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

srp said:
Warnings showing up doesn’t necessarily indicate anything in relation to platform. Most large projects have several hundred warnings about code usage in various levels. I wouldn’t think about this problem in terms of “how many problems will I have to solve” and instead think “how complex are the problems I will have to solve”

Just as a fair heads up - this is a pretty large undertaking you’re talking about and as you go through the runtime crashes you will find it increasingly difficult to continue building without disabling large parts of the browser or writing entirely new modules that can work with 10.4 system APIs. It’s not just one or two parts of the codebase that need to be adapted.

Getting into PPC development, I initially tried to support Tiger as a default but it is just too old and has too many POSIX compliance issues to reliably develop for. Expect to chase down race conditions in the threading system and to run into crashes stemming from kernel bugs rather than anything you can fix yourself.

Not saying any of this to discourage you - I think what you’re doing with Tiger is a noble effort. Building any software on PPC is high effort, low reward, but PowerFox on 10.4 seems masochistic.
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Thank you for the kind words. I am aware that PowerFox likely has many warnings unrelated to platform, which is why I presented 1509 as the upper limit. More accurately, if someone wanted to build from source and then compare their log with mine (attached), we could figure out how many are due to targeting Tiger. This might speed the process of porting the browser to Tiger vs just fixing things that cause runtime crashes.
One major advantage to porting PowerFox over some other projects to Tiger is that Aquafox is known to work on Tiger, and the structure of the code is similar, as they forked from the same code base. Instead of writing modules from scratch, I plan to first try substituting the Aquafox code that is known to work on 10.4. If I am not mistaken, this is one of the strategies used in porting the UXP codebase to Leopard PowerPC, though I am sure with more elegance than I will manage.
I did have a crash on launch related to the CoreUI framework, which does not exist on Tiger. Luckily, it appears to only be used in nsNativeThemeCocoa.mm and linked in the corresponding moz.build
I plan on swapping in the nsNativeThemeCocoa.mm from Aquafox and removing the link in the moz.build
If I am very lucky, I will get a different crash on launch!
 

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I wonder if some sort of werbRTC (like voice/video calls, videoconferences) works in this PowerFox ? I tried to recall what exactly was not working in Seamonkey (2.49 and earlier, I moved to more or less current Firefox ESR on my Slackware since 2021) and "voice call on FB not working" was one of memorable fails.

I can count on fingers of one hand cases when I actually *used* video calls for anything - but I guess I like when things just work and ready in background, in rare case you might need them.

Videoconference thing I tried last year was taxing even with just four of us on my AMD FX 4300 blasting at full 3.93 Ghz x4, so i doubt you can get 20 way Zoom-like call even on most powerful PowerPC machines but it might be interesting to try? I used https://jitsi.org/ in browser, I think you can test it without giving them subscription or email. Fore real conference I used my google log in (more like "lock in", but well ...) and used uvc webcam and apulse with hand-fixed ALSA config (should be irrelevant for OS X version of Mozilla browsers)
 
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Andrew-R said:
I wonder if some sort of werbRTC (like voice/video calls, videoconferences) works in this PowerFox ? I tried to recall what exactly was not working in Seamonkey (2.49 and earlier, I moved to more or less current Firefox ESR on my Slackware since 2021) and "voice call on FB not working" was one of memorable fails.

I can count on fingers of one hand cases when I actually *used* video calls for anything - but I guess I like when things just work and ready in background, in rare case you might need them.

Videoconference thing I tried last year was taxing even with just four of us on my AMD FX 4300 blasting at full 3.93 Ghz x4, so i doubt you can get 20 way Zoom-like call even on most powerful PowerPC machines but it might be interesting to try? I used https://jitsi.org/ in browser, I think you can test it without giving them subscription or email. Fore real conference I used my google log in (more like "lock in", but well ...) and used uvc webcam and apulse with hand-fixed ALSA config (should be irrelevant for OS X version of Mozilla browsers)
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You can use teams from a browser, assume that would work albeit slowly?
 
