Test reports
|
Test reports
|
»Introduction:
After several beta- and pre-releases, which were all very likely to crash, the "final release" of the webbrowser Voyager3 has been published on 28-Dec-1999. After only 3 days, (on 31st December) the first bugfix with the version 3.0a (or 3.0.52) was released. According to Vapor, "final release" doesn't mean that the development has ceased, they just felt that the version was stable enough to remove the beta status (let me cite: "stable as a rock"). You can read here if this decision was right.
Requirements:
User: Knowledge of English language! There aren't any localizations for Voyager yet, because Oliver Wagner (the programmer) was not sure which menus and/or features should be implemented in Voyager. And of course he didn't want to change several catalogs after every little modification in the program.
Amiga: The minimum requirements for your computer is a 68000 processor (!), AmigaOS2.0, 2MB RAM, MUI 3.8, and 5MB of harddisk space. However recommend is a 020, 4MB RAM, AmigaOS3.x, and at least AGA graphic chips.
As always the rule is: The more the better. Graphic boards are supported through Picasso96 or CyberGraphX .
I'm using Voyager3 on an Amiga1200 with a Blizzard1230-IV, AmigaOS 3.5 and 64MB RAM, and I must say that working with a 16 to 64 color screen under AGA is reasonably fast. Voyager also takes advantage of an mathematic coprocessor, becauses the plugin for decoding and remapping of the graphics is also available in a FPU specific version for the 030 and 040. Furthermore, the program Fblit (from Aminet) is recommended (by me), it makes scrolling and refreshing a little bit faster. You will also benefit from a fast serial interface card.
After downloading the archives v3_30.lha, v3_30a_update.lha and v3docs_011099.lha from the Vapor website (http://v3.vapor.com/) or the ftp-server (ftp://ftp.vapor.com/pub/voyager) you can start the installation.
Installation:
The installation is quite easy, thanks to the Commodore/Escom/Gateway/whatever-installer, and also detects older version of Voyager. After the usual settings like installation mode, protocolling, etc. you can choose the version of Voyager that suits the processor used in your Amiga.
Then you have to choose a directory on your harddisk where the installer creates the Voyager directory.
The next question is whether the MIME preferences editor should be copied into the same directory as Voyager or into the common "Prefs" drawer. The MIMEPrefs editor is used to define the viewers for several file types (e.g. Visage to display PNG pics, the MP3-player mpega for mpg soundfiles, etc.) or whatever Voyager should do with certain files.
After copying the MimePrefs, you may choose between several versions of the imagedecoder plugin. Beside the 68k versions, the installer also offers a PPC version for PowerUP, which is not in the archive (currently it is not available at all).
Since Voyager3 has a very flexible user interface, the archive contains 3 different button sets. I would recommend to install all 3 of them, they all look very good, and if you don't like them, you can always delete them or use them as base for your own creations.
Then some readme's and necessary system libraries will be copied.
The next thing required is an environment variable for the ContactManager (another Vapor product, I don't know much about it, and I don't want to write about it, either) which must contain the complete path to the Voyager directory (the "Ram Disk" is not allowed!). If you make a mistake here, you can change it later. It is stored in ENVARC:Vapor/ and has the filename CManager_path.
After completing the installation, unpack the v3_30a_update.lha archive, if you didn't do that already. It contains a readme and the update to Voyager. Copy these to your Voyager directory and you have finished the installation.
Because Voyager uses the TearOff custom classes for MUI, and the archive only contains the absolutely necessary files, you should download and install the complete TearOff archive from Aminet (dev/mui/MCC_TearOff.lha).
The last archive, v3docs_011099.lha, contains the english documentation in HTML format, which can be used directly from Voyager.
Preferences:
Now you have to set the correct preferences for Voyager. The preferences window can be be opened from the menu entry "Settings/General Settings..." look similar to the preferences of MUI. On the left side, there are small, labeled icons, which divide the configuration in several related parts. Almost all gadgets have a helptext (MUI bubblehelp), so you don't need to consult the documentation most of the time.
Usage:
When using the unregistered version of Voyager, you get a window at every startup, telling you how many times you've started Voyager, how long you've been using it and a notice that Voyager is a shareware program. After 30 minutes the program quits. Beside that, the demo has the same features as the full version.
