Otter Browser
Paul Sprangers (346) 495 posts |
I haven’t found a website needing javascript that cannot be accessed by Firefox yet, but if you want examples of such pages that cannot be accessed by Netsurf, I can give you plenty! The built in web page of my printer, for example. But somehow, I feel that this is not what you mean. |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
Dynamic areas: I notice that Otter’s claimed Dynamic area doesn’t clear automatically when the browser is quit/crashes: seemingly the only way to clear it is by rebooting. FWIW, I find here (Pi B, 512MB RAM, RC14, 17-2-15 ROM) that once the claimed DA exceeds 200MB or so Otter crashes, so it would be helpful if the DA could be cleared by quitting Otter as required. Apart from that, the latest iteration is more responsive than previous versions (using it now :-), and I look forward to the next release. |
Rick Murray (539) 13469 posts |
The DebugTools module has a useful |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
Have searched the ROOL site and my Pi’s SD card without success (the former contains a somewhat elderly (2012) thread about it but nothing else that I could find: any suggestions where the DebugTools module might be obtained would be welcome! |
Matthew Harris (1462) 36 posts |
George, Try the ‘Bonus binaries’ at: https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/common It’s in ‘Modules.Developer’ |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
Cheers! |
Raik (463) 2031 posts |
I’m a little bit confused. How can I save the URL as text from Otter? |
Chris Gransden (337) 1164 posts |
There’s an updated version of Otter Browser available from here. It needs an updated libssl library installed first. Download from here. Just copy the Resources folder over the one in !Boot. It’s now based on the 0.9.09 development version. The full list of recent changes are here. There are no further RISC OS specific updates apart from the date appears in ‘Help→About Otter’ so you can see if you have the latest version. If you have Otter Browser installed using PackMan it’s just a matter of installing available updates. One of the new features is ‘Address Field Suggestions’ when typing in a URL. It might be worth disabling this as it can cause problems entering URLs. Untick the boxes in ‘Tools→Preferences→Advanced→Browsing’ |
GavinWraith (26) 1541 posts |
That is all very well, but where is the ‘Tools’ button? There are neither text nor icons visible in the Otter window that I can see – RO5.23 on Rpi2. |
Chris Gransden (337) 1164 posts |
If no text is in the window it normally means that !UnixFC and !UnixFont haven’t been seen by the filer before Otter browser has been run. |
GavinWraith (26) 1541 posts |
Thanks. That was the problem. |
Chris Gransden (337) 1164 posts |
Here’s a useful tip for speeding up Otter browser. First turn off Javascript globally. ‘Tools→Preferences→Advanced→Content’. Untick ‘Enable Javascript’. In other news. Lee Noah has done some fixes to Qt5Webkit which enable the Javascript JIT to be turned on. While it still has a lot of problems it does speed up page loading on the ones that work successfully. |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
@ Chris: thanks, that’s a useful tip (I had already discovered that disabling JS adds a bit of responsiveness, but hadn’t realized that it could be re-engaged so easily). Does Otter remember the per-page preferences on re-loading, or does the right-click procedure need to be followed each time? Copying and pasting text into writable fields does not seem to be operational yet (I’m using the latest 09.9 version) – is that correct? |
Chris Gransden (337) 1164 posts |
It does. The overides are stored in !Boot.Choices.Qt5.config.otter.override/ini. You can manually delete them from the file if turning on Javascript for a particular site causes a hang/crash.
Copy and pasting only works within the Otter browser window/s. Just highlight the text with select and then hold select and drop the text where required.
I haven’t used NetSurf since getting it up and running. |
David Feugey (2125) 2696 posts |
I know you porting it and not making it, but a good idea would be a tool to disable JS automatically (for the website that causes some problems) when crashing. |
Bryn Evans (2091) 31 posts |
I have tried to run the last two releases of Otter with no success. Each time on clicking on the Icon, there is a short pause, then an error “Unable to move memory” This is using R Pi B and the December release of RiscOS 5.23 (Zero Pain) Obviously I have missed something ! Can anyone advise. This is not urgent – I am just curious to try it out. |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
I can confirm that both of the last two releases of Otter will run reliably on the Pi B under 5.21 (RC14), and – somewhat faster – on the Pi 2, also under 5.21 (RC14). I did a hand install of the previous release, and used !PackMan to install the 9.09 upgrade on the Pi 2, both worked. I wonder if Zero Pain is the issue here? |
Ralph Barrett (1603) 127 posts |
Just a reminder that not all Pi B’s are the same. The original version had 256Mbytes or RAM whereas the final version had 512Mbytes of RAM. Otter needs lots or RAM. Perhaps the original issue is with a 256Mbyte Pi B ? Ralph |
Rick Murray (539) 13469 posts |
I’m no longer using it1. It is nice to have a WebKit browser running under RISC OS, but the memory consumption is absolutely shameful and looking at Yahoo! mail actually managed to run out of memory on a 256MiB Pi. As such, I can’t recommend it if you have less than half a gig onboard. So… Maybe when I get myself a Pi2…… ;-) 1 Not a big deal for me, I have the tablet that I can use if I need a good browser in less time than it takes the PC to start up. |
Chris Mahoney (1684) 2129 posts |
I see that the latest update to Otter (through PackMan) installs CaCertificates into !Boot.Resources, but it has no !Sprites file and therefore gives “File ‘<Obey$Dir>.!Sprites’ not found” when booting the system. I think the version bundled with QupZilla included sprites, so it’s probably worth fixing the version in PackMan – I’m assuming that whoever maintains it (Chris G?) is reading this :) |
Chris Gransden (337) 1164 posts |
Thanks. I’ve added the missing !Sprites file. Should appear in PackMan in the next day or so. |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
Started having problems with Otter (pages wouldn’t render correctly; images missing) so de-installed and re-installed it today using PackMan. Found I had to manually delete !Boot.Resources.SharedLibs after which re-installation proceeded normally. Rebooted, and on the first re-start I thought the installation had failed – the Otter welcome page took over 5 minutes to appear, subsequent launches behaving normally. I’m posting this in case anyone else using Otter has had the same experience – I don’t remember it happening the first time I installed, but I may be mistaken. |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
Otter’s still behaving oddly, despite the reinstall. I have JS disabled and images enabled in Tools-Preferences-Advanced-Content, but on loading pages some or all of the graphics are missing (for example, the Google home page will lack the ‘Google’; the ROOL Forum page will lack ‘RISC OS Open’ and the cogwheel symbol). In their place appear boxes with question marks, similar to what you get in Firefox or Explorer on a PC when you’ve set up not to download images for security reasons. Reloading the page sometimes (but not always) restores the graphics, likewise disabling and re-enabling images in Tools-Preferences-Advanced-Content. For the pages in question, Website Preferences-Content have images enabled, with Override unticked. I’ve noticed that the footer bar showing loading progress will continue to show ‘Document 100%’ and ‘Elements’ still to load where graphics are wholly or partially missing. It looks as if some setting is preventing graphics being displayed, but it is not doing so consistently. I’m running Otter 0.9.10-dev;20160122, WebKit Backend 538.1; OpenSSL 1.0.2e 3 Dec 2015. Any/all advice gratefully received. |
Chris Gransden (337) 1164 posts |
I think it’s to do with the disc cache. A work around is to turn off the cache. Type ‘about:config’ in the URL bar. Click on the ‘+’ sign next to ‘Cache’. Change both values to ‘0’. Make sure you click on save for each one. |
George T. Greenfield (154) 724 posts |
@Chris: that seems to have done the trick, thanks. You know your way around Otter pretty well, it would seem! |