#63533 - psionicgeek - Wed Dec 14, 2005 2:02 am
Is it (will it be)possible to put a browser on the ds?The psp has one right?
Also Ive heard talk about linux ?
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#63538 - El Hobito - Wed Dec 14, 2005 2:32 am
possible? yes practical? not overly due to not a great deal of memory available. it may be more practical to owners of g6/m3/supercard
#63541 - Suddenly_Dead - Wed Dec 14, 2005 3:05 am
| El Hobito wrote: |
| possible? yes practical? not overly due to not a great deal of memory available. it may be more practical to owners of g6/m3/supercard |
Well, since the thread exists, I may as well say something. Wouldn't web browser be possible to GBAMP users with a port of something like Lynx or Links2? Of course, they're not the most slick way to surf, but they do work quite well, and naturally use little memory.
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#63542 - psionicgeek - Wed Dec 14, 2005 3:44 am
Can you put e-books on the ds?How?
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#63554 - Darkflame - Wed Dec 14, 2005 5:06 am
Of course it will be practical..the DS is a portable wi-fi machine and it has a touchscreen.
(I dont get why some people list something as impractical, just because it cant take over 4MB in Ram...browseing without pictures isnt *that* bad you know....you could also have a selective option to view one pic at a time later)
I have a Sony CMD-J5 phone which which is monocrome, text only, tiny screen, low res....and yet it still has a web browser on it!
I dont know how much Ram it has, but I dought its as much as the DS has.
I can post to forums fine from it, query google, and check my webmail.
Id personaly love a little web browseing app on my DS that could do all these things :)
It would be quite some work, but I dont see any hardware reason why not too.
| Quote: |
| Can you put e-books on the ds?How? |
GBAMP ? Moonshell? Multiboot?
GBAMP's built in one works best still thanks too its bookmark save functions.
#63584 - El Hobito - Wed Dec 14, 2005 3:32 pm
| Suddenly_Dead wrote: |
| Wouldn't web browser be possible to GBAMP users with a port of something like Lynx or Links2? Of course, they're not the most slick way to surf, but they do work quite well, and naturally use little memory. |
yeah lynx would work great and i would expect someone will try port that first.
after all the browser is loaded in your only realistically gonna have around 2-3 megs of ram and considering i've heard the psp's browser has problems with running out of memory not all sites will be viewable. were talking browsing full standard html web sites here not text only wap. although not a great example my firefox needs 130 MBs of ram at the mo.
#63586 - Dudu.exe - Wed Dec 14, 2005 4:20 pm
My Siemens MC60 has a browser that works very fine.. it resize some imagens and remove anothers.. ansd its perfeclty readable on its tinny screen!
nas DS hardware is MUCH better then my Cell phone..
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#63605 - Darkflame - Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:12 am
Wasnt wap.
I was viewing sites completely unintended for mobile phones (like this one, for instance).
You really dont need that high requirements to read basic HTML and translate it onto the screen. Unless the webpage is massively big, it should fit into ram fine.
(and even if it dosnt, cache the page on the compact flash, and then view it a bit at a time...speed isnt that important is it? Its not like a game)
Theres a lot you can do with even basic websites.
For instance, some sites let you use ICQ/MSN from your broswer. (and I am not talking about java or such).
It is amazingly crude, mind.
#63609 - knight0fdragon - Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:23 am
theres a lot of useless crap on IE and Firefox, you could probably build a decent browser using maybe a meg of RAM, in fact, it would be interesting to build an html interpreter, even if it didnt have net support at the moment
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#63610 - m2pt5 - Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:24 am
| Darkflame wrote: |
| (and even if it dosnt, cache the page on the compact flash, and then view it a bit at a time...speed isnt that important is it? Its not like a game) |
I suspect there would have to be different versions written for different cards, then. (And I could see one for Supercard that runs the browser in the DS's active memory and uses the Supercard's RAM for caching images and such... 32MB may not be much, but it's plenty for web browsing.)
Also, while I doubt it'll be practical / doable, I'd suggest whoever wrote a browser for DS implement the flash player that's also being worked on, because there are many pages that use flash nowadays.
| knight0fdragon wrote: |
| in fact, it would be interesting to build an html interpreter, even if it didnt have net support at the moment |
That will probably be done before an actual net-enabled web browser is.
