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Arctic Fox web browser for 10.6 (32 & 64-bit)
- Thread starter wicknix
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- snow leopard web browser
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Why is there more than 1 brand of gasoline, cigarettes, oil, milk, etc? Options. People like options.
On a serious note... InterWeb and SpiderWeb are exactly the same code base. The only difference is the user interface. Arctic Fox now has a new owner/developer as i lost interest and time. There's only so much we can do, and these browsers will never be "great" with todays every changing web. 10.6 is getting long in the tooth, and it's dev environment only allows for so much. The 2-3 of us are just eeking out as much as we can for as long as we can before these projects can go no further. Much like TenFourFox, there's only so much i/we can do before it becomes impossible.
Cheers
On a serious note... InterWeb and SpiderWeb are exactly the same code base. The only difference is the user interface. Arctic Fox now has a new owner/developer as i lost interest and time. There's only so much we can do, and these browsers will never be "great" with todays every changing web. 10.6 is getting long in the tooth, and it's dev environment only allows for so much. The 2-3 of us are just eeking out as much as we can for as long as we can before these projects can go no further. Much like TenFourFox, there's only so much i/we can do before it becomes impossible.
Cheers
“Sometimes you feel like a nut,
Sometimes you don’t.
Almond Joy’s got nuts,
Mounds don’t.”
Could you double-check that link? That one appears to point to the direct downloads of AF itself. Thanks.
That's where i uploaded them. Hopefully Riccardo will find a better permanent home for them at some point.
Apologies. I hadn’t realized there was an “Addons.zip” at the top there. I was, erroneously, expecting the link might have pointed to a blog post with a linked list of each Add-on you previously had archived.
I'm sorry, @wicknix, really sorry after all the work you and your colleague have done for us, but one Saturday evening, one whole Sunday and a good chunk of Monday's dawn hours later, I'm giving up on v.40. After all that time there were still some issues (see below) that couldn't get resolved without dedicating them even more time, so instead I went and checked a bunch of the sites that had forced me in the first place to move over to SpiderWeb, then to Linux/Firefox and PaleMoon: banks, exchanges, webmails, IT providers and others (for example Trustpilot.com, or sites that make use of parastorage.com javascripts). Every single one of them gave me a dreaded variant of that “Browser not supported”, or just a blank page.
Add to this that as I painstakingly went through all the preferences to match them with the existing v.27 settings, I didn't come across any new functions. In terms of performance, I did not notice any difference either (not that I've ever complained about AF's speed at rendering pages.) Maybe I'm living on another planet than those enthused about v.40…
If it can be of any use to those who do not have a whole load of extensions like I do, here's what followed what I had described last week:
- Saved everything Chuck Baker's FEBE extension lets you save from your current Profile, so that I could add Cookies and Cookies Permissions to what had already been imported. FEBE had saved every single Addon (53 of them, not 30 some) but for some reason it just wouldn't import them. So I had to initialise them one by one by dragging them from the FEBE backup folder (talk of entertainment!) They all got accepted without any complaints wrt. compatibility, but afterwards in the Add-ons Manager every single one was flagged with a warning.
Note however that FEBE wouldn't import its own backups of the Themes (Appearance) — maybe due to the difference between 32 and 64-bit? Together with the import of Bookmarks, History etc. from the old Profile, the 64-bit version only ended up with the default theme, whereas the 32-bit version had imported all of the custom ones.
- Saved all of the Extensions' settings from the Profile using OPIE2. It imported all of them to the new Profile. Or so it said: it turned out that some of them were imported, and others not. Trouble is, it doesn't tell you which ones, so you still have to go and check each Add-on one at a time.
Of the dozen or so I had managed to check by sunrise this morning, most did what they were supposed to, but some, important ones for my use, were working very poorly (Sidebar Tools, for example) or not working at all (the Status bar wouldn't show up, whatever I tried) — meaning I would have had to spend more time searching for updates or alternatives. That's where I went and tested those websites…
A little detail: when launching v.40 the first time with an active profile, on my system at least, the System Preferences' Security/Firewall/Advanced requests it to Accept incoming connections. This is the first time I see this happening in the case not only of AF, but of any browser.
