Many things are supposed to happen on the net side of the amiga, and
I tried to make a sort of all this...
There are currently 5 browsers on amiga, two of these can be
forgotten for 'serious browsing' (if it exists) (AMosaic and ALynx,
the latter being a text only browser).
On the remaining three, (V, Aweb, and IB), many announces have been done
for V and IB, development of Aweb is very silent (but I'm not sure
there's already been an announce on Aweb development). Aweb is
supposed to be delivered with OS3.5 (certainly because it's the only
one not laying on a Mui interface), and maybe this version will be
enhanced a bit ?
On the IB side, I often read things like 'IB2.0 to be released', but
never saw a feature list (except at omnipresence outdated an never
updated website ). Sometimes IB's author posts news such as the
'long wait is over' or 'really soon now', but in my opinion, it
really looks like a dead project. The team has been divided by 6, the
updates that used to be released every 4-6 months haven't shown for
almost one year... And the basic browser is being so outdated in
terms of features that I'm not even sure that Ibrowse users expect JS in top
priority ... Dunna what to expect from this one.
On the V side since recently we've been given a nice list of
progresses, most of them being major functionnalities.. What's more
Olli told us to expect it before 5 monthes (he said 6, but almost a
year ago), and it's getting so much different from the current V
version that it appears to me like a new browser (new interface,
new decoders, plugin api, new bookmarks, new formats supported,
recent html support... ) ( I sometimes wonder if Olliver 'bates'
Wagner has a second personality (Stefan Stuntz?) :)...
On the 'vapor' side, we have Iprobe (at the very beginning of the
project), Opera (that sometimes is dead, sometimes is active),
Webcruiser (hin hin) and AMozilla... Many people expect Amozilla to
be the ultimate browser, it's the only one that we could see screen
shots, and many signs of activity are frequently shown... The things
that disturb me on this projects are that the people who communicate
on this don't look to agree on what we'll find in it... I noticed
they mentionned VRML in their IRC conference but didn't quote it in
the feature list they published one day after.. What's more so much
external parts from the original code are announced to be supported
that it's hard for me to believe... And of course there is the usual
'communicator is a buggy turtle' point of view...
So paradoxally, when too much happens, nothing happens... We hold our
breath expecting for mozilla to come out (early may they said, late
may the say (and "make an urgent port of XP connect if you want to
be able to maintain your port in the future" the mozilla site says)),
and I suppose other browser teams do the same.
Will it be a free upgrade ? how much will it cost ?
In my opinion most browser makers can't answer to this now...
The previous policy that to was be the first to support a given
feature looks to have given the place to a try to have the best
browser ready-to-release, keep quiet about it (to be able to
adjust the features to what the competition offers), and wait the strategic
time to release....
Just a compilation of my personal thoughts...
Phil
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