk cache, plus lazy images that load as you scroll instead of all at once
- Lots of rendering fixes such as full-width forum layouts, downloadable web-font icon glyphs, better text spacing, and cookie-consent bars you can actually click
Requires a Power Mac G3/G4, Mac OS 9.1–9.2.2, CarbonLib 1.5+.
See the full release notes and download here: https://github.com/mplsllc/macsurf/releases
You can also download it from the non ssl version of macsurf.org.
If you run into any issues please let me know so I can get it fixed! In many cases it runs much better on real hardware vs emulation so results will vary.
Last edited:
If you give it a shot and run into an issue with being unable to load any sites let me know! Chasing a bug I can't replicate and need some logs. Thanks!
ALSO - try this version if you do have the blank screen issue:
https://macsurf.org/MacSurf168b.sit
ALSO - try this version if you do have the blank screen issue:
https://macsurf.org/MacSurf168b.sit
MacSurf 2.0 has been released!
A whole family of cross-signed HTTPS sites now validate on the Mac, including macintoshgarden.org , which loads here over a secure connection. And image-heavy forum pages that used to take a minute or two now come up in a few seconds thanks to viewport-gated lazy image loading. The address bar gained type-ahead autocomplete with a suggestions dropdown, and there are now real History and Bookmark manager windows.
http://macsurf.org/builds/MacSurf2.sit
https://macsurf.org/builds/MacSurf2.sit
https://github.com/mplsllc/macsurf/releases
What MacSurf can as of today:
A whole family of cross-signed HTTPS sites now validate on the Mac, including macintoshgarden.org , which loads here over a secure connection. And image-heavy forum pages that used to take a minute or two now come up in a few seconds thanks to viewport-gated lazy image loading. The address bar gained type-ahead autocomplete with a suggestions dropdown, and there are now real History and Bookmark manager windows.
http://macsurf.org/builds/MacSurf2.sit
https://macsurf.org/builds/MacSurf2.sit
https://github.com/mplsllc/macsurf/releases
What MacSurf can as of today:
- Loads more of the HTTPS web. The TLS stack now reorders out-of-order
certificate chains, so cross-signed sites (macintoshgarden.org among them) open securely instead
of falling back to plain http. - Fast on heavy pages. Off-screen images load only as you scroll to them,
cutting big forum threads from minutes down to seconds. - Type-ahead address bar. Autocomplete from your history as you type, with
a dropdown listing the other matches. - History and Bookmark managers. A persistent, clearable, day-grouped
history (Cmd-H) and a folder-based bookmark manager with drag-and-drop (Cmd-B). - Modern JavaScript on-device (macQJS). Real ES2023 via a QuickJS port,
no transpiling, no offload. - Native HTTPS. A hand-written TLS 1.3 stack (macTLS) with the full Mozilla
CA bundle, talking straight to live sites over Open Transport. - Real text input. A blinking cursor, click-drag selection, Cut/Copy/Paste,
and Tab between form fields. - Logins stick. Sign in to a forum or account and stay signed in, cookies
and sessions persist. - Modern CSS. CSS Grid, flexbox, custom properties (var()),
gradients, shadows, transforms, and downloadable web-font icon glyphs. - A refreshed interface. A new toolbar, animated loading Puffin icon and
progress bar, a pill-shaped address bar, and a downloads manager.
OK, I'm here to sound the alarm on MacSurf on something that started SUDDENLY happening just hours ago, that too after I gave multiple, extensive contributions to its latest versions to steer it in the right direction on Macintosh Garden recently:
The weirdest part is that this is all COMPLETELY out of nowhere. Still so puzzled about it.
The weirdest part is that this is all COMPLETELY out of nowhere. Still so puzzled about it.
Last edited:
MacSurf is a solo project, I have a discord server for suggestions and issues. I will not be using Macintosh garden for any of that and need to centralize my work because it's too taxing to try and juggle the different location. Github cleanup was long overdue and I was merging branches and removing unnecessary files. 68kmla is the only other forum I will be regularly active.
That doesn't explain any of the following:
- Deleting your existing comments. Nothing to maintain there;
- Spending a lot of time and effort to go out of your way to remove ANY mention of Macintosh Garden EVERYWHERE, even going so far as to RE-release Macsurf 2.0 when 2.0.5 was already out. You EVEN went so far as to remove mention of download links for things such as CodeWarrior if they were pointed to the Garden, only to redirect it to the Suppository exclusively. What's the point of THAT?;
- Spending further time to remove all your MacSurf downloads from its Garden page.
If you want to only be regularly active on 68kMLA, or Discord, that's all 100% fine obviously, but your response just now makes ZERO sense.
That was simply because I wanted to make a release and not lose the direct link out in hackaday. You're being paranoid.
Please do ellaborate. There's not a SINGLE word I said that is untrue. If there is, show evidence, or argue.
In fact, this is not even an attack at you: it's a WARNING for USERS to BE CAREFUL with MacSurf acting suspiciously. And a fair, balanced criticism of how you handled this, while also ACKNOWLEDGING that, if you want to, you CAN provide an explanation for it. Which NOW you are, but, again, makes ZERO sense.
Ok, now FINALLY we have some DISCLOSURE of the alleged thought process. Still doesn't explain it at all: the Discord of the Garden is a WHOLLY different beast: almost none of the Garden regulars use it, because Discord is HARDLY accessible from a real Mac OS install. And the Garden FORUM/ARCHIVE consists of mostly people that use the forum/archive ONLY, both for that and other reasons.
I don't know what idiots at the Discord channel said to you, but on the Garden forum you received LOTS of support from the VAST MAJORITY. We even defended you against a naysayer or two that were going on about "AI slop" this and that. You MISchanneled your frustration with some Discord kiddies (or men children) towards the Garden itself, IN SPITE of all the visible support and cheerleading you got there... And THAT is what is quite telling.
I was being reasonably careful, as explained so far.
You're upset because you feel disrespected, I never meant that and tried to reply to your comments and thanked you for all the effort. I'm sorry you feel slighted. It was not my intention yet I did so I apologize. My decision to wipe the information was my own and again I am sorry it disrespected your efforts with the project.
Thank you for the private messages, apology is 100% accepted. Again, sorry from my side as well if, in any way, shape or form I overstepped or said anything that was out-of-order. Again, take your time to "settle down", and make sure to continue on things only if you feel happy with it. Don't let the naysayers get to ya.
Everything discussed is 100% ontopic and pertaining to MacSurf. I discussed not only Garden content, which is one of the 3 places the project was officially hosted, but also the GitHub repository, so please do not misunderstand.
I'm not misunderstanding anything. You're referring to a Discord discussion nobody here knows about, and I'm kindly asking you to keep things cool.