Date: Thu, 21 May 2020 17:54:03 +0200
To: 9front@9front.org
Subject: [9front] netsurf native frontend

Hi,

I've just committed the initial release for the netsurf native
frontend.  Feature-wise it is almost on par with the framebuffer
frontend except for images that are not handled yet.  I tried to make
it look and behave like a native application but would like to have
some feedback on this.

All code is in the main repository: http://github.com/netsurf-plan9

In order not to mess with the current framebuffer frontend, I created
a separate mkfile found in netsurf/mkfile.native.  To build this new
frontend, just run mk as usual and then run mk -f mkfile.native in the
netsurf directory.

Regards,
Philippe

Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2021 13:30:48 +0100
To: 9front@9front.org
Subject: [9front] netsurf news

Hi,

After a somehow long hiatus I recently resumed work on the netsurf
port and I feel that given
the number of changes this deserves some kind of "release notes".

First, I would like to thank Ori for taking care of keeping the tree
in sync with upstream, Sigrid and
Michael Forney for their various patches.

Build:
- All dependencies are now vendored in the organization repo so no
more reliance on our beloved ports.
- Framebuffer frontend is gone as I don't have the time nor interest
in maintaining both ports.

Performances:
This was the major drawback of the port and was mainly caused by my
initial event scheduler implementation
along with the webfs backend.  Both were rewritten to fix slow loading
times.
In addition, special care has been taken to ensure redraws are done
only when and where (ie screen area) necessary.
With all of this done, netsurf now has reasonable performances.

Image support:
- image support is now enabled by default.
- basic SVG support has been added (still needs some work).

Plumbing:
- netsurf supports incoming plumb messages and will either open the
page or (like mothra) forward the link content
to the image port (for images and ps/pdf documents)
- text plumbing is also supported
- any unrecognized link url (e.g.  mailto: or gopher://) is sent to
the plumber

UI:
- menu2 changes based on where you click (web page, link or image)
- mouse text selection is now possible in address bar (thanks sigrid)
- rio-like text selection with double-clicks
- mouse chording for snarf/cut/paste
- native keyboard shortcuts (^U, ^W, ...) for address bar and html
textfields
- ^B focus address bar, ^G focus the web page
- "galaxy brain scrolling"
- native looking tick (or is it called caret ?) in html forms

New features:
- configuration is saved in $home/lib/netsurf (you can change
homepage_url from there for instance)
- file downloads
- text search (look in menu2)
- web search (search in menu3).  Search engine can be changed from the
menu in the top-left corner of the window and is saved across
sessions.
- bookmarks support
- history support: all time history is available through menu3,
session history is available by right-clicking the 'back' button
- ability to enable/disable javascript through menu3 (js/nojs)

Bug fixes (main ones as this mail is already long enough):
- libcss issue leading to netsurf crashing on some sites
- fix js and svg crashes due to too harsh fp rules (thanks ori)
- scrolling was not clipped to page bounds (thanks mforney)
- various drawing enhancements (thanks mforney)
- force user-agent to fix some sites not rendering properly
- html frames not rendering properly

Please share any bugs or feature requests you may have.

--phil