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Appleuser201

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 12, 2018
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I saw this video (link above) from June 2018 showing 3 different browsers running on a 1.33ghz ibook g4, one of them being the default safari browser which aactually did the best even beating tenfourfox for speed and being able to manage online flash video and even youtube playback. Tenfourfox cant handle video and is slow but renders sites perfect compared to the mostly unsupported safari. I believe the newer webkit is also mostly unsupported and plays video fine just like safari.

what is your favorite browser for the G4 and why? Thinking of getting that very same 1.33 ibook in the video and I dont care about using it for youtube or online video, but is safari and webkit really the best broswer depsite being unsupported?
 
I saw this video (link above) from June 2018 showing 3 different browsers running on a 1.33ghz ibook g4, one of them being the default safari browser which aactually did the best even beating tenfourfox for speed and being able to manage online flash video and even youtube playback. Tenfourfox cant handle video and is slow but renders sites perfect compared to the mostly unsupported safari. I believe the newer webkit is also mostly unsupported and plays video fine just like safari.

what is your favorite browser for the G4 and why? Thinking of getting that very same 1.33 ibook in the video and I dont care about using it for youtube or online video, but is safari and webkit really the best broswer depsite being unsupported?
Curious…the answers posted in a similar thread you started aren't good enough for you?

I've said my peace in there about Safari/LWK and T4Fx. 'Best' is just like 'better' and is solely dependent on whether you value speed or customization.

I value customization.

Link to speeding up T4Fx in my signature.
 
Leopard WebKit while not being updated in 10 months is by far the best browser for speed and web compatability. It's still 2 years newer than FF45 which TFF is based off of and is basically safari 11.

If you want a slew of addons/themes etc, and current security patches, then TFF is the better choice, but lots of pages won't render properly with the old gecko backend unless you use a mobile UA.

If you want a happy medium between the 2, the unfinished but usable arctic fox ppc port gives you WebKit like speed with FF customization ability, but will also have some rendering issues due to its older backend.

Lastly iceweaselppc is TFF on steroids and sits happily in the middle of them all.

Use all 4. I do. ;)

Cheers
 
I don’t have a favorite. I use roccat+iOS UA for video & everything else I use TFF.

This is not a knock on any other browser (I’m a fan of the current ArcticFox & 1window projects) , rather an expression of my limited time & abilities. I don’t have a ton of free time & I don’t have the skill set to build one myself so within those parameters, These two do what I need, are supported, & I found them first.

Works for me, so through that filter, TFF+Roccat is best.
 
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I saw this video (link above) from June 2018 showing 3 different browsers running on a 1.33ghz ibook g4, one of them being the default safari browser which aactually did the best even beating tenfourfox for speed and being able to manage online flash video and even youtube playback. Tenfourfox cant handle video and is slow but renders sites perfect compared to the mostly unsupported safari. I believe the newer webkit is also mostly unsupported and plays video fine just like safari.

what is your favorite browser for the G4 and why? Thinking of getting that very same 1.33 ibook in the video and I dont care about using it for youtube or online video, but is safari and webkit really the best broswer depsite being unsupported?
I uSed to use LWK but now I'm completely on TFF as with @eyoungren s speed tweaks and three addons (umatrix, bluhell firewall, noscript) it is reeeaaalllyyy fast for a single core system. For video (as in YouTube) I use ArcticFox and CorePlayer. LWK is too heavy on the CPU in my experience
 
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I uSed to use LWK but now I'm completely on TFF as with @eyoungren s speed tweaks and three addons (umatrix, bluhell firewall, noscript) it is reeeaaalllyyy fast for a single core system.

BluHell and NoScript are rendered unnecessary once uMatrix is in the picture, which does everything both do and more.

Thus, I would disable (or remove) BluHell and NoScript to cut down on bloat.

Decentraleyes, however, is a good companion to uMatrix and makes for a very speedy experience indeed.
 
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BluHell and NoScript are rendered unnecessary once uMatrix is in the picture, which does everything both do and more.

Thus, I would disable (or remove) BluHell and NoScript to cut down on bloat.
Disagreed. Too often I found myself in the situation where a site is completely broken by umatrix. To make it usable I disable umatrix temporarily, enable the noscript extension and then customize umatrix while bluhell still blocks out the most annoying things. Yes, in theory umatrix would be all I need, but that's how I've been doing it for quite some time now and it somehow works quite well :D

But I'll have to have a look at Decentraleyes as I have never heard of it before
 
Disagreed. Too often I found myself in the situation where a site is completely broken by umatrix. To make it usable I disable umatrix temporarily, enable the noscript extension and then customize umatrix while bluhell still blocks out the most annoying things. Yes, in theory umatrix would be all I need, but that's how I've been doing it for quite some time now and it somehow works quite well :D

But I'll have to have a look at Decentraleyes as I have never heard of it before
Most of the time I am browsing news sites. What I'll do is disable uMatrix but not save the setting. That way I can read the site. When I quit and restart the browser those settings, because they are temporary, are forgotten and if I encounter that site again it will be blocked.

