No Browsers for NeXTstep?

Hanul asks this decent question: "I tried NEXTSTEP (3.3/PA-RISC) for the first time a few days ago. I think it still looks great compared to other GUIs and configuration is very easy. While I was surfing the Web with a 4-year old browser, OmniWeb 2.7, I experienced something unsatisfying: No Java, no JavaScript, no Plugins, nothing a surfer needs today. There are a lot of sites which state plainly: no access, your browser is too old. I wonder why the OS where the WWW was invented on by Tim Berners-Lee has no current browser. I know NeXT doesn't exist anymore and there is no (official) support for NEXTSTEP from Apple. But there a lot of obscure OS with decent browsers (AmigaOS, RISCOS) and it seems that every UNIX flavor in the world has one port of Mozilla except for NEXTSTEP. Of course it has no X (natively) and no current Java available, but I expected more geeks out there (with some respect to history) who are willing to give NEXTSTEP an up-to-date browser."

Comments

Hi, I am a proud Vic-20 user who needs help...

[duffbeer703]

Why aren't any Opensource developers developing cutting edge web browsers for the Vic-20???

The Vic is all the computer anyone needs, and is plenty fast. Yet I don't see a BASIC webbrowser project on sourceforge??

What the heck??

Re:OPENSTEP

[vapfy]

Sadly, no.

HP-RISC support was short lived - it's only in 3.2 and 3.3. It was dropped from 4.0 before release.

If the poster's serious about having a modern browser on NeXTstep, he'll have to install X11 and use remote display from another machine. It might - might! - be possible to hack Mozilla enough to get it to build on a NeXTstep + X11 install but you'd have to have a lot of time and patience.

If you decide to install X11, use Xnext (http://www.peanuts.org/peanuts/NEXTSTEP/X11/serve r/Xnext/) - the other X11 packages for NeXTstep are either horribly broken or commercial dead-ware.

Best of luck.

-josh, former SQA geek at NeXT

Re:Try NextStep version 4: several browsers availa

[RevAaron]

Uhh... Mac OS X is like NeXTSTEP 5, or even 6.

There was an OpenStep 4.0 (and 4.1, 4.2), as well as Rhapsody DR1, Rhapsody DR2, *and* Mac OS X Server. Way beyond 4 man.

Performance

[psleonar]

One problem you may run into: extremely slow performance rendering HTML. This is because OmniWeb, in those days, used the very elegant Object-Oriented architecture of NeXTStep to process HTML. In fact, the flowchart looked like this:

HTML -> SGML -> RTF

(RTF was one of the formats that the Display PostScript engine could display natively, and it was pretty easy to map HTML's bold and italic onto it.)

Sounds slick, right? Unfortunately, until NeXTStep 4.2 (?) the text object was not multi-threaded. This was never a problem until web browers were invented, and suddenly the system had to do things like format web pages based on data from the network. IIRC, later versions of the OS did have a multi-threaded text object, but the upgrade was really expensive even for Academic customers. The OS's hinderance of good browser performance contributed to the death of NeXTStep (not that it needed any help in this regard.) I suppose Omni could have re-written their rendering engine to not rely upon the OS's text object, but that would kind have defeated the purpose of developing on the platform.

I don't know enough about OmniWeb nowadays to say whether it uses equivalent services under OS X...

Re:This wins my award for...

[RevAaron]

Heh. Silly AC. But s/he does have a point. This was a rather stupid Ask Slashdot. That's not to say most of the other Slashdot stories aren't stupid. *shrug*

Omniweb or X11

[Mike Miller]

Two general directions. Go get Omniweb or another NeXT based browser from a respectable archive (ftp://ftp.peak.org/next-ftp/next/apps/internet/ww w/) or run a X client/server pair on the box (strangely VNC doesn't seem to be available, but that might be worth further research: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/) and try and get mozilla or some other 'modern' browser running using X for the graphical display. It's BSD deep under all that fancy exterior and display-level postscript, and it will run X11 with some help (ftp://ftp.peak.org/next-ftp/next/X-for-NeXT/).

Sadly, lack of a decent browser is what pushed me from using my nice NeXT cube with a 19" monitor to a Linux box with a 13" monitor around '96.

- Mike

$400 for Y2K compliancy?!!??

