MacSurf 1.68 – NetSurf on OS 9 Released
61 points
6 hours ago
| 6 comments
| github.com
| HN
mplsllc
6 hours ago
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The single biggest change since 1.5 is under the hood: MacSurf's JavaScript engine has been replaced. Duktape (ES5) is gone; MacSurf now runs macQJS which is a QuickJS port for Classic Mac OS and executes modern ES2023 JavaScript natively on Mac OS 9.
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anthk
4 hours ago
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This needs to backported to main Netsurf ASAP.
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mplsllc
3 hours ago
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The most annoying bug I was able to fix that is also present up stream was this weird viewport, extra scroll bar, that would appear on some pages. I need to figure out how to get involved with the main repo if they'll have me.
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LetsGetTechnicl
1 hour ago
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Writing a JS engine for OS 9 in 2026 is like, genuinely impressive
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pKropotkin
38 minutes ago
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Not working, “Bad Parameter”
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crims0n
4 hours ago
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This is awesome and greatly appreciated, going to boot up my iMac G4 and give it a go.
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mplsllc
3 hours ago
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Awesome! Please let me know how it goes (good or bad) I am always open to feedback.
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system7rocks
5 hours ago
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Wow. Just wow, I will give this a run on my old iMac G4 later today. Very cool to see this progress, and I am a big fan of NetSurf.
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thisislife2
3 hours ago
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Yeah, I wish more people contributed to Netsurf and it gets the momentum it needs to compete with Blink, Gecko and Webkit. So many divided efforts in this area - there's Ladybird, Flow, Servo, Goanna. Even just improving Webkit and making it truly multi-platform (it isn't available for Windows, and the Linux version is apparently not as performant) would greatly even the field.
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mplsllc
3 hours ago
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Netsurf seems pretty closed in terms of who they allow to contribute. However, I need to look more into it and not use the excuse that it's "too complicated" to see if they are interested in my bug fixes.
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MetalSnake
5 hours ago
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Awesome stuff! I love retro computing especially with Macs.

But it's a bit weird that old PPC Macs get modern browsers, but Intel Macs running 10.14 are stuck with Firefox 115esr.

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