#63611 - knight0fdragon - Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:28 am
[quote="m2pt5Also, while I doubt it'll be practical / doable, I'd suggest whoever wrote a browser for DS implement the flash player that's also being worked on, because there are many pages that use flash nowadays.
[quote]
That there will probably end up eating all your RAM and CPU, since flash in itself is slow and loves to eat RAM
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#63613 - El Hobito - Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:49 am
| Darkflame wrote: |
Wasnt wap.
I was viewing sites completely unintended for mobile phones (like this one, for instance).
You really dont need that high requirements to read basic HTML and translate it onto the screen. Unless the webpage is massively big, it should fit into ram fine.
(and even if it dosnt, cache the page on the compact flash, and then view it a bit at a time...speed isnt that important is it? Its not like a game)
Theres a lot you can do with even basic websites.
For instance, some sites let you use ICQ/MSN from your broswer. (and I am not talking about java or such).
It is amazingly crude, mind. |
that partly what i mean by not overly practical.
as for using the cf card for cache is the worst idea ever since it would waste write cycles on the flash and ruin your card. using the extra 32 megs of the m3 and supercard would make a browser far more practical but quite tough since you'd need some serious memory management.
#63661 - alangerow - Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:04 am
I don't get the whole running out of memory stuff. Considering a web page won't hold more than a couple hundred kilobytes of data with images, how are you going to run out of memory. Even with a web browser taking up 2-3 MB of RAM space, that leaves plenty to display a single web page.
Is the PSP caching in memory visited web pages and that's causing memory problems? If so, don't do that. People will have to deal with non-cached pages. Or cache only the previously viewed page for one quick back page. Or, have an option to "cache this page" and save that page to temp RAM space and not every single one. Or not automatically downloading images could allow several hundred web pages to be cached.
Unless I'm missing something. Personally, I say learn from the PSP's browser short comings ... don't use them to limit what you think can be done on the DS.
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#63672 - paco1234 - Thu Dec 15, 2005 2:32 pm
| Quote: |
| Considering a web page won't hold more than a couple hundred kilobytes of data with images, how are you going to run out of memory |
Right !
If the browser does not support java and other "stuff" it could be quite small i suppose. Since a lot of pages are PHP a simple html-interpreter would be enough to show them correctly.
One problem is the resolution of the screens. 220*80 aint much.
Maybe use the directional buttons to scroll? The B button to go backwards?
The touchscreen for links? The second display for pictures?
Caching is not a problem. Do you still use caching on IE ? not me.
#63673 - Darkflame - Thu Dec 15, 2005 2:43 pm
Yup, 4MB is quite a lot if you leave off the "extras" (flash,java, any uncommon support
| Quote: |
Also, while I doubt it'll be practical / doable, I'd suggest whoever wrote a browser for DS implement the flash player that's also being worked on, because there are many pages that use flash nowadays.
|
The only flash player ds I saw just played one movie file as a test.
Its a long way from being usefull on a generic webpage.
alangerow ~ Agreed. Cacheing is a no-no. Maybe a "save page" feature, but thats neither here nor there really.
| Quote: |
One problem is the resolution of the screens. 220*80 aint much.
Maybe use the directional buttons to scroll? The B button to go backwards?
The touchscreen for links? The second display for pictures?
|
I think idealy a zoomed in view at the top, with a page overall at the bottom.
Kinda like ScummDS.
The zoom could be adjusted for reading comfort, while the bottom is for page navigation. (clickable links ect).
#63684 - El Hobito - Thu Dec 15, 2005 3:57 pm
where did you get 220*80 from? arent the screens 256x192?
i guess the best way to do it would be to start off small with just a html interpreter then add on more stuff as you go along and see how far you can push it. i might have a go myself actually if i get the time
#63699 - Dudu.exe - Thu Dec 15, 2005 6:00 pm
Tha page can be showed on topsceen and down can have NAV buttons
to control back Fowaard, and a cursor..