It's absolutely incredible to see embedded youtube videos playing at 360p with no slowdown whatsoever on a 1.67GHz DLSD PowerBook G4. Using UBlock Origin + NoScript makes so many websites completely usable, this is so much better than any other firefox-based browser I have tried in the past. I cannot wait to see what performance is like once JIT works. GPU acceleration is definitely the star of the show here, CPU might be pegged loading the site + scripts, but the actual webpage is still responsive.
 
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It's nice to see that PowerFox for Leopard Beta got a dedicated Intel Release. Indeed, I have got laying around a crappy old Laptop where I just for fun put Leopard onto, and it turned out, it runs better than Windows and better than Linux at the time of installing, so I kept the installation.
Now this craptop really could benefit from a newer browser. As Intel-TFF never was officially supported, PowerFox Intel is a welcome choice.
 
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atarixle said:
It's nice to see that PowerFox for Leopard Beta got a dedicated Intel Release. Indeed, I have got laying around a crappy old Laptop where I just for fun put Leopard onto, and it turned out, it runs better than Windows and better than Linux at the time of installing, so I kept the installation.
Now this craptop really could benefit from a newer browser. As Intel-TFF never was officially supported, PowerFox Intel is a welcome choice.
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I remember when early Intel macs were neglected in favor of only supporting PPC, but no more! It's a fun time to be an old mac collector/enjoyer.
 
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I'd like to loose some words about the tiny Tiger vs. Leopard debate, as many of us dream that PowerFox could run on Tiger:

Tiger is with no doubt one of the most Aqua-ish OS' out there, as it still has the nice pine stripe look. It's also less hungry for resources, and still gets a wide support from the vintage-Mac-community as it is the last supported OS on G3 or some G4 computers. So you get support from many enthusiast no matter if you run Tiger on G3, G4, or G5.

But Leopard on the other hand is so much more modern, mature, advanced, and introduced so many new features which are essential in today's macOS desktops. Also the three years younger versions of several underlying techniques open up the gates for so many more Open Source software, some even can run in current versions.
When I brought my iBook G4 to work, Tiger was locked out from the Windows network, even if it should have worked. Leopard on the other hand had absolutely no issue to access shared Windows-folders.

PowerFox lately was the final reason I upgraded my G5 from Tiger to Leopard. Well, now I'd rather upgrade my iMac G5 from 768 MB to 2 GB which can be costly today (speaking of hardware-upgrades, I just had to swap the fan in my MacBook1,1 just only after 20 years being in heavy use ... it's the only one out of 20 here from the A1181 that makes noise at all - man the very first models of the 1,1 are still a pain).

The losers are Tiger x86 as well as Leopard x86, as the community rather supports Snow Leopard. Also older operating systems like Panther barely get any attention, no matter if this was the last OS officially supported by Apple on the non-Firewire-iBook Clamshells. Another a loser is Mountain Lion (which runs great on patched Macs supporting Lion only) since all officially ML-capable Macs can be upgraded to El Capitan, which itself is a loser as it hasn't been yet discovered by enthusiasts.

Mod-Info: if you think I just am stealing this thread too far away, feel free to tell me or to move this post.
 
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atarixle said:
PowerFox lately was the final reason I upgraded my G5 from Tiger to Leopard. Well, now I'd rather upgrade my iMac G5 from 768 MB to 2 GB which can be costly today (speaking of hardware-upgrades, I just had to swap the fan in my MacBook1,1 just only after 20 years being in heavy use ... it's the only one out of 20 here from the A1181 that makes noise at all - man the very first models of the 1,1 are still a pain).
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Which G5? It'll either be DDR1 or DDR2, and depending on which PowerMac (or which iMac G5) it's almost certainly able to take more than 2GB unless its a first gen iMac G5.
Nonetheless, neither are costly. I'm seeing a set of 2GB DDR400 (DDR1) for $25USD, and a 2GB stick of DDR2-533 is $15. At this point in time, I'm honestly amazed you have a G5 with only 768MB.
 
atarixle said:
I'd like to loose some words about the tiny Tiger vs. Leopard debate, as many of us dream that PowerFox could run on Tiger:

Tiger is with no doubt one of the most Aqua-ish OS' out there, as it still has the nice pine stripe look. It's also less hungry for resources, and still gets a wide support from the vintage-Mac-community as it is the last supported OS on G3 or some G4 computers. So you get support from many enthusiast no matter if you run Tiger on G3, G4, or G5.

