PS3 firmware 2.80 avaiiable
- Thread starter patsu
- Start date
Woah... you have some fast phone there. Does the phone browser support Flash ?
NetFront browser product page: http://www.access-company.com/products/internet_appliances/netfrontinternet/internet_appliances.html
I thought Sony rolled their own browser on PS3 (may be based on an earlier NetFront) ?
In October it support flash, its the HTC Magic, what i meant is that it works, is stable and can be used like i am used to. I don´t expect it to crash or not to be able to show certain pages.
Yeah, crashing is certainly a big no-no.
NetFront was a complete package for Flash + HTML viewing 2-3 years ago when PS3 bundled it. I do wonder what NetFront is doing now though. They should be planning something to bring their product up to date. I have seen HTML5 animation, media, database, local cache support in WebKit. If Netfront doesn't respond, it'd be hard for them to survive.
EDIT: Might be interesting to compile WebKit/GTK on PS3 Linux:
http://dt.in.th/2008-03-19.compile-webkit-gtk.html
NetFront was a complete package for Flash + HTML viewing 2-3 years ago when PS3 bundled it. I do wonder what NetFront is doing now though. They should be planning something to bring their product up to date. I have seen HTML5 animation, media, database, local cache support in WebKit. If Netfront doesn't respond, it'd be hard for them to survive.
EDIT: Might be interesting to compile WebKit/GTK on PS3 Linux:
http://dt.in.th/2008-03-19.compile-webkit-gtk.html
I played around with Yellow Dog Linux when I first got my PS3, a couple of years ago. It ran Firefox quite well, certainly better than NetFront has ever done on the PS3.
I imagine WebKit would do fantastically well.
While improvement is always welcome, the PS3 browser works fine for me as it is. Actually, I don't have any strong opinion on what needs to improve ever since they allow highlighting and copying of text. It works well for the websites I often visit (not media heavy) and the easy zoom allow me to lean back on my seat to read. Good enough for me. :smile:
Yes, in standalone mode I think it'd be fine. deathindustrial's points are hard to overcome though.
I caught a break at work and decided to try compiling WebKit/GTK on PS3. It looks like YDL 6.1 have trouble with 80Gb PS3 WiFi. YDL 6.2 is due next Monday. Will see how it goes.
Webkit was around 2-3 years ago, as was Gecko. Both support all of the HTML5 whiz-bang features and are being actively developed for embedded/mobile use, and were back then as well too.
Even if Sony has a deal with NetFront, they should drop it and move to Webkit like the rest of the world. Everybody wins, except for the makers of NetFront...
Yes..I've seen that when I play a 60hz game it works just like it does outside of the game minus the icon loading time but even then the icon loading time is faster in 60hz.
But when I am playing a 30hz game it works slower, its a pretty obvious guess since games which have their FPS locked have a custom refresh rate of the Framerate at which they are locked in.
The timeframe is wonked. PS3 was released on Nov 2006. The Netfront browser would have been developed on Cell processor at least 9 months ago. With negotiation started even earlier. Apple's WebKit was open sourced around June 2005. It's probably too new to consider.
I agree, but I don't want to lose Flash. So they'd have to combine their WebKit port with their existing Flash work.
EDIT: About the new 64 character limit in XMB Chat... there seems to be a bug when using a real keyboard. On a monitor, the message still get clipped at 32 character. I have to bring up the virtual keypad (press ^), and continue typing in that keypad to type beyond 32 characters.
On a HDTV, I could type all the way to 64 characters in the message box directly.
Webkit was simply a fork of KHTML, which has been around and open sourced since 1998.
Re: Flash...Flash is just a plugin, even in Netfront...is it not? I don't understand why the HTML/CSS engine needs to be so tightly tied to Flash. If it is, Netfront is even worse than I ever imagined.
Edit: Nokia even managed to fully port Webkit/KHTML to Series 60 Symbian phones in 2005, well before the PS3 was out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Browser_for_S60
If Nokia could do it for an awful OS like Symbian on an embedded platform, Sony could absolutely have done it in the PS3.
