Ditch/Kill/Erradicate/Exterminate/Obliterate/Abandon/Nuke built in browser

[ChiggyChiggy]

Why not to remove the built in browser of Winamp? It doesnt really serve any use When something in Winamp links to something it tends to open in it, which is really annoying since the built in browser just feels... weird, not to mention it tends to take the color of the skin thats being used (try the new SHOUTcast with a cPro colored skin to see what i mean, nightmare)

That and almost any webpage open in it makes it spit out an endless amount of errors.

On the dev side of things itd mean less code in Winamp i suppose, thats another plus

[DrO]

all of the complaints you're making are by design (trying to follow the skin colour for the border / scrollbars, opening links, etc). and with the case of the links, it's been recently covered in a thread that it could be disabled for those not liking it &/or the browser tab for bento skins (what other skins do is down to them) being able to be hidden.

as for the colouring thing, when the loaded pages followed the Winamp theme it made more sense as it made everything feel consistent. obviously if the page doesn't make use of that (like the old SC radio view), then it looks wrong and so in some respects your request is valid for possibly dropping the skinning (but then some parts need it otherwise it'll look even weirder), so i think in the long run i'll not going to mess with that and it'll stay like it is.


and you may not like it, but we get complaints when it breaks due to IE update issues so there are clearly people out there who are using or people aren't able to find it (from changing skin). so it's like with so many things in Winamp, some like it, some hate it and the silent majorty, who knows.

as for removing it, the handling which provides it is used for other things like the now playing view, the information fields in the podcast subscriptions view and it's also possible for 3rd parties to use. so realistically removing it is not an option (and with some of the internal code cleanup, it barely makes a dent on the installer size anyway, maybe a 100KB or something like, as the dll uncompressed is now under 300KB in size).

[Victhor]

Good try Chiggy.. keep on. Anyway, thanks for all the synonymous of "remove"!

[Aminifu]

I'm in the group that likes that Winamp has internal web browsing capability. I like it so much that I appreciate that cPro allows for 2 separate browser engines that can be used at the same time (the IE one that Winamp uses and either of 2 others that were written by the cPro devs). In some cases the functionality of the internal browsers are limited to focus on 1 thing. In other cases the functionality is the same as that provided by external browsers.

I mostly use Winamp to play media I have installed locally, but I like to listen to (or listen and watch) streams on occasion and/or view info related to the media I'm playing. It is nice not having to switch to an external browser to do this. The other things Winamp uses internet access for are also handy things to have, imo.

Web pages basically work the same way, but their layouts conform to each site's developers' views on how they want the pages to look. It's silly to expect web page layouts to conform to the apps that are displaying them, imo. It is possible to change many aspects of a page's layout if I really want to (with options built into the browsers). But it's easier for me to conform to a particular page's layout than making the page's layout conform to me.

I have not experienced endless errors viewing or accessing web pages within Winamp. I have had no more problems than I have had using my external browsers. These are almost always temporary issues with the sites themselves, or my internet service provider, or my firewalls, or the connection hardware or it's configuration, and not anything that's due to the browsers themselves.

I sometimes have to learn to conform to the way a particular site does things that is different from the way most sites do a similar thing. This can be annoying, but is normal and should be expected from time to time. People use different usability standards or don't try to conform to any standards at all.

So, I say Winamp should not change it's internal web browsing capability other than keeping up with the IE updates.

[ChiggyChiggy]

I mostly use Winamp to play media I have installed locally, but I like to listen to (or listen and watch) streams on occasion and/or view info related to the media I'm playing. It is nice not having to switch to an external browser to do this. The other things Winamp uses internet access for are also handy things to have, imo.

Hmm, good point, ive never really thought about using Winamp to play streams from streaming sites. I guess thats one use of it, maybe the only use of it there is, but still a use.

Web pages basically work the same way, but their layouts conform to each site's developers' views on how they want the pages to look. It's silly to expect web page layouts to conform to the apps that are displaying them, imo. It is possible to change many aspects of a page's layout if I really want to (with options built into the browsers). But it's easier for me to conform to a particular page's layout than making the page's layout conform to me.

I have not experienced endless errors viewing or accessing web pages within Winamp. I have had no more problems than I have had using my external browsers. These are almost always temporary issues with the sites themselves, or my internet service provider, or my firewalls, or the connection hardware or it's configuration, and not anything that's due to the browsers themselves.

