TenFourFox 7 Power PC Port Of Firefox 7 Browser Released

The TenFourFox Power PC Port of Mozilla.org’s Firefox browser, now available in version 7, has literally given my two old 2000 Pismo PowerBooks their second new lease on life, extending their production usefulness by at least anohter year or two I reckon. (their first life-extension was installing G4 processor upgrades). Being as the old laptops are now in their 12th year of continuous service, another year or two is nothing to sneeze at.

It was looking like disappearing up-to-date Web browser compatibility with OS X 10.4 Tiger would turn out to be the tipping point into obsolescent unusability for the Pismos, and it still ultimately might, but thanks to TenFourFox, not yet.

“Mozilla left you. Apple left you. But we didn’t,” say the TenFourFox development team, noting that like many PowerPC Mac holdouts, they were horrified when Mozilla delivered the one-two punch of dropping both support for Tiger and our beloved Power Macs from Firefox.

“A quad 2.5GHz G5 isn’t worth using to surf the web? Really? And you guys still support Windows XP?

“And, of course, Apple’s been giving us Power Mac users the proverbial middle digit since 2006. Remember: think different. That’s why your MacBook has the same hoary old architecture in ye old generic Wintel box, and if you want to use your perfectly good OS 9 software, you’re using Tiger or bust. Heck, Lion won’t even run any PowerPC software anymore. (And don’t get us started on Sheepshaver. It’s a great hack, but Classic beats it cold.)

“But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years of using Macs, it’s that they outlast anything else out there. Why shouldn’t an iBook be able to look at embarrassing pictures on Facebook, or Twitter about our lunch break? These are our computers, dang it. We paid good money for them. They still work. They may not be as fast, but there’s no technical reason they can’t do everything that a MacBook can. So if you want something done, you do it yourself, and we did. The result is TenFourFox.

Tuned For Your Operating System And Processor

Why is this TenFourFox and not Firefox? Because even though it uses the Firefox code base, it’s not Firefox. It uses code tuned for 10.4 (and compatible with 10.5), adds new PowerPC-specific improvements and restores the glue necessary to get most of modern Firefox’s advanced features working on our older computers, offered in separately hand-tuned builds for G3, G4/7400, G4/7450 and G5 processors to get the most from your specific computer.

Nevertheless, it’s still almost all the same code as today’s Firefox and has nearly all the same features, including dramatically faster JavaScript, WebM video, compatibility with most Firefox add-ons, and HTML 5 and CSS 3 support. You’ll find TenFourFox significantly faster overall than Firefox 3.6, yet it supports so many more new and emerging Web features that your dear old Power Mac will still be able to do what you need online for years to come

The Fastest JavaScript on Power Macs

No, that’s not chart trickery: TenFourFox’s JavaScript interpreter really is faster than Safari 5 and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6, as proven on both the SunSpider and Dromaeo industry-standard browser JavaScript benchmarks. Thanks to its exclusive native tracing just-in-time compiler, TenFourFox powers through today’s JavaScript-intensive web applications faster than any other PowerPC browser on both Tiger and Leopard. We’ve sent our work back to Mozilla so others can benefit, but with TenFourFox, you can wring the best online performance from your Power Mac now!

AltiVec Acceleration, From Server To Screen

Remember how AltiVec was going to change the world? Well, it did, because everyone else did it too and now vector and SIMD extensions are in every new Intel CPU and every new browser. But no one brought those new algorithms back to the PowerPC browser world … until now. In TenFourFox 4, we brought you pixel compositing and WebM video accelerated by AltiVec. In TenFourFox 5, we brought you scaling and colour conversion powered by AltiVec. In TenFourFox 6, we even accelerated HTML itself. Every step of the content chain is faster already, and will get faster in the future. It’s the power your G4 and G5 Power Macs always had that TenFourFox finally unlocks. (Don’t worry, G3 owners, you can still enjoy all the other benefits of TenFourFox.)

You Asked For It. Now You Can Get It. Download TenFourFox 7

So what are you waiting for? Download TenFourFox and accelerate your Power Mac’s Internet experience today. We’re (almost) exactly the same code as Firefox 7, and surf the same sites, but with the code needed to keep your Power Mac functional and fast.

Be sure to read the Release Notes, the official TenFourFox FAQ and the list of known bugs before you begin. Then pick the version for your processor (older versions also available):

• TenFourFox for G3 processors
• TenFourFox for G4 processors: 7400 | 7450 (“G4e”)
• TenFourFox for G5 processors

System requirements:
TenFourFox requires a G3 or later Power Macintosh, Mac OS X 10.4.11, 100MB of free disk space and 512MB of RAM. Systems with 256MB of RAM are no longer supported as of 7.0. 768MB of RAM and a G4 or G5 processor is recommended. Video playback is likely to be poor on systems slower than 1.25GHz; a G5 is recommended. Mac OS X 10.5.8 is supported.

Intel Macintoshes are not supported, but the G3 build is known to run under Rosetta in 10.5.8 and should run under Rosetta in Intel 10.4.11. It is not tested with Snow Leopard. 10.4Fx will not run under 10.7 Lion, as Lion does not support Rosetta and 10.4Fx is not a Universal binary.

TenFourFox is free software.

For more information, visit:
http://www.floodgap.com:80/software/tenfourfox/