The developer of Firefox Dynasty is excellent at what he does, and I'd say its just a matter of time before Quantum is running on 10.6.
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Introducing Aquafox: A New Hope (TenFourFox fork) | Updated Jul 1, 2025
- Thread starter thewireless
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Rosetta doesn't do Altivec. You have to use the G3 build with Rosetta.
Edit: Just for future readers. I was misremembering. Rosetta can do Altivec. But it doesn't do it well. G5 or PPC 970 is the instruction set that it cannot translate.
In my experience, Altivac heavy or applications compiled specifically for G4s are hit or miss (like these browsers).
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That tracks. It would be about as slow as an actual G3 if it did work. I tried it a couple times with tenfourfox a few years ago. It was very slow, and pretty crash-happy.
I installed Aquafox-G5-2.2 on my 10.4.0 (8A428) 2ghz G5 imac
On opening, l get an error message, "You cannot use the applicaton "Aquafox" with the version of Mac OS X"
What would be the fix?
On opening, l get an error message, "You cannot use the applicaton "Aquafox" with the version of Mac OS X"
What would be the fix?
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It requires 10.4.11. (might also work on 10.4.6, can’t remember)
There is probably not much stuff compiled with `-mcpu=970` (unless you build locally on a G5 and force this flag). Whatever used `-mtune=970` is supposed to work on G4 or Rosetta.
Well, InterWebPPC and AquaFox are both completely based on TFF and its JS JIT so we'll just have to live with that unless a Rust compiler for Tiger/Leopard surfaces, allowing for a newer version to possibly be compiled.
The other option would be to investigate whether some version of Firefox for Linux, running under X11, might be compiled for 10.4 or 10.5...
How come it supports this version of Tiger? Xcode just supports shipping for 10.4.9 when you compile under 10.4.11 or what? Are the APIs that similar?10.4.9
TenFourFox and Aquafox rely on the Core Video framework and will not start if they cannot find it. On Tiger, Core Video is actually part of the Quartz Core framework, and according to this page on developer.apple.com, it was only spun off into a separate framework with version 10.5. The 10.4.9 update for Tiger actually includes the addition of this separate framework, despite being released half a year before 10.5.
Modern versions of Firefox also look for this separate framework, as that is the standard for modern versions of Mac OS X. Since TenFourFox is a fork of (then) modern Firefox, it likely inherited this behavior. I believe this is why the minimum supported version is 10.4.9.
Since we have just learned that Core Video is part of the Quartz Core framework, we should be able to run Aquafox without the separate Core Video framework installed on our system. To do this, you simply need to trick the browser into loading the Quartz Core framework instead of the non-existent Core Video framework. This can easily be done by creating a symlink. However, this will only work for versions 10.4.3 and later; I haven't been able to run the browser on earlier versions, as the dynamic linker complains about being unable to find some symbols. This issue could possibly be fixed, but I don't think it's worth spending too much time on.
Now, should you actually do this? Probably not. The only version officially supported by TenFourFox was 10.4.11. It's not entirely unthinkable that some things will break when running on an older version, as it may rely on more than just Core Video. Additionally, the later patches all added and fixed a bunch of things, so there’s really no reason not to update.
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AquafoxBox 1.0
TenFourFoxBox and InTheBox need no introduction on this forum, but for those who are unfamiliar with these utilities, they allow you to create site-specific browser applications using TenFourFox or InterWebPPC as the backend. You click the icon, and a window dedicated to a single website appears—no browser controls, just the website with a title bar. This is very useful for things like webmail.TenFourFoxBox creates "foxboxes," and InTheBox creates "application boxes." But what about "aquafoxboxes"? Well, don't fret, because the wait is no more! Introducing AquafoxBox: it's exactly the same but now with Aquafox as the backend and, most importantly, a brand new icon handcrafted in Krita by yours truly. For more information and downloads, check the GitHub project page (link), as well as the updated user guide (link).
I initially considered making a separate thread for this, but since it's very closely related to Aquafox, I will instead post it here and tidy up the first post a bit to include it.
Thank you for your support, and I’ll see you all again real soon!
Aquafox 2.3
Hey everyone! I'm back with another release, and I wish everyone a great summer—remember to keep it cool!This is the third security update for Aquafox 2. Just like before, this release includes security updates to the latest version of 128 ESR.
Thank you all for your continued support, and a special thank you to Santiago Lema and MickeyD for their donations! I’ll see you all again in a few months for the final release of Aquafox 2, with Aquafox 3 right around the corner, scheduled for release this fall.
Direct downloads here:
https://github.com/BlackBirdLC/Aquafox/releases/expanded_assets/v2.3
Once more, thanks @thewireless - great job!
BTW, I tested out AquafoxBox on a G5 Dual 2.3 GHz, running Sorbet, and it ran beautifully.
BTW, I tested out AquafoxBox on a G5 Dual 2.3 GHz, running Sorbet, and it ran beautifully.
Great news about AquafoxBox (I'll have to test how much video in browser can be improved with it) and the security update. The work you do for PowerPC is greatly appreciated!
Quick tests on my G5 Dual and G5 AirQuad show that Aquafox 2.3 starts up and runs just fine in the Sorbet environment.
Great work, thank you so much for this!
Been using Aquafox for the past few days here and there on my G5 with Sorbet Leopard. Smooth sailing so far. Thanks for all that you do developing Aquafox.
Looks like GH added some more JS garbage in their website. Before you could choose to have SMS sent as an alternative. Now it is perhaps inside More options, but the thing is unclickable. Any solution?
What is it with web developers breaking things? It's as if they want to reinvent the wheel time after time. I understand that stagnation is not good, but we've had collapsible menus and fade/slide animations for years. Why complicate them to such a degree that they completely break functionality when our JavaScript support is a little older? It's not like we don't have JavaScript; we do, but it's just not really up-to-date anymore. @Ryan Bremer, is this specific Github issue addressable with a userscript?
Regardless, I've been experimenting with injecting a local polyfill package (from Cloudflare) in tab-content.js, but I haven't had any success so far. I think I'm injecting it too late in the loading processes. But loading this into every tab, I'm unsure of the effects on performance.
@GA204 @f54da, any updates on this? I'm quite new to modern JavaScript (anything beyond basic JS; my personal website is just plain HTML/CSS, and the only JS included is a third-party frame link script which updates the URL for convenience), but I'm willing to dedicate time to this. I just need a plan of approach, as I'm not entirely sure where to even start, especially since my initial experiments proved less than fruitful.
P.S. There's a GitHub issue related to this here.
No offense to web devs, but I deal with a lot of them at work, and it seems like about 20% of them are geniuses, while the rest are/were just kids who's grandmas said they're good with computers, so they thought they should make websites for a living lol. I've seen that 80% do all kinds of bonehead things, and often make changes for the sake of change alone.