pichlo | # 11 | 2019-10-31, 08:01 | Report

Yes, PM3. I would much rather use PM1 (far, far, far more intuitive and user friendly) but sadly, I no longer have the choice.

Jedibeeftrix | # 12 | 2019-11-01, 09:01 | Report

is there any point adopting 5.9 now?

the joy of lts is ongoing support, and at this point even 5.12 lts is getting long in the tooth!

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on a separate note i'm glad the browser got some fixes for twitter.

the change is important for apps like quickditt and tweetian are not to be rendered pointless, because the transfer to a browser function leaves the user with a borked experience.

two solutions:
1. fix the damned browser
2. allow user to select the preferred browser to transfer web calls from native apps

right now tweetian and quickditt remain unused - choosing firefox instead - because i'm done with being transferred to the broken native browser. it simply isn't good enough.

but its inadequacy is spoiling the SFOS experience with native apps, which is a real shame.

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Last edited by Jedibeeftrix; 2019-11-01 at 09:08.

atlochowski | # 13 | 2019-11-02, 12:53 | Report

Just Jolla had plans to update QT version this year but they posponetd it.

It's hard to say Jolla fixed browser for twitter. It is more workaround then fix. But for us it's good that we can open twitter in browser.

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Last edited by atlochowski; 2019-11-02 at 15:19.

cy8aer | # 14 | 2019-11-02, 14:20 | Report

Just to mention: For me the twitter stuff works again for some weeks with 3.1.0.12... This is no 3.2.0.12 thingie.

foufoutos | # 15 | 2019-11-02, 15:08 | Report

so dead os

nthn | # 16 | 2019-11-03, 08:53 | Report

Is it just me or is the TOHKBD no longer working? I haven't used mine for some time so I don't know if this is a new thing or not. The keyboard doesn't get recognised when attached.

ste-phan | # 17 | 2019-11-03, 09:19 | Report

If I was the head of Jolla I'd say: dump the native browser. As a customer I surely say, start doing/improving what I need and that is not the native browser.

Fix SIP and other to be integrated primary communication protocols instead , then hunt for partnerships with Mozilla if not other browser developers. Hire a software wizard / geek that can port Fennec to Sailfish OS. I am sure if nicely asked there are people who would do this for free even.

Why do we need a 50 head development team try to compete browser wise with Mozilla?

How long did it take to have Fennec "running" if always out of RAM on N900? A couple of weeks, months? Why this hasn't happened for Sailifsh?

olf | # 18 | 2019-11-03, 15:02 | Report

The same here: Tried in August with SFOS 2.2.1.
Did not take the time to analyse why, though.

MartinK | # 19 | 2019-11-03, 18:33 | Report

I don't think you can really do that - you simply need a native browser to be always available, even for stuff like captive portals on some WiFi hotspots. The Android emulation layer is (optionally) installed on first start, so you might need a native browser, so you can authenticate with with you hotspot to download Android support & install an Android browser.

Also in some cases Android emulation support is simply not available so an Android browser is out of the question:

• community ports
• Russian corporate devices reportedly don't have Android emulation by design
• cases where the user opted to no use the Android emulation layer

Also, even if the Android emulation layer is available, it is quickly approaching obsolescence on all the older devices & Xperia X due to only suportiong Android 4.4.x API level, so it's possible up to date Android browsers will no longer run on it.

Well, the current default Sailfish Browser already uses the Firefox rendering core (Gecko) and there is actually not many alternatives:

• WebKit is not in much of a good state, QtWebKit as well
• QtWebEngine is hard to build even on Fedora due to horrendous amount of bundling & outdated GCC
• Chromium - again horrendous amount of bundling, outdated GCC & not sure about Wayland support
• Firefox - only recently added support for running natively on Wayland (in Fedora 31 released a couple days ago), might be hard to build due to outdated GCC

So older Firefox core is actually maybe the only thing usable in current circumstances.


This is not correct - Jolla is not writing their own browser from scratch. The default Sailfish OS browser is just a thin layer that uses the Firefox 45 Gecko rendering core for all the actual website rendering.

AFAIK, the main issue why the browser if lagging behind is twofold:

1) Gecko does not really have a stable embedding interface, so for each Gecko upgrade, sizeable embedding patches need to be adjusted to all the code changes in the private APIs it has to use in the new Gecko version. This can be a significant endeavor.

I've talked to someone from the Mozilla community and apparently the new Firefox Preview on Android uses some new Gecko embedding API & can be used to provide a generic Gecko based web view to other Android applications. This could be a boon for Sailfish OS as well - if gecko needs to support embedding for Android, it could be possible to use the same API for embedding on Sailfish OS as well.

Also I seem to remember someone from Mozilla attending the Fosdem Sailfish OS meetup & discussing Gecko embedding improvements. So I guess things could improve in this case and hopefully make Gecko upgrades for the native Sailfish OS much less painful.

2) GCC & the overall library stack is currently too outdated to build modern versions of Gecko. IIRC glibc version has been bumped a bit recently, but we will likely be still stuck until GCC is finally upgraded as well.

nthn | # 20 | 2019-11-03, 20:54 | Report

Problem solved: for some reason, at some point, the systemd service for the TOHKBD was deleted. Reinstalling the TOHKBD ambience fixed it.