NetSurf
Encyclopedia
NetSurf is an open source
web browser
which runs on a variety of platforms including RISC OS
, AmigaOS
and Unix-like
systems. NetSurf has features that include tabbed browsing, text selection and PDF export. Running on other platforms is also possible by building from source, with the developers intending to add further binaries when time can be found to do so.
The NetSurf project was started in April 2002 in response to a discussion of the deficiencies of the RISC OS platform's existing web browsers. Shortly after the project's inception, development versions for RISC OS users were made available for download by the project's automated build system
. NetSurf was voted "Best non-commercial software" four times in Drobe Launchpad's annual RISC OS awards between 2004 and 2008.
, and implements most of the HTML 4
and CSS 2.1
specifications using its own bespoke layout engine
. As of version 2.0, NetSurf uses Hubbub, an HTML parser that follows the work-in-progress HTML5 specification. As well as rendering GIF
, JPEG
, PNG and BMP images, the browser also supports formats native to RISC OS, including Sprite, Draw and ArtWorks
files. , NetSurf has no support for JavaScript
.
Work on a GTK port
began in June 2004 to aid development and debugging. It has since gained many of the user interface features present in the RISC OS version. The browser is packaged with several distributions including Ubuntu
and NetBSD
.
A native BeOS
/Haiku
port has been developed. Since the GTK version was built for AmigaOS
, using Cygnix which provides an X11 environment, a native AmigaOS port has also been developed. In January 2009, NetSurf was made available on MorphOS
, an operating system that is API-compatible with AmigaOS. Work has started on a Windows
port, but as of September 2009 no official releases have been made.
A framebuffer
port was created in September 2008. Unlike the other ports, it does not use any GUI toolkit, but instead renders its own mouse pointer, scrollbars and other widgets. The framebuffer front end has been used to create a web kiosk on embedded systems.
In January 2010, the NetSurf Developers announced the release of what they expect to be the last release for RISC OS
. This is at the Wakefield RISC OS show in April 2010. Team spokesman Michael Drake said at the time "Realistically, the people qualified to maintain the RISC OS port are up to their necks in other stuff."
January 2011 saw the announcement of a Mac OS X
port. At the time of the announcement, it has to be built from source.
Since February 20th, 2011, a port to the Atari 16/32 bit computers is available from http://freeshell.de/~monokrom/geeklog/index.php?topic=20110219230358215
repository on 15 August 2007.
NetSurf 2.0 was released in April 2009 for RISC OS, Unix-likes (e.g. Linux), AmigaOS 4, BeOS and Haiku. In May 2009 NetSurf 2.1 was released, with improvements to page layout and bug fixes.
2009. The projects they ran included development of LibDOM, the project's Document Object Model
, and improvement of NetSurf's user interface. The interface work included moving previously RISC OS-only functionality to the multi-platform core, including bookmarks, global history, cookie management and page search features. A port to the Windows operating system was also started. In 2010 the NetSurf project did not apply to participate in Google Summer of Code due to the developers having other commitments.
NetSurf also participated in Google Summer of Code in 2008 as a mentoring organisation, running four projects. These included improving the GTK front end, adding paginated PDF export support and developing the project's HTML 5
compliant parsing library, Hubbub. All NetSurf development builds since 11 August 2008 have used Hubbub to parse HTML and it is available for use in other projects under the MIT license
.
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
which runs on a variety of platforms including RISC OS
RISC OS
RISC OS is a computer operating system originally developed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England for their range of desktop computers, based on their own ARM architecture. First released in 1987, under the name Arthur, the subsequent iteration was renamed as in 1988...
, AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
and Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
systems. NetSurf has features that include tabbed browsing, text selection and PDF export. Running on other platforms is also possible by building from source, with the developers intending to add further binaries when time can be found to do so.
The NetSurf project was started in April 2002 in response to a discussion of the deficiencies of the RISC OS platform's existing web browsers. Shortly after the project's inception, development versions for RISC OS users were made available for download by the project's automated build system
Build Automation
Build automation is the act of scripting or automating a wide variety of tasks that software developers do in their day-to-day activities including things like:* compiling computer source code into binary code* packaging binary code* running tests...
. NetSurf was voted "Best non-commercial software" four times in Drobe Launchpad's annual RISC OS awards between 2004 and 2008.
Features
NetSurf's multi-platform core is written in ANSI CANSI C
ANSI C refers to the family of successive standards published by the American National Standards Institute for the C programming language. Software developers writing in C are encouraged to conform to the standards, as doing so aids portability between compilers.-History and outlook:The first...
