[HN Gopher] The end of TenFourFox and what I've learned from it
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The end of TenFourFox and what I've learned from it
Author : foodstances
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-03-29 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tenfourfox.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tenfourfox.blogspot.com)
| shrubble wrote:
| I remember sending off a particular weird DIMM that fit one of
| the floodgap machines, suprised that TFF has lasted as long as it
| has.
|
| It still mostly works with Archive.org and I was listening to
| some old radio shows using it and reading pdfs on the 12" MacBook
| G4.
| jamespo wrote:
| What a great post, the dev can write as well as they can code.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Modern browsers seem to be somewhat over their technological
| skis, so to speak. Next gen browser requires next gen runtime
| requires next gen library requires next gen compiler requires
| next gen system, etc.
| skyfaller wrote:
| As someone rooting for [NetSurf](https://www.netsurf-
| browser.org/) (and any other remaining independent browser
| engines) to survive, I wonder if they'd be better off not
| supporting Javascript at all and simply focusing on good support
| for modern HTML and CSS, so it can at least be used to read
| documents. If Javascript is what finished TenFourFox, maybe
| attempting to support the full weight of modern Javascript and
| web apps is a trap. Let the big browsers try to be an entire
| operating system.
|
| Ultimately I'm coming to think that Gemini may be the best hope
| for a simpler internet that individuals can contribute and
| manage.
|
| - https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/gopher-gemini-and-the-smol...
|
| - https://drewdevault.com/2020/11/01/What-is-Gemini-anyway.htm...
|
| Personally I love the Lagrange client on desktop, and the Ariane
| Android client.
|
| - https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/
|
| - https://oppen.digital/software/ariane/
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Many sites require JavaScript even if they don't really need
| it. Users won't use a no script browser because it locks them
| out of much of the web.
|
| Heck even web savy people find it too annoying to use the
| noscript addon.
| skyfaller wrote:
| But if supporting Javascript kills all independent browsers,
| wouldn't it be better to have some alternative than no
| alternative?
|
| Supporting a Javascript-less document-based web may be an
| alternative to creating an entirely separate ecosystem like
| Gemini. It's probably doomed as a compromise that pleases no
| one, but it might be worth a shot.
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Sure, I'm definitely not going to argue against some making
| the effort. And I don't want to sound too fatalistic.
|
| I just don't see a way for an alternative to be anything
| other than a tiny niche of like minded users. Which isn't
| bad in itself but it's also not really a true alternative.
| It's a fun extra, not a replacement.
|
| Can I use my government's website in a noscript browser?
| Can I buy from online shops? Can I use social media? Can I
| read my preferred news site?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Gemini's standard is missing several important means of
| semantic tagging that screenreaders need to properly deal with
| content. I feel that if we are going to replace HTML, we still
| need to ensure that the disabled are first-class citizens from
| day one of whatever new standard we use.
| caslon wrote:
| HTML already isn't meaningfully accessible. Gemini will still
| be an upgrade, because there's much _less_ to spam
| screenreaders with, by virtue of being effectively just a
| hyperlinked document layer.
|
| I think accessibility is critically-important, too, but
| acting like it's something required for success (however you
| define success) is denying the existence of the platform
| Gemini's already trying to supplant.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Plain HTML is fairly accessible, I'm not sure what you
| mean?
| skyfaller wrote:
| Yes, I agree accessibility is a vital concern that needs to
| be fully addressed before Gemini is finalized. Here are some
| posts I found using this Gemini search engine:
| gemini://geminispace.info/
|
| - gemini://tilde.team/~tomasino/journal/20200601-accessibilit
| y.gmi
|
| - gemini://gemini.marmaladefoo.com/blog/7-Sep-2020_Parsing_pr
| eformatted_alt_text.gmi
|
| - gemini://ebc.li/posts/alt-text-proposal.gmi
|
| You can run them through the Gemini web portal if you don't
| have a Gemini client yet:
| https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I think this is an interesting point. Now that nearly
| everyone uses the Internet, the bar for accessibility and the
| accompanying workload for implementing it is considerably
| higher than what it was in the 90's.
