AquaWeb micro - A Stupidly Fast Minibrowser for PPC OS X

[z970]

@corneydj On a fresh profile, every video through QuickTime I've tried buffers for a couple of seconds and then plays without a problem.

Although, every install I've tried it on also has Perian. See what happens after you install Perian, if anything changes. You may even want to delete your old AquaVid profile in /Users/user/Library/Application Support/ afterward, just to be safe.

Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components

Perian is a free, open source, QuickTime component that supports many popular media types, including AVI, DivX, and XviD.

perian.org

 

[corneydj]

The G4 had Perian installed already. I deleted the AquaVid profile to see if that would help but when QuickTime opens it just gets stuck at “Switching Transports”. The G3 did not have Perian but the same thing happens there as well. Both are running 10.4.11

I was able to get a video to play, but only by copying the URL from AquaVid, then opening PPCMC separately and asking that to start a stream inside of QuickTime. If I tell AquaVid to open the link in PPMC instead of QuickTime, QuickTime opens anyway and the same “Switching Transports” issue occurs.

I’d really like to get this all working inside AquaVid if possible since it’s such a nice package. Do you have any idea of what else might be causing this issue? Is there some sort of manual transport setting I need to set within the QuickTime preference pane?

 

[z970]

Actually, I just now - for the first time - came across one video with the same problem you're having. But not even PPCMC can stream the URL. And surprisingly enough, PPCMC can't even download the video! Did you have success with PPCMC streaming the same problem video, or was it another one?

Apparently, people have encountered this issue with QuickTime before and fixed it by going into the 'Advanced' pane in the QuickTime preferences, and choosing the 'Custom...' option under 'Transport Setup', and then selecting 'HTTP' as the Transport Protocol with Port 80. I tried this however, and it effectively made no difference.

On the other hand, you could also try installing VLC and attempt to stream through that (which is a plus anyway because its lighter on resources than QuickTime).

 

[z970]

... And now it's working (for me at least), seemingly just by waiting for a certain period of time. AquaVid can stream the video through QuickTime just as all the others, and PPCMC now succeeds in streaming the video, plus download it without issue.

Perhaps certain videos can simply be prone to an intermittent connection?

 

[corneydj]

It happens with every video I’ve tried. But I also have an issue with PPCMC not downloading the videos. There are a bunch of error messages in terminal when I try to do that. But I only get those errors on the G4 - the G3 refuses to stream anything through PPMC but it will download the videos from there. The errors I get when trying to download are mostly about commands not being found.

I also tried setting transport to HTTP port 80 buts it’s been about 10 min and it still just says “Connecting”

 

[corneydj]

Also downloaded VLC but can’t seem to get that to work from AquaVid or PPCMC

 

[z970]

To be clear, your machines do have a reliable connection to the Internet? You can check the latency and reliability of the connection with "ping 1.1.1.1" in terminal, which should return 64 bytes every two seconds.

Please post one of the problem videos here - it is definitely not supposed to fail every video, unless there's a fault on your end. And go ahead and set the transport protocol back to automatic if HTTP isn't working - I have no idea how HTTP behaves under normal circumstances and at this point may just be a hindrance rather than help.

Is PPCMC and Youtube-dl up to date on both machines?

 

[andysa1966]

I downloaded AquaVid but I can’t seem to get any videos to play through QuickTime. When it pulls the video up QuickTime just gets stuck at “switching transports” Is there something inside of QuickTime I need to change / plugins I need to download to get this to work? I’ve tried this on a G3 & a G4 but both refuse to work.

Same here, G4 OS Tiger and QT 7.6.4

 

[z970]

Very strange... Every video I try (save for the aforementioned one) plays in QuickTime fine.

I have read that 3gp streaming in QuickTime may not work reliably in some places, seemingly most prevelent in the UK.

@andysa1966 Can PPCMC stream or download videos, or is that prone to failure too?

 

[corneydj]

My internet connection is plenty fast - like I said before I can get videos to stream when initiated through PPCMC but not through AquaVid. And they download to completion fairly quick. Everything I’m using is up to date as well & I’ve tried this now on a 667 TiBook G4, a 600 iBook G3 & a 333 iBook G3 all of which are running 10.4.11. The last two aren’t really fast enough to play the videos at full frame rates, but they all three experience the exact same problem when attempting to play YouTube videos in QuickTime when initiated by AquaVid (but succeed when initiated through PPCMC)
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Oh and I tried a bunch of different videos, here is one of them -

 

[z970]

Well, I don't know what to do here. Aside from some kind of obscure regional difference that is somehow interfering with the way AquaVid redirects 3gp files from YouTube to QuickTime, I'm drawing blanks at the moment.

