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

Heres a better statistic for you to think about:

When I disable JIT in PowerFox 10.5 Intel, I get a score of 23.
So, JIT provides an ~700% increase in graphical performance in this test.
 
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Jazzzny said:
Heres a better statistic for you to think about:

When I disable JIT in PowerFox 10.5 Intel, I get a score of 23.
So, JIT provides an ~700% increase in graphical performance in this test.
Click to expand...
Yes, I understand that. But a PowerPC benchmark would help me figure whether my 6600LE is the problem.
 
Appleuser201 said:
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.
Click to expand...
Personally, I would prefer to keep this a Leopard and up project. Tiger still has Aquafox, and G3s are too slow to be useful even if the modern web eventually loads.
I've been saying for years that if we had a browser that targets Leopard instead, we'd get a lot further. I'd rather have that than be held back by the people insistent on using Tiger instead. I'm assuming the dev feels the same.

These days I only keep Tiger installed for two reasons: It's a G3, or Classic support for G5s. Otherwise, I use vanilla Leopard, and dualboot Jaguar.
 
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Project Alice said:
Personally, I would prefer to keep this a Leopard and up project. Tiger still has Aquafox, and G3s are too slow to be useful even if the modern web eventually loads.
I've been saying for years that if we had a browser that targets Leopard instead, we'd get a lot further. I'd rather have that than be held back by the people insistent on using Tiger instead. I'm assuming the dev feels the same.

These days I only keep Tiger installed for two reasons: It's a G3, or Classic support for G5s. Otherwise, I use vanilla Leopard, and dualboot Jaguar.
Click to expand...
I agree that Leopard is the logical goal right now. Once Leoplard PPC Powerfox is firmly in place and functioning, if anyone wanted to try and back port all that would be required to Tiger like TLS3, system frameworks, cocoa APIs etc, I think that would be very cool. it would be a valiant & Herculean effort for sure.

I'm sure there's someone out there who doesn't eat sleep or have a life that could potentially pull all that together and do it but jeez, where would one even start?

AI? 😀
 
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Project Alice said:
Personally, I would prefer to keep this a Leopard and up project. Tiger still has Aquafox, and G3s are too slow to be useful even if the modern web eventually loads.
I've been saying for years that if we had a browser that targets Leopard instead, we'd get a lot further. I'd rather have that than be held back by the people insistent on using Tiger instead. I'm assuming the dev feels the same.

These days I only keep Tiger installed for two reasons: It's a G3, or Classic support for G5s. Otherwise, I use vanilla Leopard, and dualboot Jaguar.
Click to expand...
I agree with that, a lot less progress would be made if the dev decided to try and make it Tiger compatible. Trying to spread the project out would bring far less progress and results. I'm amazed something like this is even possible on Leopard as it is. It's astounding to have a browser of this caliber working on a G4.

I've been saying Aquafox is great for a while, but a ton of websites just straight up refuse to load at all anymore. Even back in 2019, almost everything worked on TFF based browsers, but these days is a far different story. As much as I'd love to see Powerfox/modern web standards working on 10.4 so I could use it on my G3 iMac, I agree that it shouldn't be a priority.

As for the G3 being competent on the modern web, I'd agree it isn't very pleasant. But I have seen videos (from Action Retro) of Linux based browsers running pretty decently on a G3 and actually being quite usable within reason, but any modernish Firefox based browser like TFF/Aquafox or Powerfox, will never be very usable on a G3.
 
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I must thank Jazzzny for this effort. I'd never thought I'd be able to access icloud.com again from my PowerPC macs. This is wonderful! I can't wait to see how this develops further.
Picture 1.png
 
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Writing this in PF on an A1104 12" Powerbook G4. It's pretty slow, probably due to limited RAM, I'm guessing, as well as also being on the stock spinner! Will try also on an A1107 17" with the max 2GB RAM and see if there's much difference. Same processor, but it does have an SSD in it.
 
DCBassman said:
Writing this in PF on an A1104 12" Powerbook G4. It's pretty slow, probably due to limited RAM, I'm guessing, as well as also being on the stock spinner! Will try also on an A1107 17" with the max 2GB RAM and see if there's much difference. Same processor, but it does have an SSD in it.
Click to expand...
On my 12" Powerbook, MR page even after loading sits at 100% CPU - do you see the same?
 
Dronecatcher said:
On my 12" Powerbook, MR page even after loading sits at 100% CPU - do you see the same?
Click to expand...
Already switched over to the A1139 17", and it's no better. Yes, the CPU is pegged at or near 100%, so it's this that is causing the poor performance. But it does work, for the most part. I show some graphic elements missing on this website, but not enough to make it unusable.
 
