Arctic Fox web browser for 10.6 (32 & 64-bit)

[parrotgeek1]

You'll need to copy the 2 libraries in the zip file to /usr/lib to use the other 2 browsers. Either way, AF is generally all you need for 95% of the web anyway.

Cheers

Here is how I fixed this in FFL52

FirefoxLegacy52/getcxx.sh at esr52_sl · parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

Firefox ESR 52 for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. No longer supported. - parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

github.com

FirefoxLegacy52/patchcxx.sh at esr52_sl · parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

Firefox ESR 52 for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. No longer supported. - parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

github.com

run ./getcxx.sh to get SL libc++ from macports
then run ./patchcxx path/to/Firefox.app
it will put the libc++ inside the app and patch FF to look there

 

[madbiker31]

Hi,

I've been using 27.10.2a since yesterday and I didn't meet any problem.

Sometimes I test sites that use to not work, no change for now, I switched to SpiderWeb when I need.

If there are specific things to test, just tell me.

 

[wicknix]

Thanks. Nothing to test really. Should be pretty stable, but a few more things need to be done before the next official release. I wouldn't expect previously broken sites to work due to the age of its rendering and java script engine, but it'll have some under the hood bug fixes and updates.

Cheers

 

[madbiker31]

I confirm the stability as always.

I guess that under the hood 27.10.2a is better, thanks for the work.

I don't mind identified broken sites as SpiderWeb do the job with rare exceptions.

Cheers

 

[RobJos]

Maybe of some use for the coming upgrade. Just had something curious happen, which I noticed it because suddenly all the usual pages were looking funny, everything showing with the default font set in the prefs /Content/Fonts & Colors. Under /Advanced the Allow pages to choose etc. setting had gotten toggled between one launch and the next. I believe it's the first time I experience something changing by itself in the prefs, at least since I got the sessionstore.js file locked as a protection against crashes, some time back.

 

[rampancy]

Is there a build of 27.10.2a available? I'm dying to test it out for myself!

Edit: Just checked and noticed that binaries are available for download. W00t!

 

[wicknix]

27.11.0 is now available for multiple platforms.

Cheers

 

[madbiker31]

27.11.0 downloaded, launched and running

 

[madbiker31]

I have a problem with youtube, only the mobile version displays (m.youtube.com) forced.

How to change that ?

 

[Dronecatcher]

I have a problem with youtube, only the mobile version displays (m.youtube.com) forced.

How to change that ?

In about:config changing media.mediasource.format-reader to true worked for me.

 

[snowy moon]

In about:config I found this preference "general.useragent.override.youtube.com" with a mobile user agent as value, clearing that value worked for me.

 

[wicknix]

The polymer UI on YT is a resource hog. The mobile site loads quicker, but lacks some features. Using the mentioned changes posted above will give you the desktop YT back.

Cheers

 

[Imixmuan]

The polymer UI on YT is a resource hog. The mobile site loads quicker, but lacks some features. Using the mentioned changes posted above will give you the desktop YT back.

Cheers

I prefer the mobile site greatly, it's still not as efficient as tenfivetube, but I can playback 360p in Arctic Fox with only 50% CPU. The desktop site pegs my G4 Powerbook at 100%, fans roar like trains, just not worth it. On Snow Leopard the ol' Yewtube performs even better, but not every video will load or play. Think its pretty amazing that in almost 2021 we an still use our Powermacs for almost every modern purpose, and I think we all know who we have to thank for that.

 

[wicknix]

and I think we all know who we have to thank for that

Heh. Thanks. However there are numerous others as well. Riccardo has basically taken over AF while i monkey around with other browsers and things. There is also the guys who produce youtube-dl and viewtube.js which allows for fluid YT streaming on our powerpc's. Then here in this very forum we also have alex_free, Dronecatcher, Lastic, z970mp, AphoticD, and a slew of others dropping software, macports packages, tweaked mozilla prefs files, wiki's, work-a-rounds, and just general knowledge with the willingness to help. Oh, and don't forget the users, as there is no point creating stuff if nobody is going to use it. Without this particular forum and its members i think powerpc macs would've died a slow death a few years ago. Other forums i check out here and there just don't have a desire like we do.

Cheers

 

[madbiker31]

@Dronecatcher
Thanks for the idea I applied as the "general.useragent.override.youtube.com" modification, I erased the mobile reference.
Now it's working.

@wicknix
Thanks again for your work that allow my use of Snow Leopard every day.

 

[Dronecatcher]

@Dronecatcher
Thanks for the idea I applied as the "general.useragent.override.youtube.com" modification, I erased the mobile reference.
Now it's working.

@wicknix
Thanks again for your work that allow my use of Snow Leopard every day.

That was the suggestion from @snowy moon I was talking about the 32bit Intel version, no mobile override on mine.

 

[RobJos]

The polymer UI on YT is a resource hog. The mobile site loads quicker, but lacks some features. Using the mentioned changes posted above will give you the desktop YT back.

Unfortunately, not the case here.

- changing "media.mediasource.format-reader" to true does nothing, i.e. www.youtube.com still refreshes automatically to m.youtube.com. That's even with the UA set to Firefox 79.

- clearing "general.useragent.override.youtube.com" results in YouTube “general pages” (searches or channels) being completely blank, with only their logo on top. Single video pages, if you're lucky enough to have the link, apparently open normally, but then ViewTube's interface doesn't load anymore — more about this below. [Incidentally, I have now found out that this is also the case in SpiderWeb — I can't be sure, it's possibly happened following the change of default user agent we had agreed upon in a PM]

I only saw the posts in reply to madbiker31 after a bunch of tests that got me pretty convinced that there was a compatibility issue with ViewTube (*). Updating it to the latest 15.10.2020 version did help a bit, but there are still some glitches that weren't there with the AF 27.10, such as the interface only loading partially, or even corrupted dowloads.