|
| There probably weren't as many accessibility advocates back
| then. But accessibility is still crucial to have from a
| modern standpoint.
| rvense wrote:
| I think there's a simpler, better solution than Gemini, that is
| Markdown over HTTP. Accept:
| text/markdown,text/plain;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.1
|
| I would love to see support for this in blogging engines.
|
| (Inspired by https://jcs.org/2021/01/06/plaintext)
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Funny this is the second reference to Gemini I've seen on HN
| today after only learning about it last week. The notion that
| Gemini is the best hope for a simpler global scale hypermedia
| library that individuals can contribute and manage, not to
| mention actually develop clients for, seems reasonable.
|
| For better or worse, the web is now an application development
| platform with two relevant implementations and zero hope of a
| third one arising. While not a perfect platform, its good
| enough. Maybe its time to accept this is what the web has
| become and let something like Gemini be the do-over that's
| focused purely on the role of globally connected hypermedia.
| anticristi wrote:
| > What should you do? Phrase it better. Post your reports with
| the attitude that you are just one user, using free software,
| from the humility of your own personal experience on your own
| system. Make it clear you don't expect anything from the report,
| you are grateful the software exists, you intend to keep using it
| and this is your small way of giving back. Say this in words
| because I can't see your face or hear your voice. Write "thank
| you" and mean it. Acknowledge the costs in time and money to
| bring it to you. Tell me what's good about it and what you use it
| for. That's how you create a relationship where I can see you as
| a person and not a demand request, and where you can see me as a
| maintainer and not a vending machine. Value my work so that I can
| value your insights into it. Politeness, courtesy and
| understanding didn't go out the window just because we're
| interacting through a computer screen.
|
| This should be part of bug reporting training.
| pwdisswordfish6 wrote:
| Strong disagreement from here.
|
| I don't want that kind of stuff in bug reports for the same
| reason that I don't want to have to deal with "hello", "good
| morning", from coworkers in messenger applications, and I will
| assume that for your sake you don't want to deal with it
| either, unless you explicitly say so.
|
| So if this is a requirement for writing and responding to bugs,
| then _you_ should "say it in words" that that's what you want.
| eropple wrote:
| The baseline expectation of social niceties is the lubricant
| upon which our _human_ systems run. That you don 't
| personally find them necessary, or even perhaps find them
| aggravating, does not mean that they should not be by-default
| valued in the recognition that the person at the other end of
| the line is a fellow human being with feelings and needs.
|
| It does not take much effort to _be nice_ in the general
| case. Your desire for efficiency does not supersede respect
| for others ' humanity. And, frankly--resentment at a coworker
| for saying "good morning"? _Yikes._
| Arainach wrote:
| I disagree. Bug trackers should be respectful, and users should
| know that they are just one user and be humble without
| demanding that things are fixed immediately or otherwise
| showing anger/entitlement.
|
| That doesn't mean they should write prose in their reports. Bug
| reports should be precise and should make it obvious what's
| happening to allow them to be quickly triaged and understood.
| They should ideally be a bulleted list with configuration, what
| was done, what happened, and what the user expected to happen.
| Logs/screenshots/etc. can be attached as necessary. It is
| incredibly uncommon for anything else to be necessary - and I
| say this from more than a decade of experience in enterprise
| and end user-facing software that gets thousands of
| feedback/bug reports per day.
|
| As part of a triage team, I'm going through bug after bug after
| bug. I don't want to read paragraphs. I don't want to read your
| life story. I don't even really want to read your "thank you".
| I want to read exactly what is necessary to assign the bug to
| an owner and to understand its priority - no more, no less.