As soon as the user interface is up, users who worked with other browsers before should find their way. Using Voyager is quite easy. Menus and gadgets are labeled in english and leave not much room for misinterpretation. For most options in the preferences there are the usual MUI-bubblehelp texts. You seldom need to look in the documentation. In the upper part of the window, there are the navigation buttons, a text field for the URL, below that are the buttons for the (freely configurable) fastlinks. The lower part of the window has on the left side a status line, where the kind of connection and the transfer speed is shown, on the left side there are eight lamps. Each lamp describes the status of a connection. The number of simultaneous active connections can be freely configured. If you click on the lamps, the Voyager Network Status window comes up, which shows a more detailed output about the connections.
Special features:
You should pay special attention to the contxt-sensitive pulldown-menus (as seen in Windows o MacOS).
Just position the mouse above a link, hit the right mouse button, and you'll see a menu with some options that are sensible for this type of object (e.g. "Download File", "Copy URL to Clipboard" etc.). So far nothing new, other browsers do that, too, but in Voyager, the feature also works in many other parts of the program. For example: If you don't want the tranfer animation to be shown, just right-click on it and you get a menu to make it disappear. So if you are desperately looking for a certain function, first try the right mouse button.
Because Voyager uses TearOff.mcc for its interface, you can arrange the button panel in any way you want them. Click on the left side of the panel and move it anywhere you like or drag it outside the window. But be careful, because on my configuration, this often resulted in a total crash.
Another ability of Voyager is the resuming of downloads after an interruption. Just imagine, you are downloading a very big file (e.g. the demo of T-Zero ;-) and your Amiga crashed a few minutes before the end of the transfer. After rebooting, you just click your way to the file again and Voyager asks whether to overwrite the old file or to resume download
Until now, this feature worked flawless. All downloaded archives unpacked without problems.
Voyager supports Javascript 1.3. There is even a just-in-time compiler, which speeds up the execution of these scripts a lot. Unfortunately, there are many yet unimplemented functions, which makes it almost impossible to use sites with lots of Javascript. But Voyager shares this problem with all Javascript-enabled Amiga browsers.
Furthermore, Voyager supports secured connections via SSL (secure socket layer), which is important for online-banking and confidential transmissions (credit card numbers, etc.). The TCP/IP stack in use doesn't have to have this ability (for example AmiTCP or the TCP/IP-Stack from Commodore).
Websites can be printed out. Alas this is not always successful. It depends upon printer and driver. Especially documents that are larger than one screen (you have to scroll to see the whole site) can cause problems.
There exists a so called FlashPlugin. It lets you view flash animations in websites. This plugin is not included in the main archive, because it is a slow beta version. If you want to use it, get it from the same source as the main archive. There is also PowerPC version available.
Java is not supported by Voyager.
Stability:
Crashes are not as common as with the NG- and V3-predecessors, but not impossible. If you compare the new, although much more powerful version to the predecessor VoyagerII (NOT Voyager2NG!!!), V3 can't keep up. Unreproduceable crashes, sometimes just caused by clicking a link, aren't really common, but sometimes unavoidable. Sometimes even a click on a lamp, to make the "Network Status" window show up, can cause a total crash. Furthermore you can provoke a crash if you keep on resizing the window while Voyager is calculating the page layout. Some features (e.g. the bookmark manager or the disk cache management) are implemented only rudimentary or faulty in some parts. But through improvisation you can work around most of these problems.
Result:
I wouldn't call this version "stable as a rock". But if you know which problems can arise, and avoid them, you can work good, fast and convienient with Voyager. Everyone who registers Voyager supports the development and helps to fix those bugs. Keep in mind that Voyager costs about 50,-DM (25,-EUR) and you can work with it as good as with browers double that price (and sometimes even faster). And, as I wrote above, the development isn't stopped, Vapor is working on newer, more stable versions.
Sources:
| Vapor: | http://www.vapor.com |
| Voyager-Portal: | http://v3.vapor.com |
An older version (can be upgraded for free) is available on the NetConnect3-CD by Haage & Partner.
Haage&Partner: http://www.haage-partner.com
Help the first:
There is a very active mailing list, where many of the aforementioned problems are discussed and solved. To subscribe to this list, visit http://www.vapor.com/lists/.
Help the second:
There is also an older, unofficial FAQ, downloadable at http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/bcs/VFAQ/.
Christian Aichinger <aichi@gmx.de>«
