This is intriguing... does use of a RAMDISK as the browser caching mechanism produce any noticeable performance gains in AquaFox? I am ALWAYS on the lookout for ways to make AquaFox go even faster!
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Introducing Aquafox: A New Hope (TenFourFox fork) | Updated Apr 1, 2025
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IIRC @eyoungren used this config with TFFx on his PPC systems. I want to say he pushed cache to the RD. It's been a minute though LOL.
Yes, TenFourFox being a fork of Firefox, I was able to push the cache to a ramdisk. And the browser user profile. This put all the cache files and the stuff in the user profile directly into memory. Then, for good measure I dropped the actual app into the ram disk and then ram the app from the ramdisk.
I just had to remember that if I updated the app, installed new addons or bookmarks or made some change/addition I wanted to keep, that I had to quit the app and then copy both the profile and the app to a folder that was on an actual drive. I also had to recreate the ram disk on each startup and then copy that stuff back to the ramdisk.
This is necessary because the moment you unmount the ramdisk, everything in it is gone. It's volatile memory.
I would not advise doing this however if the Mac you want to use it on has 2GB of ram or less. You won't gain anything and you're going to lose valuable ram to a ramdisk. You'll probably also run out of ram and the Mac will freeze on you. This rules out all G3s and G4s. I was okay with doing this for myself though because I had a Quad G5 with 16GB ram.
Wow ! That is pushing the concept of using the RAMdisk to the max ! 👀
So then did it make a noticeable, measurable difference in execution times, page loading, GUI etc...?
Whenever I have enough time I'll try to benchmark this idea of cache (just the cache, not the whole shebang (no pun intended), not enough RAM in my machine albeit maxed out ^^) to RAMdisk vs SSD with Aquafox (and maybe some other browser) and see what the experiment will yield.
So then did it make a noticeable, measurable difference in execution times, page loading, GUI etc...?
Whenever I have enough time I'll try to benchmark this idea of cache (just the cache, not the whole shebang (no pun intended), not enough RAM in my machine albeit maxed out ^^) to RAMdisk vs SSD with Aquafox (and maybe some other browser) and see what the experiment will yield.
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It made enough of a difference that I was able to browse comfortably on one of the last versions of T4Fx until around May 2020. What finally forced me to move entirely to Intel was that no matter what I tried, my banking websites were breaking. The sites where I paid bills were breaking and it just started to cascade.
But I had a couple good years where things were pretty usable. However, I would stress again, that I was using a Quad G5 with 16GB ram. Since a lot of that ram was not being used by Photoshop or other apps I had the leeway to use it for other purposes. But you just aren't going to get much from all that using a G3 or G4.
Note…one of the limitations of Leopard and earlier is that they can only give you a max of 2GB for a ram disk. So, what I used to do was use Ram Disk Creator to make 4 ramdisks when logging in. I then used Terminal to RAID those 4 ram disks, which resulted in one 8GB ramdisk.
Just something to keep in mind if you have ram to spare.
This was my story too... banking sites finally sealed the fate of my G5s.
BUT... there is good news here now. Even without RAMDISK caching, I can once more access my back from my G5, running under Sorbet Leopard, via the Aquafox browser. The sites work, and they accept Aquafox as a supported browser, but they are slower, clearly, than if accessed from a faster machine (Intel or Apple Silicon).
On my PowerMac G5 DP 2.3 GHz, with 4.5 GB of RAM and lots of available disk space (but all mechanal spinning HDDs), and using Aquafox, I was able to log in to the two big national banks where we do our banking. It was slower to load the pages, but acceptable.