To be honest, my only suggestion to you right now is to just use PPCMC if that's what works. AquaVid will still function fine as a tailored URL browser.

 

[andysa1966]

Well, I don't know what to do here. Aside from some kind of obscure regional difference that is somehow interfering with the way AquaVid redirects 3gp files from YouTube to QuickTime, I'm drawing blanks at the moment.

To be honest, my only suggestion to you right now is to just use PPCMC if that's what works. AquaVid will still function fine as a tailored URL browser.

Do you have any of or all of QTE, Perian and tenfourfoxmp4enaber-7450 installed, maybe there is a conflict here

 

[corneydj]

I did have QTE installed on the G4 but uninstalled it when I couldn’t get this to work. (QTE also never worked for me) The G3 never had QTE but still had the same issue. I have Perian installed as well but apparently that’s suggested for this app. Never installed mp4enabler. Oh also I’m in the USA so that’s the YouTube I’m streaming.

 

[z970]

@andysa1966 I do not have QTE installed on any machine. Given the advent of PPCMC, and QTE's historical unreliability, it is no longer that useful to install.

@corneydj Perian wasn't necessarily suggested for this app; it was just a troubleshooting shot in the dark.

 

[andysa1966]

i checked and i dont have QTE installed, i did previously, but i recently did a clean os install, i uninstalled Perian, still same issue as described by corneydj

 

[z970]

Added AquaVid IV for those having trouble with YouTube streaming through QuickTime. AquaVid IV is built on Invidious and therefore does not require the MP4 Enabler and can thus be used on 1 GHz machines and below, most fittingly for audio streams.

@corneydj @andysa1966 This may be of interest to you guys...

 

[swamprock]

Added AquaVid IV for those having trouble with YouTube streaming through QuickTime. AquaVid IV is built on Invidious and therefore does not require the MP4 Enabler and can thus be used on 1 GHz machines and below, most fittingly for audio streams.

@corneydj @andysa1966 This may be of interest to you guys...

Which instance of Invidious did you use? The main one shut down on the first, and the others have various issues; at least, here they do.

 

[z970]

@swamprock Here as well. I liked invidious.snopyta.org the best because it used a version of the software that allows you to select the specific resolution, on top of having the low-resource player interface, which allows for smoother playback than the basic "medium" and "HD" stuff that the vanilla software had.

However, the more I tested it (and the more the total site traffic increased once the shutdown occurred), the longer videos and queries took to load, not to mention increasing frequencies of buffering.

So, I opted for one which tested at 100% health, little to no traffic, and was based in the US, which was invidiou.site. It uses the vanilla software, but it at least works reliably, and will stream audio well on slower machines. As Invidious's popularity increases (and hopefully gets more public instances), if another one comes up with invidiou.site's same qualities, but with invidious.snopyta.org's granular resolution control (providing the best featureset for maximum performance), I'll switch over to that one instead.

Of course, Tonvid also lacks comment section functionality, related videos, the resource-light player interface, and occasionally suffers from query issues just as well. Not an optimal choice either.

 

[z970]

I'd like to take a moment of appreciation here for just how seriously good these mini browsers are (and how great FoxBoxes are in general).

If you get into the right flow, using AquaWeb as opposed to full TenFourFox actually almost feels like driving a stick shift over an automatic, thanks to the increased usage of keyboard shortcuts and other manual workarounds for missing features like tabbed browsing (more detail in the new Usage Tips section at Macintosh Garden). To me, that's actually a lot more charming than the tired 'everything is a visible button' model.

There's only so much that foxPEP can do when the vanilla browser is far more bloated than it has any right to be considering its target market. So when you combine the vetted research of foxPEP with the ingenuity and raw power of TenFourFox's exhaustive CPU optimization without any bloat whatsoever, you get a far more desirable end result because of it. Case in point, from a performance standpoint, browsing the Internet via AquaWeb on a SP 1.25 MDD feels very similar to browsing the Internet on full TenFourFox on a DP 2.0 G5 - they're literally that close in page rendering time and element responsiveness.

