Tuesday, December 29, 2015

TenFourFoxBox 1.0

For those of you happily using the TenFourFoxBox beta, it's now time for 1.0 as promised.

TenFourFoxBox 1.0 is mostly a feature and bugfix update. You can update your foxboxes in place without losing information; just save the new foxbox over the old one, keeping the app name the same. Aside from various cosmetic tweaks, this release also fixes a problem with sites that try to enumerate navigator.* properties (Chase Bank being the most notorious), since doing so would barf when it got to navigator.mozApps as we didn't have that component loaded. Interestingly, SeaMonkey had this same problem in bug 1094714, which they solved by effectively importing the entire JavaScript webapps framework. That wasn't acceptable here where the whole point is to strip the browser down, so I got around this problem by creating a dummy stub XPCOM component to replace it and splicing that in. Much more lightweight!

In addition, a number of you apparently rename your TenFourFox builds to just TenFourFox.app, so this version will try that filename if the proper machine architecture is not found. If you really can't control for that either, make a copy of the browser as TenFourFoxBoxRunner.app and it will take precedence over any other executable (but remember to keep that copy up to date!).

Finally, there were also several requests for allowing URLs to be sent back or at least copied for the main browser's benefit. I'm weighing my options on how to push the URL through (Launch Services or otherwise), but you can at least now go to the Box menu and copy the current location URL to the clipboard, or right-click any link to do the same, which you can then paste into your browser of choice. Localization is still not yet supported because we're not yet to a string-freeze point, but we're getting close.

Remember to stop all foxboxes before you upgrade them, and make sure TenFourFox is still running before you start them back up if you want to have the main browser running parallel. Developers, look at the Makefile in the Things To Try: For Developers folder for how to automate foxbox creation and upgrades from the command line.

As of this release, TenFourFoxBox has an official home page and download site and you can grab 1.0 from there. Assuming no major issues by the end of this week, we'll start publicly rolling it out, and then I'll start the arduous trek towards TenFourFox 45. Meanwhile, for 38.6, there will be some updates to the font blacklist but so far no major bugs yet.

13 comments:

  1. Bravo Boss! This is easily one of the best things to come to PPC in a long time.

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  2. it is soo much faster then before :) the boxed edition i whisch you a very nice 2016 :DDDD

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  3. This is extremely helpful for all of the web applications that I need to run. Thank you!!

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  4. Although this is a great feat for PPC users everywhere, I'm beginning to wonder what happened to our other great browser choice, Leopard Webkit. It hasn't been updated in a while.

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  5. First time I have ever been able to use Facebook in a normal(non-mobile) way. Even with several other apps running - works GREAT! Also, runs WordPress SOOOOO much better!

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  6. I'm having issues with making new foxboxes. When I try to have more than one of the ones that I have made open at once, I get a message that I cannot have more than one Newfoxbox open. I've named them differently so I can hover over them on the app bar and tell them apart but it still says I have to close them to open another new one. Any help?

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  7. Nevermind. Now I get it. Love the browser and the foxboxes!

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  8. Thanks for the FoxBox app. I installed it on my G5 without a hitch, but now on my powrbook g4, I am getting the message that "Unable to create/Applications/NewFoxBox.app: permission denied.
    Not sure what I've done. I had the previous version running nicely on the powerbook. I'm still under the effects of pain meds from surgery and am confused. Any ideas what might be the problem? Thanks

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    1. Check the permissions on /Applications or consider running Repair Permissions on that volume. Alternatively, save the foxbox somewhere else, and move it to /Applications manually.

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    2. Thank you for the direction. I had gone to the 'get info' on the applications file. the permissions area was all fogged over. I failed to recognize the closed padlock at the lower right of the window. Once I recognized that lock I knew I had to open the lock and reset the permissions.
      Thanks for the help. These challenges help to keep us old folks' brains from turning to mush.
      I am really appreciative of FoxBox being able to function apart of TenFourFox when doing banking functions on the computer.

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  9. I've set my user agent as a legacy Symbian mobile device with a view to making a FoxBox for Youtube that plays videos in 3gp format through Quicktime.
    This works as planned in the browser but the FoxBox I create defaults to a standard user agent and therefore doesn't work (full website, attempting to load Flash).
    Does FoxBox not recognise user edits in about;config?

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    1. Fixed - I replace the FoxBox prefs.js file with the one from TFF - all tweaks and user agent are then in place.

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  10. It works Perfect in a PowerPc G5 with 10.5.8 Thanks so much¡¡¡¡ Today its a great Day¡¡¡¡¡¡

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