PowerFox - new web browser for Leopard on PowerPC!

[JDW]

I just downloaded the new v3.1 under OS 10.4.11 on my G4 Cube (with 1.7GHz Sonnet CPU). Disk image mounted fine. But the MacFox v3.1 app launched and crashed right away...

Again, I don't know how to convey this info to the developer, but if anyone here does, please pass the word along. Thanks.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

How much video memory do you have in the system? ISTR that Action Retro tried the 10.5 build on a G4 and had to upgrade his graphics card or he'd get a similar startup crash. (I'm not sure how he determined that was the problem, but it worked after he did.)

 

[Jazzzny]

How much video memory do you have in the system? ISTR that Action Retro tried the 10.5 build on a G4 and had to upgrade his graphics card or he'd get a similar startup crash. (I'm not sure how he determined that was the problem, but it worked after he did.)

Just FYI, I fixed this several weeks ago - it seems like he was using my initial build.

The problem was related to these GPUs not supporting FBOs which caused the basic compositor to freak out.

 

[JDW]

The G4 Cube I am testing on has the stock ATI Radeon Rage 128 Pro installed. So I guess 16MB of VRAM? The machine is at the office and I’m home for the weekend so I can’t check right now.

 

[Jazzzny]

@ClassicHasClass I've ported down to 10.4 using your patches, all code written by hand.

Thanks again for TenFourFox and (especially keeping the if(0) defines)! Most of the patches I was able to copy-paste.

 

[JDW]

How much video memory do you have in the system?

I confirmed today that the ATI Rage 128 Pro used in the G4 Cube has 16MB of VRAM.

 

[Jazzzny]

Fiddled around a bit with HIToolbox to get it to match the HIG a bit better.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Nicely done. Yes, I remember having to dink around with pixel offsets to get Australis working. If you have a build, I'll try it on the G5 this weekend.

 

[Jazzzny]

Yes, I'll try to get something out soon.

Still a few blockers that I need to deal with though, mainly DrawTargetCG doesn't seem to like like certain draw requests for whatever reason, even pages like about:support cause it to fault in SVG code.

Speaking of DrawTargetCG, could I pick your brain about something? I was trying to add support for CSS's masking properties, which accept images (via mask and mask-image) and gradients. These were added after the CG backend was ripped out, so it doesn't work properly after CG was put back in. I believe this runs through https://repo.palemoon.org/Moonchild...1f6/layout/svg/nsSVGIntegrationUtils.cpp#L539 on either path.
After patching this to let CG handle the drawing instead of falling back on Skia and failing, it gets masking with images to work. However, masking with gradients is still broken, nothing gets rendered.

Do you happen to have any ideas as to why CG doesn't like to render the gradient + mask that its getting passed? This happens on 10.4 and 10.5.

 

[Jazzzny]

Okay, sorry, I lied - its 10.5-exclusive. I fixed the last major 10.4 issue, and gradient clipping works perfectly here! I'll see how to get whatever fixed it ported up to 10.5, but for now, this is working and looking great on 10.4.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Do you happen to have any ideas as to why CG doesn't like to render the gradient + mask that its getting passed? This happens on 10.4 and 10.5.

I seem to remember a problem with alpha blending and gradients but not failing to render entirely. You mentioned it only occurs on 10.5. Are your previous builds linked against the 10.5 SDK affected?

 

[Jazzzny]

Yeah, the 10.5 builds built with the 10.5 SDK suffered from the gradient clipping issue. I'll try again now that that the 10.4 changes are in DrawTargetCG, hopefully they'll do something.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Hmm. My only other comment is that in TenFourFox, I used a third-party library called CTGradient to give me proper convenience functions. This library works on both 10.4 and 10.5. I don't know if that's worth looking at, but if you want to, it should be in gfx/2d/ in the TenFourFox source (CTGradient.*, which includes a couple bridge libraries I wrote as glue).

 

[Jazzzny]

Yeah, I’ve imported that library as part of the 10.4 port. Thanks again for keeping the code clean!

I've pushed my initial changes to https://github.com/Jazzzny/platform-uxp/tree/tiger if you want to take a look for whatever reason. I still have to solve 1-2 minor issues to reach Leopard parity, though they should hopefully be trivial.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Thanks again for keeping the code clean!

You're welcome, though that was just self-preservation. I would have gone mad trying to merge later updates without a clear understanding of the intended changes.

 

[Jazzzny]

I've shipped PowerFox 26.2.1 for Tiger:

Builds are available for G3, G4, G4e, G5, and i386.

Release 26.2.1 Tiger Beta · Jazzzny/powerfox-browser

Initial beta release for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Thank you to everyone who has supported PowerFox! Note If you are running Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6, please use their respective releases. Releases for 10....

github.com

 

[Jazzzny]

@ClassicHasClass Thank you again for all of your work - theres simply no way I could have figured out stuff like this on my own!

 

[Jazzzny]

I've released 26.2.2 which addresses stability issues when running the browser on G3 systems:

Release 26.2.2 · Jazzzny/powerfox-browser

Beta release for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Fixed instability on G3 systems Thank you to everyone who has supported PowerFox! Note If you are running Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6, please use their respective re...

github.com

 

[JDW]

I confirmed just now that the 7450/7447 build of 26.2.2 works on a G4 Cube with Sonnet 1.7GHz 7447A running OS X Tiger 10.4.11. Great!

But the main problem I have is that if you use the Start Page and type Wikipedia into the Search field and hit return, you are given an "unusual traffic" error page with reCAPTCHA, and after clicking the "I'm not a robot" checkbox, the spinning wheel spins forever. Tried searching for Macintosh Garden and the result was the same.

I am able to access websites ONLY if I know their URL. These worked when I typed them into the address bar directly and hit return:

Apple

Discover the innovative world of Apple and shop everything iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV, plus explore accessories, entertainment, and expert device support.

apple.com

Macintosh Garden - Celebrating Macintosh Abandonware!

Macintosh Garden - Celebrating Macintosh Abandonware!

macintoshgarden.org

But search is blocked for me due to that reCAPCHA problem. And search is pretty important.

Performance is slower than other browsers like Safari that came with Tiger, but not unusually so, as it often is when trying to get a vintage browser to run on 68K Macs, for example.

 

[cjsebes]

I installed PowerFox on my 12-inch PowerBook G4. I'm stoked that I can hit some simple websites like my favorite streaming radio station, Radio Paradise. My next challenge is finding a Bluetooth USB dongle that will allow me to stream music to my BT speaker. So far, everything I see is designed for sending or receiving data, not audio. That would require A2DP functionality and I've not yet seen a way to incorporate that into a machine this old.