| capableweb wrote:
| > and I say this from more than a decade of experience in
| enterprise and end user-facing software that gets thousands
| of feedback/bug reports per day
|
| > part of a triage team
|
| You have to realize your perspective is very different from
| the perspective of someone building small-scale open source
| software.
| Arainach wrote:
| Building small scale open source software, my time is even
| MORE valuable since I'm not even being paid to read your
| prose.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Thank you's are literally the only form of payment small
| scale open source developers tend to get. If no one cares
| about your project or likes it or shows appreciation then
| why bother with it or at least why bother responding to
| issues?
| altano wrote:
| "All these 'thank you's and 'please's are annoyingly
| adding to the verbosity of the bug reports!" said no
| small-scale open source software maintainer, ever.
| kenny11 wrote:
| Perhaps adding some prose along the lines of "Thanks for
| spending your time on this, I really enjoy using it" to
| these bug reports _is_ the payment.
| scythe wrote:
| For some reason I always think of an episode from _The Wire_.
| Rawls is dressing down McNulty for his latest infraction and
| orders him to have a report to the deputy tomorrow morning,
| and the points should have "little dots next to them. The
| deputy likes dots."
|
| Since then I always separate and mark specific items in a
| report, usually with bullet points. It turns out pretty
| often, the deputy does, in fact, like dots. But it's also
| important to avoid duplication.
| violiner wrote:
| > That doesn't mean they should write prose in their reports.
|
| I, too, would prefer bug reports written in verse.
| violiner wrote:
| It won't do what I want when I click it, So now I
| will open a ticket. It should do the right thing
| And not be a pain, Would you please help me out now
| and fix it?
| dylan604 wrote:
| iambic pentameter or haiku? my automated bug report
| diagnostic tools only read prose written by the Bard, so if
| you choose the wrong meter, your bug gets tossed to the
| "won't fix" category
| spicybright wrote:
| I kind of want that to exist, actually
| violiner wrote:
| It would be sweet if you could configure the forms and
| meters that it would accept.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This was such a wonderful project. It kept my 12 inch PowerBook
| G4 alive for far longer than expected.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| This is pretty indicative of the ability of anyone besides a
| fully staffed dev organization to maintain a web browser that can
| browse modern sites.
|
| I hope that the only people who are able to put in the effort to
| implement the ever growing web standards have good intentions and
| will not muck up what is quickly becoming too important of a
| communications medium for all of humanity.
| [deleted]
| thesuitonym wrote:
| The nice thing about the Internet is that if the web becomes
| too unwieldy, we can always throw it away and start something
| new.
|
| The great thing is that you don't _have_ to throw it away to
| start working on something new.
| sfink wrote:
| I found this to be very well stated: Write
| "thank you" and mean it. Acknowledge the costs in time
| and money to bring it to you. Tell me what's good about
| it and what you use it for. That's how you create a
| relationship where I can see you as a person and not a
| demand request, and where you can see me as a maintainer
| and not a vending machine. Value my work so that I can
| value your insights into it.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Congratulations on such a long and successful run for TenFourFox.
| It's a great project and losing TenFourFox will certainly spell
| the end of 10.4 daily driving and the many G4 machines which
| cannot be upgraded further. To me it is a testament to
| TenFourFox's capability.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Author here. Thanks for the kind word. It's not a post I wanted
| to make, but I think it's the post I should be making, for all
| the reasons I wrote.
| psim1 wrote:
| I've got a G4 "arm-lamp" Mac that I occasionally boot up for
| fun, and it runs TenFourFox quite nicely. I have appreciated
| the project and had no idea it was the effort of a single
| developer/maintainer. Thank you.
| classichasclass wrote:
| There certainly are other contributors, but it's largely
| me. Thanks for the kind word. I have a 1.25GHz 15" iMac G4
| myself. A beautiful form factor which deserves to be
| revived.