On your G5 Quad with all that RAM and the browser running out of that RAM as well, page load times should be faster, to the point that it might even be quite an acceptable experience. I wonder if you could give it a try and report back here to let us know?
what you do with your own body has no business being discussed here. 😁
On a more serious note, good to see that the G5 may still be used today to access complex sites like banks client pages, although I would personally avoid to do this, the security status of TFF/IWPPC/Aquafox running modern sites/apps is not clear to me at least.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. 😊
@eyoungren, thanxx for the info. I have 1.25GB RAM on my machine, and run the Activity monitor at all time (plus CPU usage as a vertical bar on the side) to make sure I'm not getting too close to using 100% of the RAM (in fact I'm most often not even close, not doing anything fancy at the moment, just trying basic stuff).
For now I'd say the impact of using a cache RAMdisk on Aquafox doesn't appear to drastically improve things, I guess it would be more prominent if I was still using a spinning HDD, but am on SSD now.
The other thing I've noticed, is that Aquafox (same for IWPPC and TFF) is a bit "slower" than Safari in Tiger 10.4.11, by that I mean that scrolling even simple web pages (and/or having Javascript disabled) is not as fluid, stutters a bit, in fact I can see the CPU usage going way up close to 100% while scrolling, clearly there's much more happening with Aquafox than Safari - and that's no wonder : the latter doesn't allow me to navigate pretty much any web site of interest, while so far I haven't found any rebuttal nor crash with Aquafox - not yet anyway.
@eyoungren, thanxx for the info. I have 1.25GB RAM on my machine, and run the Activity monitor at all time (plus CPU usage as a vertical bar on the side) to make sure I'm not getting too close to using 100% of the RAM (in fact I'm most often not even close, not doing anything fancy at the moment, just trying basic stuff).
For now I'd say the impact of using a cache RAMdisk on Aquafox doesn't appear to drastically improve things, I guess it would be more prominent if I was still using a spinning HDD, but am on SSD now.
The other thing I've noticed, is that Aquafox (same for IWPPC and TFF) is a bit "slower" than Safari in Tiger 10.4.11, by that I mean that scrolling even simple web pages (and/or having Javascript disabled) is not as fluid, stutters a bit, in fact I can see the CPU usage going way up close to 100% while scrolling, clearly there's much more happening with Aquafox than Safari - and that's no wonder : the latter doesn't allow me to navigate pretty much any web site of interest, while so far I haven't found any rebuttal nor crash with Aquafox - not yet anyway.
I apologize, but I'm going to decline on that. The Quad has been in the garage for the last four years. I'd have to pull it out, find a display, find a hard drive and restore my final backup. Right now there is no good place for it to be and I just don't want to go through all that for the 30 minutes or so it'd take me to try this. Because after I'm done, everything would be disconnected and go right back where it all came from.
I might be at a point sometime in the future where the garage gets cleaned up and things get set up out there (my plan), but I'm not there yet.
Even if I did discover that things were working well enough to justify finding a place for the Quad again - there's really no room. Click on the link for '6 Displays' in my signature and you'll see why. My focus now is on my MacPro 5,1 (4,1).
Webkit based browsers will always be faster. But I spend a lot of my time in the browser (whichever one I am using) every day. So, for me, customization is more important than speed.
That said, there are things you can do. You can enable smooth scrolling, you can enable more piping (more than one connection to load a page) and you can tell the browser to start displaying info the moment it receives it rather than waiting for it to process the entire page and display it to you.
There is a sticky in this subforum for foxpep. It might apply. That project has roots in this thread, which you might want to look through as well…
My TenFourFox About:Config tweaks - and my addons
QUICK LINKS PowerUOC Project. Link to alternative TenFourFox tweak project. Legacy Addon Site
forums.macrumors.com
@eyoungren, once again thanxx a lot, matter of fact my primary usage with this PBG4 is web browsing, hopefully getting on YT and be able to watch videos (this is starting to look good thanks to PPCMC7 that @Dronecatcher indicated to me few days ago btw), etc... and also playing music, movies and other fun stuff. But also eventually do some coding to tweak the OS to my liking (and maybe delve into some of the more dev-oriented topics here - but I'm not there yet by a long stretch).
Therefore I'm going to look into the hints you just gave me, and will report back if substantial progress is made.