Im a webdigner .. and the most of the pages dot get bigger then 200K (with images ) oly gets bigger with we put lot of flash animations..
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#63719 - Xtreme - Thu Dec 15, 2005 8:23 pm
| paco1234 wrote: |
| Quote: | | Considering a web page won't hold more than a couple hundred kilobytes of data with images, how are you going to run out of memory |
Right !
If the browser does not support java and other "stuff" it could be quite small i suppose. Since a lot of pages are PHP a simple html-interpreter would be enough to show them correctly.
One problem is the resolution of the screens. 220*80 aint much.
Maybe use the directional buttons to scroll? The B button to go backwards?
The touchscreen for links? The second display for pictures?
Caching is not a problem. Do you still use caching on IE ? not me. |
Are you serious? My Nokia phone (with series 40 OS) has 128x128 screen and I have Opera browser in it. It will show all the pictures too (minimized). It does not support java. My phone does have only few MB's RAM so that 4MB in DS must be enough.
Resizing pictures is done in server side (opera) I believe.
Oh, and btw, my phone is not a power house.
Look here:
http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/operamini/
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#63731 - mymateo - Thu Dec 15, 2005 10:10 pm
It would probably be more practical to have the top screen show the zoomed out view, and the bottom screen be the zoomed-in view. You could scroll using the stylus and click on links and such. You could have an image filter that won't download large images, or images that fit specific sizes (such as ads and banners) to make browsing faster and use less RAM. Then clicking on an image placeholder would allow the image to be viewed.
#63734 - El Hobito - Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:50 pm
| mymateo wrote: |
| It would probably be more practical to have the top screen show the zoomed out view, and the bottom screen be the zoomed-in view. You could scroll using the stylus and click on links and such. You could have an image filter that won't download large images, or images that fit specific sizes (such as ads and banners) to make browsing faster and use less RAM. Then clicking on an image placeholder would allow the image to be viewed. |
what would be nice would be to have the zoomed out one on the touch screen but have a mouse pointer on the top screen that would be moved by the touchscreen perhaps by pressing a button. either that or simply have a swap screen button
#63760 - Darkflame - Fri Dec 16, 2005 3:36 am
| mymateo wrote: |
| It would probably be more practical to have the top screen show the zoomed out view, and the bottom screen be the zoomed-in view. You could scroll using the stylus and click on links and such. You could have an image filter that won't download large images, or images that fit specific sizes (such as ads and banners) to make browsing faster and use less RAM. Then clicking on an image placeholder would allow the image to be viewed. |
Yes, thats sounds pretty good.
#63776 - bigboicee - Fri Dec 16, 2005 6:30 am
Or you see the top screen as the wep page and on the lower page you pretty much a blank screen but at the top you have you file edit and view functions and at the bottom you have a keyboard tab that pops up when you click it. also the address bar would be on the top. So basically it's like the way the metroid demo controls. you move with the lower screen but you focus on the top.
#63790 - Empyrean - Fri Dec 16, 2005 9:26 am
Or develop software like Propel Accelerator, which runs on really little RAM anyway.
What that basically does is optimizes (compresses) images on websites and cleans up HTML to minimal code for faster downloading and minimal memory use.
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#63807 - alangerow - Fri Dec 16, 2005 1:52 pm
I would, personally rather see something like the top screen be a zoomed in view, and the bottom screen a representation of the whole web page. There'd be a box around the top screen view area, and instead of scrolling, you just move the box around with the stylus. And a top row of button controls would be present for things like back, forward, refresh, stop, etc, and the location bar. There'd be a button to bring up a collapsable keyboard.
To follow links and such, just hit a button and the screens switch, bringing the zoomed in view to the lower screen allowing the clicking of links and highlighting of text, perhaps.
Very similar to bigboicee's suggestion.
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#63808 - paco1234 - Fri Dec 16, 2005 1:53 pm
| Quote: |
| where did you get 220*80 from? arent the screens 256x192? |
Your right! 220*80 is the pictochat format. I did mess that up.
#80622 - tepples - Mon Apr 24, 2006 12:27 am
So could somebody make a proof-of-concept that browses HTML files on the CF card or in a GBFS?
