I wonder whether porting the ABrowser from the Syllable OS project would be a viable option. The ABowser is based off the Webkit and isn't Syllable OS API similar to BeOS/Haiku.

Actually the Syllable port of WebKit provided a lot of ideas for my Haiku port, and I have certainly taken a look at ABrowse. The code is quite simple and could possibly serve as a base for a Haiku browser, but I think it makes more sense to do a cleanroom browser using some of the best ideas now in the various mainstream browsers.

Plus the Syllable API is different enough to the Haiku/BeOS API to make porting ABrowse more trouble than it is worth.

No. PLEASE. Just port Firefox and focus on everything else. I have been following the creeping slow development of Haiku for years and am disappointed there still isn't an R1 yet.

The Firefox port has largely stalled in the 2.x series. Not due to any lack of effort on the part of BeZilla devs, but because newer versions have dependencies that either aren't present on Haiku yet, or aren't yet mature on Haiku (Cairo, the DB engine used for storing user data in newer versions, etc).

I also don't think that developing a native browser will have any effect on the speed of Haiku's overall development. No one appears to be suggesting that dev. of a native browser should take priority over more critical parts of Haiku development.

I understand your frustration but as Stephan B says getting a working Firefox is no easy task either, and in my opinion the direction Firefox 3 has taken is not the kind of browser I would want to use on Haiku. Though I would not complain if others made a nice port of it, and I might even help on that one day.

But believe it or not, right now I think the fastest way to get a nice, fast, modern browser on Haiku is to develop a native one using WebKit. It won't be trivial, but it certainly isn't as difficult as the work done to get Haiku to where it is now.

I also think the code will be much more accessible and easier to develop on than Firefox. I intend to make it that way because that is the kind of code I want to work with.

Hear hear. Good riddance to Firefox. If we can get a Webkit browser, I'd use it any day based upon rendering speed, snapyness, and I'm sure the code base is also so that a lot more Haiku contributions could go in.

- What about Flash however?

I should email you about it.