I take it this is while using the cPro browser? iirc correctly you use a dark theme, how is it that it hasnt ruined the layout of sites for you? D: Alot of sites with colorless spaces/ white become almost unusable from it lol. Maybe cPro's devs found a way around that..

If the cPro browser isnt the same one that Winamp uses thats basically just an IE window, then what rendering engine does it use? Gecko?

Good try Chiggy.. keep on. Anyway, thanks for all the synonymous of "remove"!

Well you know what they say, nothing says expressing yourself like raping the dictionary for terms to use xD

[Aminifu]

I take it this is while using the cPro browser? iirc correctly you use a dark theme, how is it that it hasnt ruined the layout of sites for you? D:

...

If the cPro browser isnt the same one that Winamp uses thats basically just an IE window, then what rendering engine does it use? Gecko?

Web sites shown with my internal browsers look basically the same as when shown in my external browsers. If there are Winamp options that screw up site layouts, they are not enabled by default in my configuration. TBH, I don't know what browser engines cPro uses, I assume they are different from IE because of some comments DrO has made in passing.

I'm attaching 3 small, cropped, screenshots:
One is showing the SkinConsortium site with the IE engine browser. The skin is the cPro 1 skin listed in my signature and the tab heading simply says "Browser". As shown, the address bar and search bar are available, so I could enter anything that I could enter in an external browser. I'm using this site as the home page for this browser because the AOL search page doesn't work right anymore.

Another screenshot (of the same skin) is showing what the SongFacts site looks like with the cPro engine that supports the "BrowserPro" widget (cPro widgets are like Winamp plug-ins). The page is showing info associated with the artist of the song selected in the playlist editor. The tab heading says "BrowserPro". The address bar only allows for a limited selection of sites to be chosen. The list of sites can be changed by manually editing the appropriate cPro data file.

Both sites in these screenshots are running at the same time. I can switch between them and interact with them simply by changing tabs.

The 3rd screenshot is showing the same SongFacts page, but I've switched the skin to a cPro 2 skin (Dark Aluminum by Victhor) and the browser is the "Web Reader". I assume this browser is using a 3rd engine. It has 2 modes. 1 mode allows for a limited selection (and changing) of sites like "BrowserPro". The other mode allows for a normal address bar where any site's address can be entered. The "BrowserPro" widget will not load in a cPro 2 skin and I don't see an easy way to open an IE supported panel (but I have not really looked since I mostly use the other cPro 1 skin).

Since I can change skins without pausing the media that is playing, I have access to 3 different browser panels (with different engines I assume) any time I want. Of course this increases Winamp's CPU and RAM usage, but my hardware can easily handle it. The only significant difference, I've noticed, between the internal and external browsers is the internal browsers do not have tabs for opening multiple pages at the same time. Clicking on a link on a page causes an instance of my external IE browser to open with the associated item.

[ChiggyChiggy]

This is freaky..... in the built in IE browser (the same one you used) It works normally and sites dont look strange and messed up, which id weird since its supposed to be the same one that looked messed up...

Ill use the Winamp site as an example since it shows the best example of how bad things get;

This is with using the IE browser: http://i.gyazo.com/a1c5aec2308a7888c96a63824a7c3449.png

This is with using the one from BrowserPro/WebReader: http://i.gyazo.com/92892afbb90944e4e9bb95dbabf382f4.png

And finally, this one: http://i.gyazo.com/e38cc7b9d76aebebb52900aac26eb043.png

This one is the one im talking about, it even features one of the lovely errors im used to seeing when something opens in it. You get this one when you open the now playing page, or pretty much any of the "Online Services" part. The weird thing is i couldnt get any of those errors using the "Browser" or "BrowserPro" browsers, its just with that one.



The plot thickens? Winamp has two engines of its own?

[Aminifu]

Hi ChiggyChiggy,

I'm only using 3 online services at the moment; SHOUTcast Radio (url with the black and white page), Mood Agent, and Top Music Videos. They all work normally for me. "Now Playing" stopped working soon after the sale to Radionomy (it had embedded stuff associated with AOL), so I haven't tried using it for quite awhile.

Can you provide the exact steps you used to cause what's shown in your 3rd screenshot. I would like to try to reproduce the problem.

