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| Author | Netscape 2.x sources + enhancing it ? (Read 36613 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: July 27, 2025, 17:18
So, @alexMac and I had a chat yesterday about the browser situation for 68k System 7 Macs. I'm a staunch fan of @ClassicHasClass MacLynx, @alexMac prefers colourful pictures (Netscape 2.x) though :-P (just kidding)Anyway, while chatting we thought how cool it would be to get our hands on the Netscape 2.x sources. (2.x because it is so incredily snappy even on bare-bones 68030 Macs!) and then potentially further enhance the browser, fixing some bugs with regards to form elements / inputs. Perhaps backporting a few select changes from later versions. Anybody know if that has been tried before? Do we happen to have the Netscape 2.x sources somewhere? Earliest I was able to dig up was some version 4.x code. Any of you happen to have 2.x sources somewhere? Posted from my IIci using ... no not Netscape 2.x, but MacLynx :-) |
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Last Edit: July 27, 2025, 17:24 by Bolkonskij
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Cashed
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128 MB  Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #1 on: July 27, 2025, 17:55
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Supercalifragilistic -yes why not I luv Netscape too! I have the source code -been stashing every unimaginable source codes I've stumbled over for the past 3 years. My barebones and HDDs are still in storage though. However if no one else has it at hand -I can find it again.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #2 on: July 27, 2025, 18:55
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I've built a lot of firefox variations for MacOS X and Linux, and did a VERY deep dive into Classilla. Found bugs in the build process, fixed them and helped create instructions on building it, and added lots of notes and some "ready to build" downloads: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/classilla I've never built older than Classilla for classic MacOS. If you've got the source, I could definitely take a look. I didn't know they were out there "in the wild". Check if you have it. I haven't been able to find anything that old other than an incomplete 3 tree, missing the mac parts! Classilla is a beast, but older versions might be more manageable. Still, it'd be a serious deep dive into development world. Just getting them to build will probably be a challenge...but again, older ones maybe less painful than Classilla. So I might be able to help.
Last Edit: July 27, 2025, 19:01 by lauland
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #3 on: July 27, 2025, 21:17
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Wow, this sounds so epic! 
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #4 on: July 28, 2025, 16:13
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I took a look, and found the source for Netscape 3.x, but it is indeed missing the mac front end and probably more (there are no mac build scripts). It looks like the first official full source code release was for "Netscape 5", which never came out, they skipped and went to 6. It was in the middle of when they were changing the rendering engine. There never were binaries released, just the source code at several stages of development. There are a few built windows binaries, and it mostly looks like exactly what it is, a mutant between Netscape 4 and 6. Most reports seem to say it is unstable and has some features unfinished. There are several .sit files of it from Netscape's servers you can find. I looked at the source, and the build process is very similar to Classilla's, involving MacPerl and CodeWarrior, and requiring a lot of obscure third party libraries. Here's the readme for building it on PowerPC. It says it can't be built on m68k, but hopefully it builds fat binaries. Don't know if that's something you'd want to look into, as it sounds unstable. We could, but the build process is pretty Byzantine, like Classilla's. It'd be interesting, but would take a lot of work not for the faint hearted to get set up, and not sure if the results would be worth the trouble. If you have the sources for any earlier, stable, version, now THAT would be worth looking into...but I'm not sure they ever were released...though maybe they "escaped".
Last Edit: July 28, 2025, 16:17 by lauland
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alexMac
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Administrator 4 MB Posts: 7 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #5 on: July 30, 2025, 15:32
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Would be so cool to get Netscape 3 or 2 sources for the Mac. And help would be certainly needed and much appreciated to get it built successfully. I'm still convinced that it would be a great base to start a the definitive browser for System 7 on 68k with it. If the Netscape 5 source code is complete, maybe we could use it and do a spring cleaning of it 
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #6 on: July 30, 2025, 19:45
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From what I can tell, the sources for 5 are complete, but it was a snapshot in progress development version, reported to be possibly unstable and not fully finished. So may or may not be worth trying to build. ie Even if we built it, we may find it doesn't work well. It would be a bit of a Byzantine process, extremely similar to Classilla, and not for the faint of heart. Read about the Classilla process to see what it'd entail. The netscape 3 sources that seem to be "in the wild" are missing all the mac parts, unfortunately. It would not be possible to easily "backport" parts of 5, nor to recreate a mac frontend without a really massive amount of work. If anyone actually has full source for netscape 4 or older, that would be ideal, but I am not sure if those were ever were actually publicly available, nor did they ever "escape".
Last Edit: July 30, 2025, 19:50 by lauland
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