(Unpopular Opinion) I think Webkit is the way to go, not Tenfourfox..

[Appleuser201]

I am gonna start this off by saying that I know this is a very unpopular opinion, and will get hated on but I just want to share it and am open to negative criticism and feedback. I will also say that I show much appreciation to Cameron Kaiser and the contributers to TenFourFox for supporting an ancient platform to keep the select few who take there PPC's on the internet safe and secure and have a modern browsing experience. And of course everyone who has contributed to TFF's many addons and tweaks to make it run better and smoother.

My main arguement is though, was a Firefox based browser the best option for keeping PPC browsing alive? First of all the browser itself is based on the code of Firefox 45. Old Firefox on any platform (from my experience) really wasn't the best. It felt bloated and it loaded certain websites pretty slow whereas Chrome, Safari and Opera didn't. And of course YouTube runs horribly on any version of Firefox (cant play 1080p at all anymore on a first gen i5 vpro with latest version of Firefox, it shows mostly stills!, not even stutter and 720p is stuttery).

However, even with the Polymer modern YouTube, Webkit plays lower quality videos wonderfully. And I imagine on a G5 quad, it may be able to play HD videos well. The general browsing experience with Webkit is quite good, it obviously isn't perfect and I have found it a little unstable at certain times but I got to thinking, why did Cameron Kaiser choose Firefox over Webkit? Lots of people on here have mentioned significantly better browsing on Webkit over any other PPC browser. I know Tiger has its limitations, it is from ancient 2005 after all, and the fact that it even has a up to date browser at all is no easy feat. Its just, could a proper up to date, and Tiger/G3 supported Webkit browser come to us eventually? (I remember we did have TenFourKit or something like that years back and I forget why it was discontinued). I feel it could be possible for a much faster up to date Webkit based browser for PPC if resources are put towards that instead of TenFourFox...

Was Firefox the wrong way to go or am I just crazy?

 

[iModFrenzy]

My issue with WebKit is compatibility. I’ve noticed some broken pages on Safari whereas Firefox would display them properly. Especially on pages that have way more code going on.

This is the same case on Catalina as well, hence why I use FireFox on that as well.

 

[JoyBed]

I am gonna start this off by saying that I know this is a very unpopular opinion, and will get hated on but I just want to share it and am open to negative criticism and feedback. I will also say that I show much appreciation to Cameron Kaiser and the contributers to TenFourFox for supporting an ancient platform to keep the select few who take there PPC's on the internet safe and secure and have a modern browsing experience. And of course everyone who has contributed to TFF's many addons and tweaks to make it run better and smoother.

My main arguement is though, was a Firefox based browser the best option for keeping PPC browsing alive? First of all the browser itself is based on the code of Firefox 45. Old Firefox on any platform (from my experience) really wasn't the best. It felt bloated and it loaded certain websites pretty slow whereas Chrome, Safari and Opera didn't. And of course YouTube runs horribly on any version of Firefox (cant play 1080p at all anymore on a first gen i5 vpro with latest version of Firefox, it shows mostly stills!, not even stutter and 720p is stuttery).

However, even with the Polymer modern YouTube, Webkit plays lower quality videos wonderfully. And I imagine on a G5 quad, it may be able to play HD videos well. The general browsing experience with Webkit is quite good, it obviously isn't perfect and I have found it a little unstable at certain times but I got to thinking, why did Cameron Kaiser choose Firefox over Webkit? Lots of people on here have mentioned significantly better browsing on Webkit over any other PPC browser. I know Tiger has its limitations, it is from ancient 2005 after all, and the fact that it even has a up to date browser at all is no easy feat. Its just, could a proper up to date, and Tiger/G3 supported Webkit browser come to us eventually? (I remember we did have TenFourKit or something like that years back and I forget why it was discontinued). I feel it could be possible for a much faster up to date Webkit based browser for PPC if resources are put towards that instead of TenFourFox...

Was Firefox the wrong way to go or am I just crazy?