But Leopard on the other hand is so much more modern, mature, advanced, and introduced so many new features which are essential in today's macOS desktops. Also the three years younger versions of several underlying techniques open up the gates for so many more Open Source software, some even can run in current versions.
When I brought my iBook G4 to work, Tiger was locked out from the Windows network, even if it should have worked. Leopard on the other hand had absolutely no issue to access shared Windows-folders.

PowerFox lately was the final reason I upgraded my G5 from Tiger to Leopard. Well, now I'd rather upgrade my iMac G5 from 768 MB to 2 GB which can be costly today (speaking of hardware-upgrades, I just had to swap the fan in my MacBook1,1 just only after 20 years being in heavy use ... it's the only one out of 20 here from the A1181 that makes noise at all - man the very first models of the 1,1 are still a pain).

The losers are Tiger x86 as well as Leopard x86, as the community rather supports Snow Leopard. Also older operating systems like Panther barely get any attention, no matter if this was the last OS officially supported by Apple on the non-Firewire-iBook Clamshells. Another a loser is Mountain Lion (which runs great on patched Macs supporting Lion only) since all officially ML-capable Macs can be upgraded to El Capitan, which itself is a loser as it hasn't been yet discovered by enthusiasts.

Mod-Info: if you think I just am stealing this thread too far away, feel free to tell me or to move this post.
Click to expand...
A forgotton loser (double loser) is Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar which is the last version to officially support Old World ROM Macs (the beige G3 Macs that came before the legendary iMac G3). One of these OWR machines is the Powermac G3 All-in-one which is my profile picture.
 
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Appleuser201 said:
A forgotton loser (double loser) is Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar which is the last version to officially support Old World ROM Macs (the beige G3 Macs that came before the legendary iMac G3). One of these OWR machines is the Powermac G3 All-in-one which is my profile picture.
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This makes me think about whole "how much work you should put into OS to make it work" question ...

There is ReactOS, but it partially uses Wine code (30 years in the making)


There is Haiku OS (25 years in the making)but it partially stand on history of open-sourced components and still lives like there is year 1998 and multiuser is luxuary no-one need.

There are various reimplementations of System 6, but they far from complete

There is EmuTOS, but I guess whole GEM/VDI architecture was a bit simpler compared to even System 7,

There is AROS, but I think I only once booted it, never tried to do anything with it.

I think it sort of sad that OS X can't ran GUI apps from chroot (I am not sure chroot is even a thing on osx)

G4/G5 can IIRC offer some easier virtualization (kvm_pr in Linux, user-level mode instructions) but it never was ported to newer ppc osx (I only learned about existence of such software from this forum!)

Sometimes positive surprizes (like GeForce emulation in Bochs out of the blue) happen, so may be at some point it will be possible to re-create at least minimum of components missed from Darwin to get OS X like OS with GUI and non-stubbed frameworks, so for example y2038 problem can be patched out at full system/apps level like in NetBSD or Linux. But I am not holding my breath
 
Appleuser201 said:
A forgotton loser (double loser) is Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar which is the last version to officially support Old World ROM Macs (the beige G3 Macs that came before the legendary iMac G3). One of these OWR machines is the Powermac G3 All-in-one which is my profile picture.
Click to expand...
I run Jaguar on my PowerBook because it’s the last system to have good Classic support. One thing I miss from Jaguar is that it’s also the last version of OS X to not support WPA WiFi.
 
