TenFourFox 19 Beta

A new TenFourFox beta is out for testing. This is an important update as it's the first build under a new compiler and there were previous warnings that it would push minimum memory requirements up to 1 GB. I can echo Cameron Kaiser's finding that those fears have not come to pass. In my testing, memory use is up slightly, maybe 30-40 MB on average, not enough for me to care about. He also says he's eager for Leopard and G3 users to test this as he doesn't have a G3 or a Leopard machine, so give it a download.

In my couple of days testing, it's been stable. In that respect, TenFourFox remains as boring as ever. Page rendering seems less jumpy and a tad quicker, but that could be a placebo effect. Altivec acceleration has been added for pages that shadow out the background. This will make me hate web developers a little less. Also, clicking scrollbars and tabs with the window in the background are now active, like with Safari/TenFourKit.

Check out Cameron's blog for the longer version. His posts are always packed with information without being overwhelming to the layperson. Glad to see TenFourFox still has a bright future.

UPDATE: And for Leopard users, SeaMonkey 2.16b1 has been released.

TenFourFox New Version Alert

A new alpha of TenFourFox 17 is out for testing. Since this will be an ESR (Extended Support Release) and since 18 and onward will likely have increased memory requirements, this may be the last version some of you will use, so in the words of Cameron Kaiser, "I want people banging on this version hard." Report any bugs to the friendly helpers at the TenFourFox support page.

Browser Round Up

After installing TenFourFox 10 and seeing it was an Extended Support Release, I decided to give myself a break from the constant upgrading and skipped the betas for 11, 12, and 13. Now 14 has come around, and as the internet keeps getting slower, I wanted to see if the new version offered any speed improvements.

The UI differences from 10 and 14 are probably too trivial to mention, but I did see a speed improvement. 14 seems a bit faster on javascript-heavy pages. I say "seems" because I didn't actually benchmark it, so I have to use touchy-feely words like "seems," "feels like," and "makes me all warm and fuzzy inside." On some pages the difference is more noticeable than others. Safeway's coupon pages show a definite improvement, whereas Gawker and their crime-against-humanity new commenting system showed not much. As with all TenFourFox releases, even betas, stability is excellent.

However, if you're using Leopard, TenFourFox is not your only option. There have been a few newer browsers to join the fight and continue to support PowerPC:

The first is Leopard-Webkit. It's a build of the current Webkit sources, basically an updated Safari, and also supports h.264 video.

More recently there's AuroraFox (Firefox alpha channel), which is like a bleeding-edge version of TenFourFox. Though on their website they announced they'll reach "Judgment Day" with the release of version 17 since that's when Mozilla drops Leopard support.

Finally there's a new kid on the block, Seamonkey-PPC. Also Leopard-only, it's Mozilla's all-in-one browser suite with email, IRC, and more. It's goal "...is to maintain a working version of SeaMonkey for PPC based Macs." So check it out!

Some of you may also add Stainless to the list, but I'm not sure how active the project is (only one update in the last year).

Speed Up TenFourFox

With its rapid release schedule, TenFourFox has been in a constant arms race with website coders who are more determined than ever to make their sites slower. Except for Amazon. I'll give credit where credit's due. Amazon is the only site that recently had a revamp that didn't turn it into molasses. But just because Cameron Kaiser & company are on the case doesn't mean we have to take it sitting down. There are several things we the end user can do to speed up TenFourFox, so I thought I'd drop a list of some of my best tips:

First, install the NoScript add-on. A lot of what slows down site loading is javascript and NoScript will let you block all scripts except for those you specifically allow. This is a bit of a pain the first time you visit your regular sites and figure out what functionality to allow, but after that it makes for much smoother surfing.

You can also install Greasemonkey for scripts that unclutter and tailor a website to your needs. One Greasemonkey script I'll point out is the Neetzan Zimmerman Post Destroyer which, if you're familiar with Gawker, you'll totally understand.

There are a couple of tweaks to about:config you can make. First, set browser.tabs.animate to false to eliminate animated tabs. Second, change browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting to false to keep the download manager from opening when you begin a download. That progress bar uses a nontrivial amount of CPU.

You may be occasionally annoyed at how animated gifs slow things down, especially in forum threads where every user insists on having one for an avatar. The quickest way to nix them is by hitting the esc key, but if you want to preemptively keep all animated gifs from looping, change image.animation_mode from normal to once (for animating through a single loop) or none (for no animation).