Interesting computer you have there, I use Firefox my whole life and I like more than the other browsers. My win-box with i3 can play 1080p in firefox and it was able to do it without an issue even with a pentium D in lga755 socket... More or less I cant decide which browser is better Webkit or TenFourFox... I use both but when I just want to quickly search for something or lookup something or download something I always use TFF. There are some sites that I am opening in Webkit but the TFF seems to me that it is just superior in classic day to day browsing even tho its a resource hog. I agree that the youtube and facebook goes better on the Webkit but I find other sites working better that on the TFF. These are my findings, on PPC im not fan of something so I die hard use it... I use the app that works for me the best and the TFF is the quickest and most nicest of all the browsers for the PPC. But dont take into consideration my G4 macs, all of them are overclocked and one of them have changed CPUs. Maybe if the PPC Macs had more power the TFF would be the best option combined with Webkit for some other sites. Thats my opinion.

 

[sparty411]

I am gonna start this off by saying that I know this is a very unpopular opinion, and will get hated on but I just want to share it and am open to negative criticism and feedback. I will also say that I show much appreciation to Cameron Kaiser and the contributers to TenFourFox for supporting an ancient platform to keep the select few who take there PPC's on the internet safe and secure and have a modern browsing experience. And of course everyone who has contributed to TFF's many addons and tweaks to make it run better and smoother.

My main arguement is though, was a Firefox based browser the best option for keeping PPC browsing alive? First of all the browser itself is based on the code of Firefox 45. Old Firefox on any platform (from my experience) really wasn't the best. It felt bloated and it loaded certain websites pretty slow whereas Chrome, Safari and Opera didn't. And of course YouTube runs horribly on any version of Firefox (cant play 1080p at all anymore on a first gen i5 vpro with latest version of Firefox, it shows mostly stills!, not even stutter and 720p is stuttery).

However, even with the Polymer modern YouTube, Webkit plays lower quality videos wonderfully. And I imagine on a G5 quad, it may be able to play HD videos well. The general browsing experience with Webkit is quite good, it obviously isn't perfect and I have found it a little unstable at certain times but I got to thinking, why did Cameron Kaiser choose Firefox over Webkit? Lots of people on here have mentioned significantly better browsing on Webkit over any other PPC browser. I know Tiger has its limitations, it is from ancient 2005 after all, and the fact that it even has a up to date browser at all is no easy feat. Its just, could a proper up to date, and Tiger/G3 supported Webkit browser come to us eventually? (I remember we did have TenFourKit or something like that years back and I forget why it was discontinued). I feel it could be possible for a much faster up to date Webkit based browser for PPC if resources are put towards that instead of TenFourFox...

Was Firefox the wrong way to go or am I just crazy?

Webkit is a dead end on the PPC platform. Even though FF 45 is old, it still provides the best compatibility with the modern web, relatively speaking. Someone with enough talent could probably port a newer code base, but it would be very time consuming.

 

[jmilan0302]

Webkit is a dead end on the PPC platform. Even though FF 45 is old, it still provides the best compatibility with the modern web, relatively speaking. Someone with enough talent could probably port a newer code base, but it would be very time consuming.

There's Chromium on linux though, right?

 

[sparty411]

There's Chromium on linux though, right?

No

 

[XaPHER]

Cameron Kaiser has been doing this for about 10 years, starting with Firefox 4, right after mozilla announced dropping powermac support. After release 10, he started releasing corresponding ESR versions (17esr,24esr,31esr,38esr,45esr). With firefox 45 leaving ESR he considered moving to 52esr, but ultimately decided against as it was too risky and had too many breaking changes for what benefit it would give. It's not like he initially aimed at a 45ESR fork and thought something among the lines of "okay, let's make this into the best and greatest browser for powermacs".

And if, once we left source parity (45.9.0 was rolled out), instead of making a real fork (with FPR), he would've said "OK 45 is unsupported, we can't move to 52, abandon all ships", I wonder if we would still have a functional browser on our powermacs?

