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View Full Version : At last, the nastiest bug (caching) fixed in NetFront 3.2!


Menneisyys
04-28-2005, 04:39 PM
As I've posted to several PPC boards, I've found a nasty bug in NetFront 3.1 (from now on: NF) with flaky caching/reloading, which makes using NF 3.1 far more bandwith-consuming than an in this respect bugless PPC browser (for example, Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) or NetFront 3.2).

If you navigate to a previously visited page which still exists in NF's cache, the changes to the page will NOT be visible at all - the server always answers with a 304 Not Modified message. I've tested this several times with modified HTML pages. The changes have never been displayed without explicit reloading. If you force a reload of the page (click the Reload icon), on the other hand, all files will be downloaded again, regardless of their being modified or original, resulting in excess (and, again, unnecessary) bandwidth hit. In this respect, both PIE and NF 3.2 is much better.

Fortunately, in the latest (still Japanese only) version of NF, 3.2, this bug has been corrected.

Stephen Beesley
04-29-2005, 12:57 PM
Glad to see this has been fixed.

This has particularly bugged me when visiting news sites (like ppc Thoughts) and needing to do an explicit refresh every time I visit.

Now I just have to wait for an English release of v3.2...

Menneisyys
05-01-2005, 03:23 PM
I've countinued exploring Netfront Version 3.2.

Version 3.2, unlike its predecessor, it allows for relocating the cache - just found it out by examining its registry keys. That is, the cache may be in the (fast to write to) RAM, while the app itself may be in ROM.

See HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\access.co.jp\NetFront3\BrowserPref

Incidentally, Version 3.2 has a lot of other, new settings. Much as the above entry only contained "NF3RendererType", "NF3BuildNo", "NF3CoreType" and "LicenseID" in 3.1, version 3.2 is far more configurable. Even without knowing Japanese, based on the Registry, it does seem that the new version is indeed a great leap forward.

Before you ask: I've tried to hack version 3.1 by importing the 3.2-specific L2Cache* values into the 3.1 registry to enable cache relocation; without success. 3.1 doesn't make use of them.

Kati Compton
05-02-2005, 06:41 PM
Does 3.2 handle VGA natively?

Menneisyys
05-02-2005, 09:02 PM
Does 3.2 handle VGA natively?

Unfortunately, no. It's working in forced VGA great, however. (I haven't checked whether it's buggy with forms though - it was an annoying bug with 3.1 in forced VGA mode.)

See for example the screenshots of NF 3.1 and 3.2 in both forced VGA and standard SE, without forced mode at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39534 .

Menneisyys
05-04-2005, 06:18 PM
(I haven't checked whether it's buggy with forms though - it was an annoying bug with 3.1 in forced VGA mode.)


I've just tested if version 3.2 still has the forced/native VGA form bug of its predecessor. It was eliminated from forced VGA:

3.1 had a problem that made a lot of problems for VGA users in both forced and native VGA. If you used the browser to fill in form fields, as soon as you stepped in any of them, the lower half of the screen just disappeared as can be seen in the following two shots:

http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/BrowserRoundup/NF31FormProblemsInVGA-1.gif
http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/BrowserRoundup/NF31FormProblemsInVGA-2.gif

This problem no longer exists with 3.2, as can be seen here:

http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/BrowserRoundup/32noFormProblemsInForcedVGA-1.gif
http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/BrowserRoundup/32noFormProblemsInForcedVGA-2.gif

In native VGA, however, it remained:

http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/BrowserRoundup/NF32ProbsInNativeVGA-2.gif
http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/BrowserRoundup/NF32ProbsInNativeVGA-3.gif

And a new one has been introduced (again in native VGA):

http://menneisyys.freeweb.hu/BrowserRoundup/NF32ProbsInNativeVGA-1.gif

Therefore, I'd use this app only in forced VGA mode. Unfortunately, as clearly can be seen, the app is still not VGA-aware. Text entry fields are messed up in forced VGA (only the upper half of the letters are visible) etc. However, the size of the address bar is correct, as are those of the dialogs.

Kati Compton
05-04-2005, 07:05 PM
Ugh - but it still has the problem that fonts rendered inside text entry boxes are cut off at the bottom. :( This is my biggest complaint about NF. Second would be the GIGANTOR location bar in forced VGA mode that also has text cut off at the bottom.

Menneisyys
05-04-2005, 07:19 PM
Ugh - but it still has the problem that fonts rendered inside text entry boxes are cut off at the bottom. :( This is my biggest complaint about NF. Second would be the GIGANTOR location bar in forced VGA mode that also has text cut off at the bottom.

Yes, it's still not perfect, unfortunately. It's strange the people over at Access didn't make this version VGA compliant...

halljames
06-23-2005, 08:58 AM
I know. Netfront 3.1 has been out for ages, you would think in this day and age of VGA devices that they would have made it compatible. I think it is disgraceful.

Menneisyys
06-23-2005, 09:09 AM
I know. Netfront 3.1 has been out for ages, you would think in this day and age of VGA devices that they would have made it compatible. I think it is disgraceful.

Well, the Access people just may consider the VGA market too small and not profitable enough. Thunderhawk, for example, doesn't have a VGA-optimized version either, not even as long as images are concerned. (Creatng a VGA charset is much more time-consuming than just add VGA image support into Thunderhawk.)

galt
06-23-2005, 01:04 PM
Hmm... For me the worst bug in 3.1 isnt the caching, but the crashing. I've been unable to identify why, but on my Axim X30 High NF will crash on me on several sites, Livejournal (trying to load a page of comments), HowardForums if I have a cookie set for it to log me in, and a few others. Even after a hardresest and an install of just NF, still crashes on those pages. Wonder if it's fixed in 3.2?