One of my favorite tricks is something I got clued in on while using Classilla. Classilla masks itself as a mobile device so websites default to their mobile pages which load much faster. So just find a site's mobile address and a website that was glacially slow becomes an instant loader. This is especially true for Twitter. Compare www.twitter.com to mobile.twitter.com.

Finally, don't install too many add-ons if you don't need them as they can slow your startup time and take up memory. The only two add-ons I have are the above mentioned, and for ad blocking I have a UserContent.css file instead of Adblock Plus (the ad_blocking.css file embedded in Camino.app/Contents/Resources is a good starting point).

TenFourBird (or the App Icon Hall of Fame)

As TenFourFox is to Firefox, TenFourBird is to Thunderbird. At least you'd think, right? Well, now it is as a new developer took Cameron Kaiser's lead and released a brand new version of Thunderbird for PowerPC users called, naturally, TenFourBird. I downloaded and installed it and the results were excellent.

Setting up an email account was easier than with any other client I've used. It basically just needed an email address and password and the rest was automated. Importing mailboxes from Apple Mail was successful and so was importing from OS X's Address Book. I couldn't find anything in the preferences about blocking remote images, but it turns out it's done by default. Performance was snappy, though if you notice high cpu usage after importing, it's most likely from indexing the new mailboxes. The only thing buggy I found was a zombie progress bar the first time I ran it, but that disappeared after subsequent startups. Overall I'm really impressed, but that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about TenFourBird's icon:



This is the best icon ever. Now, I'm a fan of "bad" icons, ones that draw the howls of Apple's carefully cultivated aesthetic-fascists but are actually creative and have a well-placed sense of humor about these things. So with that in mind, I thought I'd share my icon Hall of Fame, masterworks of hand-drawn desperation, a clip art purée for your dock's delight, and see if you'll agree.




Let's start off with TenFourFox. This is a marginal choice because, say what you want to say, it at least looks professionally done. But I'm including it here because so many people hate it.





Then there's Handbrake. The application isn't as fun as the icon, but what was fun was reading the reviews on Macupdate where they'd constantly beg to change the icon.





I couldn't leave out Sheepshaver, not only because it's so literal, but because it's got that 8 bit look to it.






MacTheRipper wins the award for most homicidal icon.






And finally Phoenix Slides' first icon. I feel like adding my commentary to this is like trying to add words to the Mona Lisa, so I won't even try. I'll just let this sit here, and linger, until it becomes burned in your retina and you can never shake it loose.

TenFourFox 9 is Out!

Well, a release candidate, anyway. But it's the debut of methodjit which will come to our rescue now that tracejit is going the way of the dodo, and as a result our javascript scores won't take a massively negative hit. All the details are blogged by Cameron Kaiser, the lead developer, here (download link included), so go read for the compiler pr0n. But I can report to you my Dromaeo scores are about ten percent faster from version 8 to 9 on my ancient Sawtooth, and Sunspider shows a 25 percent improvement. Not bad work;)

On the GUI side, the only difference I see is a de-coloring of the stop/reload button. It used to be red/blue, but now it just blends with the white of the menubar. I've seen just one rendering problem, unfortunately with Blogger's Dashboard interface, so I'm writing this post in Safari. I could just try clicking the "Try the updated Blogger interface" link that's been staring at me for several months now, but that wouldn't be living up to my namesake. I think I'll deploy a corollary of my tried-and-true life strategy Ignore It Until It Goes Away. In this case, I'll Wait It Out Until It Comes Back. I'm sure it'll work.

UPDATE: The Blogger problem is a Firefox problem, not just TenFourFox.

TenFourFox 7 Beta

While Floodgap is temporarily down, I've been keeping track of TenFourFox's development via Cameron Kaiser's blog and saw he's released the first beta for TenFourFox 7, about the equivalent of Firefox 7 beta 4. I've been using it about a day and as always am really happy with it.

Visually it's almost the same, except they've now removed the http:// from the urls. So Mozilla's address bar team continues to fix problems that didn't exist. I haven't noticed any remarkable speed improvements on my ridiculously low-end system. Twitter definitely seems faster, other sites I couldn't tell. The best news is that RAM usage is a bit lower. It's been between 150 and 200 MB for me, though it's only been a day. I'm sure tomorrow it'll shoot up to 450.

