Netfront on Life Drive - can it be done?

[trickypuss]

I have to say I'm really missing using Netfront since I switched over to the Life Drive. Blazer doesn't even seem to support pages with frames.

I saw on palmgear that the makers of UDMH are claiming that Netfront can be run on different palmOne products with their hack installed. Is there any reason to believe this might work on the LD?

[Tam Hanna]

Hi,
just get MakeClie, the program that I made. And it will work. Or, it at least should!
No need for UDMH here! Runs onmy TT3 without UDMH, just MakeClie!

[timepilot84]

Tried running my Palm enabled version that I made for the T5. Got the same error as on the T5. Not enough memory.

[Tam Hanna]

Why does it work on my T3?? ever tried UDMH??

[timepilot84]

T3 has 12 megs of Heap space. T5 and LD have 6 (4 usable).

[trickypuss]

Hmmm... maybe UDMH is the way to go.

[Tam Hanna]

I second that. UDMH all the way IMHO.
But who knows if Dmitry already got it working?

[Cyker]

On a normal Palm, UDMH works by allowing the stack/dynamic RAM segment to spill over into Storage/Program RAM.

On a T|3, this is not a problem because it has a very large amount of Program memory, and usually has lots of it empty for use.

On fake-RAM/NVFS devices like the T|5 and LD, there is no Program memory as such - They only have the NVFS, which UDMH can't use (You can't execute machine code directly from FlashRAM on PalmOS devices).
I don't know if UDMH can access the hidden 'execution' memory that NVFS devices have to get around that oversight. On a T|5 it'd be useless anyway because IIRC it only has about 16MB of 'real' RAM, split 6/10 between Stack and execution memory, and with NetFront running in execution memory there'd be barely enough space left...

On a LD, the 32MB should have enough space, but then standard NVFS incompatibilities apply, so some more NVFS-specific workarounds, kludges and general hackery would be required...

[Sharkk717]

just a note here- the new Blazer on the LifeDrive is based around the NetFront core... so browsing is very similar. In fact, one of the built-in PRCs explicitly contains NetFront in its name.

that said, if you are really looking for a CLIE-like Netfront browsing experience, then try Tam's app (changing the company id of the device via FtrSet) w/ UDMH (if necessary?).

regards, sharky

[JAmerican]

just a note here- the new Blazer on the LifeDrive is based around the NetFront core... so browsing is very similar. In fact, one of the built-in PRCs explicitly contains NetFront in its name.

that said, if you are really looking for a CLIE-like Netfront browsing experience, then try Tam's app (changing the company id of the device via FtrSet) w/ UDMH (if necessary?).

regards, sharky

I tried Blazer on the LD and it does render better but one thing. It renders in text only till the end. When done loading, all the images can be seen. This sucks compared to NetFront since NetFront loads the images and text at the same time.

JAmerican

[Sharkk717]

that's what i meant JAm... it's not the exact same browsing experience. personally, i like that Blazer renders text, then images only when i'm on my cellphone via BT to the Internet; when I'm on WiFI i don't like it.

regards, sharky

[JAmerican]

that's what i meant JAm... it's not the exact same browsing experience. personally, i like that Blazer renders text, then images only when i'm on my cellphone via BT to the Internet; when I'm on WiFI i don't like it.

regards, sharky

Just putting my two cents in. If NetFront can be placed on the LifeDrive and WiFi doesn't slow it down via NetFront, that would be a great improvement. Have you tried MakeClie with LifeDrive sharky?

JAmerican

[Tam Hanna]

Some users already ttried it IMHO(thats what I understand after reading this thread) and failed because there isn't enough RAM on these machines.
But, what about using a older NetFront that comes off an older Clie that has only 4MB of System RAM or so? The files that I used were off a VZ90 IMHO...

[trickypuss]

The only version of Netfront that is really great is the 3.1 version that came on later clies. The earlier versions gave a lot of "out of memory" messages. I don't mind the quality of the images that blazer on the LD is putting out, nor does the preloading of text bother me. It's mainly just the fact that it changes the layout of pages to be stacked and doesn't make much of an attempt to maintain the relative look of the pages. Also, it won't render side by side frames which means that on pages with this type of layout one is constantly scrolling to the bottom to see the content of the right-side frame after selecting links in the left. Annoying.

Netfront 3.1 was able to render frames side by side without the need to scroll down. And with Landscape installed it was really an amazingly good web experience. I also like that it has four viewing options for page optimization while blazer has only two.

I may have to try UDMH anyway, Netfront or not. Because just trying to access 1src gives me "page is too big" errors. If I try to enter the forum it consistently causes my LD to do a soft reset. Netfront on my TH-55 chokes on 1 src also, but it doesn't crash. It just eventually times out when I'm in the forum. Guess I should try hitting the mobile version instead.

Oh yes, the adjustable cache size on netfront is a plus too. I can't find that option in blazer.