, and implements most of the HTML 4
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
and CSS 2.1
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
specifications using its own bespoke layout engine
Layout engine
A web browser engine, , is a software component that takes marked up content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer...
. As of version 2.0, NetSurf uses Hubbub, an HTML parser that follows the work-in-progress HTML5 specification. As well as rendering GIF
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
, JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
, PNG and BMP images, the browser also supports formats native to RISC OS, including Sprite, Draw and ArtWorks
Artworks
ArtWorks is an advanced vector drawing package for RISC OS created by Computer Concepts in 1991. It has been developed by MW Software since 1996. Xara has continued to develop a Windows version called Xara Photo & Graphic Designer....
files. , NetSurf has no support for JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
.
Ports
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
began in June 2004 to aid development and debugging. It has since gained many of the user interface features present in the RISC OS version. The browser is packaged with several distributions including Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
and NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...
.
A native BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
/Haiku
Haiku (operating system)
Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....
port has been developed. Since the GTK version was built for AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
, using Cygnix which provides an X11 environment, a native AmigaOS port has also been developed. In January 2009, NetSurf was made available on MorphOS
MorphOS
MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...
, an operating system that is API-compatible with AmigaOS. Work has started on a Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
port, but as of September 2009 no official releases have been made.
A framebuffer
Framebuffer
A framebuffer is a video output device that drives a video display from a memory buffer containing a complete frame of data.The information in the memory buffer typically consists of color values for every pixel on the screen...
port was created in September 2008. Unlike the other ports, it does not use any GUI toolkit, but instead renders its own mouse pointer, scrollbars and other widgets. The framebuffer front end has been used to create a web kiosk on embedded systems.
In January 2010, the NetSurf Developers announced the release of what they expect to be the last release for RISC OS
RISC OS
RISC OS is a computer operating system originally developed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England for their range of desktop computers, based on their own ARM architecture. First released in 1987, under the name Arthur, the subsequent iteration was renamed as in 1988...
. This is at the Wakefield RISC OS show in April 2010. Team spokesman Michael Drake said at the time "Realistically, the people qualified to maintain the RISC OS port are up to their necks in other stuff."
January 2011 saw the announcement of a Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
port. At the time of the announcement, it has to be built from source.
Since February 20th, 2011, a port to the Atari 16/32 bit computers is available from http://freeshell.de/~monokrom/geeklog/index.php?topic=20110219230358215
Releases
After five years of development, the first stable version of the browser was released on 19 May 2007 to coincide with the Wakefield RISC OS show. Version 1.0 was made available for download from the project's web site and the software was sold on CD at the show. Since the release of NetSurf 1.0 there have been two point-releases, which have largely comprised bug fixes. In August 2007 and March 2008, these maintenance releases were made available for RISC OS and as a package in the Debian GNU/LinuxDebian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
repository on 15 August 2007.
NetSurf 2.0 was released in April 2009 for RISC OS, Unix-likes (e.g. Linux), AmigaOS 4, BeOS and Haiku. In May 2009 NetSurf 2.1 was released, with improvements to page layout and bug fixes.
Google Summer of Code
NetSurf was accepted as a mentoring organisation into Google Summer of CodeGoogle Summer of Code
The Google Summer of Code is an annual program, first held from May to August 2005, in which Google awards stipends to hundreds of students who successfully complete a requested free or open-source software coding project during the summer...
2009. The projects they ran included development of LibDOM, the project's Document Object Model
Document Object Model
The Document Object Model is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use...
, and improvement of NetSurf's user interface. The interface work included moving previously RISC OS-only functionality to the multi-platform core, including bookmarks, global history, cookie management and page search features. A port to the Windows operating system was also started. In 2010 the NetSurf project did not apply to participate in Google Summer of Code due to the developers having other commitments.
NetSurf also participated in Google Summer of Code in 2008 as a mentoring organisation, running four projects. These included improving the GTK front end, adding paginated PDF export support and developing the project's HTML 5
HTML 5
HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, and is a core technology of the Internet originally proposed by Opera Software. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard and is still under development...
compliant parsing library, Hubbub. All NetSurf development builds since 11 August 2008 have used Hubbub to parse HTML and it is available for use in other projects under the MIT license
MIT License
The MIT License is a free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . It is a permissive license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software provided all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms...
.
See also
- Browser timelineBrowser timelineA time line of web browsers from the early 1990s to the present. Prior to browsers, many technologies and systems existed for information viewing and transmission...
- Comparison of web browsersComparison of web browsersThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.-Historical web browsers:...
- List of web browsers