| visiblink wrote:
| I just wanted to chirp a "Thanks" here for all the work
| you've done to keep gopher going. I'm a daily user, have a
| small presence, and your work as an ambassador and steward of
| the protocol is greatly appreciated.
| classichasclass wrote:
| I never intended to be the de facto BDFL for Gopher, but it
| sort of ended up that way. Still, I'm glad to see others
| appreciate its unique qualities and find it useful.
| skyfaller wrote:
| I want to thank you as well.
|
| I've been really enjoying Gemini, and I don't think it
| would have happened without the resurgence of interest in
| Gopher. I want to make sure Gopher survives for
| retrocomputing, so that Gemini doesn't feel compelled to
| support the full weight of backwards compatibility for
| computers pre-dating the Web, and Gopher doesn't feel
| pressure to extend and update for modern needs (like
| privacy in a world of total surveillance). We need both,
| I think.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > Nowadays front ends have become impossible to debug by
| outsiders and the liberties taken by JavaScript minifiers are
| demonstrably not portable.
|
| I'm very surprised. What are the ways these JS minifiers are
| producing unportable JS? Do minifiers just remove white space,
| shorten variable names, and some may do some dead-code-
| elimination and inlining? How can JavaScript be non-portable?
| [deleted]
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This is a great project. My ex still relies on it on my old 2007
| MacBook. I know she should upgrade. But for some people a
| computer is just something you use once a year to update your CV
| or something.
|
| But I understand it can't be supported forever. Thanks for
| supporting it as long as you could!
|
| PS: I know many people that would be interested in old computers
| would also block tracking. I certainly do. So you won't see the
| entire userbase in the stats.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Thanks. Yes, I'm sure there are more than ping the server for
| updates, and a lot more machines that just come out
| occasionally. It's fun seeing others rework it to support old
| Intel machines even though it was never built for that. At this
| point, though, it's just a matter of acknowledging the wall is
| approaching even if we haven't hit it yet.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Writing and maintaining a browser engine is fricking hard and
| everything moves far too quickly for a single developer now.
| However, JavaScript is what probably killed TenFourFox quickest.
| For better or for worse, web browsers' primary role is no longer
| to view documents; it is to view applications that, by sheer
| coincidence, sometimes resemble documents. You can make
| workarounds to gracefully degrade where we have missing HTML or
| DOM features, but JavaScript is pretty much run or don't, and
| more and more sites just plain collapse if any portion of it
| doesn't. Nowadays front ends have become impossible to debug by
| outsiders and the liberties taken by JavaScript minifiers are
| demonstrably not portable. No one cares because it works okay on
| the subset of browsers they want to support, but someone bringing
| up the rear like we are has no chance because you can't look at
| the source map and no one on the dev side has interest in or time
| for helping out the little guy. Making test cases from minified
| JavaScript is an exercise in untangling spaghetti that has welded
| itself together with superglue all over your chest hair, worsened
| by the fact that stepping through JavaScript on geriatic hardware
| with a million event handlers like waiting mousetraps is absolute
| agony. With that in mind, who's surprised there are fewer and
| fewer minority browser engines? Are you shocked that attempts
| like NetSurf, despite its best intentions and my undying
| affection for it, are really just toys if they lack full script
| runtimes? Trying and failing to keep up with the scripting
| treadmill is what makes them infeasible to use. If you're a
| front-end engineer and you throw in a dependency on Sexy
| Framework just because you can, don't complain when you only have
| a minority of browser choices because you're a big part of the
| problem.
| anthk wrote:
| QuickJS would work fine in both Edbrowse and Netsurf.
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| I hope someday a similar endeavour will be attempted for macOS
| Mojave (which I intend to stay on because of its support for
| 32-bit applications, removed in later versions of the OS).
| timw4mail wrote:
| Has any browser been discontinued for Mojave yet?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| We've got one going back to Lion. :)
|
| https://github.com/blueboxd/chromium-legacy
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(page generated 2021-03-29 23:01 UTC)