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wicknix

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 4, 2017
2,634
5,323
Wisconsin, USA
AF-MacPPC.png


I've been picking away at this for awhile now. It works, mostly, and it's far from 100% complete, but it does browse the web. Mainly i have a few UI / Menu bar issues to look in to, and initial profile creation seems to barf, so i just created a new profile in 10.6 and copied it over.

For the eager beavers out there i packaged up a "work in progress" build if you really want to play around with it. Please read the README file in the archive. It explains what works, what doesn't etc. Please don't report bugs on the arcticfox thread or on github. It's not supported, and it may never be supported on ppc mac. Only time will tell.

I want to thank the Aurorafox/Tenfourfox devs for their patch sets. Without those i would have given up long ago. Anyway, just remember, it a WIP, it's partially broken, and it's not supported, and it may never be.

The binaries/libs aren't stripped, so the uncompressed archive is about 200mb.
If you have macports and macports gcc installed grab this package.

If you don't have macports installed, grab this package (thanks Traace!)

Work-a-round for bookmarks:

New version here: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/arctic-fox-web-browser

Cheers

 
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Just a wild thought here... but maybe you and Cameron Kaiser could work together. Your Pale Moon abilities mixed with his Firefox abilities could only produce good results.

Think about it...
 
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Am I correct if I think this will only work on Leopard?

Btw great work. If it gets stable I might reconsider using leopard insread of good old fast Tiger.
 
@timidpimpin well, heres the thing... both projects are targeting different platforms. TFF's main focus is ppc mac tiger/leopard, and AF's main focus is Intel mac snow leopard (ppc Linux is just a bonus). The underlying FF code base is very similar in both, other than obvious tweaks added to each for their supported platforms. Not that i'd be opposed to it, but it wouldn't make sense in the grand scheme of things. This build is just a very oddball side side side project of mine, just because. ;)

@EnriqueG it was built on 10.4, with TFF patches, so yes, it does currently run on Tiger also.

Cheers
 
oh, okay. i do know that some programs only work on the g5, but thanks for reminding me

I would imagine the ones that don't run on G4 are 64 bit only. The G4 is 32 bit.
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@timidpimpin well, heres the thing... both projects are targeting different platforms. TFF's main focus is ppc mac tiger/leopard, and AF's main focus is Intel mac snow leopard (ppc Linux is just a bonus). The underlying FF code base is very similar in both, other than obvious tweaks added to each for their supported platforms. Not that i'd be opposed to it, but it wouldn't make sense in the grand scheme of things. This build is just a very oddball side side side project of mine, just because. ;)

Fair points that I hadn't thought of. Though I have read that Cameron is moving toward Linux development also.
 
Whoa.

I've been triying it if for an hour and here are my impressions:

-My daily sites load faster and browsing them is way more smooth compared to TFF. Namely, an Spanish newspaper www.eldiario.es, SciFinder (an online tool by the American Chemical Society), my institution's webmail, some blogs...
-However, two sites are giving me problems: another newspaper, www.elpais.com (images not loading) and I can not log in Google, no matter wether it is GMail, Drive... I get to the login screen, I type my email but the next button does nothing.
-TFF made my computer hotter. I use a 15 inch, 1.25 PowerBook G4 and even the aforementioned newspaper eldiario.es took the CPU usage of TFF to a high level and my fans were on at full speed. Now i've opened like 10 tabs in ArcticFox and my PowerBook is still cool.
-Tried to search text (Cmd-F) but nor the keystroke or the Edit->Find worked.

From my report you might think I'm pointing negative issues but... you built this on your own and got a FAST browser. Maybe the fastest i've seen running on Tiger. I encourage you to continue on this please. I don't know how to code but I can test the browser if needed.

Thank you for your effort.
 
12" PB G4 1.5Ghz here and I must say if this is a test build , a damn fine one it is.

On Better Battery Life it starts up faster than TFF and feels snappier.
CPU wise it seems to spike more when typing ( goes from 5% to 83% ) but TFF keeps eating CPU the entire time so another plus for ArticFox .

I mostly use LeopardWebKit and/or Roccat because I sometimes need Flash and other TFF things but will keep using Arctic Fox for the remainder of the week with multiple tabs.

Off topic does anybody know why I can't never logon to Gmail in TFF (and ArticFox also) , click on the next button just doesn't do anything. I have to use WebKit for Gmail.
 
Glad to hear browsing is working well. Hopefully i can figure the broken bits out eventually. To temporarily replace the broken bookmarks, click "view -> side bar -> history" then select "view -> by most visited" for a temporary workaround. I just tested gmails webmail, and got in no problem however. Though i never use webmail. What i did was relinked the default mail.app to leopard-webkit, and i access my gmail that way.

