OS/2 package created from CVS tag FIREFOX_3_0_5_RELEASE. One change was applied on top of the CVS codebase: - slightly edit the in-package README.txt to reflect the current status of the OS/2 port For information on requirements, major missing features, and known bugs, please see the copy of README.txt below, it will be available after installation in the program directory, too. Peter Weilbacher , 2008-12-17 ================================================================================ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Firefox Read Me = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ================================================================================ Firefox is subject to the terms detailed in the license agreement accompanying it. This Read Me file contains information about system requirements and installation instructions for the OS/2 build of Firefox. For more info on Firefox, see http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. For more info on the OS/2 port see http://www.mozilla.org/ports/os2. To submit bugs or other feedback check out Bugzilla at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org for links to known bugs, bug-writing guidelines, and more. You can also get help with Bugzilla by pointing your IRC client to #mozillazine at irc.mozilla.org, OS/2 specific problems are discussed in #warpzilla and in the newsgroup mozilla.dev.ports.os2 on news.mozilla.org. ================================================================================ Getting Firefox ================================================================================ Official Milestone builds of Firefox are published on the release page at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/ OS/2 releases are not created by Mozilla.org staff and may appear on the page http://www.mozilla.org/ports/os2 before the releases page. Be sure to read the Firefox release notes linked on the releases page for information on known problems and installation issues with Firefox. ================================================================================ System Requirements on OS/2 ================================================================================ - This release requires the C runtime DLLs (libc-0.6.3) from ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/gcc/libc-0.6.3-csd3.zip in order to run. You can unpack them in the same directory as the Firefox executable or somewhere else in your LIBPATH. - Minimum hardware requirements + 400 MHz Pentium class processor + 128 MiB RAM plus 128 MiB free swap space + 40 MiB free harddisk space for installation plus storage space for disk cache + Graphics card and driver capable of displaying more than 256 colors - Recommended hardware for acceptable performance + 1.0 GHz processor + 512 MiB RAM plus 128 MiB free swap space NOTE: Firefox's performance and stability increases the more physical RAM is available. - Software requirements + Installation on a file system supporting long file names (i.e. HPFS or JFS but not FAT) + OS/2 Warp 4 with Fixpack 15 or later (Warp 3 may work but is unsupported) + MPTS version 5.3 + TCP/IP version 4.1 + INETVER: SOCKETS.SYS=5.3007, AFOS2.SYS=5.3001, AFINET.SYS=5.3006 NOTE: Do not attempt to use MPTS & TCP/IP versions below these INETVER levels. Although Firefox may seem to start and run normally with older stacks, some features Firefox needs are not implemented correctly in older MPTS versions, which may result in crashes and data loss. + Convenience Pack 2 or eComStation 1.0 or later meet these requirements out of the box. + Only Java plugins of version 1.4.1 or 1.4.2 are supported. (IBM Java 1.3.1 or earlier will crash the browser!) - Useful optional software The following packages enable additional features in Firefox. Download locations are listed below with a detailed description of the features. + Remote Workplace Server (RWS), version 0.8 + Doodle's Screen Saver (DSSaver), version 1.8 or later ================================================================================ Installation Instructions ================================================================================ For all platforms, unpack into a clean (new) directory. Installing on top of previously released builds may cause problems with Firefox. Note: These instructions do not tell you how to build Firefox. For info on building the Firefox source, see http://www.mozilla.org/build/ OS/2 Installation Instructions ------------------------------ On OS/2, Firefox does not have an installation program. To install it, download the .zip file and follow these steps: 1. Click the "Zip" link on the site you're downloading Firefox from to download the ZIP package to your machine. This file is typically called firefox-x.x.x.en-US.os2.zip where the "x.x.x" is replaced by the Firefox version. 2. Navigate to where you downloaded the file and unpack it using your favorite unzip tool. 3. Keep in mind that the unzip process creates a directory "firefox" below the location you point it to, e.g. unzip firefox-3.0.en-US.os2.zip -d c:\firefox-3.0 will unpack Firefox into c:\firefox-3.0\firefox. 4. Make sure that you are _not_ unpacking over an old installation. This is known to cause problems. 5. To start Firefox, navigate to the directory you extracted Firefox to, make sure that the C library DLLs are copied to the installation directory or installed in the LIBPATH, and then double-click the Firefox.exe object. Running multiple versions concurrently -------------------------------------- Because various members of the Mozilla family (i.e. Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, IBM Web Browser) may use different, incompatible versions of the same DLL, some extra steps may be required to run them concurrently. One workaround is the LIBPATHSTRICT variable. To run Firefox one can create a CMD script like the following example (where an installation of Firefox exists in the directory d:\internet\firefox is assumed): set LIBPATHSTRICT=T rem The next line may be needed when a different Mozilla program is listed in LIBPATH rem set BEGINLIBPATH=d:\internet\firefox rem The next line is only needed to run two different versions of Firefox rem set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 d: cd d:\internet\firefox firefox.