Therefore I'm going to look into the hints you just gave me, and will report back if substantial progress is made.
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I would just say, look more to the foxpep thread. That thread was actually a project, where my thread was mainly a hobby consisting of my 'notes'. You can see the somewhat hostile fallout of all that in the final pages of my thread.@eyoungren, once again thanxx a lot, matter of fact my primary usage with this PBG4 is web browsing, hopefully getting on YT and be able to watch videos (this is starting to look good thanks to PPCMC7 that @Dronecatcher indicated to me few days ago btw), etc... and also playing music, movies and other fun stuff. But also eventually do some coding to tweak the OS to my liking (and maybe delve into some of the more dev-oriented topics here - but I'm not there yet by a longstretch).
Therefore I'm going to look into the hints you just gave me, and will report back if substantial progress is made.
In any case, what you are doing is what I was doing for years. But periodically, I have to make the tech leap to the next thing in order to do/keep doing what I want to do. That's almost always when things come down far enough into my price range.
Unfortunately for PowerPC, the things I want to do just no longer have workarounds that are acceptable to me for systems that are daily drivers. They are all more than functional and capable for graphic design with the tools that I know and have used in the past however, so that is in large part why I haven't tossed them all.
But good luck to you and I hope you are successful in your goal.
@Alubook133 I believe that Safari offloads most graphics work to the system GPU, resulting in faster and smoother performance when loading and manipulating pages. Aquafox, IWPPC, and anything else based on TenFourFox renders everything in software exclusively and offloads to nothing, so that's why it's slower and consumes so many more CPU cycles.
As far as I'm aware, no one has ever found a way to hardware accelerate Mozilla browsers on PowerPC OS X -- unless the original releases of Firefox were accelerated and this was always just a TenFourFox issue. Not sure on that one.
And for clarity, the foxPEP tweaks have already been included in Aquafox out-of-the-box, so there isn't really a need to peruse the standalone script anymore. Although there may be a few more preferences that can offer even further improvement in the thread that @eyoungren linked though, potentially.
@eyoungren I forgot all about that. It seems that friction arose mostly out of miscommunication and some differing beliefs, like most other conflicts on this planet.
Of course, both projects are dead now and we've both moved onto newer platforms since, and life is too short for online message board conflicts anyway. So I would certainly hope there are no hostilities still remaining in the present time.
As far as I'm aware, no one has ever found a way to hardware accelerate Mozilla browsers on PowerPC OS X -- unless the original releases of Firefox were accelerated and this was always just a TenFourFox issue. Not sure on that one.
And for clarity, the foxPEP tweaks have already been included in Aquafox out-of-the-box, so there isn't really a need to peruse the standalone script anymore. Although there may be a few more preferences that can offer even further improvement in the thread that @eyoungren linked though, potentially.
@eyoungren I forgot all about that. It seems that friction arose mostly out of miscommunication and some differing beliefs, like most other conflicts on this planet.
Of course, both projects are dead now and we've both moved onto newer platforms since, and life is too short for online message board conflicts anyway. So I would certainly hope there are no hostilities still remaining in the present time.
@z970, thanks, I had no idea - so in essence I shouldn't expect to see any improvement with Aquafox when using the PEP prefs because they're already there, and matter of fact : I didn't, at least not "visually" (haven't run any actual benchmark) but the (moderate) stuttering and CPU raging while scrolling even a text-only web page is still there compared with the "stock" Aquafox prefs.
I've read@eyoungren POV on "stuttering while scrolling", and the fact that for him it's no issue (and he thoroughly explains why), however I'd personally rather try to reduce this effect to its minimum, if at all possible. Now if no GPU acceleration has ever been available for PowerPC Mozilla/Firefox based browsers, I'll probably have to accept it the way it is.
I've read in another thread that things are better in Leopard/Sorbet, unfortunately Sorbet is unusable right now because I get a 95% CPU util at all time due to a "SystemUI" process running (I think it's the right name, but I'll check).Could it be Spotlight doing his things and eating up the CPU ? Got to try killing Spotlight upfront next time I boot into Sorbet.
