Arctic Fox web browser for 10.6 (32 & 64-bit)

[vddrnnr]

Hi wick,

Any news about the possibility of a new ArcticFox build for PPC ;-)

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[wicknix]

None yet i'm afraid. My Tiger install got hosed a few months back and i never got around to reinstalling it and setting up macports or anything yet. Too busy with other projects currently.

Cheers

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi Wick,

Can I help??

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[wicknix]

@vddrnnr : If you want to take a stab at getting it working on 10.4/10.5 again i'm all for it. Let me warn you, it'll make you want to throw your machine across the room attempting to do so.
First get your machine set up. Install macports and follow these instructions: https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/wiki/HowToBuild38 and/or https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/wiki/HowToBuild45
If you can successfully build TFF, then proceed.
Now that you can build TFF, grab what i salvaged here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Fz6rKQqHu30lQUlKac0yNqXT9xz94qm/view?usp=sharing
Note: This isn't a working source tree. It's partially fixed, but isn't the exact code that i released from. That code was lost when Tiger went down.
So now download the 38 patch sets here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BqddV-bBUjXmhsXsYr9mvYWvVbaHJaJH/view?usp=sharing and read the readme in it. You'll have to patch most the files by hand (and ignore the TFF specific patches regarding branding etc). If you did everything right, AF will compile and build on 10.4.
There will be months of trial and error, but stick with it. If you get a working build, i will try to help out with whats still semi broken. I just don't have time to do the whole thing over again.

Cheers

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi Wick,

Thanks for the quick rundown.
I'll try and set things up one step at a time as you suggest ;-)
Let's see if we can get this going again.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[wicknix]

@snowy moon @RobJos or anyone else who had startup crashes on 10.6 with 27.9.19. Give this build a whirl and let me know how it goes. Thanks.

arcticfox-27.10.1a.mac.dmg

drive.google.com

 

[RobJos]

Good, launched fine right away with existing profile, no questions asked, checked addons in a fraction of a sec — wonderful job !!! Feels a bit slower. but that could be because it's the end of day and I'm having a VM running at the same time. I'll see tomorrow morning. Can you tell shortly (for us commoners' use) what/if there are any new features?

Incidentally, I was on GitHub today, hadn't been there for two years, had to go through a whole rigmarolle of security codes and whatnot, whereupon it decreed that I was using... Firefox for Android (my UA = Chrome 77 - NT10) !?

Many thanks, as always.

 

[wicknix]

The github android mobile UA override was put in to place to keep that site mostly working with AF. Shortly after Microsoft bought github it quit working properly with older browsers.

Anyway, thanks for the quick report. In my local source tree i removed a bunch of the new 'session store / restore' patches that have been added, and replaced arcticfox.js with the old palemoon.js. It seemed logical to me as those relate to the profiles default settings etc. So for now it looks like i'll just keep a separate source tree just for osx builds. All the other bugfixes etc of the main branch will still be included.

Cheers

 

[RobJos]

[Running fine, as fast and light-footed as ever. Installed and running just as smoothly on my other 10.6.8 machine too]

Ah, GitHub = M$ now? Must be why I've seen one programmer moving to something called GitLab recently.

«override», says you? Does that mean that one (commoners like me, or programmer on request) can customize the UA, site-wise? It doesn't seem that User Agent Switcher can do that.

The rest is rather on the abstruse side to me, but I'm pretty sure that you know what you're doing. Do you have a notion that certain issues with sites that were difficult or impossible to access might be over with this new version?

Talking of the which, a couple of days ago I was trying to watch a video from this (usually poorly conceived) site. Normally I download videos with ViewTube and/or FlashGot, but sometimes, as in this case, it doesn't work. When I tried to watch it it didn't do anything, so I thought it might be buffering and I left it there and went somewhere else. When I got back the video was still not running, but by then AF's (still 27.9.18) constant use of CPU was over 600% (most apps on this machine show occasional peaks of 100-150%, no more.) Couldn't close the tab, and when I tried to quit AF, at first it wouldn't, and then it exploded after a few minutes. It's not an urgency in the least, but if you do decide to look into this, you need to be registered — so I'll give a hand if needed.

 

[wicknix]

No, there wont be any better site compatibility. That'd require a newer FF code base (52 or better), which unfortunately wont build or run on snow leopard. 10.7 and above it is not a problem however. If a site has a mobile version we can force a UA override to use the mobile page, which helps sometimes, but not every site has that option.

You can set site specific overrides by typing about:config in the URL bar. Then type useragent in the search box.

Right click in the empty white area and choose new string. In the popup box type general.useragent.override.YOURSITE-TO-OVERRIDE then in the next popup box type in the UA you want to use for that site. Thats it.

