Saturday, December 11, 2010

Arora web browser in Haiku

Recent browser benchmarking tests in Haiku gave very high scores to Arora which is a Qt-based lite browser.
So, even though I'm reasonably happy with Web+ despite its lack of Flash and Java, I decided to try out Arora.
Well, the first problem was that, in R1A2, Arora 0.11.0 wouldn't boot and gave an error message about a "Missing symbol.......".
OK, so moved over to r39792 and tried again with Arora 0.11.0 which, incidentally, I downloaded from Haikuware. Still didn't launch afetr install but gave a more understandable error message complaining about a bunch of missing Qt libraries.
Of course, the Haiku nightlies contain only the basics so I opened up Synthetic Package Manager and installed Qt library 4.71.
Now, Arora launched without any further problems.
Yes, it seems fast, seems to have a clearer and sharper font than Web+ which makes it easier on the eyes. I also liked the Bookmarks bar which can be loaded up with your favorite sites for one-click launch of such as Google, Gmail and Haiku Forum.
I was intrigued by the presence of a Use ClickToFlash on flash plugins option in Tools>>Options>>Privacy. However, I never got around to seeing how realistic was the opportunity to enjoy flash in Arora because the browser seems extremely crashy.
It literally seems to crash at the drop of a hat to the point of making it, on my machine anyway, almost unusable.
Nevertheless, I did notice that the Date & Time clock in iGoogle works perfectly in Arora. In Web+ this clock is dead which I had always attributed to the lack of Flash. However, YouTube certainly doesn't work in Arora.
Back to R1A2 and, here, I got Arora 0.11.0 to lauFibnch without errors by going to SPM and uninstalling Qt 4.7 and then re-installing Qt4.71. This removed whatever was the issue in preventing the launch of Arora.
However, it crashed with the same alarming frequency as in r39792 which was a disappointment.
Finally, I tried an earlier version of Arora (0.10.2) in r39792. But it performed absolutely no better and still crashed itself into unusability.
As Arora has been so well written about, I can't believe that it can be so well thought of if it crashes so frequently.
I think I'll rasie this as an issue in the forum.

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