Plan 9 / 9front - Netsurf (browser) porting effort

Originally Posted by rhimbo I saw an article a while back about Google's plans to phase out the user agent string in Chrome.

And replace it with what, that is the question.
Or maybe: phase out because they already have much better means of identifying clients.

PS: why not share a real link?

The Haiku browser seems to use WebKit, probably it detects the “Apple” substring.

I haven’t managed to try 9front with NetSurf just yet - too much stuff going on, currently. I’m curious for screenshots though!

Originally Posted by Mill J Google might end up creating a de facto standard.

Ha, Netscape was first (“Mozilla/“)!

Originally Posted by ondoho And replace it with what, that is the question. Or maybe: phase out because they already have much better means of identifying clients. PS: why not share a real link?

Here is the "real" link... if that is what you were referring to....
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google...ngs-in-chrome/

The plan is to replace it with "client hints" according to this article:
https://wicg.github.io/ua-client-hints/

I'm not sure if Mozilla has proposed something recently. Yes, Mozilla was first way back when, but I don't know if they are proposing anything today that might compete with or be an alternate proposal to Google's client hints.

That's what I meant by de facto standard. If no other mechanism is proposed, Google's might become the "latest de facto" standard.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe The Haiku browser seems to use WebKit, probably it detects the “Apple” substring. I haven’t managed to try 9front with NetSurf just yet - too much stuff going on, currently. I’m curious for screenshots though!

Here's several. As you can see, images don't work yet, and if you look closely you might be able to see that cirno load and syscalls are almost 100% when loading a page. As far as building the browser, it didn't take long at all. Luckily I had git9 installed already.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe Ha, Netscape was first (“Mozilla/“)!

That's the user agent of plan9, even Netsurf uses that.

Thank you a lot!

Looks like someone should work on fonts too...
Or rather, maybe the NetSurf libraries (Duktape, the HTML/CSS libraries et cetera) could be integrated in Mothra? Hmm.

Originally Posted by rhimbo Here is the "real" link... if that is what you were referring to.... https://www.zdnet.com/article/google...ngs-in-chrome/ The plan is to replace it with "client hints" according to this article: https://wicg.github.io/ua-client-hints/

Thanks.
Of course they know how to make themselves look like the good, privacy loving guys in this, when in reality they want to "fine tune" user data aquisition.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe Thank you a lot! Looks like someone should work on fonts too... Or rather, maybe the NetSurf libraries (Duktape, the HTML/CSS libraries et cetera) could be integrated in Mothra? Hmm.

Yes fonts would help. However right now I think the two most important things would be better img support, and speed, since it's painfully slow. I wouldn't be surprised if some components could be used to enhance Abaco and Mothra.

Everything net-related that was invented after Plan 9 is painfully slow in Plan 9 ...

Abaco is still maintained?

Originally Posted by ondoho Thanks. Of course they know how to make themselves look like the good, privacy loving guys in this, when in reality they want to "fine tune" user data aquisition.

Yes, I agree with you completely. I did not mean to imply that I agree with, support or advocate for Google. I was just saying that if the industry does not try to create consensus, Google might create the latest de facto standard as a result of their size and influence. If that happens, everyone might just very well decide to captivate and follow. I think that would be a mistake as I agree that Google is good at making themselves appear to be altruistic but in fact are quite the sinister imp wreaking havoc.

I thought that it might be interesting for browsers to get involved now to create a fair standard that has design goals of insulation from the complex historical browser lineage and also privacy and so forth.

Perhaps other projects such as Plan 9 could be influential by partnering with browser authors who agree to build something standard, safe, private and robust. I think there might be strength in several projects supporting each other. A good OS like Plan 9, a reputable browser or browsers that work closely with the OS platform to deliver high performance, light-weight foot print and security, etc.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe ) Abaco is still maintained?

Wikipedia says it's discontinued. And after using it, I'd tend to believe that.

Ha!

Meanwhile, I asked on the IRC about merging Mothra and NetSurf, and I was told that it probably wouldn't be worth the effort instead of writing a native UI from scratch. Well, good to know at least.

Originally Posted by rhimbo Perhaps other projects such as Plan 9 could be influential by partnering with browser authors

The current version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux uses the 9P protocol to ensure integration of the virtual Linux drive...

Well, I haven't gotten around to trying Netsurf with 9front, because I'm having too much fun with Haiku. And WebPositive is a decent browser, but I'll have to check out the other options, too, I believe Netsurf is one of them.