Add to this that as I painstakingly went through all the preferences to match them with the existing v.27 settings, I didn't come across any new functions. In terms of performance, I did not notice any difference either (not that I've ever complained about AF's speed at rendering pages.) Maybe I'm living on another planet than those enthused about v.40…
If it can be of any use to those who do not have a whole load of extensions like I do, here's what followed what I had described last week:
- Saved everything Chuck Baker's FEBE extension lets you save from your current Profile, so that I could add Cookies and Cookies Permissions to what had already been imported. FEBE had saved every single Addon (53 of them, not 30 some) but for some reason it just wouldn't import them. So I had to initialise them one by one by dragging them from the FEBE backup folder (talk of entertainment!) They all got accepted without any complaints wrt. compatibility, but afterwards in the Add-ons Manager every single one was flagged with a warning.
Note however that FEBE wouldn't import its own backups of the Themes (Appearance) — maybe due to the difference between 32 and 64-bit? Together with the import of Bookmarks, History etc. from the old Profile, the 64-bit version only ended up with the default theme, whereas the 32-bit version had imported all of the custom ones.
- Saved all of the Extensions' settings from the Profile using OPIE2. It imported all of them to the new Profile. Or so it said: it turned out that some of them were imported, and others not. Trouble is, it doesn't tell you which ones, so you still have to go and check each Add-on one at a time.
Of the dozen or so I had managed to check by sunrise this morning, most did what they were supposed to, but some, important ones for my use, were working very poorly (Sidebar Tools, for example) or not working at all (the Status bar wouldn't show up, whatever I tried) — meaning I would have had to spend more time searching for updates or alternatives. That's where I went and tested those websites…
A little detail: when launching v.40 the first time with an active profile, on my system at least, the System Preferences' Security/Firewall/Advanced requests it to Accept incoming connections. This is the first time I see this happening in the case not only of AF, but of any browser.
I actually get this with Chromium-Legacy every time i update to a new version on 10.7. I never really looked in to it personally. Figured that's just how a browser works. As for the ever changing web, i've been saying for the last few years that a linux or windows 7 (or above) VM would be needed to access g00gle-ified websites on 10.6. Sadly that's just what the web is becoming. Web pages are no longer simple html and basic javascript, but rather applications wrapped up to work in a modern browser.
As for AF, i haven't touched an ounce of code in it for about 2 years now. I have no idea whats been added or removed. I do know he has been adding support for more obscure operating systems like NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD on various platforms like arm and mips because they really lack any decent web browsers. In doing so it *may* be hampering 10.6 compatibility (as noted with crashes since the end of the v27 era), but i can't be certain of that.
Honestly, InterWeb is the most compliant snow leopard browser, even if it is slowly falling behind by modern standards. It's still the best of the bunch (AF, IW, SW, TenFourFox, and FF-Legacy/Nightly). Neither AF or Nightly support TLS 1.3 for instance. IW has push notifications (works great for this forum if enabled btw), and in my opinion should be considered and recommended as the only 10.6 browser. AF's code base is just now only at FF40 levels, which is even older than TFF at 45.9. Nightly is at 52.9 and hasn't been updated in 2 years, while IW/SW are at 52.9-60.9 and receive minimal, but major, updates. Still old by todays standards, but not as old.
Staying on ancient OS's means we have to pick our battles, and sadly, our battle is with the modern web these days.
Cheers
This isn’t the fault or due to the intervention of @wicknix ’s efforts in maintaining AF. It’s not helpful to put him, a volunteer, on the spot like this.
As he noted a few posts back, the kinds of issues you‘re facing here — the issues which all legacy browser users face incrementally — are features based on proprietary javascript engines which several commercial web sites in 2022 now use, despite those engines not being based on open standards. While I understand that this shuts out the functionality of some web sites which choose to lean on those proprietary engines, this isn’t the doing of wicknix, and there’s not a lot he can do here. The same variety of issues occur on Nightly and on Interweb/Spiderweb.
Staying on ancient OS's means we have to pick our battles, and sadly, our battle is with the modern web these days.
Yes, you're absolutely right. I also know how much effort you've put into this, and I'd repeat my kudos at every post if it didn't risk sounding sleazy. Let me just add that you really do not have to apologize for not doing enough ;-)
If that can comfort you, during my brief acquaintance with v.40, after the original startup series of crashes, it never crashed again.