I don't like where firefox is going right now, though it was my main browser and I liked it when it still ran on panther. But well, right now Tenfourfox is my main browser, Powermacs my daily driver.

And indeed, webkit is even more broken for powerpc. It in a somewhat better state on linux, but for powermacs Tobias Netzel pretty much did best effort. And last lepWK build he released is from before 2019. The Morphos community is struggling to continue development for OWB because they have similar issues moving forward with webkit. I'm not sure how well tiger would fare; Tobias Netzel gave up on tenfourkit in 2012 and probably had good reasons to do so.

Anyway, my point is CK didn't "choose" to revive firefox, he just did it at the good time. It *was* the right thing to do.

If what you're comparing is webkit and firefox, your thread title should say "and not firefox" instead of "and not tenfourfox".

 

[wicknix]

With firefox 45 leaving ESR he considered moving to 52esr, but ultimately decided against as it was too risky and had too many breaking changes for what benefit it would give

That's a shame as 52 is a major improvement over 45. Unlike 38 to 45. The reason the PM dev team stayed with 38 for PM27 was because there wasn't a big change or any significant improvements with 45. They just back ported a few of the changes from 45 instead. Then jumped to using 52 for PM28. As an example, try FF45 or AF on ppc linux and compare it with any of the UXP browsers built for ppc linux. There is a huge difference in web compatibility. 52 brought a bunch to the table that 45 didn't have.
* Added support for WebAssembly
* New CSS features implemented
* New JavaScript features: async functions, trailing commas in functions, rest parameter destructuring, and much much more.
All of this is needed for todays web. 38/45 are showing their age more and more every day. Having 52 for 10.4/10.5 would've been killer.

Cheers

 

[XaPHER]

That's a shame as 52 is a major improvement over 45. Unlike 38 to 45. The reason the PM dev team stayed with 38 for PM27 was because there wasn't a big change or any significant improvements with 45. They just back ported a few of the changes from 45 instead. Then jumped to using 52 for PM28. As an example, try FF45 or AF on ppc linux and compare it with any of the UXP browsers built for ppc linux. There is a huge difference in web compatibility. 52 brought a bunch to the table that 45 didn't have.
* Added support for WebAssembly
* New CSS features implemented
* New JavaScript features: async functions, trailing commas in functions, rest parameter destructuring, and much much more.
All of this is needed for todays web. 38/45 are showing their age more and more every day. Having 52 for 10.4/10.5 would've been killer.

Cheers

I agree 52 is a significant landmark compatibility-wise, but it would've mandated a lot more unnecessary things like skia, complete IPC, and webassembly is yet another big-endian hostile feature. I guess Palemoon dev did fully kill e10s from UXP, and AFAIK he's not doing this on a free time basis. Apart from the hacks and shims to get it to work, 52 still would've lacked hardware accelerated compositing and would've probably been worse in terms of footprint/speed. Cameron did backport quite a few web features to 45 at least, though not to 52 levels.

With the way web development is going right now, I have that pessimistic feeling it won't take long before new "features" that cripple one more generation of web browsers get introduced. Once I can no longer browse the web the way I want I'll just reboot into Mac OS 9 or 8.6 and never move away from it again, I guess. 🤔 Oh and get some sleep!

 

[Macbookprodude]

I am gonna start this off by saying that I know this is a very unpopular opinion, and will get hated on but I just want to share it and am open to negative criticism and feedback. I will also say that I show much appreciation to Cameron Kaiser and the contributers to TenFourFox for supporting an ancient platform to keep the select few who take there PPC's on the internet safe and secure and have a modern browsing experience. And of course everyone who has contributed to TFF's many addons and tweaks to make it run better and smoother.

My main arguement is though, was a Firefox based browser the best option for keeping PPC browsing alive? First of all the browser itself is based on the code of Firefox 45. Old Firefox on any platform (from my experience) really wasn't the best. It felt bloated and it loaded certain websites pretty slow whereas Chrome, Safari and Opera didn't. And of course YouTube runs horribly on any version of Firefox (cant play 1080p at all anymore on a first gen i5 vpro with latest version of Firefox, it shows mostly stills!, not even stutter and 720p is stuttery).