But the way I see it, if you're going to take your vintage Corvette out to the modern highway, you may as well give it a fighting chance. Thankfully, the many ways of accomplishing this are in no shortage now!

 

[swamprock]

@swamprock Here as well. I liked invidious.snopyta.org the best because it used a version of the software that allows you to select the specific resolution, on top of having the low-resource player interface, which allows for smoother playback than the basic "medium" and "HD" stuff that the vanilla software had.

However, the more I tested it (and the more the total site traffic increased once the shutdown occurred), the longer videos and queries took to load, not to mention increasing frequencies of buffering.

So, I opted for one which tested at 100% health, little to no traffic, and was based in the US, which was invidiou.site. It uses the vanilla software, but it at least works reliably, and will stream audio well on slower machines. As Invidious's popularity increases (and hopefully gets more public instances), if another one comes up with invidiou.site's same qualities, but with invidious.snopyta.org's granular resolution control (providing the best featureset for maximum performance), I'll switch over to that one instead.

Of course, Tonvid also lacks comment section functionality, related videos, the resource-light player interface, and occasionally suffers from query issues just as well. Not an optimal choice either.

Thanks. That one seems to work the best, with some search issues once in a while.

 

[swamprock]

View attachment 950988

Speaking of Corvettes (to sway a tad off-topic), I like the boxy interior 1984-88 'vettes. They're cheap, and I've been wanting one since the 80s. Finding one in decent shape, though, is a challenge. Most are project cars these days...

 

[z970]

Having just installed Leopard onto my MDD, I got the chance to casually compare the performance of both AquaWeb and Leopard WebKit ...

After visiting several websites, it seems that the latest incarnation of AquaWeb has surpassed Leopard WebKit in both site loading times and scrolling smoothness, the latter being by a large margin. The fact that AquaWeb blocks ads right out-of-the-box probably helps, too.

And surprisingly enough, Leopard WebKit's general performance is comparatively sluggish overall. It also exhibits a flickering issue when scrolling through the page (while this may be related to BeamSync being disabled, I don't recall this happening before), and that's to say nothing of its crash-prone nature either.

In other news, I also discovered that Leopard WebKit is no longer able to connect to Wikipedia.

Being basically just a giant encyclopedia that anyone can edit, you would think that their security standards wouldn't be as high as they are...

 

[z970]

AquaWeb has received another update in accordance with TenFourFoxPEP 2.2.2, and outside of several minor presentation adjustments, has also been reduced in default size from 800 x 600 to 640 x 480, substantially increasing performance in low-end environments (the maximize button can be temporarily used wherever a larger viewing area is required). The pre-existing (if any) AquaWeb profile folder within the user's Application Support directory will need to removed in advance in order to take advantage of this change, however.

And to those who prefer an all-in-one video solution, AquaVid YT plays 144p videos flawlessly right after starting the video on even a base 1.25 GHz configuration, as required by the TenFourFox MP4 Enabler.

As before, the new builds are available @ Macintosh Garden.

AquaWeb / AquaVid - Macintosh Garden

AquaWeb and AquaVid are heavily modified foxboxes designed to bring maximum browsing speeds and efficiency to OS X Tiger / Leopard.

macintoshgarden.org

 

[z970]

So, cool news. I did some experimenting around again, and I found that ultra small windows (480 x 320), while now stretching into novelty / gimmick territory due to their diminutive size, are regardless incredibly fast at loading pages, even on literally 20-year-old hardware.

So I figured that if said 20-year-old hardware can remarkably cruise around the modern Web mostly unhindered (think late G3s / early G4s), the trade off in viewing area is needless to say probably worth it in the end.

So, here's AquaWeb micro; packing several bug fixes, another snazzy new icon, and gimmicks performance to spare.

But that's not all, I also found out that TenFourFoxBoxes are one of the few applications to massively benefit from QuartzGL integration on 10.5.x systems, so now it comes with that built-in, too. So on top of having less pixel area to draw (thus placing less demand on the CPU), rendering performance has easily been doubled on compatible environments.

Give it a try!

AquaWeb / AquaVid - Macintosh Garden

AquaWeb and AquaVid are heavily modified foxboxes designed to bring maximum browsing speeds and efficiency to OS X Tiger / Leopard.

macintoshgarden.org