 

[RobJos]

Thanks a lot, I'll certainly look into that. Meanwhile — issue with YouTube. About once a day or so, I load 5 to 10 YouTube channels in separate tabs in one shot, never has been a problem until now. But today YouTube's pages are very heavy loading, giving a blank page until they're done. The first time, it ended with AF crashing. Again, this never has happened earlier. Rebooted, retried twice, no crash, pages load completely, but at the same heavy pace. AF's CPU use was absolutely normal, though.

Unfortunate coincidence — I'm not able to tell whether this is due to this new version of AF or to the implementation of the changes YouTube has been threatening us with for some weeks (warning about “browser soon unsupported” or the like is now gone, btw.) Plausible that they'd do that on a Sunday morning on the US West Coast.

Note that it's loading the pages that is the problem. As said earlier, I always download with ViewTube, and that goes as usual. So I don't know whether watching the videos online is working or not.

 

[wicknix]

I did switch the YouTube UA to use their newer layout that they are pushing in that test build. It is slow and bloated, but it's googles baby and they don't care that people prefer the old style layout. You can still revert that by changing it back to ff42 in about:config, but it will eventually quit working.

Cheers

 

[RobJos]

Pox, thanks for confirming. I guess I'll leave it where you set it, otherwise how will I remember when it stops working in xx months from now?

[Added 17.02: discovered much to my dismay that attempting to open more than three YouTube pages simultaneously crashes AF. Once they're loaded, it's OK though. Re-pox on bloaters]

 

[snowy moon]

@snowy moon @RobJos or anyone else who had startup crashes on 10.6 with 27.9.19. Give this build a whirl and let me know how it goes. Thanks.

Oh, I'm late to the party... again. Anyway AF 27.10.1a works flawless! Thanks as always!!

I had to upgrade the 'uBlock origin' add-on manually, which may have to to with 'uBlock Origin Updater' add-on being obsolete now. Legacy uBo 1.16.4.17+ upgrades itself by now.

The new Youtube UI builds up with a little delay, but absolutely acceptable, @RobJos, I can even have several tabs open with clips playing, but at three tabs cpu usage exceeds 100% (which is strange math as other apps have cpu time too!?), so more tabs would be problematic I guess.

Github pages look normal to me, no warnings.

Question: what is about these Firefox security vulnerabilities discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21995055, is this patched in PM (probably), and patched code in AF? In my other "old" browsers I set these configs to "false":

javascript.options.baselinejit
javascript.options.ion

 

[wicknix]

Ok cool. Good to know it works on 10.6 again. As for those security patches, i do believe PM fixed that in the last release. As for AF, from what i've read ( and we also check what TFF applies ), i believe AF/PM27/FF38 is too old to be affected.

Cheers

 

[snowy moon]

I think, I found something: Vimeo is not working in AF 27.10.1a, videos are not showing up/playing, tested in blank profile without add-ons, cookies allowed. Vimeo is still fine in AF 27.9.18.

 

[RobJos]

I think, I found something: Vimeo is not working in AF 27.10.1a, videos are not showing up/playing, tested in blank profile without add-ons, cookies allowed. Vimeo is still fine in AF 27.9.18.

Strange. I just went and checked on Vimeo's site, selected the first video there, downloaded it with the ViewTube addon. And didn't watch it, so don't ask me what it's about

 

[RobJos]

@wicknix - things aren't going quite well with 27.10.1a, and apparently it's not only YouTube-related. I've noticed that if I open a number of tabs at the same time (say, a series of links inside an article), AF now goes on “panting” while opening them. This had never been the case. With my limited understanding taking a closer look, it seems that it churns to translate what it's getting before suddenly rendering the page. Or only part of it, occasionally. Maybe it's the images, or embedded videos, that are slowing things down.

It wouldn't be too much of a problem (I can't read several tabs simultaneously anyway) if AF wasn't crashing much more often than it used to. 27.9.18 never crashed more than every couple of months or so. Matter of fact, the last monthly DiagnosticReports I have kept only show two crashes in January, whereas now in February I'm already up to 10 of them (including the couple of YouTube-related ones mentioned earlier). If you wish I'll mail those logs to you.

The last recorded crashes happened yesterday, after I'd noticed that instead of AF's normal tiny CPU usage (1-5%) with peaks of 100% and slightly over when it's busy, it was constantly hovering around 300% with peaks of up to 400%. After closing all active tabs (not pin tabs), CPU% didn't change, and when I quit AF it crashed. Relaunched it (essentially to make sure the profile was not corrupted, my biggest concern), didn't do much with it, but when I closed it down half-an-hour later, it crashed again.

Note that this abnormal CPU usage appears to be rather stable, doesn't resemble what I remember from every 3 or 4 versions of Firefox, when memory usage went slowly building up (memory leak?)

To add to the (your) fun, I even had AF freeze on me two days ago… and freezing the machine with it too ! Time warp, like being thrown back to the days of OS9. No log of course, but the hassle of having to verify disk etc.

Not putting any demands on you of course, but if you have a vague idea of a timeline, I'll figure whether to temporarily go back to using 9.18 or not.