Chromium: mine is v.49 from 04.16 (is that the same as your “Legacy”?), so I wouldn't remember if it did that at the time. I can't even remember when I used it last, mostly thanks to Linux and after discovering that even though it looks like it's doing it, Chromium doesn't erase its default g00gl cookies after you've told it to. If I really have to authorize some g00gl scripts to get a page to work, I try first in SW after changing servers, authorize the scripts temporarily, do what I have to do, then I quit SW (erases everything) and change server again. All this using a no-logs VPN. That's the best I can do to keep g00gl at bay, not allowing it to leave traces and spying devices of any kind in my OS (anyone not really aware of g00gl's spying and other misdeeds should read Joseph Mercola's articles). In Linux I use Firefox to do the same as SW in SnL.
Wrt. "g00gle-ified websites", it would be nice if we could know which ones are and which ones are not before we visit them
. A killer, in that respect: those stupid sites where registered users have to go through a g00gl captcha in order to login — even after they've entered their login information! Then, if g00gl is "obscured" as in my AF, you don't even know that there's a captcha waiting in ambush, and you go and wonder why you can't login. Yes, battles.About Interweb, I looked in my notes, found that the reason I dropped it from the start was that in its Prefs tab, the Search, Privacy, Sync and Advanced menus didn't open, they didn't react at all.
Not sure how what I wrote could be interpreted that way, but wicknix pretty well knows what I think of him and his work, and that's what counts, IMHO.
I don’t know. Your remarks to him were probably better suited for a private message.
No. Legacy is current chromium (currently at 106) back ported to 10.7 - 10.10. Sadly 10.6 support isnt possible. I've seen whats required to have any hope of it on 10.6 and understand why.
Its fine. We've PM'd a lot over the years. Sometimes typed text doesn't come across as it would if it were spoken, and it gets misinterpreted. No harm, no foul.
Cheers
I’m guessing it stems from much more than a need for full, 64-bit compliance (which can exist in SL), and more related to system libraries/frameworks simply absent in the 64-bit 10.6.8 setting.
You betcha.
Correct. 10.6 is missing boatloads of frameworks and libraries compared to 10.7. They'd all have to be created or stubbed. LOTS of work.
Cheers
Cheers
So, 64 bit AF 40.0 works again on SL, thanks wicknix and @rmottola.
Some observations:
Xmoon theme got disabled, but standard theme is nice enough and slim, if used with small icons.
Add-ons like Self-destructing-cookies and Decentraleyes seemed installed but do not have toolbar icons or menu entries. Reader-view add-on shows up but without function.
Some icons for toolbar and dialogs do have wrong symbols, i.e. the Full Screen icon is represented by Reload symbol, and others not matching too...
It is not possible to delete history from menu, the dialog comes up, but if you click Clear Now nothing happens, dialog remains open.
All in all, a nice snappy browser, no dramatic problems, important add-ons like uBo and uMatrix do work, others too. Although I prefer SpiderWeb and Tenfourfox, InterWeb..., but it is nice to have a fast little browser seperately to do quick searches, read stuff.
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I was having trouble accessing uBlock and uMatrix on AF 40, despite bringing over my legacy add-ons from another vintage Mozilla browser — namely, neither icon appearing on the location bar level and no readily apparent way to access their settings. Where should I be looking for access and configuration for both of these — or, would it be wiser to locate versions of both which were optimized originally for Palemoon? Cheers.
Versions I use are latest from here uBo-for-firefox-legacy and ηMatrix. If they don't show up in navigation bar, go to Menu > View > Toolbars > Customise... a dialog rolls down with gui items and add-on icons, uBlock and uMatrix should be there, drag them to where you want them.
Ok, after editing it's install.rdf, Xmoon theme works in AF 40. And it circumvents the non-matching toolbar-icons.
Having a look through that list, and I’m basically just, “Wow. Heck.”
Just want to post my many continued thanks to Riccardo Mottola for taking over and carrying on Arctic Fox for OS X 10.6.
Version 40.1 is working very well for me on my OS Snow Leopard 10.6.8 system. 👏
Version 40.1 is working very well for me on my OS Snow Leopard 10.6.8 system. 👏
