MacSurf 1.68 – NetSurf on OS 9 Released

[OP] mplsllc | a day ago

The single biggest change since 1.5 is under the hood: MacSurf's JavaScript engine has been replaced. Duktape (ES5) is gone; MacSurf now runs macQJS which is a QuickJS port for Classic Mac OS and executes modern ES2023 JavaScript natively on Mac OS 9.

anthk | a day ago

This needs to backported to main Netsurf ASAP.

[OP] mplsllc | 23 hours ago

The most annoying bug I was able to fix that is also present up stream was this weird viewport, extra scroll bar, that would appear on some pages. I need to figure out how to get involved with the main repo if they'll have me.

system7rocks | a day ago

Wow. Just wow, I will give this a run on my old iMac G4 later today. Very cool to see this progress, and I am a big fan of NetSurf.

thisislife2 | 23 hours ago

Yeah, I wish more people contributed to Netsurf and it gets the momentum it needs to compete with Blink, Gecko and Webkit. So many divided efforts in this area - there's Ladybird, Flow, Servo, Goanna. Even just improving Webkit and making it truly multi-platform (it isn't available for Windows, and the Linux version is apparently not as performant) would greatly even the field.

[OP] mplsllc | 23 hours ago

Netsurf seems pretty closed in terms of who they allow to contribute. However, I need to look more into it and not use the excuse that it's "too complicated" to see if they are interested in my bug fixes.

MetalSnake | a day ago

Awesome stuff! I love retro computing especially with Macs.

But it's a bit weird that old PPC Macs get modern browsers, but Intel Macs running 10.14 are stuck with Firefox 115esr.

cgyvbunji | 19 hours ago

Hmm, no, you have latest Chrome, via Boot Camp ;)

1over137 | 18 hours ago

Or by installing a BSD or linux.

MetalSnake | 12 hours ago

Well, then they are not running Mac OS 10.14. ;)

Wowfunhappy | 18 hours ago

They are not!

https://github.com/aobaharuki2005/momiji-web-browser

thisislife2 | 8 hours ago

You can use PaleMoon - https://www.palemoon.org/download.shtml

crims0n | 23 hours ago

This is awesome and greatly appreciated, going to boot up my iMac G4 and give it a go.

[OP] mplsllc | 23 hours ago

Awesome! Please let me know how it goes (good or bad) I am always open to feedback.

LetsGetTechnicl | 20 hours ago

Writing a JS engine for OS 9 in 2026 is like, genuinely impressive

steve-atx-7600 | 15 hours ago

Seriously. I am going to check this out. Otherwise, I can only use the last release of tenfourfox on my g4 but only through the https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice proxy running on another machine.

pKropotkin | 20 hours ago

Not working, “Bad Parameter”

[OP] mplsllc | 14 hours ago

I'm trying to figure this out now, I can't replicate it myself. Actual hardware of emulation? Spinning disk drive of SSD?