Firedog 1.2 - a smarter, faster, more stylish browser suite

[tataditiditin]

¿Why do not make a Firedog version based on Firefox 3.5 or 3.0.14? Firefox 2.0.0.20 is very obsolete, and Mozilla has been retired the assistance to this version. SORRY FOR MY BAD ENGLISH.

[sc0ttman]

¿Why do not make a Firedog version based on Firefox 3.5 or 3.0.14? Firefox 2.0.0.20 is obsolete, and Mozilla has retired assistance for this version.

Firstly, we don't need support from Mozilla - Firedog works fine.. FF2 is not "obsolete" - it is simply "not as new as FF3".. What would be improved by using FF3? FF2 is fast, especially on older PCs..

Second, newer is not always better - FF3 is very good, but FF2 is still a great browser.. FF3 has a load of space-wasting crap in it - like phishing protection, which is not needed unless you're stupid..

Many addons can prevent the need for this phishing protection.

Thirdly, a lot of very popular addons for FF3 are designed simply to make FF3 revert back to old FF2 behaviours and settings - showing that people still love FF2.. Also, some cool addons in used Firedog don't support FF3..

Fourth, a lot of addons have been updated simply to support FF3 - not to improve the addons themselves! Firedog has (mostly) the same great addons as FF3, without the extra diskspace of the newer addon versions!

I carefully selected the latest version of each addon that Firedog can use - without needlessly including newer versions of those addons which are only FF3 compatibility updates! This reduces the filesize quite a lot.

Lastly, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.." - Firedog includes security updates released after FF2, so it is still very secure. Firedog is based on the last ever version 2 release of Firefox, which is mainly a secure, stable, bugfixed release - perfect for Puppy!

I may release a Firedog version based on FF3 - simply because a nice Bittorrent client can then be included.. Other than that, nothing (important) is lost in Firedog, I reckon!

In short, FF3 crashed a few times, and needs a better PC.. Firedog never crashed for me and works great on my old PC.

BTW, the word 'obsolete' is mostly ungradable.. (No 'very') Woo! TEFL!

[James C]

I'm posting from ttuuxxx's Firepup in my 4.20 install right now, but I think I'll give Firedog a try as well.

I agree that the 2 series Firefox is not obsolete as well, and on a lot of the pre-4.30 Puppies the 3 series FF doesn't seem to perform very well.There is always the need for a good browser.

[sc0ttman]

I'm posting from ttuuxxx's Firepup in my 4.20 install right now, but I think I'll give Firedog a try. I agree that the 2 series Firefox is not obsolete, and on a lot of the pre-4.30 Puppies, the 3 series FF doesn't seem to perform very well.

I'm a long time FirePup user but eventually found the need to upgrade to FF2 or FF3 - FirePup is missing some very useful tweaks and addons and some sites recently stopped working with FF1.5 - Facebook being one of them.. I always preferred FF2 on windows, and especially on Puppy - FF2 seems much more stable and usable, expecially on older PCs, as I said.

But yeah, go for it, I hope you enjoy Firedog! I built it with FirePup in mind.. [edit] BTW people, Firedog can't be installed alongside FirePup, obviously... Choose one or the other!

[sc0ttman]

I've found a pet file which should enable Chinese in any browser, including Firedog..

Here is the link:

http://www.browserlinux.com/software/WenQuanYi.pet (6mb)

I've attached an image, so people can see Firedog displaying Chinese in the website.

This does NOT fix other apps, you must have a Chinese locale installed in Puppy for that.

[otropogo]

I've found a pet file which should enable Chinese in any browser, including Firedog..

Here is the link:

http://www.browserlinux.com/software/WenQuanYi.pet (6mb)

I've attached an image, so people can see Firedog displaying Chinese in the website.

This does NOT fix other apps, you must have a Chinese locale installed in Puppy for that.

Thanks. As it happens, CatDude managed to dig up my old post of a year ago describing the manual method of installing the necessary wqy fonts. And I've already got them installed and working.

I am surprised at the size of the pet though. As I believe the fonts themselves are 16 or 19MB?

So if the pet doesn't work, try the method described below. And yes, it seems to work for both Seamonkey and Opera.

I haven't tried FireDog yet, I'm hoping to hang tough until a pet based on Firefox 3.6 is available. Firefox 3.6 is expected soon, because 3.5 isn't Windows 7 compatible.


http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 6e1c0512a8

[sc0ttman]

I haven't tried FireDog yet, I'm hoping to hang tough until a pet based on Firefox 3.6 is available.

It seems most Puppy users are keen to use the latest Opera or Firefox - demonstrated by the very, very poor download statistics for Firedog.. Compared with other packages available, the stats are rubbish!

Stats (at time of writing):

Hits: 1097
PET Downloads: 22
SFS 4.3 Downloads: 6
SFS 4.2 Downloads: 1

Why did I bother?? I guess most users are now on systems that happily run the latest browsers...
I am, too.. But I still prefer tried, tested and trusted FF2! Guess I'm in a small minority.

Oh, and thanks very much for your link and information otropogo.

On a related note, for anyone who is interested, Ttuuxxx once translated FirePup into French and knows exactly how to get a FF-based browser working in another language. He had offered to make this change into other languages (for FirePup)..
I don't know if that offer still stands, but it's out there! He seems to be a busy boy, though...

[TonshA]

sc0ttman

Well I'm going to give it a try! Saw this thread yesterday (Along with jrb's sfs loader) and thought it was fantastic!

I've got a friend running a basic Puppy but having problems with Facebook. I intend to let her try the Opera 10 sfs and Firedog to see if that will solve the problem.

I didn't get the chance to download it last night (1.5 hours of ironing...) but I'm going to download it tonight! So expect those stats to go up by '1' at least.

