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PowerFox Web Browser - A brand new browser for PowerPC (Beta)
- Thread starter Jazzzny
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Gloomy
macrumors member
The numbers suggest an almost 2000% improvement in JavaScript rendering in the next PowerFox update, i.e. much faster browsing.
DurltazorOSXPower
macrumors member
Hey everyone,
Another thing I have been working on for the next release is enabling the Skia graphics backend:
Currently, two of PowerFox's weakest areas regarding performance are JS execution and graphics (browser rendering).
The former is solved with our new IonPower JIT, and now the latter is solved with Skia, which is a very fast rendering engine that even browsers such as Chrome still use, which no browser on PPC OS X has ever supported. I've seen a doubling in graphics performance across various parts of the browser, and pages that used to scroll quite sluggishly are now much better. This is shaping up to be a very nice release!
Another thing I have been working on for the next release is enabling the Skia graphics backend:
Currently, two of PowerFox's weakest areas regarding performance are JS execution and graphics (browser rendering).
The former is solved with our new IonPower JIT, and now the latter is solved with Skia, which is a very fast rendering engine that even browsers such as Chrome still use, which no browser on PPC OS X has ever supported. I've seen a doubling in graphics performance across various parts of the browser, and pages that used to scroll quite sluggishly are now much better. This is shaping up to be a very nice release!
Appleuser201
macrumors 6502
You sir, are fantastic. Along with other people who have helped significantly like Dr. Cameron Kaiser. This is very good work, and I believe will make the high end powermac G5s daily drivable again, and the later G4s finally usable on the modern web. I'm very excited to see the future of this project and what other great things we can achieve in our fight against planned obsolescence.
Smithwick’s
macrumors regular
This is huge! Thank you for your tireless work in the retro community. Frankly, despite the niche nature of the project this should be a huge resume booster in my opinion!
Any idea of the timeline for a release?
I'm currently putting finishing touches on all 10 unique builds that will be shipped, which takes quite a bit of time and effort to ensure that every configuration is working properly. At this point, I am quite close to a release and I think I can get one out within the next week.
Bug Report: PowerFox on Leopard i386 does not run very well ... it glitches badly on my own homepage (http://atarixle.ddns.net; on both version 26.2.1 for Leopard i386 as well as 26.2.2 for Tiger i386). It does not make those glitches on Tiger PPC/i386, or Leopard PPC. On Leopard i386, the icons here in this very forum are still squared (which used to be fixed in PowerFox 26.2.2 Tiger PPC/i386 on Tiger and Leopard PPC).
It is inappropriate to report issues about Intel here, please use the Intel thread. Additionally, please try again once the new release is published.