If it's a site I plan to spend time on more than once I will actually invest the time to work the settings. Otherwise, to me, it's a temporary type of thing since I don't plan on coming back to that site intentionally.

Most of the time this works, but sometimes it doesn't and the browser gets slow because I've unblocked everything for that site. Then I have to decide if the content is worth working uMatrix's blocking settings. Nine times out of time it's not, so I close the site and move on.
 
OP does seem to make a habit of asking the same questions but not heeding any of the advice given.....
answers were good, but the youtube video actually showed the leopard safari providing good performance for an old browser amd wondering if anyone still bothered with it same with camino amd the lightweight older browsers. you do know, tenfourfox was meant for G5's? slow as a dog on g4, and impossible on a g3.
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I uSed to use LWK but now I'm completely on TFF as with @eyoungren s speed tweaks and three addons (umatrix, bluhell firewall, noscript) it is reeeaaalllyyy fast for a single core system. For video (as in YouTube) I use ArcticFox and CorePlayer. LWK is too heavy on the CPU in my experience
saw a thread of tiger running on a 233mhz G3, that means you could run tenfourfox... at 233mhz. tff was not meant for g3s at all.
 
answers were good, but the youtube video actually showed the leopard safari providing good performance for an old browser amd wondering if anyone still bothered with it same with camino amd the lightweight older browsers. you do know, tenfourfox was meant for G5's? slow as a dog on g4, and impossible on a g3.

I'm sorry but not only do you not listen to advice - you don't even listen to your own experience!

Here in January you tell us you can't play Youtube on your G3 with TFF:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/youtube-not-working-on-600mhz-imac-g3.2163891/

Then in May, you ask us what is TFF like on a G3:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-bad-is-tenfourfox-on-a-g3-mac.2182438/

You keep asking about Youtube playback - which has saturation coverage in the forum but then offer, "Thinking of getting that very same 1.33 ibook in the video and I dont care about using it for youtube or online video" - it's hard to help when you don't know your own mind.
 
saw a thread of tiger running on a 233mhz G3, that means you could run tenfourfox... at 233mhz. tff was not meant for g3s at all.
Completely incorrect IMO. How do you define "meant for"? It allows my G3 Pismo to surf the web. It allows every G4 I own to surf the web. Therefore I do not care the least bit about what target platform the developer had in mind. I'd even say every developer has the platform he actually uses or the best of the best platform in mind. Mr Kaiser is no different. He uses a G5 Quad and develops a browser to keep this machine as long as possible alive, that includes surfing the internet. Then he strips it down a bit to allow for compatibility with G4s and G3s - I quote RhianB:
TFFx was meant for G3s, G4’s & G5s. Says so on the webpage with specific builds for each.

But TFF was never meant for using YT. That's IMO the point you don't get right.
Why is "the internet" for you just a synonym for "YOUTUBE"??
What is wrong about actually surfing the web?
 
I’m not in any way disputing TFFx focus, rather I was pointing out that TFFx cast a broader net than just G5 machines per their website.

I don’t think anyone here (unless you’re a ding dong) would put YT playback in front of building a secure, up to date browser for aging tiger & Leopard ppc machines.
 
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Alright people, settle down.

Wrong as it is, that's his opinion and he's allowed to express it. To someone with a low-end G3 on an unoptimized OS/TFF install, it could very well be expressed that TFF (let's not forget its insane bloat and slow-nature even on high-end G4s) was not "meant" for G3s at all. Does it allow G3s to browse the Web securely? Yes. And does it display the Web as originally intended? Yes. However, this does not at all mean that the G3 version was tuned specifically for optimized browsing on G3s, minus the AltiVec removal and attached "G3" logo.

But frankly, even I am surprised that the G3 variant does not already ship with the useless services and surface-level junk stripped down to better accommodate G3 systems, and maybe already come with a couple preferences pre-tweaked for optimal G3 usage.

@Appleuser201, your best bet would be to optimize your OS, optimize TFF with eyoungren's tweak thread, and use a separate client for watching YouTube, like YewTube, or TigerTUBE. And don't forget that maxxing out your machine always helps. Lightweight surfing can also be accomplished with older, lighter browsers, like OmniWeb or Camino. Similar to TFF, there are also processor specific revisions of Camino available online. And on that note, this may prove useful.
 
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Alright people, settle down.

Wrong as it is, that's his opinion and he's allowed to express it. To someone with a low-end G3 on an unoptimized OS/TFF install, it could very well be expressed that TFF (let's not forget its insane bloat and slow-nature even on high-end G4s) was not "meant" for G3s at all. Does it allow G3s to browse the Web securely? Yes. And does it display the Web as originally intended? Yes. However, this does not at all mean that the G3 version was tuned specifically for optimized browsing on G3s, minus the AltiVec removal and attached "G3" logo.

But frankly, even I am surprised that the G3 variant does not already ship with the useless services and surface-level junk stripped down to better accommodate G3 systems, and maybe already come with a couple preferences pre-tweaked for optimal usage.

