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Other Web browsers for early Intel Macs
- Thread starter wicknix
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Can anyone recommend a browser that's light on resources? I need something suitable for my 2010 MBA - which only has 2GB RAM and a 1.4 Ghz C2D CPU. Firefox is ok but I also have to use Outlook 16 constantly and that doesn't leave much memory available for web browsing.
MT LION loves SeaLion and Pale Moon on a MBP while the sites were slightly slower on my Macbook Air 2010 4gb i3 processor this year but not sluggish.
BTW if you need new OWC battery, 11" let me know.
I’ve been using the newish Interweb-Nightly 55.0 put together by @Jazzzny and @wicknix on my mid-2007 A1224 running Snow Leopard, and it still seems adept on its feet. It’s a 2.0GHz Santa Rosa CPU on 4GB RAM, so I’m not sure how well that might translate to your MBA 2010’s performance. RAM notwithstanding, I’d imagine the difference would be about 20 per cent (if relying on GeekBench’s scores on Everymac).
Then again, it’s worth bearing the following considerations. I use:
- my own prefs.js (adapted from previous optimizations going back to the PPC TFF days, derived from @eyoungren ’s ca. 2015 efforts);
- the @eyoungren network optimization script;
- only keep maybe three tabs open at a time (very unlike me); and
- the requisite uBlock origin with uMatrix…
On that particular iMac, I haven’t done much other than the optimizations script (which runs at startup). For example, I’ve yet to pull out any background processes/daemons which aren’t really things I’m liable to use on there. I suppose that could still be another area to bring down some additional, minor memory overhead.
If you’ve yet to try this combo with
^^^Just to add, I don't really have anything to offer here. Part of the reason I moved to Monterey on my MP was that Vivaldi was outdated enough that it had started to just quit out on certain websites. I suspect uMatrix has some small part in that as I use it excessively, but I'm unwilling to remove it in Vivaldi. And that's why I keep Microsoft Edge around. Last resort is Safari.
I did however, over the weekend, install Brave. I'm running it on my center display and using it primarily for news reading. Both Brave and Vivaldi are taking low amounts of ram, but I doubt older versions on older hardware will be much use. And Brave does not have a email component (later versions of Vivaldi do however).
The only suggestion I might have is Opera. Opera has always had an email component and the newer versions use the Chrome engine so you can install Chrome extensions.
Vivalid is an offshoot of Opera by the people who originally designed Opera, so they are quite similar.
I did however, over the weekend, install Brave. I'm running it on my center display and using it primarily for news reading. Both Brave and Vivaldi are taking low amounts of ram, but I doubt older versions on older hardware will be much use. And Brave does not have a email component (later versions of Vivaldi do however).
The only suggestion I might have is Opera. Opera has always had an email component and the newer versions use the Chrome engine so you can install Chrome extensions.
Vivalid is an offshoot of Opera by the people who originally designed Opera, so they are quite similar.
On my hunt to find an email client that can authentificate at Gmail from El Capitan I found eM Client. I would hapilly use Thunderbird as there are enough older versions running under El Capitan, but El Capitan has not the protocols needed by Gmail for authentification. So I run ver. 8.2.1478 under 10.11.6.
It is a bit heavy on memory, but it does what I need it for.
It is a bit heavy on memory, but it does what I need it for.
Just discovered this thread. Thinking of throwing in the towel on Chromium Legacy, since it's been left unpatched now for over 3 months, and not seeing any signs of life from the developer. Wondering of the two, Basilisk and Pale Moon, which is the most secure and most updated/maintained? Would be using for iMac and Mini, see signature below.
What do you mean, 'unpatched'? An exploit has recently been discovered, and a way to prevent it was posted in the Legacy thread..
They both use the same rendering engine. Pale Moon is the flagship with a team of developers and gets loads of official builds for various platforms and has the most themes and extensions. Basilisk has less extensions and is run by one developer and usually lags behind a month or so with new releases. I guess it depends on what UI you like better. The old original firefox look, or the firefox australis look. Internally they are basically the same otherwise.
Chromium legacy has been horrible this week and last was slowing down effectively.
therefore that wont be used since we have other better options now.
maybe that is shunning chrome browsers since Edge was ineffective on my M1 macbook air.
