Re: Boiling the Oceans [was Re: GNUstep Live on OSnews]

[Xavier Brochard]

A lightweight browser for reading docs is good _only_ if the engine is embed 
in the documentation browser — see what kde has done with konqueror. 
Otherwise it doesn't make sense to launch 2 browsers (Firefox for 
"monstrosities" and a second, lightweight one, for docs and lightweight 
sites), because Firefox + another browser launched at the same time doesn't 
makes things lighter.
You would even prefer to read the docs in Firefox — only one process.

Le 02 août, 19:31:23 Ivan Vučica a écrit :
> Context of this discussion is offering a representative desktop to users.
> It started due to comments on osnews, right?
> 
> If we are discussing what kind of browser we would have to offer to make
> comments less negative, then something that cannot run "monstrosities" is
> not the answer.
> 
> Actual users want the "monstrosities".
> 
> And JavaScript is not even the toughest nut to crack in these cases. DOM
> and a zillion other standards are.

> 
> For something that can browse docs on a Raspberry Pi, sure, SWK is good (I
> didn't dismiss it in the previous email, I'm not doing it now). But unless
> I can offer the browser to my aunt and she can use it to message my nephew
> using Facebook, I cannot expect them to use it. And even if I replace
> Gmail, I would be upset if I couldn't order stuff from Amazon.
> 
> That is not even taking into account things like intranet services or
> government websites.
> 
> We can talk about Dillo or NetSurf or SWK in context of reading
> documentation or tech enthusiasts being very, very aware of the
> limitations. But not in the context of majority of users who have very
> different needs than "I want to run this on RPi". If they are unable to
> open "monstrosities", I would not consider solved the problem of the
> browser on a reference GNUstep system or a live CD.
> 
> On Wed, Aug 2, 2017, 20:05 Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it>
> 
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Ivan Vučica wrote:
> > > That is, if we added manhours which we don't quite have, and SWK could
> > > become usable on, say, top 50 sites of the modern web, it would no
> > > longer be lightweight
> > > 
> > > Would you consider it lightweight once it could run Facebook desktop
> > > experience? Or Google Docs? No matter what one may think about
> > > particular products, sites like this are what's important for a
> > > regular user to consider something a browser.
> > 
> > It should not support them! not in full experience at least... to use
> > those monstruosities you can barely use Firefox.
> > That is why I usually have two browsers installed on all of my systems.
> > 
> > As I wrote, being an GNUstep version of NetSurf or Dillo would be a
> > medium term goal for SWK+Vespucci and I think it would be useful and
> > cater to people who like  simple and fast thigns.
> > As said, something I can run on my Raspberry easily. It should be
> > capable of displaying GS documentation for example. Wikipedia "well
> > enough" without full stylesheets. It should be able to make searches in
> > things like duckduckgo
> > 
> > No JavaScript or, medium-term, simple enough JavaScript to perform some
> > basic operation that are useful
> > 
> > Otherwise it would be indeed a full reimplementation. After all, there
> > is not such difference in "weight" between the major browsers. I think
> > Gecko is one of the best, but not the fastest. I don't like the chrome
> > engine at all, even if it is embedded inside Opera, however it excels in
> > certain things.. Even IE 11 has its superiority to the other two. But
> > once you punch these through big interactive sites (like cloud sites)
> > they all will require tons of memory and at least 2 Cores.
> > 
> > I explicitely chimed in when I saw NetSurf cited.
> > 
> > Riccardo