So give it a download. You may have to upgrade your add-ons. I had to install a new Flashblock, which thankfully had been updated to be compatible. And stay safe out there. It's a jungle of SSL certificates.

A Tour Through TenFourFox's about:config

One of the coolest things about Firefox has been its about:config feature and its near endless array of preferences. You simply type about:config in the address bar, and it's like the keys to the kingdom. Turns out TenFourFox is no different and even has a few custom preferences of its own, so I thought I'd take a brief tour through some of the settings with an eye on speed enhancements.

First, type about:config in the address bar and make the obligatory promises not to break stuff. Then find the following preferences:

javascript.options.tracejit.chrome

This is set to false by default. Double click on false which changes it to true, and you might notice the interface seems a little snappier.

browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting

When true, this raises the download manager window when a download starts. However, on my Sawtooth I noticed that blue animated progress bar takes about 20%-25% of my CPU, so rather than keep closing the window after it pops up, I just have it not open at all. I already have MenuMeters in my menubar telling me my network activity, so I already know something's downloading.

browser.tabs.animate

Don't want animated tabs slowing you down? Set this to false.

Speaking of tabs, here are a couple more:

browser.tabs.tabClipWidth

This clips the width of your tabs when you have too many open, but it also eliminates the close tab button from all tabs except the one focused. The default value is 140 pixels. I switched mine to 80, and now the close button remains visible on all tabs.

browser.allTabs.previews

Set this to true and click on the list all tabs button at the right end of the tab bar.

And one more:

image.animation_mode

Change the value to once. Then animations will only play once and won't loop and slow down your browsing.

There are also a few settings that are unique to TenFourFox. Just type tenfourfox in the filter bar and you'll see there are three for now. They have to do with disabling certain troublesome plug-in features, and the developer has promised there will be more settings unique to TenFourFox in the future.

TenFourFox Final vs. Beta 12

On the TenFourFox development blog, the 4.0 final release came with a caveat that a last minute bug fix caused a 10% to 15% slowdown in javascript performance (stability wins over speed). This bug wasn't present in the betas, just the release candidate. The developer then released another quickie update that he said largely corrected the speed hit, so I wanted to check out which was faster, the last beta (12) or the updated final release (4.0s).

I tested both browsers with Sunspider and here were the results (lower number is faster):

Beta 12 - 7392.0 ms
4.0s - 7724.3 ms

Yeah, I know, but I'm on a Sawtooth. Cut me some slack.

Then I went over to Dromaeo, and the results were (higher number is faster):

Beta 12 - 18.89 runs/sec.
4.0s - 16.78 runs/sec.

So in Sunspider, the beta's javascript performance remains about 4% faster than the final, and slightly faster still in Dromaeo, though these results aren't always absolutely consistent when repeated. However, the beta was consistently very slightly faster.

So should you use the beta instead of the final? Well, the final had security fixes, but I have a need for speed so I'll stick with the beta.

Danger is my middle name.

Addendum: Lest you think the final release is some kind of slouch, it still beats the pants off Firefox 3.6, whose Sunspider score was 18786.2 ms, a full two and a half times slower. So if you're using Firefox 3.6 and not TenFourFox, then you probably haven't read this far yet 'cause your renderer is so slooooooooow.

Replace TenFourFox Icon

So I'm reading people are loving the new TenFourFox, Firefox 4 custom made for PPCs on Tiger, except for one nagging issue. They don't like the icon. I know. Some people are very particular about this. I don't know what to say. It's not the ugliest icon I've ever seen. That award goes to the original icon for Phoenix Slides. In fact, I kind of like it. It has a certain kind of whimsy.

But being that people shouldn't have a stupid icon separating themselves from probably the most valuable piece of software you can run on Tiger, here's a quick tutorial on changing it. This will also apply to changing the icon to any other application.

Step 1) Choose the image file you want to use. Here's a sample png you can download. It's the Firefox globe without the tasty critter:



Step 2) If your image file isn't already in .icns format, you need to convert it using img2icns.app (link goes to the Tiger version). It's very simple, just drag and drop. You should now have your .icns file.

Step 3) Right+click or control+click on TenFourFox.app and choose "Show Package Contents." Go into Contents --> Resources, and there you will find a file called firefox.icns. Rename it something like firefox-old.icns, then name your replacement icon firefox.icns and move it into the same folder.

Step 4) Close everything and start up Firefox (if you already had it in your dock, you should remove it first). You should see your new icon.