So Firefox 49 was released a while ago, and requiring 10.9 or higher, whereas 48 required 10.6. Does this mean anything for TenFourFox? Will the higher requirement make it harder to port Firefox to PowerPC? Thanks.
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What Does Firefox 49 Mean for TenFourFox?
- Thread starter AmazingHenry
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Cameron Kaiser had a hell of a time getting to T4Fx 45. At one point he was not certain it was possible. He's pretty much ruled out making it to the next ESR (Extended Service Release).
The problem is that the JS rendering engine in Firefox cannot be easily replicated. And it's getting harder and harder to do because the code just does not exist on the PowerPC platform. But if Kaiser wants to maintain the status of being a current alternative fork of Mozilla he has to keep up.
Kaiser has mentioned that we will probably be dropping to feature parity with the next ESR. What that means is that T4Fx will emulate the features of the latest version of Firefox, but using code that runs on PowerPC. Doing that and not upgrading the JS engine means T4Fx is no longer a fork of Mozilla because it's now using it's own code to replicate features.
Finally, at a certain point he's also mentioned that we'll be down to security updates.
One of his other issues is dealing with the fact that Xcode in Tiger does not support certain things that Xcode in Leopard supports. So, sooner or later he's going to have to drop Tiger.
Right now we're in a good spot. As much hell as it was to get to 45 we made it. But we've probably plateaued at this point.
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I recently updated my 17" 1GHz (512MB Ram) iMac G4 running 10.4.11 and TFF 38.6 to 45.4, and although I did no before/after timing checks, I had the impression that the browser was slightly slower to load to my TFF home page.
So I booted up a 17" 1.25GHz (1GB Ram) G4 iMac also running 10.4.11 and TFF 38.6. Connected by ethernet, the browser loaded to the main Apple home page in 25.5 secs. Several other checks recorded the same time. I then updated to TFF 45.4 and subsequent checks revealed that loading to the same main Apple home page took 29 secs. Effectively confirming a slightly longer time for 45.4 to load, which is by no means a gripe, but more an observation for info purposes.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has observed similar findings.
Both the above iMacs have the same user.js file and also identical Tiger performance tweaks suggested in this forum - kudos to the originators for those! All of my G4 PPC Macs are in fact now getting more frequent use. I must equally try and spend more time with the G3's.
So I booted up a 17" 1.25GHz (1GB Ram) G4 iMac also running 10.4.11 and TFF 38.6. Connected by ethernet, the browser loaded to the main Apple home page in 25.5 secs. Several other checks recorded the same time. I then updated to TFF 45.4 and subsequent checks revealed that loading to the same main Apple home page took 29 secs. Effectively confirming a slightly longer time for 45.4 to load, which is by no means a gripe, but more an observation for info purposes.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has observed similar findings.
Both the above iMacs have the same user.js file and also identical Tiger performance tweaks suggested in this forum - kudos to the originators for those! All of my G4 PPC Macs are in fact now getting more frequent use. I must equally try and spend more time with the G3's.
There was a post by Kaiser some time ago where he stated that versions past 38 would be somewhat slower to start up initially but that after a short while things would catch up and page loads would be quicker with newer versions.
Try the same tests you mention after the browser has been open for a while.