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I believe the first sign of KHTML + Apple collaboration was in 2002/2003. It doesn't mean Sony should go after it right away though. WebKit has deviated from KHTML since then. I am salivating over WebKit's 100/100 ACID3 score right now. I believe the Konqueror effort scores lower in ACID3.
Netfront got Flash working. Sony has to start somewhere given the tight schedule.
Yes, but no Flash ? Netfront is a complete package, deployed on many consumer devices too.
EDIT: I should really get that WebKit compile going.
The reason they score lower is because it uses an older build of the webkit engine. In 2007 the codebases of KHTML and Webkit were "unforked" (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2007/07/the-unforking-of-kdes-khtml-and-webkit.ars).
ACID3 is nearly completely pointless. It checks edge cases cherrypicked by the author that most browsers failed. They're situations and cases most websites don't use now, or ever will. It serves a purpose to ensure that all browsers render exactly to spec, but the problem with ACID3 is now everyone looks at it like some kind of barometer for HTML/CSS implementation features, which it most certainly is not. For instance, people are crying that Firefox 3.5 only scores 93/100 on ACID3 even though it has a far more complete HTML5, CSS2/3, and JS1.7/1.8 implementation across all browsers.
Eg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(HTML_5)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(ECMAScript)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(Cascading_Style_Sheets)
Other clarifications:
KHTML and Webkit are now, and have been since 2007, working together on the same codebase now. Webkit was a fork, but the KHTML folks have announced they're going the Webkit codebase now that Apple has agreed to remove all Apple-specific hardware code from the Webkit codebase itself.
Even before Apple got involved with Webkit, KHTML has been a very clean, very small, very easy to implement and very standards-compliant rendering engine that attracted the attention of companies like Nokia and, ultimately, Apple. Presenting it like KHTML was some kind of unknown enigma or not usable until Apple got involved is not at all accurate.
The simple, unadulterated truth here is that KHTML/Webkit was the best choice in 2004/2005 when Sony was developing this at first, and it's only becoming increasingly more obvious that it's the best choice now. Sony needs to toss out their pride and/or arrogance and hop on the Webkit train to save themselves time and money and to give the users a browser that doesn't remind me of trying to surf the web in iCab in 2001 (where things mostly work, most of the time, but it has enough quirks to drive me bonkers).
What? Netfront implemented their own flash runtime? That can't be true.
I'm sure Adobe would be more than happy to provide a Flash plugin runtime for the PS3. They provide it even for a PocketPC 2002 iPaq, don't see why they couldn't for the PS3. I'm pretty sure they were actually involved in working with Sony to get Flash working inside the NetFront browser. AFAIK NetFront has absolutely nothing to do with Flash, just like Webkit and Gecko have nothing to do with Flash.
But anyway, yes...Nokia's webkit web browser has Flash support.
I actually got to try this out for the past couple days. I took out half the RAM in my 1GB machine in hopes of selling the parts from this PC since I'm upgrading and I've experienced my browser locking up temporarily at an image heavy forum thread. Also performance is decreased when switching tabs there is a lag before the tab is switched, I can hear the HDD being accessed as the tab is switching(virtual memory). It's also more sluggish in pages with a lot of flash or lots of images.
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What browser and OS? I viewed more image-rich threads on my 512MB Win2000 machine. At this point I'd say your machine wasn't perfectly on form. I have FireFox struggle to load some images on some pages, for example, where IE has no problem with them. I think your suffering software issues.
I'm using WinXP and Firefox. So far I've experienced one temporary browser lock-up on an image heavy forum thread and noticed some browser sluggishness. My machine is the same aside from the RAM change, performance wasn't an issue before.
Feel free to dismiss this though. Nothing I can do about that. I don't want to dedicate the time to yet another multi-page argument with you and patsu trying to beat me into submission.
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Yes, but no one could foresee what they want to do. Plenty of open source project didn't go anywhere. Sony needs something they can implement quickly and maintain. Now given WebKit's success, it's a different story.