Phillip Dyson
06-23-2005, 01:36 PM
To me the nastiest bug in Netfront 3.1 was the how awful websites looked in my VGA (MS-VGA) device. That and widget sizing in the browser itself.

I caused me to retreat back to slow PIE. I hope these are fixed. I'd love to be able to go back.

Menneisyys
06-23-2005, 01:55 PM
HowardForums if I have a cookie set for it to log me in, and a few others. Even after a hardresest and an install of just NF, still crashes on those pages. Wonder if it's fixed in 3.2?

I'll test HowardForums.

galt
06-23-2005, 02:07 PM
HowardForums if I have a cookie set for it to log me in, and a few others. Even after a hardresest and an install of just NF, still crashes on those pages. Wonder if it's fixed in 3.2?

I'll test HowardForums.

Thanks, (it was crashing when loading the HoFo PPC Forums, of course) but I'm wondering if it's a Axim-only or Galt's-Axim-only bug. A while back Darius helped me test the same pages using Netfront on his device (nor sure which one) and he experienced no crashes. Go ahead and test (I know it makes you happy :lol:), let me know if you expereience crashes on either version.

whydidnt
06-23-2005, 04:44 PM
Well, the Access people just may consider the VGA market too small and not profitable enough. Thunderhawk, for example, doesn't have a VGA-optimized version either, not even as long as images are concerned. (Creatng a VGA charset is much more time-consuming than just add VGA image support into Thunderhawk.)

It's understandable, but if I recall correctly, Access released a VGA optimized version of NF 3.1 for the E800 devices. It's seems odd that they couldn't roll that up into their latest release, or at least offer that program to the rest of us VGA PPC owners. The lack of VGA support is the one thing preventing me from sending NetFront some cash for their program.

Menneisyys
06-24-2005, 08:53 AM
Answering a question over at the PPCMag forum (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16594), I've found two other bugs in NF3.1:

NF 3.1, unlike 3.2, simply ignores the "Content-Type" HTTP header and only sets the encoding based on the http-equiv meta tag. This is clearly a BIG bug in 3.1.

3.1 wasn't able to correctly use ­ (Soft hyphen) entity (see http://penguin.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/academic/xml/dtd/index.php for more info). Pages using ­, therefore, are rendered under NF3.1 awfully, by using a real hyphen.

Finally (this is not a bug in 3.1!), NF3.2 offers support for a lot of additional code pages in addition to the five in NF3.1. For example, in version 3.1, there is no Central-European (ISO-8859-2) support at all.

Darius Wey
06-25-2005, 03:45 AM
A while back Darius helped me test the same pages using Netfront on his device (nor sure which one) and he experienced no crashes.

Wow, that was eons ago. A good tickle of my long term memory there. I only just found out about NF3.2 since I decided to go into offline isolation whilst in Sydney the past few days. If I get my hands on it, I'll see about doing a bit of testing. :)

galt
06-25-2005, 06:51 AM
I only just found out about NF3.2 since I decided to go into offline isolation whilst in Sydney the past few days. If I get my hands on it, I'll see about doing a bit of testing. :) When there were no Darius posts on the Netfront 3.2 release I figured you must be busy doing something. :lol: Days offline... wow! I start getting withdrawl symptoms after a few hours....

Darius Wey
06-25-2005, 11:19 AM
When there were no Darius posts on the Netfront 3.2 release I figured you must be busy doing something. :lol: Days offline... wow! I start getting withdrawl symptoms after a few hours....

Yeah, I felt that way too, but I survived - somewhat. Anyway, I assure you the worst bit is cleaning up back-logged emails. ;)

Menneisyys
06-25-2005, 02:21 PM
You may want to read http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=351433 on a new bug I've just discovered affecting all NetFront versions.

galt
07-25-2005, 12:48 AM
Hmm... For me the worst bug in 3.1 isnt the caching, but the crashing. I've been unable to identify why, but on my Axim X30 High NF will crash on me on several sites, Livejournal (trying to load a page of comments), HowardForums if I have a cookie set for it to log me in, and a few others. Even after a hardresest and an install of just NF, still crashes on those pages. Wonder if it's fixed in 3.2?

Just to follow up here, I finally purchase & installed NF3.2. My crashing problems are gone! I think I might now have a memory leak issue though, not sure. I've also installed NewsBreak, the Axim X30 A06 ROM, and SPB Pocket Plus 3.0 all in the last 2 days (not smart, I know) so it might take a while for me to figure out what's causing the problem.

Phillip Dyson
07-25-2005, 12:08 PM
I've also been experiencing a memory leak. I had thought it was PhoneAlarm. But I had also installed SPB Pocket Plus 3.

Perhaps Plus is the culprit.

Darius Wey
07-25-2005, 01:31 PM
I've also been experiencing a memory leak. I had thought it was PhoneAlarm. But I had also installed SPB Pocket Plus 3.

Perhaps Plus is the culprit.

I think a lot of users have been experiencing memory leaks with Pocket Plus 3.0. It's a little strange - I never had the problem with the beta. Only now have I found my memory slowly going down some black pit.