Edith : self response, this was due to iStats 3 running in the background (shows continuously updated CPU/Mem/Disk/... info in the menu bar), a demo version that had supposedly expired... definitely gone now, so I can get back to fiddling with Sorbet Leopard. Actually looks like Aquafox is more fluid there, good enough for me anyway compared to the Tiger "version", good news.
I've read@eyoungren POV on "stuttering while scrolling", and the fact that for him it's no issue (and he thoroughly explains why), however I'd personally rather try to reduce this effect to its minimum, if at all possible. Now if no GPU acceleration has ever been available for PowerPC Mozilla/Firefox based browsers, I'll probably have to accept it the way it is.
I've read in another thread that things are better in Leopard/Sorbet, unfortunately Sorbet is unusable right now because I get a 95% CPU util at all time due to a "SystemUI" process running (I think it's the right name, but I'll check).
Edith : self response, this was due to iStats 3 running in the background (shows continuously updated CPU/Mem/Disk/... info in the menu bar), a demo version that had supposedly expired... definitely gone now, so I can get back to fiddling with Sorbet Leopard. Actually looks like Aquafox is more fluid there, good enough for me anyway compared to the Tiger "version", good news.
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We're fine. I took no offense then and harbor none now. I actually asked the mods to sticky your thread at that time so that it would gain more exposure. What I was doing was always just a hobby and and if others got something from it that was nice. But you had a project and it deserved to be recognized.
So, no…no hard feelings at all.
@Alubook133 Depending on what system you’re using and its horsepower available, my conjecture is that the stuttering scrolling on mostly blank pages may as well be just from processing the weight of the browser itself - a circa 2021 mega application with many different functions and subsystems built-in running on processors 20 years older than it. And the fact that (especially in a stock configuration) even UI animations for opening new tabs and submenus stutter badly is further evidence of this.
Moreover, if I recall correctly, I believe Safari used about 15 threads? Meanwhile I’m relatively sure that TenFourFox always used around 40, and several times the memory. Case in point.
Regarding Sorbet, Spotlight is already killed in Sorbet by default. And at this point I have no idea what that process is or what it’s supposed to do (besides display the user interface) so if it’s a persisting issue, short of rooting around for explanations in the Console, I would suggest just restoring the system again and calling it a day.
@eyoungren It was mostly an observation. In the end, we were all just vibing in parallel doing the things that brought each of us some happiness and satisfaction. If it doesn’t pay the bills after all, I would think that’s essentially the only reason to log in to the message boards in the first place.
Moreover, if I recall correctly, I believe Safari used about 15 threads? Meanwhile I’m relatively sure that TenFourFox always used around 40, and several times the memory. Case in point.
Regarding Sorbet, Spotlight is already killed in Sorbet by default. And at this point I have no idea what that process is or what it’s supposed to do (besides display the user interface) so if it’s a persisting issue, short of rooting around for explanations in the Console, I would suggest just restoring the system again and calling it a day.
@eyoungren It was mostly an observation. In the end, we were all just vibing in parallel doing the things that brought each of us some happiness and satisfaction. If it doesn’t pay the bills after all, I would think that’s essentially the only reason to log in to the message boards in the first place.
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@z970, I've just edited my previous post (hadn't seen yours yet) to say that I found the culprit : iStats 3. But thanxx for the tip anyway. Also, good to know that Spotlight is verbotten in Sorbet, I probably need to RTFM.
As you can see I also mentioned that scrolling web pages (even loaded ones, not just flat text) in Aquafox on Sorbet is fluid enough for me, which it isn't in Tiger, so that's a positive surprise. Other than that in terms of loading pages and correctly displaying them I haven't seen any major difference yet, but need to spend more time evaluating this key performance criterium for me (while not setting expectations too high).