Cheers
 
Hmm, am I doing something wrong? I copied the ArcticFox folder to ~/Library/Application Support/ and sent the ArcticFoxPPC.app file to "Applications", but ArcticFox crashes when I attempt to open it. I'm using a PowerBook G4 A1138 with Leopard. It looks like I'm missing libatomic.1.


Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x000000008fe0105c
Crashed Thread: 0

Dyld Error Message:
Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libgcc/libatomic.1.dylib
Referenced from: /Users/steve/Downloads/ArcticFoxPPC 2/ArcticFoxPPC.app/Contents/MacOS/libmozglue.dylib
Reason: image not found
 
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You might have a bad download. That file is included by default. Also /users/steve/downloads isn't /applications folder. ;)

Cheers
 
You might have a bad download. That file is included by default. Also /users/steve/downloads isn't /applications folder. ;)

Cheers
Ah, idk why I tried to launch it fromthe downloads folder, oops. The problem persists when trying to launch it from applications, though. I'll give it another go when I get home later, thanks!
 
You might have a bad download. That file is included by default. Also /users/steve/downloads isn't /applications folder. ;)

Cheers
Yeah, I downloaded it again, unzipped, and gave it another go. Same result.

Date/Time: 2019-03-05 12:25:09.272 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Report Version: 6
Anonymous UUID: 7A991E4F-A71A-4613-B28A-205CDF8A98A7

Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x000000008fe0105c
Crashed Thread: 0

Dyld Error Message:
Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libgcc/libatomic.1.dylib
Referenced from: /Applications/ArcticFoxPPC.app/Contents/MacOS/libmozglue.dylib
Reason: image not found
 
Yeah, I downloaded it again, unzipped, and gave it another go. Same result.

Same here. Made sure that the app is in Applications folder, and the rest is in the Application Support library, per the Read Me. Tried on a 1.67 GHz 15" DLSD PB running Leopard, and a 1.33 GHz 12" PB running Tiger. Arctic Fox crashed on opening in both. FWIW.
 
Strange. I'll download and test that archive tonight after work. If it somehow became corrupt I'll upload another tonight.

Cheers
 
I'm getting the same problem.
Code:
Process:         arcticfox [366]
Path:            /Applications/ArcticFoxPPC.app/Contents/MacOS/arcticfox
Identifier:      org.mozilla.firefox
Version:         ??? (???)
Code Type:       PPC (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [87]

Interval Since Last Report:          267 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           3
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  0 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   3

Date/Time:       2019-03-05 11:29:46.035 -0800
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Report Version:  6
Anonymous UUID:  C532FA4D-4BCC-4F41-9655-4D22F243F0CA

Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x000000008fe0105c
Crashed Thread:  0

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libgcc/libatomic.1.dylib
  Referenced from: /Applications/ArcticFoxPPC.app/Contents/MacOS/libmozglue.dylib
  Reason: image not found
I'm using a 1.5Ghz PowerBook G4 15". I followed the instructions, so it might be the download like you said. I'd really love to try this out though! The more PPC mac browsers the better.
 
I see some of the reports you are showing here and I see a common thing... Leopard. Except Lastic who was successful.

Maybe is that the reason?


I know itsi too early but I can volunteer on adapting the Palemoon langpack for Spanish (and maybe Italian) if this gets going...

You tell 2006 Apple that some people would develop things for PowerPC in 2019 and they would have flipped
 
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Hey wicknix its a great build, many many thanks.


Just a little mistake.
Some of the binaries and dylib's still link to /opt/local because it got build with macports.

Wait. I fix it. give me a sec :)

Edit: Done, fixed. Used a little otool & install_name_tool magic. This version should run
DL: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XT5m2ayeRdmtPX5fuyPoLKcT23JKzpT-

If you still need help don't hesitate to message me :)
 
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Hey wicknix its a great build, many many thanks.


Just a little mistake.
Some of the binaries and dylib's still link to /opt/local because it got build with macports.

Wait. I fix it. give me a sec :)

Edit: Done, fixed. Used a little otool & install_name_tool magic. This version should run
DL: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rt4KRcun455BgW0Y5pzPe0xAuqW_caS3

If you still need help don't hesitate to message me :)

Hey, thanks! Great work Wicknix, this browser is really snappy!
 
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I know this is a stretch, but since people have had good luck so far (in terms of performance), if you CAN get this to run on a G4, could you POTENTIALLY get it to run on the G3? (likely the only person here insane enough to use a G3 as their secondary computer :D)
 
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