It's still pretty buggy compared to Chromium Legacy, but if anyone needs modern Firefox on 10.8+, Gargan has been working on a new backport!
github.com
GitHub - i3roly/firefox-dynasty: haters puttin' a wrap on us, callin' it a legacy, we keep showin' what the fuss, call it a dynasty
haters puttin' a wrap on us, callin' it a legacy, we keep showin' what the fuss, call it a dynasty - GitHub - i3roly/firefox-dynasty: haters puttin' a wrap on us, callin' it a...
github.com
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This is weird - all flavours or versions of Firefox in the past have taken my existing FF profile and used that, but this one was new, clean. Is that because I launched it direct from Downloads? Anyway, I quit it and launched my old FF 78 and all my data was still there (phew).It's still pretty buggy compared to Chromium Legacy, but if anyone needs modern Firefox on 10.8+, Gargan has been working on a new backport!
GitHub - i3roly/firefox-dynasty: haters puttin' a wrap on us, callin' it a legacy, we keep showin' what the fuss, call it a dynasty
haters puttin' a wrap on us, callin' it a legacy, we keep showin' what the fuss, call it a dynasty - GitHub - i3roly/firefox-dynasty: haters puttin' a wrap on us, callin' it a...
I suppose the next question is - how do I import existing FF profile into this new one?.
Please do share a link to this Discord when you have a moment. I have no idea what is going on or if Chromium Legacy will ever be updated again, but ending the project like this seems really strange.
Is it possible this is some kind of misunderstanding?
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Ah, it WAS because I launched from Downloads - having moved it to Applications, it's taken my profile. I shall have to try and recreate the themed extension though!.
>unofficial chromium developers discord 2020-2024
I'm guessing it's this one? https://discord.me/chromiumdevsunofficial. There is no valid invite there, can you share screenshots to provide more context? It just seems a bit weird that bluebox would post on discord rather than e.g. archiving the github repo.
I'm guessing it's this one? https://discord.me/chromiumdevsunofficial. There is no valid invite there, can you share screenshots to provide more context? It just seems a bit weird that bluebox would post on discord rather than e.g. archiving the github repo.
Possibly Firefox has a check if launching from Downloads, and doesn't access its Application Support data if so? OR... it may be that I launched from the dmg?.
I've downloaded the El Capitan variation on the site, but when I open the app it says that it needs at least MacOS 10.15 to run
Answering a question from another thread in here:
Firefox Dynasty should work in High Sierra. If it doesn't, open an issue on Github.
At the moment, for me on 10.9 Mavericks, Firefox Dynasty is significantly more buggy than Chromium Legacy, but I have not used it extensively. I do not like to keep more than one web browser installed on my computer at a time, because I always end up in situations where I accidentally open something in the "wrong" browser and it gets confusing.
So I can't personally vouch for it one way or another. Beyond that, I guess I would ask what "prime time" means. The worst thing that happens is the browser crashes, right? Don't use it in any situation where you can't afford for it to crash, at least at first. (And if you can figure out how to make it consistently crash, open an issue on Github with those reproduction steps, including as much detail as possible.)
None of these browsers are going to, like, steal your banking credentials, if that's what you're worried about. That sort of thing wouldn't happen by accident. (And my philosophy is, if a developer wanted to be malicious there would be much easier ways to do it.)
P.S. Honesty, my biggest issue with Firefox is that it doesn't respect my custom keyboard shortcuts or text replacement. 😠
Firefox Dynasty should work in High Sierra. If it doesn't, open an issue on Github.
At the moment, for me on 10.9 Mavericks, Firefox Dynasty is significantly more buggy than Chromium Legacy, but I have not used it extensively. I do not like to keep more than one web browser installed on my computer at a time, because I always end up in situations where I accidentally open something in the "wrong" browser and it gets confusing.
So I can't personally vouch for it one way or another. Beyond that, I guess I would ask what "prime time" means. The worst thing that happens is the browser crashes, right? Don't use it in any situation where you can't afford for it to crash, at least at first. (And if you can figure out how to make it consistently crash, open an issue on Github with those reproduction steps, including as much detail as possible.)
None of these browsers are going to, like, steal your banking credentials, if that's what you're worried about. That sort of thing wouldn't happen by accident. (And my philosophy is, if a developer wanted to be malicious there would be much easier ways to do it.)
P.S. Honesty, my biggest issue with Firefox is that it doesn't respect my custom keyboard shortcuts or text replacement. 😠
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