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PowerFox Web Browser - A brand new browser for PowerPC (Beta)

Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried this frontend for Youtube?: https://vorapis.pages.dev/#/
My old monitors are currently in storage, but having tried this with other hardware, it massively lowers how demanding Youtube is as a site, and it has legacy XPI support. Seems like that's exactly what we need to ring a little more power out of these old machines to get a better experience.
 
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atarixle said:
Did they update the Forums? Icons all around here now look blocky ("Like", "Quote", "Replay", Messages, Alerts), but I'm sure it did not look this way this morning/afternoon.
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Yes the forums have been updated. I have brought forward the issue in the SFF Thread Arn posted, and have engaged with him using internal tools.

He has attempted some changes but they are not functioning correctly so far. The issue appears to be in some of the core code, and items the forum software has moved away from in this version.

If users are having issues posting in older browsers, try disabling Java which should allow you to type without an active WYSIWYG.

Hopefully Arn and the forum software developer can resolve. The same issues are present on 68KMLA from which I notified them a couple weeks ago.
 
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atarixle said:
Icons all around here now look block
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This is a bug in PowerFox for PPC, the browser currently doesn’t render the css mask-image property properly on 10.5. I’ll try to debug this at some point, it’s not something that MacRumors needs to be concerned about as it’s a standard CSS spec. (Sorry for any trouble, MR staff)
 
Jazzzny said:
This is a bug in PowerFox for PPC, the browser currently doesn’t render the css mask-image property properly on 10.5. I’ll try to debug this at some point, it’s not something that MacRumors needs to be concerned about as it’s a standard CSS spec. (Sorry for any trouble, MR staff)
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I've also been having errors with YouTube on a iBook G4 1.2ghz/1.25gb of ram (script pop ups/completely unplayable videos that take forever to load and stutter and stop no matter the resolution) and Google AI mode doesn't work well as I'm unable to type questions to it. Very happy with the browser otherwise, thanks man.
 
Dronecatcher said:
What machine are you using - and GPU as this seems super relevant?
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Test machine is: a1047 dual cpu 2Ghz, 4GB pc3200 ddr, 120gb SSD Sorbet 1.5v boot drive, 128mb Radeon 9600 Powermac G5


I think Powerfox is pretty good so far. It's kind of funny that Safari 11.0.4 plays YT better at this point (for me) but Im sure that will change. Legacy TFFx and Aqua dont play at all comparatively. I use Basilisk on all of my early Intel macs, so this browser is a comfortable fit and to have a current UXP environment to build/use current js via jit compiler really does provide something modern for devs to sink their teeth into. It will be pretty great to see where @Jazzzny takes Powefox PPC.

Exciting times 🙂
 
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Jazzzny said:
This is a bug in PowerFox for PPC, the browser currently doesn’t render the css mask-image property properly on 10.5. I’ll try to debug this at some point, it’s not something that MacRumors needs to be concerned about as it’s a standard CSS spec. (Sorry for any trouble, MR staff)
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FYI this is also part of the problem, and why posting with Java enabled on MacRumors doesn't work in some Firefox based browsers on older PowerPC systems (perhaps Intel too).

xenforo.com

Not a bug - jQuery not loading in v 2.3.0

Many jQuery errors after upgrading to 2.3.0. /src/XF/Template/Templater.php (public function fnCoreJs) not longer loads jQuery. The current version (jquery.slim) does not have required functions (like $.ajax). Temporary fix was to add the following to the PAGE_CONTAINER template $ = jQuery;
xenforo.com xenforo.com
 
I know the advantage of SVG-masks over background-image, as you don't have to bake the desired color into the SVG itself anymore, but rather set the color of those monochrome icons in CSS directly. When inspecting the icon in Powerfox Inspector, the SVG has a size of 0x0 pixels. If I had any clue - which I definitively have in Atari 8 Bit BASIC - I'd say, that the PowerPC somewhere deep in the code misses a conversion from LSB to MSB or viceversa.
I have to admit, I was too lazy to test this very forum on Powerfox x86 on Snow Leopard, as with the start of Powerfox PPC I put away all old Intel Macs to dig out my pile of PowerPCs to put it on my desk ;-)
 
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I'll have to drag out my 2MB L3 dual G4 and test performance but I'm wondering if a large part of the difference in performance between all these machines is the amount and configuration of their caches. The 970MP G5s have 1MB l2 per core vs 512KB for its predecessors. I can't find much information on if the G5 really benefited from DDR2 memory similar to the DLSD PowerBook G4s but I'm not certain the additional bandwidth would really help this application in the first place. I'd imagine this being pretty much all latency.
 
Jazzzny said:
Power Macintosh, meet PowerFox

View attachment 2599957

Hello all, I'm very happy to announce the beta release of PowerFox Browser for the PowerPC architecture.

PowerFox is not a derivative of TenFourFox. Rather, it is a brand-new browser for PowerPC, built from the same codebase as the 10.6 Intel variant. To refresh your memory, this brings a modern web engine (UXP) with excellent support for the modern internet, with features such as OpenGL acceleration, coloured emoji, modern HTML/CSS/JavaScript support, container tabs, language packs, video codecs (no need for an "enabler"), and much more.

Right now, PowerFox is offered in a beta state for PowerPC - expect bugs and other issues, and please report any of them that you encounter to this thread or on the GitHub bugtracker.