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I still got the 768 MB in my G5 because I spent a lot of money for xmas, and things didn't get for xmas for myself, I just bought myself in January when prices were low, and February is going to be a harsh month cause of quarter-yearly costs ;-) PowerFox PPC came out when I ran out of money for the proper amount of money to buy from a serious ebay-seller (2x1 GB DDR400 is "on the way") ...

ok, back to the PowerFox: "Invidious" is a self hosted youtube front end plus there is a bunch of already existing servers hosting this ... lol I just was about to test this on my G5, but I accidentally picked a members-only-video at this very moment. On Snow Leopard x86 it rocks ... but there also the official frontend plays 720p50 (but not 720p60 on the 1,83 GHz model).
(idk if this already has been mentioned, I just discovered this and post this without reading the 7 previous pages or the PowerFox Snow Leopard thread)

Does it improve playing back videos? Very very subjective topic: it seems to use the system's or browser's video-tag, on Snow Leopard I first thought the playback was quicker but then I realized that I can watch 720p50 on the official frontend too (while 720p60 stutters on the 1,83 GHz Intel Core Duo). Here on the PowerPC I have to make further tests. But I guess my G5 isn't the best candidate over the PowerBook G4 15" HiRes with better graphics. EDIT: back on the PowerBook G4: I'm afraid playback performance is the same here as on official Youtube.

Does it display pages faster? Absolutely, as it makes use only of very simple, easy to render HTML. I mean when you used to watch videos in 480p or lower just to use this more pretty looking but slightly older laptop, it absolutely shrinks the waiting time until the video finally shows up I guess. What I think you can do the best is disable autoplay - yes, there is a settings icon in the upper right corner which leads to a very simple page full of checkboxes (but not too many), I'd rather let the browser load the video before playback, so the displayed page can load and finish displaying in full CPU-resources.
 
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I want to ask for two features:

one I was thinking about for a long time, but I guess if it was possible it would have been done already by earlier devs of TenFourFox, and its successors: can the whole UI be stripped off and be replaced by a native Cocoa interface?

two, are there plans for PowerBox? I'd like to cage in some web-apps just as I did with other boxes earlier.
 
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atarixle said:
one I was thinking about for a long time, but I guess if it was possible it would have been done already by earier devs of TenFourFox, and its successors: can the whole UI be stripped off and be replaced by a native Cocoa interface?
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This is impossible, Mozilla hasn't supported using Gecko inside Cocoa since around 2011. At best, I can release a browser based on SeaMonkey, but I find SeaMonkey to be quite clunky.

atarixle said:
two, are there plans for PowerBox? I'd like to cage in some web-apps just as I did with other boxes earlier.
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Yes, I will work on this when I get more free time.
 
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I just gave this browser a try on my PowerBook. It's slow, but I can actually browse the internet on it. I suppose having half the RAM this laptop should have makes a difference.
1771012912132.png
 
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I've got an issue with Microsoft Outlook and am unable to log in to my email on Powerfox. Is this the case for anyone else? When I click login, it opens up a new tab and nothing shows up.
 
Appleuser201 said:
I've got an issue with Microsoft Outlook and am unable to log in to my email on Powerfox. Is this the case for anyone else? When I click login, it opens up a new tab and nothing shows up.
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I tired to login to OneDrive and received a message saying the browser was unsupported or outdated.
 
ww2_1943 said:
I tired to login to OneDrive and received a message saying the browser was unsupported or outdated.
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It could be the Powerfox User Agent confusing Microsoft. It is a supported modern browser, it's just not a mainstream one. And there is no way I know of to change the user agents like you can with TFF based browsers in the settings.
 
Appleuser201 said:
It could be the Powerfox User Agent confusing Microsoft. It is a supported modern browser, it's just not a mainstream one. And there is no way I know of to change the user agents like you can with TFF based browsers in the settings.
Click to expand...
You go to about:config, right click to create a string entry, then type:

general.useragent.override.****.com

(where **** is your chosen domain)

Press enter them type your user agent in the next screen.
 
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