I will report back tomorrow. I have to work midnight to 8 am and need to get some sleep now.

[ChiggyChiggy]

The now playing page still works, however it leads you to the main normal Winamp.com page, thats what i do to get that particular error and look in this case. Just click on now playing and wait for the page to load (itll say client.winamp.com is unavailable so itll redirect you to the main page, wait for it a bit)

Once youre there its time to enjoy...

It isnt the only one but thats the only page i can remember that does it. If you remember when the new shoutcast page was first launched it used to be so... so... much worse, and its errors were endless (I mean the normal shoutcast Online Service page, not the shoutcastinwinamp one)

[Aminifu]

Ok, but your 1st post said you were having endless errors with almost any webpage. Maybe an exaggeration.

Also, are you in the United States? Users here had AOL ads stuck in "Now Playing" that users in other countries did not. I'll check it out again in a day or two.

[DrO]

anything with the online service related views may not work correctly as most had AOL specific server-side checks which may be causing some of the quirks due to them failing. so weird errors, loading failures, etc are possible and without additional things being removed (as cannot be fully done with 5.66x as-is), i'd probably just try and put up with quirks (especially when mixing things between native and what's 3rd party provided i.e. the cPro browsers).

all of what was provided online is no longer there and so ads on pages due to user location are no longer in effect as those servers and services are long gone (which was something that i did what i could to mitigate against in 5.66x but there were some code assumptions which i've only found out about a month or so back).

either way, Winamp only uses an IE based setup internally (which can be controlled via some options at the code level) and what cPro uses i don't know, though based on the size of things, i'd strongly suspect it's IE based as well and variations could just be down to how the two handle the web browser control differently in some areas. so there's not 'multiple' engines as far as the native Winamp code is concerned.

[ChiggyChiggy]

I may or may not have went a little loose of my definition of endless... it was endless on the shoutcast page tho so i guess that sorta kinda compensates xD

And no not really, altho i use English (US) for Winamp's language/ installer, is that the same as it?

Only saw your reply after i posted mine, lol sorry bout that DrO. So the stack overflow errors are form nonexistent page requests for the ad severs?

Btw, is it confirmed that the now playing feature is totally gone or its undecided? I remember either DJ Egg or Aminifu mentioning that it could make a comeback so ive refrained from completely removing it.

btw I just looked into it and you were right DrO, its IE

http://i.gyazo.com/8fec18338b8ad5b372d773249ac924ae.png

It mentions omBrowser there, so its the same as the Online Services sidebar i suppose, hmm..

[Aminifu]

I forgot to mention that I deleted the "Now Playing" entry and just realized that I did not write down the url. I'll wait until that page is fully working again, if it is returned to some kind of working order. DrO didn't like the AOL version.

[DrO]

Only saw your reply after i posted mine, lol sorry bout that DrO. So the stack overflow errors are form nonexistent page requests for the ad severs?

it won't be from the old AOL infrastructure as none of that is running. maybe it's something with the new page and how some of the in-Winamp code is trying to do things or not, but most of the online service side of things is a massive grey-area currently.

the simple summary is anything with the online services (and related aspects) may not work correctly for all (based on either the service or things the in-Winamp implementation is trying to do and / or is not able to do anymore - which was never anything evil to cover that question).

Btw, is it confirmed that the now playing feature is totally gone or its undecided? I remember either DJ Egg or Aminifu mentioning that it could make a comeback so ive refrained from completely removing it.

there are no final decisions on any of that side of things though the leaning is to maintain what was provided under the AOL days as long as it a) makes sense and b) has value.

DrO didn't like the AOL version.

i never liked most of the online based options as they never worked as well as a native implementation or when they provided better functionality, they didn't fit in with the rest of the Winamp look. that was my main reason for not liking the online versions (and a prime example is i still feel that a native SHOUTcast implementation is better for the desktop client - like WAFA has - than doing a web page option).

[Koopa]

that a native SHOUTcast implementation is better for the desktop client - like WAFA has - than doing a web page option).

I guess the web page option was done, because the previous listing produced too much traffic.

Yeah, the old listing, from the early 5.0 days was great, it looked and felt similar to the rest of the library.

They tried to re-implement several features, like a 'find as you type' thing etc, but the website version never was good.