Iris, the web browser in development at RISC OS Developments (ROD), has continued apace and the company has just announced an update, available to anyone who has previously supported the project through purchasing OBrowser, whether at shows or via !Store.
Although the company has achieved a number of things, such as gaining ownership of RISC OS itself through its acquisition of Castle and then making it fully open source, the browser project was the reason the company was formed in the first place, raising money to support the development following initial discussions at the 2017 Southwest Show. The aim was – and is – to produce a browser for RISC OS to bring a ‘modern web experience to the platform’ by using an engine with support for HTML5, JavaScript, and so on.
OBrowser was an earlier development, before work began on the more ambitious Iris, and RISC OS users have been able to purchase OBrowser as a way to help fund work on the project – and as a thank you, anyone who purchased that is able to download versions of Iris that have been made available for testing.
The December 2022 edition of Iris – which remains very much a test version – brings with it improvements in a number of areas:
- There is a revamped bookmark manager and bar. This brings folders to the manager, allowing users to categorise the sites they visit most, and supports drag and drop to move things between different folders. Drag and drop can also be used to import or export URLs. The bar also supports the use of folders, and can display graphical icons to represent web pages.
- The user interface can now be configured, allowing different aspects to be enabled or disabled according to taste or preference, and there are now more flexible options.
- Performance has been improved – and the recently released IrisRAM – which helps with this by copying Iris to the RAM disc during boot – is now included as standard alongside the browser.
- And on top of these changes there are a range of bug fixes and minor improvements, all of which are detailed in the changelog supplied with the browser.
The update can be found either from the link on the default Iris start page, or from the URL found in the ReadMe file that came with OBrowser. The username and password needed for the download site can also be found in the ReadMe file.
Rounding off the announcement with Christmas and New Year best wishes for everyone, RISC OS Developments’ Andrew Rawnsley added a possible tease as well, saying that “we hope to bring you more goodies in the New Year… or perhaps even sooner…?”