But whatever you do, please don't do what the Pale Moon people have pulled out on us with their last update (my first one in the system I'd installed it on): without asking it disabled over half of the addons, including even the current Theme. By the time I'd painstakingly enabled them again, all their settings as well as the interface setup had left to some other plane. A real disgrace, lucky I had a backup.

 

[wicknix]

By all means use 27.9.18 for now. The 27.10.1a was just a test build, which seems to need more work on the snow leopard side of things. We'll figure it out.

As for PM disabling things, I don't agree with it either, but I understand why they started doing it. They are close to milestone release of 29, which will break add-ons not updated to work with it. It's just a precautionary measure.

Cheers

 

[RobJos]

By all means use 27.9.18 for now. The 27.10.1a was just a test build, which seems to need more work on the snow leopard side of things. We'll figure it out.

Weird, it's now been running for 9 hours straight, CPU use absolutely normal. But OK, thanks, I have downgraded. You don't need those files, then? If not I'll get rid of them. I'll leave 27.10.1a on the other machine, which I use very little (no load, hence no crash), just to keep you informed if something funny happens.

As for PM disabling things, I don't agree with it either, but I understand why they started doing it. They are close to milestone release of 29, which will break add-ons not updated to work with it. It's just a precautionary measure.

I re-enabled every single addon without a hitch, so it's not like there were any incompatibilities. They could at least have managed to keep the settings saved. If I do get over feeling disgusted and try and update again, I'll see if OPIE2 does what it's supposed to.

 

[RobJos]

Well, there's already more. Shortly after writing the above, I found that AF (27.9.18 again, now) was using no less than 600-700% of CPU. Sure enough, it crashed when I tried to quit it, after being unresponsive for a minute or two. The only unusual thing (for me) had been accessing the page of a TED talk (just the page, mind you, not even watching the talk) and closing it again after a little while. Experimenting with that same page: within seconds CPU went up to ≈200%, closing the tab again brought it down to ≈100% — where it remained. After a few minutes, loaded the tab again, CPU went up to ≈300%, but when I closed the tab again, CPU wouldn't go further down than ≈200%. So when I then tried to quit AF once again, guess what happened…

Remember that this is with the old, well-functioning version, but with the latest profile. Taking a look at the profile folder it appeared immediately that it filled about 10Mb more than a couple of backups in the same directory — difference easily narrowed down to the size of the places.sqlite file. Judging from several backups the usual (normal?) size of this file, at least on my machine, is 35.1Mb, and so it still was two days ago. But 15 hours later, yesterday, it had grown to 41.9Mb. It was also yesterday that I got the crashes that led me to these posts.

More detective work. Browsing through tons of backups, there seems to be a correlation between crashes and places.sqlite bloating up. This even seems to have been the case with the January crashes (still with 27.18.9 back then) already mentioned. What's more, I also find exactly those two same sizes. But regardless of the fact that crashes have been happening a lot more often with 27.10, what I really would like to know is how that file has managed to get back several times on its own to its “normal” size — which it hasn't done yet this evening, in spite of my quitting and relaunching AF several times.

How can I force it to do that (short of erasing it, of course) ?

 

[wicknix]

It might have to do with me removing some of the session store / restore patches in the 27.10.1a test build. In PM27 the devs only partially patched it and basically left a mess, which Riccardo is finding out the hard way. He's been adding in patches for that in the last few AF versions and is now close to finishing it. That would be my only guess. Most of the underlying mozilla code is far beyond my comprehension. Thankfully my partner has a good understanding of it and he does most all the grunt work. Lets just hope when official 27.10.1 releases the issue/s is/are gone. Oddly all these quirks only randomly affect OSX. I've been using 27.9.19 on linux and winxp since it released without any lockups, crashes, high cpu use, etc.

Cheers

 

[RobJos]

Oh well… if things are beyond your comprehension, just think of me, to whom “patches” is something in my garden. I s'pose I'm going to have to create half-hourly backups of the profile, then, which is probably the lapse of time I can deal with in terms of remembering last bookmarks, tags, sites visited etc. Probably. Just wish I could start this routine with the lean sqlite file, though. Yes, let's hope that your friend will soon concoct the right medicine. Btw. — not that I'd try and bribe him — is he of the same creed as you, or does he take donations?

 

[verdantppc]

@ wicknix

Many thanks for the 27.10.1a (32 bit) test build.....so far I have not had any major issues running it on my 64 bit OS X 10.6.8 system, which previously always crashed when trying to open 27.9.19....

I am looking forward to the 64 bit 27.10 full release as OS X Snow Leopard is my main OS.

Thanks again to you and Riccardo for all your efforts on keeping Arctic Fox going as a secure browser for OS Snow Leopard!

 

[wicknix]

Arctic Fox 27.10.1 is now available.
Download here: https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox/wiki/Downloads
Change log here: https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox/releases/tag/v27.10.1

Cheers