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#80625 - tssf - Mon Apr 24, 2006 1:35 am
I second that request. :)
It would be helpful to get a localized html parser up and running before any actual web browsing software can be conceived.
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#80633 - ghazi - Mon Apr 24, 2006 5:00 am
Yes please!
That would be a great start. The closest thing I can think of that we have right now is DSOrganize's HTML reader (used for the help files), but it doesn't do anything beyond text.
#80654 - Flood_of_SYNs - Mon Apr 24, 2006 4:06 pm
There is a functioning text mode web browser within DSLinux (Since about Feb 27th).
http://www.dslinux.org/blogs/pepsiman/?p=49
I believe the screen size is 64?32 characters, I am not sure if it has SSL support yet.
[bit offtopic]
A few of my friends bought me a blue V4 DS for my b-day, have yet to get any homebrew tools for it to test this.
I plan to get a M3CF and use FlashMe.
Here is a portal page I created awhile ago for when I get DSLinux running.
http://cclemmer.googlepages.com/nds.htm
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#80708 - Darkflame - Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:29 pm
Yes, we know about the text mode browser for awhile.
To be honest, I still dont know whats so hard about getting basic HTML working.
I mean, just ignoreing tabs that are too hard to do, couldnt we start with the basics and work up from there?
#80709 - Darkflame - Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:31 pm
| ghazi wrote: |
Yes please!
That would be a great start. The closest thing I can think of that we have right now is DSOrganize's HTML reader (used for the help files), but it doesn't do anything beyond text. |
Indeed.
Seems to support a handfull of basic text tabs as well as specilised ones for doing the DS buttons (a rather nice feature :) )
It would be nice if it could open basic HTML files too...not for webbrowseing, but so people can write neat help files for their apps.
Something else Id like to see soon;
Simple download app.
Give it a exact URL and it downloads the file to the compact flash.
This will be extreamly usefull even after Opera comes out :)
#80715 - thundrestrike - Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:05 am
what about the new wifilib release? will this make it possible for graphic-based homebrew web browser?
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#80725 - TheChuckster - Tue Apr 25, 2006 2:36 am
The Linux web browser Links has graphics support for framebuffer consoles. I don't know if the DS could handle a straight port of it though. A lot of fat would have to be cut out from the source.
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#82133 - Darkflame - Thu May 04, 2006 4:03 am
| TheChuckster wrote: |
| The Linux web browser Links has graphics support for framebuffer consoles. I don't know if the DS could handle a straight port of it though. A lot of fat would have to be cut out from the source. |
I really dont get what on earth takes up the space on even these text browsers :-/
Surely for a text browser you just ignore most of the tags, display the text then assign buttons to flip between links on the page.
Then for displaying pictures, you could just have any picture tags selectable with another button, which downloads to ram and displays it using the correct lib (Jpeg, PNG, whatever).
As an extra feature any of these links could also be downloaded to the card. (like an MP3).
All of those features should fit into 4MB of ram with planty of room to spare :-/
Heck, 2 MB ram should be possible (and thus allowing 2MB jpegs to be loaded)
#82140 - HyperHacker - Thu May 04, 2006 4:24 am
A lot of them are probably compiled in C++, and not optimized for size.
#82159 - melw - Thu May 04, 2006 9:20 am
Darkflame, if you're not up for waiting - start a browser project yourself. :) Perhaps doing a very basic browser is not the biggest task on earth, but making it so that features can be added and valid HTML parsing in time... well, it's going to get huge.
Josath posted a simple http request source to the WiFi Lib 0.3 thread, could be useful for starters.
#82164 - Darkflame - Thu May 04, 2006 10:24 am
| melw wrote: |
Darkflame, if you're not up for waiting - start a browser project yourself. :) Perhaps doing a very basic browser is not the biggest task on earth, but making it so that features can be added and valid HTML parsing in time... well, it's going to get huge.
Josath posted a simple http request source to the WiFi Lib 0.3 thread, could be useful for starters. |
Yes, I have been considering this, but I have been snowed under with freelance work lately.
If I did make one, I probably wouldnt call it a browser because it would never really reach that level. More of an web "thingy" :p