System Requirements
  • Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
  • PowerPC G4 or PowerPC G5 processor
  • 1 GHz processor for proper video playback
Known Issues/Limitations
  • JavaScript JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation is currently unimplemented. This means that JavaScript performance will be slower than that of TenFourFox and its derivatives, please consider installing an Ad Blocker and keeping expectations within reason.
  • Certain SVG images will not render correctly - under investigation.
PowerFox for PowerPC wouldn't have been possible without the developers behind the UXP web engine - namely dbsoft. Thank you!

You can download a build from the PowerFox website or GitHub. Let me know what you think, and happy browsing!

- Jazzzny
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This is amazing! I wrote this on my PowerMac G4 dual 1.25ghz. Performance is quite acceptable tbh. Thank you for doing this, this browser is a game changer in PowerPC land. It puts a smile on my face, i don know anything about coding but i wish i could help you, i think i need to learn finally how to code, because we need to keep this browser alive and kicking. Apple forgot about PowerPC a long time ago, but you didn't dear Sir. Thank you so much for your hard work and i hope this project doesn't get abandoned any time soon 🙂 salutations and i wish you a good 2026, even though it is already february (man time flies isn't it?).
 
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repairedCheese said:
Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried this frontend for Youtube?: https://vorapis.pages.dev/#/
My old monitors are currently in storage, but having tried this with other hardware, it massively lowers how demanding Youtube is as a site, and it has legacy XPI support. Seems like that's exactly what we need to ring a little more power out of these old machines to get a better experience.
Click to expand...
I've used it - it's very effective. It doesn't work with PPC PowerFox - the interface loads but video won't play.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
I've used it - it's very effective. It doesn't work with PPC PowerFox - the interface loads but video won't play.
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From my experience using it on my iBook G4 (A1133), it works pretty well for searching and finding videos, but playback ends up being limited by youtube using AV1 on videos with higher view counts (seems to be a V3 problem since those vids will load without it). I've been able to watch full videos as long as they have low view counts. sometime a higher view count video would work, but most of the time it ends up bombing at around 30 seconds up to 2 minutes.
 

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I found an Airport Extreme Card laying around ... now it's in my G5. Good bye Hama USB-Wifi which needs drivers and an Utility! This kinda doubles the fun testing Powerfox ...
 
Just to see if it CAN be done... how much would I have to pay someone to update the MacOS X 10.3.9-capable version of Camino? Assuming backporting PowerFox wouldn't be easier. I'm really tempted to be willing to pay to have it done.
 
NahiaX3 said:
From my experience using it on my iBook G4 (A1133), it works pretty well for searching and finding videos, but playback ends up being limited by youtube using AV1 on videos with higher view counts (seems to be a V3 problem since those vids will load without it). I've been able to watch full videos as long as they have low view counts. sometime a higher view count video would work, but most of the time it ends up bombing at around 30 seconds up to 2 minutes.
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Now, this isn't a new problem, and it's where h264ify comes in. You'll be running avc1/h264 and nothing but it in no time. Can't speak to exactly what the exact performance experience will be, but h264 is unquestionably less demanding than vp9 or av1.
 
NahiaX3 said:
From my experience using it on my iBook G4 (A1133), it works pretty well for searching and finding videos, but playback ends up being limited by youtube using AV1 on videos with higher view counts
Click to expand...
I just tried 5 videos each with less than 20 views - still nothing.
 
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Got any idea where i could find a legacy .xpi for h264ify? now that you mentioned it i really wanna try it but i have no idea where to find one.
 
i currently havent had any problems with PowerFox other than the cpu being pinned to 100% and ram usage being high. Aquafox still beats PowerFox in loading sites quicker for doing things like quick google searches and going to sites like mac garden.
 
I take back my claim that OpenGL acceleration does *not* significantly help browser performance. I have been doing testing on a 10.5 Intel build on an HTML5 graphics performance benchmark. Comparing TenFourFox Intel (No OpenGL acceleration) to PowerFox (OpenGL-accelerated), I believe the results speak for themselves:

Picture 15.png


Picture 16.png


(We are 795% faster in graphics.)

If we get JIT, then PowerFox should perform much, much faster than TenFourFox and its derivatives.
 
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Jazzzny said:
I take back my claim that OpenGL acceleration does *not* significantly help browser performance. I have been doing testing on a 10.5 Intel build on an HTML5 graphics performance benchmark. Comparing TenFourFox Intel (No OpenGL acceleration) to PowerFox (OpenGL-accelerated), I believe the results speak for themselves:

View attachment 2602287

View attachment 2602288

(We are 795% faster in graphics.)

If we get JIT, then PowerFox should perform much, much faster than TenFourFox and its derivatives.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the work. Honestly if Powerfox gets JIT, and eventually gets ported to 10.4, it could make the G3 systems semi-usable for light use on the modern web. Which is insane to think about, but in the realm of possibilities if those 2 things happen.
 
Dronecatcher said:
And there you have it - it's down to whatever GPU you have.
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No?

I mentioned that this is on Intel with JIT. Performance is severely degraded without JIT. Try the test on TenFourFox, then disable JIT, and you'll see what I mean, even though TenFourFox doesn't have OpenGL acceleration, the test still tanks.

Even if you assume that your GPU is 4 times slower than my GeForce 9400M, if JIT is implemented, that would result in a score double of what you see right now.
 
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Jazzzny said:
No?

I mentioned that this is on Intel with JIT. Performance is severely degraded without JIT. Try the test on TenFourFox, then disable JIT, and you'll see what I mean.

Even if you assume that your GPU is 4 times slower than my GeForce 9400M, if JIT is implemented, that would result in a score double of what you see right now.
Click to expand...
What is your wirple result on PowerPC ?
 
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