Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Chemspill on 4.0 final

Due to a late-breaking issue with the JavaScript accelerator, revised versions of 4.0 are now available. Note the version is the same, so if you downloaded TenFourFox earlier today or yesterday, you may need to grab it again. I apologize for the inconvenience. This version is about 10-15% slower than before, but is much more stable, and of course is still by far the fastest JavaScript on PowerPC.

24 comments:

  1. Nice job ! Seems to be slower, but FF4 release on intel seems to be also slower than before.

    Any chance to have localization ? How can we help ?

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  2. Nice job !

    But it would be interessant to have a localized build. I'd be happy to help, if i knew how...

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  3. Yes, it is a bit slower. I went for the safer approach in this stable release. I'm hoping to get some of that back in 5 when I can try to optimize for performance again, but stability is now more important.

    For localization, I notice Narcotix88 filed issue 42 (which I accepted for bookkeeping purposes), so I'll just instruct the interested to follow that issue instead.

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  4. Seems to have rendering issues at MacWorld UK. E.g.: news items under http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/. If I scroll, part of the screen does not refresh correctly.

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  5. Hi, please don't "mercilessly ridicule" me; I have an Intel iMac running 10.4.11. It's my only computer supplied by my employer.

    Mozilla left Firefox users running 10.4 on Intel Macs behind as well, and I've been searching (unsuccessfully so far) for someone who offers a FF 4 build that will run on my iMac. Do you know of someone who offers an Intel build to the public?
    Thanks for your time.

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  6. Bager, I need those tested in Firefox 4 as well, because if it's an actual layout bug, then it's Mozilla's to fix, not ours.

    islandgirl45, I will ridicule you lightly :) and good news: TenFourFox will run on your system, but it must run in Rosetta. If this is satisfactory for you, then there should be no problem. However, I do not know of anyone making an Intel-specific build and unfortunately I have no Intel Mac running 10.4 to support against.

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  7. I should also note that any testing for Fx4 should be against a system without hardware acceleration, because the gfx stack is different and 10.4Fx does not support hardware compositing.

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  8. Do you know whether it would run slower in Rosetta than the regular FF 3.6.15 runs on Intel Macs?

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  9. Yes, it will run slower. Much of that penalty will be paid on startup, however, so once it actually starts up the speed should be comparable. However, it will not be as fast as native code.

    If you just need a supported browser and don't need the advanced Fx4 features, you can keep using 3.6; Mozilla will still support it for a few more months.

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  10. pity that got even slower.
    from B9 was about 20% faster than safari 5.0.3 ,
    now its about 30% slower than safari 5.0.4
    :(

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  11. George, I don't see that in my testing, but configurations do vary. Also note that G5 has different code, so its testing differs (sometimes wildly).

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  12. Thanks, ClassicHasClass. Hope you don't mind one more question, if I install your build and find I need to go back to FF 3.6.15, will the regular FF 3.6 build overwrite yours without any issues?

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  13. There should be no problem going back and forth; I did this frequently myself during testing.

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  14. MacWorld UK works fine in Firefox 4 on Mac OS X 10.6.7/Intel. I do not see any rendering issues there.

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  15. Bager, are you referring to the Flash applet at the right hand side? See the docs about plugins; they are on life support in 4.0. Except for serious glitches like crashes and so on, they are essentially wontfix for security reasons. With Flashblock, there is no difficulty.

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  16. Hi ClassicHasClass, thanks for the great work.

    I guess I have a rendering-issue similar to the one described by Bager, but on youtube. Refreshing during scrolling is not perfect, so that some videoframe freezes there now and then. Here is a screenshot: http://tinypic.com/r/1p9et4/7

    Should I just wait for a Flash update?
    If I can help with more info, just tell me how please. Thanks

    PB G4 (ppc 7450), Tenfourfox latest revised version 4.0 (G4e)

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  17. eorusi, thanks for the kind word. This exactly, unfortunately, is what I'm referring to. You can expect that there will be no more Flash 10.1 updates (or maybe a security update at most -- it is not clear what Adobe's intentions are), so this will not be fixed by Adobe. Because Mozilla is moving away from older plugin rendering methods and various other technical issues, graphics glitches like these will not be fixed unless they completely render the plugin useless. In 10.4Fx "Five," plugins will be pref'ed off entirely for technical reasons. All video must be HTML5 in that release. This is for security and technical reasons, sorry.

    For YouTube, however, a better option is to download it and use a QT plugin like Perian.

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  18. Anyone have any luck getting a PDF plugin to work? (Ala firefox-mac-pdf.)

    TenFourFox seems great so far, but without an inline pdf viewer, I can't really use it as my day-to-day browser... :-(

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  19. Classic, thanks for the explanation. Too bad, but on the whole just a minor issue for sure :)

    And for the pdf-plugin thing, yes me too can't really use ten4fox without a pdf viewer.
    At http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/issues/detail?id=179#c6 I found a comment from you that gives me some hope. Indeed, it would be greatly appreciated.
    THANKS!

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  20. I got it to work, but it crashes when the tab is closed, and I'm not really sure of the exact problem. I'll toy with it, but be warned that since it is also a plugin (albeit a full-pager), its lifetime is also limited.

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  21. Real quick question.. How does 10.4Fox compare to FF4? I have FF4 running on my mac pro 6-core and it is somewhat slow.. Also, do we have the same goodies and add-ons as those with FF4 have?

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  22. Sorry to report that JS speed (Peacekeeper) went from 1023 points (Beta 11) to 726 points (4.0). This is only marginally faster than FF 3.6 on my Powerbook, and slower(!) than Elfurbe's Minefield build 4.0 (788 points). Reverting to Beta 12("13").

    PowerBook G4 (Aluminium), 1333 MHz, 2048 MB RAM, Mac OS X v10.5.8

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  23. Thanks Classic! I'll look forward to have it installed.

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  24. Erik, 10.4Fx is exactly the same as Fx4 except that it does not support WebGL (due to old OpenGL on PPC), hardware acceleration or certain CoreType-only font features. Also, because it is PPC, it does not support JaegerMonkey, but it does have TraceMonkey and is the only PowerPC browser that currently does.

    chtrusch, I know this release is slower, but I'm really not seeing results THAT bad on my iBook G4 (the G5 is unaffected by this change, it uses different code). Both SunSpider and Dromaeo dropped about 13%, which is clearly worse, but not the over 25% reduction you saw. That said, I am trying to find a better solution that is comparably stable. I'm hoping to put that out in the next release, though I may do a -pre for this because of something else I want in the same version. However, now that we are "stable," I want to always optimize for stability. I don't want 10.4Fx to be any more crashy than 3.6.

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