And thanks (in advance) for creating Firedog - if you hadn't created it, there wouldn't be anything for us to try out now would there? Linux is all about choice...

DaveA

[James C]

Well, I just downloaded Firedog and am planning to try it out tomorrow.

A lot of computer users seem to have the mentality of needing the "latest and greatest" app, even if it doesn't actually function as well.

I personally still have a couple of 2 and 3 series Puppy installs where the older Firefox performs better.....so that's what I use.

Thanks for making the pet and I will try it out........

[nupupppy]

when i click on the first mirror link it brings me to "sendspace" is this a safe place or is there another place to get it

[otropogo]

Hi sc0ttman

It seems most Puppy users are keen to use the latest Opera or Firefox ...

Why did I bother?? I guess most users are now on systems that happily run the latest browsers...
I am, too.. But I still prefer tried, tested and trusted FF2! Guess I'm in a small minority.

Well, I heartily applaud your work. My favourite and only Puppy capable laptop ( I still have functioning Tandy 100 and an IBM 386 laptops) is stuck with Puppy 3.01 Retro, for lack of pcmcia-scsi drivers for any later versions. And, after all, Puppy is for that minority of Western PC users who still run ten-year old systems and older (I recently made the big move to one only a half a decade old, and can now afford to play with more bloated software.)

In any case, I'm certainly not a believer that "newest is best". I'm running Win2K and thinking about upgrading to XP on my Windows system. I'm wearing a watch that's probaly thirty years old, because I can't find one that has the same features for less than several hundred dollars (I paid $5 at a thrift store and put in a new battery for $2).

I use a half-busted digital battery tester bought from Radio Shack ten years ago because you can't buy anything comparable in Canada anymore, etc., etc...

But browsers are something special. Up to now, I haven't cared much about browser security in Puppy (and a good thing too!!). I just shrug when Xfprot opens and says "are you running xfprot as root?". But that's because I'm not currently using my Puppy system for anything critical, like my e-mail or my online banking.

The thing is that I'd like to be able to safely dual-boot this machine, and keep using Puppy for browsing, without worrying about infecting or corrupting my Windows installations. Despite its limitations and bugs, I like Seamonkey for it's relative simplicity of use. But I really want a browser I can keep secure, if I'm going to use it on a mission-critical machine.

And one nice thing about Firefox is that it gets lots of scrutiny and reportage in the PC press, such as PC World. Which makes it much easier to keep abreast of security issues..

Oh, and thanks very much for your link and information otropogo.

Glad to help!

[sc0ttman]

when i click on the first mirror link it brings me to "sendspace" is this a safe place or is there another place to get it

Yes, sendspace is, for me at least, the most reliable file-host.. I upload my files there as it's much quicker for me than other, more well-known sites. Don't be scared of sendspace..

New version available - Firedog 1.1

I've just released an improved version of Firedog, that has lots of new features, with very little impact on performance or size.

More details in the main post, which is now updated.

And thanks for the support guys, glad I'm not making it for no one.

[musher0]

Good job, sc0ttman!

That was a stroke of inspiration to assemble all those useful add-ons into a workable Internet suite!
I'll be trying it on 4.3.0 (ttuxx version) as soon as I get offline.

Out of curiosity: would you have considered the totally non-proprietary Icecat 2 for your suite? Would it have been possible? Or maybe the add-ons that you have used were only designed for Firefox 2?

All the best,

[sc0ttman]

would you have considered the totally non-proprietary Icecat 2 for your suite? Would it have been possible?

I had a look at IceCat, couldn't get it to run as yet, hunting for loads of libs and making symlinks.. Looks like a great idea, but a little too much work for me, especially as there's no way I could get the filesize down... But it does support a very large number of FF addons, most of which are used in Firedog.

And thanks for the lovely words..

Firedog seemed an obvious thing to do since FF1.5/FirePup is starting to become more widely unsupported!!

[musher0]

Hi, sc0ttman!

Not that important, really, this Icecat 2. I had it running on Puppy 3.02. I remember downloading a bin file that I just clicked on to install. And it worked! I don't think SimpleMail existed then, but I remember I could use a SQLite plugin. The problem was that some Firefox plug-ins could not be used in Icecat, some conflicted with Icecat irself, or some aspect of Firefox was missing (my understanding of it ).

In any case, we have Firedog now! And... speaking of which: I installed it on the very recent dpup 4.82 and it works great on that Puppy too!

Again, great job!

[James C]

I just did a fresh frugal install of Barry K's Puppy 2-2.18 and installed Firedog.........it seems pretty impressive after just brief test.

Here's a screenshot......

Good job.....

[Anniekin]

sc0ttman,

may I request the source code in order to compile it for my processor and try it out?

[sc0ttman]

Nice screenshot James, good to see Firedog working on an older Puppy.. Glad it worked alright!

sc0ttman, may I request the source code in order to compile it for my processor and try it out?

Sorry, but this is not a re-compile... I took the 'Firefox_2.0.0.20.pet' , found on this site, and simply extracted it, did a manual edit and some customising of all the files contained within it, and repackaged the pet file..

If you just download Firedog as it is, it will almost certainly work fine..

[sc0ttman]

A Flash 10 pet has been added to the main post.

[update] Here is Flash 10 for all browsers:

Download flash_player-10.0.32.18.pet - works perfectly for me on Puppy 4.2, it's fast and works in fullscreen.

Note:

If you use other Flash pet files, you may need to move or copy libflashplayer.so into the /usr/lib/seamonkey/plugins/ folder.

I think the Flash lib may be moved in future Firedogs, when it comes out, as it will better support other browsers and Flash pets.

Anyone had problems with Flash after installing Firedog? I don't think anyone will, and it would only be a matter of linking the flash lib to solve any issues!

[Rupp]

n/t