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 Similarly, one can create a program object to start Firefox using the following settings: Path and file name: * Parameters: /c set LIBPATHSTRICT=T & .\firefox.exe "%*" Working directory: d:\internet\firefox (One might need to add MOZ_NO_REMOTE and/or BEGINLIBPATH as in the CMD script above depending on the system configuration.) Finally, the simplest method is to use the Run! utility by Rich Walsh that can be found in the Hobbes Software Archive: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=Run! Read its documentation for more information. Separating profiles from installation directory ----------------------------------------------- To separate the locations of the user profile(s) (containing the bookmarks and all customizations) from the installation directory to keep your preferences in the case of an update even when using ZIP packages, set the variable MOZILLA_HOME to a directory of your choice. You can do this either in Config.sys or in a script or using a program object as listed above. If you add set MOZILLA_HOME=f:\Data the Firefox user profile will be created in "f:\Data\Mozilla\Firefox". If you are migrating from Mozilla, Firefox's import routine will only find the existing Mozilla profile data if MOZILLA_HOME is correctly set to point to it. Other important environment variables ------------------------------------- There are a few enviroment variables that can be used to control special behavior of Firefox on OS/2: - set NSPR_OS2_NO_HIRES_TIMER=1 This causes Firefox not to use OS/2's high resolution timer. Set this if other applications using the high resolution timer (multimedia apps) act strangely. - set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 Use this to run two instances of Firefox simultaneously (like e.g. debug and optimized version). - set MOZ_NO_RWS=1 Use this to disable Remote Workplace Server support (see below). Find more information on this topic and other tips on http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/Warpzilla.html Support for WPS objects in the browser -------------------------------------- Firefox can make use of Rich Walsh's Remote Workplace Server (RWS) library to access Workplace Shell objects from the browser. This allows helper applications for downloaded files to be selected based on their default WPS association. In addition, the WPS icons of files will be displayed in the download dialog and in directory views. To enable this functionality, Firefox has to find the RWS DLLs. They have to be located in a directory on the LIBPATH, in the Firefox directory, or already be registered as a WPS class. For eComStation 2 this is already the case. If RWS is not yet available on your system, download it from http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=rws08dll If RWS is found on the system, it is used by Firefox automatically. In case you need to disable RWS support, create an environment variable MOZ_NO_RWS and set it to 1. Idle timer for internal cleanups -------------------------------- If Doodle's Screen Saver (DSSaver) v1.8 or later is installed, Firefox can determine how long the user has been inactive. If the user has been inactive for a while, cleanup operations are performed (e.g. on the browsing history) and reloads of "Live Bookmarks" are suspended. DSSaver can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/dssaver/dssaver_v18.zip Setting the OS/2 default browser -------------------------------- The default web browser can be set using WPS URL objects. The properties notebook of every URL object contains a "Browser" tab where the browser executable can be selected. Any changes to these settings will be stored and reflected in all URL objects once the user presses the "Set Default" button. Two small applications make this change a bit easier and provide options to also set default programs for mail and news as well as internet chat services: - ConfigApps http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=configapps&sort=date - Internet Application Integration http://7cities.net/~mckinnis/os2/ Changed font handling --------------------- To be able to display text, Firefox cannot make use of normal OS/2 routines but has to use FreeType and FontConfig. This has the advantage that text can be displayed with antialiasing, but at the same time has some caveats: - Firefox cannot make use of OS/2 fonts like WarpSans and others which are not available in Type1 or TrueType format. It is therefore recommended to install the "Workplace Sans" font from http://users.socis.ca/~ataylo00/creative/fonts/ or http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=wpsu_ttf which Firefox will use as a replacement of WarpSans. - Display of text in some languages (e.g. Arabic) does not yet take into account that different forms of some characters exist. To tweak the appearance of text, you can add two preferences, preferably using about:config. - gfx.os2.font.antialiasing (Boolean) This preference controls whether antialiasing is enabled, and defaults to true. - gfx.os2.font.hinting (Integer) This preference controls the hinting level, and can be between 0 (no hinting) and 3 (full hinting). The default value is 2. Font hinting improves the contrast of displayed text, but may produce poor results for certain characters of some fonts, most notably the OS/2 version of "Times New Roman". Note that these preferences only take effect when a font gets used for the first time, so you may need to restart the application to see the full effect. Known Problems of the OS/2 version ---------------------------------- Cross-platform problems are usually listed in the release notes of each milestone release. - Printing to normal OS/2 printer queues had to be disabled. It was slow even for simple pages and used huge amounts of RAM, so that in most cases the application crashed, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=415522. While the queues are still displayed in the printing dialog, any printing operation will instead create a PDF file. By default this file is placed on the Desktop, with the name Firefox__