Fabien “Fab” Coeurjoly has released Origyn Web Browser 1.7 for MorphOS. HTML5 video and audio is provided through FFMpeg, supporting a wide range of codecs (Ogg/Theora/Vorbis, MPEG4, H264, AAC, MP3, Wav). Highlights of the change log follow.
- Updated to OWB SVN r1369, Curl 7.20
- Implemented HTML5 Media backend (<VIDEO> and <AUDIO>) through FFMpeg:
- Support for most common codecs: Ogg/Theora/Vorbis, MPEG4, H264, AAC, MP3, Wav, …
- Builtin controls support
- Sites like dailymotion/openvideo, youtube/html5 and vimeo work
- Known issues/limitations:
- Audio output uses AHI music unit at the moment, which is unfortunately exclusive. It’s still possible to play several sounds at once with this mode, by setting AHI music unit to: “Unit 0:
” - Each media instance requires one exec signal in OWB main task, which means there can be 5 concurrent media players at most (depending on other OWB options that can also eat signals)
- Fullscreen mode isn’t implemented yet
- The whole media is stored in memory (sorry for this one, it will be handled in a more elegant way later)
- Audio output uses AHI music unit at the moment, which is unfortunately exclusive. It’s still possible to play several sounds at once with this mode, by setting AHI music unit to: “Unit 0:
- Added search engine configuration window
- Implemented JavaScript window modes for popups (no toolbar, no status, window size, …)
- Improved keyboard support, more texteditor shortcuts work now: ctrl+a (select all), ctrl+[shift]+z (undo/redo), ctrl+b/u/i (bold,underline,italic)
- Added ctrl+wheel combination to zoom in/out
- Added status images for local/internet/secure/insecure areas
- Reworked history popup in completion mode, so that the typed text is shown (as bold/underline) in the matching entries in the list
- Added “Open all bookmarks” entry for quicklinks folder
- Allow to restart a finished download
- Changed options regarding session restoration at startup (always/ask/never).
- Slight adjustments in cookie parsing (fixes MobileMe)
- Don’t show authorization window with uncomplete 401 responses
- The form credentials saving system now allows to ignore some sites, by pressing “never” button, when asked if credentials should be saved
- Disable gzip on-the-fly decompression when downloading, since it seems to create some confusion
- Removed the lame googlemap bug workaround and integrated the proper fix from WebKit
- Changed some options defaults: history popup, network thread, experimental cookies and favicons are now enabled by default
Full change log, download links and a screenshot are at the bottom of the announcement.
All in all, looks great. It’s good that smaller operating systems are finally having the opportunity to participate freely on the Internet. A decline in Flash use will also give even more credence to systems like Haiku, AmigaOS and MorphOS. It is no bad thing when I can develop with the latest features, and even if I don’t test on MorphOS (like so few web developers will), there’s still some guarantee that it will work. Even lazy developers will be able to inadvertently support MorphOS users!
Great to see a small project get the video tag working IMHO. And it supports Theora *and* h264!
Well done devs!
Too bad it doesn’t run on Windows. The ballots screen needs more browsers!!
It says a lot when a virtually unheard of web browser for a platform that occupies less than 1% market share is a whole set of standards ahead of the most widely used browser on the planet built by the biggest software house in history.
On a related note: Am I right I believing OWB boasts a webkit engine?
You are.
Edited 2010-03-08 14:15 UTC
It is really great to see how fast OWB for MorphOS is progressing. Not too log ago browsing the net with MorphOS was rather limited, but today it is really quite up to date again. And it is not only the underlying techniques, but also many well thought small additions that make the program pretty convenient.
In the meanwhile I ditched Opera (on Win or OS X) as my main browser in favour to OWB on MorphOS. It is very, very stable, conveniently fast and supports the latest standards.
Only the flash support could be better (as on all platforms that don’t have official support from Adobe), albeit pretty useable for many things though.
Hats off for Fab – he really did a good job!
great news indeed!
Cool, but it’s a very bad idea to just pass anything in a video tag through to ffmpeg. It’s a great library, but I absolutely guarantee you there are a ton of security vulnerabilities in it.
Interesting reading: http://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.com/2009/09/patching-ffmpeg-into…
When I looked at ffmpeg’s main.c a few years ago there was at least a function in there with over a thousand lines of code in it.
I don’t know if things have changed since then, but it doesn’t give me confidence in its use.
That’s OK. MorphOS is a case-study in security thru obscurity. There are probably less than 100 people on the planet who even code for it anymore.
Sir, are you suggesting that only lazy developers do not target MorphOS?
Well Some are lazy and some are la$ee. Tough to tell the difference when you pronounce them the same. Simple mistake really.
Me, I’m too lazy to be la$ee. Or maybe there really isn’t any difference between ignoring a platform because you forget about the platform, or ignoring a platform because its not worth your time to invest any resources in it.
I’ve seen the port to Amiga OS3.9, but it hasn’t been updated in a while.
Bring on the classic Amiga web browsing goodness! Or something…
I want ffmpeg to be integrated into firefox! (And arora and rekonq.)
I hear a lot of debate about codecs (H.264 vs. Ogg) but what about the containers supported in HTML5?
To playback a file, I think the SRC can point to a .mp4 file, or a .ogm/.ogg file. What other containers are supported?
How about live video? If I want to stream live content with HTML5, how is that done? What containers are supported? MPEG2-TS like for Apple Adaptive HTTP streaming? Has anyone done live streaming with HTML5?
Edited 2010-03-08 21:54 UTC
Please stop using Ogg when referring to Theora.
Ok, I know this is off topic, but it’s a genuine question. I’m not trying to flame the guys on GNUStep either, I know they have their (few) hands full.
But is there a reason why every single platform on earth is sporting a Webkit implementation except for the one in which it seems to make more sense: GNUStep?
You gave the answer — porting WebKit is highly nontrivial. Perhaps all it takes is one dedicated developer, but he would have to be quite experienced in GNUstep and also willing to put in many hundreds of hours.
You can’t just adapt the OSX port because calls to CoreFoundation are sprinkled throughout. Also, if you ask the WebKit people, they would strongly suggest a cleanroom port for future maintainability.
I know it is hardly the same….but I heard there was an SDL port of OWB. I don’t know how far that went or if it is still maintained, but one would think that would be somewhat easier to port. I would think an SDL port of OWB/Webkit rendering engine should be useful as a fallback for all OSes. You could then develop your own OS native browser application around it. Sure it would be lowest common denominator, but highly portable and especially useful for modernising the browsing experience for the more obscure OSes and hardware platforms out there. I could even see the rendering engine being embedded in applications for several purposes.