However, even with the Polymer modern YouTube, Webkit plays lower quality videos wonderfully. And I imagine on a G5 quad, it may be able to play HD videos well. The general browsing experience with Webkit is quite good, it obviously isn't perfect and I have found it a little unstable at certain times but I got to thinking, why did Cameron Kaiser choose Firefox over Webkit? Lots of people on here have mentioned significantly better browsing on Webkit over any other PPC browser. I know Tiger has its limitations, it is from ancient 2005 after all, and the fact that it even has a up to date browser at all is no easy feat. Its just, could a proper up to date, and Tiger/G3 supported Webkit browser come to us eventually? (I remember we did have TenFourKit or something like that years back and I forget why it was discontinued). I feel it could be possible for a much faster up to date Webkit based browser for PPC if resources are put towards that instead of TenFourFox...

Was Firefox the wrong way to go or am I just crazy?

then FIX it if you think so - stop it from crashing so muchwhen using JavaScript !
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I agree 52 is a significant landmark compatibility-wise, but it would've mandated a lot more unnecessary things like skia, complete IPC, and webassembly is yet another big-endian hostile feature. I guess Palemoon dev did fully kill e10s from UXP, and AFAIK he's not doing this on a free time basis. Apart from the hacks and shims to get it to work, 52 still would've lacked hardware accelerated compositing and would've probably been worse in terms of footprint/speed. Cameron did backport quite a few web features to 45 at least, though not to 52 levels.

With the way web development is going right now, I have that pessimistic feeling it won't take long before new "features" that cripple one more generation of web browsers get introduced. Once I can no longer browse the web the way I want I'll just reboot into Mac OS 9 or 8.6 and never move away from it again, I guess. 🤔 Oh and get some sleep!

You said:
With the way web development is going right now, I have that pessimistic feeling it won't take long before new "features" that cripple one more generation of web browsers get introduced - Kaiser won’t let that happen. Plus, if COVID comes back they will have no choice but to allow all web browsers to access the net.

 

[wicknix]

Anything not based on chrome/google code is already becoming crippled sadly. However footprint/speed probably wouldn't be any worse. Simply disabling obsolete and useless junk like webrtc, pocket, etc made iceweaselppc roughly 40mb lighter than stock TFF, use less ram, and browse a bit faster. Same code, just better optimized for our ancient hardware (even though i built it for G3 w/out altivec optimizations its still faster than the G4/G5 optimized builds of TFF). The 52/UXP based browsers run just as fast and, at times, even faster than AF (which is basically the same underlying code as TFF) on the same hardware under linux, so i don't think 52 on 10.4/10.5 would be much heavier/slower than 45 is currently. I could be entirely wrong, but i guess we'll never know.

Cheers

 

[Macbookprodude]

If you got the code from MozillA, could you design a faster TTF than the current one ?

 

[wicknix]

I did. IceWeaselPPC. Also the unfinished experimental ArcticFox for 10.4/10.5. However, as mentioned in other threads, my 10.4 dev drive corrupted/crashed a while back. So other than tenfivetube, which i maintain/build on my powerbook using leopard, i no longer have a 10.4/10.5 dev machine, and have no desire to set one back up or do anything Tiger/Leopard related any longer. Most every ppc i have is converted to Linux now (some of them dual/triple boot w/leopard though for garageband/logic/reason).

Cheers

 

[bobesch]

It would be great to have a tiny (kind of RasPi-Like) "proxy-box" in the middle of old Hard&Software and the internet to overcome the fact, that the old browsers will loose their compatibilities one after the other ...
Either as proxi or a full-featured browser for VNC-access.

 

[Timmah_C]

+1 for WebKit. If only it worked on Tiger

 

[Macbookprodude]

Speaking of tenfivetube, will there be An update ?