[green pizza]

Hold on there fella... Apple had a huge Y2K upgrade program for NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. Users of NEXTSTEP 0.9 - 3.2 got a free upgrade to 3.3 as well as free patch CDs to bring 3.3 fully Y2K compliant. Users of OPENSTEP 4.0 & 4.1 got a free upgrade to 4.2 as well as patches. Developer tools were thrown an and upgrade as well. When I called to request the updates for my machines, I politely asked if I could get OPENSTEP even though I was using NEXTSTEP, they said sure and mailed me both. Within 3 days I had a huge package from Apple full of CDs, (boot) floppies, and manuals. Where did you get the $400 quote?? Are you talking about the OS itself or the software running on it? Any app that correctly used the NeXT date routines should be Y2K complaint.

Re:$400 for Y2K compliancy?!!??

[wmulvihillDxR]

While I wasn't directly responsible for researching the Y2K compliance of our machines, my boss was, so I heard about it. I don't even remember what version was running. Let me give you some additional pieces of info:

1. This WAS a CS department and so it is possible that they had some funky apps or things that weren't explicitly supported by Apple. And thus, we would have paid for upgrading that component
2. I absolutely remember that $400 is what it was going to cost PER machine.
3. We changed all these servers and workstations from NEXTSTEP to Linux the summer of 1999. I don't know if that program was in place when we decided to go with Linux.
4. Like I said, this was a school site and so they might have had some upgrade agreements from the past. Who knows?
5. I really think that the $400 was for upgrading the OS.

That all said, NEXTSTEP rocked because of the easy application builder. But Netsurfer was dog-slow. Although it was cool to have those spiffy looking black PREFECT cubes around.

Re:Try NextStep version 4: several browsers availa

[James Lanfear]

Not to mention that OS X probably won't run too well on a PA-RISC machine.

Re:OPENSTEP

[MrBogus]

The way I got a hold of OpenStep 4.2 + developer software:

1) Bought a cube :)
2) Dug around Apple's site until I found a Y2K upgrade form. Filled out serial number and requested OpenStep 4.2 and faxed it in.
3) OpenStep for Mach and Intel showed up at my door 2 days later.

So, if you have any old NeXT stuff (or just the serialz), better get your Y2K upgrade today.

VNC for NeXTStep

[john_updyke]

Check out Frank Siegerts excellent suite of programs at http://www.this.net/~frank/ and you can get a VNC client from there. Works nicely on black hardware and 3.3.

Must be a conspiracy!

[hatless]

H-h-hey! There aren't any good browsers for my TRS-80 Model III! I was thinking of migrating to a Sinclair Spectrum or maybe a Commodore 128. Are there any standards-compliant browsers for the Spectrum? And I don't mean Netscrape or Internet Exploder! Is Opera doing a Commodore port? If not, anyone want to start a petition? Maaaaan! The NeXT was *so* far ahead of its time that I bet a 33 MHz 68030 with NeXTSTEP would run Java *great*!!!!!

Also, can anyone recommend an open-source Apple II+ browser written in Applesoft BASIC that will run on my Coleco Adam?

Openstep for x86 hardware superseded the last OS for NeXT hardware years ago. The current "upgrade" of NeXTSTEP is Mac OS X on Apple G4 hardware.

Surely after using a NeXT box for what, 12 years? it might be time to think about getting a new computer. I hear you can get Pentium 166s that run Openstep 4.0 really well for about $30.

Re:OPENSTEP

[Xenex]

This has got me interested...

Where could someone get their hands on a copy of NeXT/OPENSTEP for x86? And are there any good websites around dedicated for it?

I had a quick search a few months back, and found nothing of excellent quality about it. I'd love to just play with it on some old hardware...

Any info would be appriciated.

get a mac

[burris]

Buy a mac and upgrade to NeXTSTEP 6.0, oops, I mean Mac OS X. burris

Netsurfer

[wmulvihillDxR]

I'm surprised no one mentioned NetSurfer. I remember playing with NeXTStep whenever the CS department still had it (they wisely upgraded to Linux rather than pay the $400 per machine to get the OS Y2K compliant.). Netsurfer was the default web browser if I remember correctly. But then I didn't know very much about the OS so I could have this wrong.