As you can see I also mentioned that scrolling web pages (even loaded ones, not just flat text) in Aquafox on Sorbet is fluid enough for me, which it isn't in Tiger, so that's a positive surprise. Other than that in terms of loading pages and correctly displaying them I haven't seen any major difference yet, but need to spend more time evaluating this key performance criterium for me (while not setting expectations too high).
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IIRC, this was why I ultimately switched to menumeters. Anymore, I prefer MM as I've used it for so long.
I believe that there was a memory bug in v3 of iStat. That, and the fact that Bjango started charging for the app at v3 caused me to stick with v2 - which is still running on my 17" PowerBook.
Unfortunately Bjango, in the interest of driving $$$ to itself did a very decent job of scrubbing the internet for version 1.0 and 2.0. Except, that I have a tendency to keep stuff, particularly the stuff I download and actually use. That said, I eventually gave Bjango my $$$ because I like the app and it's running on all my Macs.
So… https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wcn2...s2.0.zip?rlkey=gf8p8ms24267rahz69320i11c&dl=0 if anyone wants it.
I've also got version 1.0 if anyone wants that.
I know I posted both of these somewhere else earlier this week, but doesn't hurt to have it in more places.
I do not have MenuMeters though.
If anyone wants to give MM a spin, you can DL the PowerPC version here.
For early Intel El Capitan and above, you can DL the fork here.
As far as AS, I have read that MM is causing issues with external volumes mounting. I havent tried it on my AS mbp yet so cant speak to this from experience but have read a few folks reporting this and the fix was to remove MM. I have not experienced this on my PPC & EI macs. ymmv
For early Intel El Capitan and above, you can DL the fork here.
As far as AS, I have read that MM is causing issues with external volumes mounting. I havent tried it on my AS mbp yet so cant speak to this from experience but have read a few folks reporting this and the fix was to remove MM. I have not experienced this on my PPC & EI macs. ymmv
I've used both on many different Macs and like @Certificate of Excellence, I prefer MM... I just like the presentation and configuration capabilities better. However, I seem to recall that I HAD to go to iStat Pro when I got my Mac Studio... MM didn't run under Monterey (or some equally compelling technical block).
Aquafox 2.0
Hey everyone! I teased it yesterday with a picture from a friend of mine (showing Aquafox on their iBook G4), but it's official: today I'm releasing Aquafox 2.0!"It's been three months since I released the first version, and a lot has happened since then. Aquafox has been downloaded over a thousand times, and I've received a lot of feedback from all of you here.
I've made a few important updates to Aquafox, and I will continue to do so after this release. Aquafox is no longer just "TenFourFox but with water"; instead, it is now pushing ahead.
Here’s a rundown of the changes included in this release:
Update to 128 ESR: Although version 115 ESR is still supported now that Mozilla has pushed back its end-of-life date, Aquafox is moving forward by importing key security features from Firefox 128 ESR, including trusted root certificates, HSTS and HPKP lists, and time zone data, among others.Default Search Engine: When using the en-US locale, the default search engine used to be Yahoo and would switch back to Yahoo even when set to a different search engine like DuckDuckGo. This bug has now been fixed; the default search engine is now set to Google, and it should not revert back to the default when changed to something else.
Disabling Nonessential and Deprecated Services: Several services related to Firefox Sync, Web Payments, and telemetry have been disabled at build time, and some of their UI code has been cleaned up.
Prune Adblock Filter Lists: Both the basic adblock filter list and the browser's host file have been cleaned up: dead domains and duplicates have been removed, as well as false positives like facebook.com, which previously prevented users from accessing the website.
Revise FPR Versioning: Changes have been made to the versioning scheme to align with ESR releases. Each major ESR upgrade will increment the release version (e.g., from 1.0.0 to 2.0 for ESR 128), while minor updates will adjust the version accordingly (e.g., from 2.0 to 2.1).
Thank you for your support, and I’ll see you all again at the next release!
Direct downloads here:
https://github.com/BlackBirdLC/Aquafox/releases/expanded_assets/v2.0