At this point, I don't know, and I'd rather stay with 27.10 until we find a solution for YT.

Other notes:

- Yes, YouTube loads much much faster with its mobile site, but for some reason it's impossible to open links in separate tabs, at least using the keyboard + mouse as usual. Which for my purposes, adding to the disfunctionality of ViewTube, is sort of a drag.

- Vimeo is still working fine, also together with ViewTube.

- Only one crash, while loading a whole bunch of tabs to test how the sites I routinely access would behave with 27:11. But you'll be happy to know there weren't any YT's among them, and that they all loaded fine when I relaunched AF. If you're interested in the crash report, I'll send it to you in a PM.

---

* ViewTube: the good Sebaro readily answers to requests for updates and modifications, but his replies tend to be terse and on the abstruse side for non-developers, and his help page is rather minimalistic. Besides, I'm not sure he knows about AF and SW, so rather than try to explain these difficult issues to him, I'd rather try to have things figured out among us ArcticFoxers. Now, if someone is familiar with communicating through GitLab or GitHub, which I'm not, Sebaro is also present there.

[ADDED LATER] Instead of clearing it I tried to replace "general.useragent.override.youtube.com" with my current default UA. ——> blank YT page!

 

[Dronecatcher]

Sorry, I think I misunderstood @madbiker31 's post/query. My answer was to the problem I had with Youtube with the new version, the config change appeared to fix it. This is on the desktop page nothing to do with mobile versions (on Mac Pro with Snow Leopard.)

 

[wicknix]

@RobJos Try 27.10.1's default override for youtube: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
If its cleared and left blank YT will have no idea what browser you are claiming to be. That may explain the blank page. Also don't try to force it to say FF79 or something relatively new. AF is really only capable to handling the web that was written for FF38 through FF48 and small bits of FF52. Faking anything newer can break some web sites. AF does work fine on YouTube with Intel machines using the FF52.0 user agent string though.

Cheers

 

[RobJos]

@RobJos Try 27.10.1's default override for youtube: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
If its cleared and left blank YT will have no idea what browser you are claiming to be. That may explain the blank page. Also don't try to force it to say FF79 or something relatively new. AF is really only capable to handling the web that was written for FF38 through FF48 and small bits of FF52. Faking anything newer can break some web sites. AF does work fine on YouTube with Intel machines using the FF52.0 user agent string though.

@wicknix Quick test: fixed! Great relief, & as always, deepest thanks!

If I were to replace that same YT string in SpiderWeb, what should I enter instead of “52.0” ?

The reason I've been using the latest or so Firefox version number in the UA (both AF and SW) is that so far it has pretty much cleared the way through those “your browser is out-of-date” websites. So now, keeping in mind your very clear explanation, I'll try and and "downgrade" the UA in AF if when I come across a rebellious site.

FYI, in relation to an exchange we were having some time back, those YT videos I had managed to download with ViewTube before replacing the string were all named as a code number. Now, they're back as they used to, with the video's title — at least (as earlier) those in mp4 High Res.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Here is how I fixed this in FFL52

FirefoxLegacy52/getcxx.sh at esr52_sl · parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

Firefox ESR 52 for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. No longer supported. - parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

github.com

FirefoxLegacy52/patchcxx.sh at esr52_sl · parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

Firefox ESR 52 for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. No longer supported. - parrotgeek1/FirefoxLegacy52

github.com

run ./getcxx.sh to get SL libc++ from macports
then run ./patchcxx path/to/Firefox.app
it will put the libc++ inside the app and patch FF to look there

Is this Tobias, the one who made Leopard Webkit PPC ?

 

[wicknix]

The 10.6 builds of spiderweb/interweb are almost pure FF52.9 with minimal changes, so a UA of 52.0 or 60.0 should be fine. For whatever reason some sites reject the .9 of esr builds, so stick with .0.

Cheers

 

[wicknix]

Is this Tobias, the one who made Leopard Webkit PPC ?

No. That's InterNetzel.

 

[xeno74]

Hi Wicknix,

Many thanks for the new version! I successfully compiled a static package for Ubuntu 10.04 and higher PowerPC yesterday.

Download: arcticfox-27.11.0-ubuntu10.04-powerpc.tar.bz2

For Ubuntu 10.04: You need to install the GCC 4.8 and the libatomic1 via the repository 'ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test'.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install gcc-4.8 g++-4.8

Screenshots of compiling and testing the new Arctic Fox 27.11.0:









This version is really impressive because it runs on an old Power Mac G3 with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS PowerPC and also on a modern PC or Intel Mac with the latest Ubuntu 20.10 x86.

Cheers,
Christian

 

[RobJos]

The 10.6 builds of spiderweb/interweb are almost pure FF52.9 with minimal changes, so a UA of 52.0 or 60.0 should be fine. For whatever reason some sites reject the .9 of esr builds, so stick with .0.

OK, I've “zeroed” the .9 UA's I had in AF. Are there also numerations for Chrome UA's that are better than others?

About SW, do I understand correctly that you're now preferring a UA with 60.0 instead of the 68.9 you had once recommended? It's a bit more important to have the “right one” in place, as UA switcher add-ons don't work properly in SW.