TenFourFox FPR12 available

TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 12 final is now available for testing (downloads, hashes, release notes). There are no additional changes except for one outstanding security update and to refresh the certificate and TLD stores. As usual it will go live Monday evening Pacific time assuming no difficulties.

For "lucky" FPR13 I want to take a whack at solving issue 541, since my ability to work on Github from the G5 is seriously impaired at the moment (I have to resort to various workarounds or do tasks from the Talos II with regular Firefox). Since this has some substantial regression risk it will probably be the only JavaScript change I do for that release pending further feasibility tests on the whole enchilada. However, a couple people have asked again about AppleScript support and there is an old patch around that I think could be dusted off and made to work. That release is scheduled for March 19.

Speaking of the Talos II, I should be getting my second POWER9 system in soon, a 4-core Raptor Blackbird we'll be using as a media system. I've already got the mATX case picked out and some decent peripherals and it will probably run Fedora also, since I'm pretty accustomed to it by now. If these systems are starting to interest you but the sticker shock of a full T2 loadout is too much, the Blackbird can give you a taste of next-generation Power ISA without too much pain to your pocketbook.

Meanwhile, over on our sister Talospace blog, if you've been thinking about the Linux plunge (either with a POWER9 or on your own system) but your Mac habits die hard, here's a better way to get the Command key to work properly than faffing about with AutoKey and you can still run Mac OS X apps in virtualization or emulation.

TenFourFox FPR12b1 available

TenFourFox Feature Parity 12 beta 1 is now available (downloads, hashes, release notes). As before, this is a smaller-scope release with no new features, just fixes and improvements. The big changes are a fix for CVE-2018-12404, a holdover security fix from FPR11 that also helps improve JavaScript optimization, and Raphael's hand-coded assembly language AltiVec-accelerated string matching routines with special enhancements for G5 systems. These replace the C routines I wrote using AltiVec intrinsics, which will be removed from our hacked NSPR libc source code once his versions stick.

Unfortunately, we continue to accumulate difficult-to-solve JavaScript bugs. The newest one is issue 541, which affects Github most severely and is hampering my ability to use the G5 to work in the interface. This one could be temporarily repaired with some ugly hacks and I'm planning to look into that for FPR13, but I don't have this proposed fix in FPR12 since it could cause parser regressions and more testing is definitely required. However, the definitive fix is the same one needed for the frustrating issue 533, i.e., the new frontend bindings introduced with Firefox 51. I don't know if I can do that backport (both with respect to the technical issues and the sheer amount of time required) but it's increasingly looking like it's necessary for full functionality and it may be more than I can personally manage.

Meanwhile, FPR12 is scheduled for parallel release with Firefox 60.5/65 on January 29. Report new issues in the comments (as always, please verify the issue doesn't also occur in FPR11 before reporting a new regression, since sites change more than our core does).