
Mozilla Firefox 2 for RISC OS
=============================

25th December 2006
RISC OS Release 2
unix@chocky.org


This Version
------------

This version is suitable for the following RISC OS Machines:

IYONIX pc, A9, Omega.  It may also work under VirtualRPC.  It is *not* suitable
for RiscPCs or older RISC OS machines due to the use of half-word instructions.

Changes
-------

Release 2 (December 2006)

- Firefox becomes the first RISC OS GCC 4.1 application released
- RISC OS Menus and iconbar icon enabled, although functionality is incomplete
- !UnixHome not used any longer - preferences stored in standard RISC OS Choices directory 
- Handling of multiple windows fixed - this was causing Firefox to mysteriously
  exit at times,
  particularly those with pop up windows like banking sites.
- Updated to the upstream 2.0.0.1 version.

Because most of the effort of this version was focussed upon correct operation
under the new compiler, many of the existing issues still remain.  See later in
this document.

Release 1 (November 2006)

- First release of version 2 of Firefox for RISC OS


About RISC OS Firefox
----------------------

Firefox was ported to RISC OS to fill the requirement for a comprehensive
browsing solution.  Based upon the original Mozilla and Netscape work,
Firefox is potentially able to access almost any website, and is one of
the most widely used browsers in use.  Its open source nature means that
anyone inside or outside RISC OS development can update it.  These features
made it an ideal choice for porting to RISC OS.

Firefox was ported to RISC OS by Peter Naulls under the Unix Porting
Project (http://www.riscos.info/unix/) as part of a programme of bringing
Unix programs to RISC OS in order to fill gaps in the application space.
Firefox was only possible at all because it built upon work by the GCCSDK
team with GCC and UnixLib and current work by the project such as the ChoX11
library.   And of course, the many subscribers to the project who made it
financially viable.  Thanks for supporting the future of RISC OS.

The ongoing development is only possible with donations to the project.
See http://www.riscos.info/index.php/Donations for more details.


I just want to run it
---------------------

Tinct:

 http://www.tinct.net/software.asp

SharedUnixLibrary:

 http://www.riscos.info/downloads/gccsdk/sharedunixlib/

ELFLoader:

 http://ecs.soton.ac.uk/~jmb202/riscos/elfloader.zip

Since this has no installer, place the ELFLoader module inside the archive
into !Boot.Choices.PreDesk (this is not an ideal setup), and also manually
double click it (since it won't be run automatically until you reboot).


Read the next section.


Running First Time
------------------

RISC OS Firefox has some unresolved issues that afflict it when starting up the
first time:

 - It will ask you to confirm a certificate in a dialogue which opens
   *behind* the main window.

 - One of the tabs will try to access a page which does not exist.

 - If you close one of the open tabs, the display content may become detached.

To avoid this, accept the certificate permanently in the window, then choose
quit from the menu over the browser window (not the iconbar window), then
run RISC OS Firefox again.


Reporting bugs
--------------

I would much prefer you *didn't* report mis-features, things you'd
like to see, and any odd behaviour.  This might seem odd, but chances
are, I already know all about it, and extra emails will not help.
There will be chances in future to discuss things you'd like to see
improved, and I would just have to discard any such reports.

I would like to hear from you only if you have a crash that is repeatable.
Please send me !Firefox.stderr and precisely what sequence of actions
is required to repeat it.

The most obvious list of mis-features is listed below.  Some of these
things already have solutions, but I felt that they were not in
complete shape for this release, and they would make the functionality
worse, not better, until they can be improved.  This list is not
comprehensive.

 
 - RISC OS Menus

   Items that should be disabled are not, and some items do nothing.

 - RISC OS URI launching.

   Not quite ready, this version has no URI launching support.

 - RISC OS Scrollbars

   Making proper use of RISC OS scrollbars is a surprising amount of
   work.  I expect that to be done for some future release.

 - Root certificates

   For technical reasons, it is not yet possible to support the
   mechanism used to access the Mozilla root certificates.  That means
   that you will be asked to verify the identity of certain websites,
   especially using those using https. I expect to address this in some
   future release.

 - Speed

   This version is faster than the 1.5 versions for a variety of
   reasons, but there is still much that can be done.  However,
   I expect the current performance will be satisfactory for many
   users.

 - Unicode characters

   This version will only display Latin characters.  Anything else
   is shown as a question mark.  I expect to use the same font engine
   in use by NetSurf in a future release.

 - Plugin support

   There is no RISC OS plugin support.

 - Spellchecker, extensions, printing, other stuff

   For this release, the main focus was on stability and functionality
   of basic web browsing.   Anything else may or may not work.


Troubleshooting
---------------

You might have problems starting up, especially if you had an aborted
start up from a previous version.  In this case, I recommend you
delete Choices:Mozilla.Firefox and try again.

You may also find that if your currently selected file system is
different to where the !Firefox application lives, you will have
troubles starting for the first time.




