3. Amiga Browsers

If we wanted to discuss the defects of Amiga browsers, we should first describe alien browsers and search for a reference among them. But if I reported even a few details of all the browsers ever existed, and their way of managing fonts, this article would never end. Actually, I will tell you only something about some selected browsers, either important for their large diffusion in the whole computer world, or fundamental because they are the few browsers that we have in our negligible computer niche.

The first largely diffused browser, in early times, was the legendary Mosaic, which existed even on the Amiga platform, and has been recently exhumed for AROS. Another largely diffused browser was Lynx, whose special feature is the high portability, because it is a text-only browser. Of course, what was its force yesterday is also its major weakness today, because, in an era of fast and superfast connections, who cares for the time needed for downloading the images present on a web page?

I could also speak for a long time about Netscape, that marked an era with its excellent quality, or about Opera, that reached high peaks of quality and now is slowly fading away. And, of course, I could mention several other browsers developed and used only on specific computer platforms, like Galeon on Linux, Safari on MacOS, etc..

Certainly I will not say a single word concerning the technical aspects of Internet Explorer. This browser appears to be one of the uncountable tricks that Microsoft used for its conquest of the computer market. I would like to discuss extensively browsers that reflect as many web standards as they can. On the contrary, Internet Explorer is well known for ignoring some common standards and trying to set its own standards instead. It's the same old story: Microsoft likes to dominate the computer world, and every method is good if it points towards this direction...

OK. I mentioned explicitly six browsers, refused to speak about the seventh, and now will deliberately ignore many many others... What important browsers remain? Well, it is clear that it is impossible to close this argument without mentioning two browsers like Mozilla and Firefox. I will not pretend that these browsers have no defects, nor I will discuss the fact that they may and should be used universally, being free software available for almost all computer platforms. I will not comment the ever increasing basis of users that they have acquired in the recent past, and still constantly acquire today. And I will also avoid a description of the general features of Mozilla and Firefox. All these subjects are well beyond the purposes of this article. What is very important in the current context is that there is no doubt that these browsers are mature products, and that their behaviour can be seen as the canonical realization of most web standards. So, from now on, I will use them as a reference for some important subjects concerning the aspects of font management in a browser.

Note that Mozilla and Firefox are interchangeable as reference browsers, because they share the same web engine: Gecko (that also drives Netscape).

Until now I did not discuss the main Amiga browsers: AWeb, IBrowse, and Voyager. Everyone knows that they are outdated according to the current web standards. In particular, CSS (Cascade Style Sheets) management is missing, so these browsers are even not fully HTML 4 compliant.

This lack of features may be solved only with a new web engine, that all of us hope will appear sooner or later. There are efforts for porting Mozilla/Firefox, for wrapping KHTML to MUI, for improving web engines of current browsers, and even for writing a completely new web engine from scratch (Paihia browser).

In spite of being outdated, Amiga browsers are not completely prehistoric. For instance, they are able to clone the full non-CSS font management of Firefox, and can display web sites with greater elegance than most people imagine. Three problems are involved here.

1. Amiga browsers are distributed with a default font configuration that is really minimal: one proportional font in 7 sizes and one monospace font in 7 sizes. Most people does not know how to change and improve this starting outfit.
2. If people want to use webfonts in an efficient way, they need to install TrueType fonts on their computers, and this is not a trivial task in Amiga-like operating systems.
3. After webfont installation, most people do not know how to insert webfonts in the configuration files of their browsers. And even if they know, it is likely that they have no idea of the sizes that should be associated to these fonts.

Well, in the following you will find a solution for all these problems.

1. Item 1. above can be solved in a very simple way if one knows what must be done in the configuration phase. This optimisation requires very little effort and is effective even without having resort to webfonts. Its details are discussed in the subsection below.
2. Item 2. can be solved on the Pegasos/MorphOS platform by means of the instructions given in the next section.
3. Item 3. can be solved through a suitable comparison procedure with Firefox, described in a following section.

Let me introduce the problem. Assume you have just installed a browser and try to view this HTML test file with the default font settings. You should see this, but it is very likely that you will obtain a window like this. The fontscape is absolutely flat: all the lines in each HTML size column are displayed by the same font. Why?

Since webfonts are not installed and configured, it is reasonable that the lower lines of your display (from "Andale Mono" to the bottom) are flat. But the first three lines should be displayed by means of the three minimal default fonts that browsers are able to use (Helvetica, Times, Courier, for instance). If not these three specific fonts, certainly at least two equivalents are configured by default in your browser: but only one font is displayed. Why? Well, this is a matter of bad configuration.

The three current Amiga browsers use by default two types of fonts: "normal or default font" and "fixed width font". The first is a proportional font (for instance Helvetica or Times) and the second is a monospace font (for instance Courier). By default, the browser represents any font not specified in its configuration by means of the "normal font" or "default font". In this way you are always able to read the text contained in the HTML file you are viewing, but of course you lose any difference highlighted by the characteristic shapes of distinct fonts. This is what happens in the case shown on the right, where (an old version of) AWeb MAX was run just out of the box and displayed everything with its default AWebArial.font.

If we want to obtain better results, we must say to the browser what it should do when it finds certain font requirements in HTML files. A typical font declaration that may be find in a HTML file is:
<font face="Georgia, Garamond, Palatino, serif"> ... </font>
This says to the browser: display the text within the declaration with Georgia font; if you do not have this font, use Garamond instead; if you do not have this font, use Palatino instead; and if you do not have this font, at least display the text with your default proportional serif font. All well-done font declarations contain as last resource the font specification serif (or sans-serif, or monospace) because these specifications are understood by any modern browser. Such a browser will use respectively its default proportional serif font, proportional sans-serif font, and monospace font when those declared explicitly are not present. Even Amiga browsers are able to understand these declarations, but they must be configured in a suitable way. In the previous example image these declarations were not configured, so AWeb was forced to display even serif and monospace font declarations (which it did not recognize) with its default proportional font (which happened to be a sans-serif font!).

No Amiga browser was preconfigured with such last resource font declarations: so the task of inserting them in the font configuration of your browser is up to you. This can be done by means of the following procedure. Go to the relevant setting window of your browser (AWeb: Settings » Browser settings... » 2 Fonts; IBrowse: Preferences » Settings... » HTML » Fonts; Voyager: Settings » General settings... » Fonts) and select the insertion of a new font declaration (AWeb: Add; IBrowse: New font style; Voyager: Add face). You should insert a declaration name in the specific text field (AWeb: Alias; IBrowse: Name; Voyager: substitute NewFace), and then you should insert a suitable font filename, a slash, and seven suitable font sizes in the specific fields (with AWeb you are forced to use a font requester only).

You must insert three new font declarations, repeating the previous selections three times. Each time you should insert one of the following declaration names:

• sans-serif
• serif
• monospace