DCBassman said:
Already switched over to the A1139 17", and it's no better. Yes, the CPU is pegged at or near 100%, so it's this that is causing the poor performance. But it does work, for the most part. I show some graphic elements missing on this website, but not enough to make it unusable.
Click to expand...
It's a make or break for me - I don't like to see sustained 100% CPU on any machine but it's bad news on an aging Mac portable.

The only remedy is to run the processor in reduced mode - it will still be 100% but at half processor speed.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
It's a make or break for me - I don't like to see sustained 100% CPU on any machine but it's bad news on an aging Mac portable.

The only remedy is to run the processor in reduced mode - it will still be 100% but at half processor speed.
Click to expand...
For me, unless this is part of PF still being in beta, it means I'll be saying bye-bye to PowerPC unless I can find an easier way to get Linux on them. Having said that, I'd probably keep the 12" because it's just a great little machine. Maybe keep it offline and use just as a writing machine, or something.
 
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DCBassman said:
For me, unless this is part of PF still being in beta, it means I'll be saying bye-bye to PowerPC unless I can find an easier way to get Linux on them. Having said that, I'd probably keep the 12" because it's just a great little machine. Maybe keep it offline and use just as a writing machine, or something.
Click to expand...
Luckily, all the sites I visit still work in Aquafox (and load 3 to 4 times faster) but realistically the Powerbook isn't getting used - it's last real role was making an album's worth of music for Bandcamp. I think I'll be letting it go to someone who can give it a more active life.
 
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DCBassman said:
For me, unless this is part of PF still being in beta, it means I'll be saying bye-bye to PowerPC unless I can find an easier way to get Linux on them. Having said that, I'd probably keep the 12" because it's just a great little machine. Maybe keep it offline and use just as a writing machine, or something
Click to expand...

Linux won't make much of a difference, you still won't have a JavaScript JIT. If you use NoScript to block all the JavaScript, it will be an order of magnitude faster (with vastly reduced CPU usage) and 90% of the MacRumors forum functionality will still work.
 
Dronecatcher said:
It's a make or break for me - I don't like to see sustained 100% CPU on any machine but it's bad news on an aging Mac portable.

The only remedy is to run the processor in reduced mode - it will still be 100% but at half processor speed.
Click to expand...

Fwiw I don't see sustained 100% CPU usage, not on the MR homepage or this forum thread, with or without NoScript. It settles after the page has loaded.

EDIT: post amended with second screenshot without NoScript. I would suggest checking out your eyesight if you can't see the CPU meter.
 

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Matias_ said:
Fwiw I don't see sustained 100% CPU usage, not on the MR homepage or this forum thread, with or without NoScript. It settles after the page has loaded.
Click to expand...
Extraordinary - clearly PowerFox favours some setups and hates others.
 
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Had some time recently so I threw this together:

github.com

Release UXPEP 3.0 · zgxSystems/UXPEP

More than five years after the previous release, foxPEP was rebranded into UXPEP to denote a refocus to the UXP codebase over mainstream versions of Firefox and Waterfox since those browsers have b...
github.com github.com

Performance and responsiveness on Pale Moon, Basilisk, and PowerFox on Intel all seem to be improved after anecdotal A/B testing, and there does also appear to be a noticeable boost on PowerFox for PPC as well, albeit no benchmarking was performed since almost all of them are JS-dependent. Curious to know how other systems would respond though, give it a shot.

On another note, I suggest installing the below addon to bypass the missing JIT issue whenever possible as JavaScript can generally be disabled on most static webpages (search engines, reference sites, forums, Wikipedia, etc.) where there is already little to no user interaction in order to improve performance even further:

Basilisk Add-ons - Toggle JavaScript [Enabled/Disabled]

A XUL-based web-browser demonstrating the Unified XUL Platform (UXP).
addons.basilisk-browser.org addons.basilisk-browser.org
 
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Testing on my G4 Dual 533 and having decent luck so far. Definitely laggy in places and more of a system burden than Aqua & TFF, but nice to have other options in places that need a bit more modern speed. This forum seems to be working well overall.

One mental trick when using unsupported machines, is to pretend I am also using early 2000s DSL or Dialup, when you put your mind into that context, the minor wait for things to load is completely fine 😉 .
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Luckily, all the sites I visit still work in Aquafox (and load 3 to 4 times faster) but realistically the Powerbook isn't getting used - it's last real role was making an album's worth of music for Bandcamp. I think I'll be letting it go to someone who can give it a more active life.
Click to expand...
On my new (to me) iBook G4, PowerFox is also quite slow. Sure it loads all the modern sites correctly, but its borderline unusable at times. Luckily for us, Aquafox works great. Quite snappy, especially with the KaiOS user agent. Most of the sites I regularly use like Old Reddit work well, and YouTube streaming over VLC is mostly good too. Still a functional machine on the modern web, but PowerFox is a bit too much for it.
 
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