@Appleuser201, your best bet would be to optimize your OS, optimize TFF with eyoungren's tweak thread, and use a separate client for watching YouTube, like YewTube, or TigerTUBE. And don't forget that maxxing out your machine always helps. Lightweight surfing can also be accomplished with older, lighter browsers, like OmniWeb or Camino. Similar to TFF, there are also processor specific revisions of Camino available online.
despite being unsupported, camino is still good
 
Demeter is really good. I was surprised how well Amazon.com loaded and worked with it. I used Demeter years ago and the abandoned it over security concerns, but just browsing on it is fast.
 
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You don't know what you're talking about and you don't want to hear from people who do.
then how do you optimize tff for a g3 mac? tff in my opinion was designed in mind for late g4s and g5 systems... no one would want to even use a g3 for daily internet usage anyways unless using classilla on mac os 9.
 
Out of curiosity, if TFFx was not intended in part to address a G3 running OSX, why create a streamlined build and clearly offer it on one's website? The internet of today is certainly not the internet of 2011, when TFFx was first released - my point being that TFF-on-a-g3 performance was most certainly better in that environment than today.

So is TFF in its current parity release slow and tedious in 2019 on a garden variety 233Mhz single core imac g3? Probably - I'd put money on it. Was it always that way? Probably not.
 
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then how do you optimize tff for a g3 mac? tff in my opinion was designed in mind for late g4s and g5 systems... no one would want to even use a g3 for daily internet usage anyways unless using classilla on mac os 9.
I followed @eyoungren 's TFF optimization guide, and have found it to be a game changer. Take his recommended tweaks, and apply them to @wicknix 's IceWeasel browser, as it is lighter on system resources than TFF.
 
then how do you optimize tff for a g3 mac? tff in my opinion was designed in mind for late g4s and g5 systems... no one would want to even use a g3 for daily internet usage anyways unless using classilla on mac os 9.

All of this info is searchable in the forum - probably a lot in answers to your previous questions. People go out of their way to help but time and time again, you don't acknowledge the advice given, barely participate in the thread you've started....and then pop up again with another thread asking vaguely the same question framed differently.
 
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Completely incorrect IMO. How do you define "meant for"? It allows my G3 Pismo to surf the web. It allows every G4 I own to surf the web. Therefore I do not care the least bit about what target platform the developer had in mind. I'd even say every developer has the platform he actually uses or the best of the best platform in mind. Mr Kaiser is no different. He uses a G5 Quad and develops a browser to keep this machine as long as possible alive, that includes surfing the internet. Then he strips it down a bit to allow for compatibility with G4s and G3s - I quote RhianB:


But TFF was never meant for using YT. That's IMO the point you don't get right.
Why is "the internet" for you just a synonym for "YOUTUBE"??
What is wrong about actually surfing the web?
youtube is quite important as well as surfing the web as its what people do.
I'm sorry but not only do you not listen to advice - you don't even listen to your own experience!

Here in January you tell us you can't play Youtube on your G3 with TFF:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/youtube-not-working-on-600mhz-imac-g3.2163891/

Then in May, you ask us what is TFF like on a G3:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-bad-is-tenfourfox-on-a-g3-mac.2182438/

You keep asking about Youtube playback - which has saturation coverage in the forum but then offer, "Thinking of getting that very same 1.33 ibook in the video and I dont care about using it for youtube or online video" - it's hard to help when you don't know your own mind.
I have used tff on a 600mhz higher end g3 well I believe the most popular g3s were the 333mhz and 400mhz imacs and I was wondering how bad tff ran on mid, low end g3sd on mine. youtube is very important for daily powerpc usage, and ive started just using mac apps for that
at. at.
All of this info is searchable in the forum - probably a lot in answers to your previous questions. People go out of their way to help but time and time again, you don't acknowledge the advice given, barely participate in the thread you've started....and then pop up again with another thread asking vaguely the same question framed differently.
yeah shouldnt do that anymore. there is lots of good advice here which I am going to try out, and ive used tff on a 600mhz g3 (brutal slow) and asked the question to see how much worse it is as most people have 333mhz to 500mhz g3s and 600mhz up g3s were generally the "high end" models and people opted for the 400,500mhz cheaper imacs. my point is, I have experienced tff on a high end g3 and its not usable.
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Out of curiosity, if TFFx was not intended in part to address a G3 running OSX, why create a streamlined build and clearly offer it on one's website? The internet of today is certainly not the internet of 2011, when TFFx was first released - my point being that TFF-on-a-g3 performance was most certainly better in that environment than today.

So is TFF in its current parity release slow and tedious in 2019 on a garden variety 233Mhz single core imac g3? Probably - I'd put money on it. Was it always that way? Probably not.
what I meant exactpy is, while tff has a g3 version, I doubt tff deveopers actually think many people will run tff on a g3 when there are lighter much faster browsers like classilla.
 
youtube is very important for daily powerpc usage

If YouTube access is such a high-ranking necessity, why not reserve a modern device just for that purpose? That way, the PPCs don't have to choke doing something they weren't meant to do, and you get the best experience out of both worlds.

By all means, push these machines to do great things; but at the same time know when to fold.
 
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