According to their product sheet, Flash is provided by NetFront. So it's more likely that NetFront worked with Adobe to port Flash over. Adobe is very selective in porting Flash. They won't port it to any device just yet. Even on PS3, we only have Flash 9 instead of Flash 10.
Anyway, I have started to compile Epiphany, which uses WebKit now. Quite a few libraries are outdated on YDL 6.1. I will try to install YDL 6.2 and continue. Am keen to see how much memory it takes (by default), and how it compares to the PS3 FireFox.
For my latest project (on-going for 9 months now), I use low memory Windows instances day in and day out on a Mac Book Pro (I'm going to be stucked in one the entire day today). Watching trailers and display images is hardly a problem. Afterall, most of these images are just jpeg files. Some of the image heavy site with girl pictures may have Flash ads, or malicious ads which are crash-prone. That's why I don't install Flash on the web browser in these instances. I have separate VMs for Flash-enabled browsers (among other things).
In any case, hulu has blocked PS3 as a legitimate browser (using the "User Agent" field). If I have the time, I will set up a simple application level proxy to swap the User Agent field.
I can't help but read these posts and think you're making excuses for Sony.Yes, but no one could foresee what they want to do. Plenty of open source project didn't go anywhere. Sony needs something they can implement quickly and maintain. Now given WebKit's success, it's a different story.
According to their product sheet, Flash is provided by NetFront. So it's more likely that NetFront worked with Adobe to port Flash over. Adobe is very selective in porting Flash. They won't port it to any device just yet. Even on PS3, we only have Flash 9 instead of Flash 10.
Anyway, I have started to compile Epiphany, which uses WebKit now. Quite a few libraries are outdated on YDL 6.1. I will try to install YDL 6.2 and continue. Am keen to see how much memory it takes (by default), and how it compares to the PS3 FireFox.
KHTML had momentum well before the PS3 came out. Apple released Safari based on it a full 3 years before the PS3 was released. It is simply not valid to say no one knew what would become of the codebase when it was already being rapdily adopted by big names such as Nokia and Apple.
And regarding Flash, are you kidding when you say Adobe is picky about where it ports Flash?
Flash currently runs on:
Windows
Mac
Linux
Solaris
Windows Mobile/PocketPC
SymbianOS
Maemo
Android
It's in Adobe's interest to put Flash runtimes on as many devices as possible. The only reason there's not one on the iPhone is because Apple is keeping it off the platform -- Adobe made one for it.
Seeing as there's tens of millions of PS3s out there, connected to HDTVs, I can guarantee you that if Adobe partnered with Netfront to get Flash working, they would partner with Sony to get it working.
It is nonsensical to portray the situation like the only practical way for Flash to get on the PS3 would be to do it with some horridly awful proprietary no-name browser like Netfront.
It's pretty clear to me someone at Sony didn't do due diligence. Which would not be at all surprising given their track record with the PS3 to date. Not going with KHTML/webkit was a mistake, and there's really no way around that. They're not stuck with footing the bill on trying to make a crappy browser more usable when they could be leveraging the work done by others free of charge. A mistake, nothing more.
For non-mainstream platform ? I think they only do it if someone pays them. They won't release and maintain the port for PS3 or iPhone for no reason or for free. Adobe seems to be milking it. They announced Flash 10 on the same day Sony/Netfront released Flash 9. In some cases, the port may be done by the licensees.
Over a year after iPhone's release, we are now hearing that Flash may finally come to iPhone (due to successful business negotiation). All these "hassles" are sidestepped by licensing Netfront (web browser + Flash + other mobile markup language parsers). Would be great if they can migrate to WebKit and keep the Flash compatibility.
Which service pack are you both using? It makes a huge difference if one is surfing with SP1 or SP2 (let alone SP3). I know 512MB is barely using IE6 and SP2 on my laptop, but I wouldn't want to try tabbing and don't have hundreds of websites open.
What also makes a huge difference is what websites I have open. If I have a website open that features some flash video and at the same time some annoying Flash-Ads, the browser does lock up occasionaly or slow down considerably.
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