Firefox 4 and mac ppc w/OSX10.5?
I have upgraded to the latest version of Firefox 3.6. After restarting, Firefox takes me to a page that wants me to upgrade to v.4. V4 is NOT supported on a Mac ppc with OSX 10.5 Leopard. I discovered that after I downloaded it and replaced 3.6 with the non-functional version. Then, I had to download 3.6 again. Nowhere on the Firefox 4 promo page does it have a link to system requirements, which would have saved me a lot of time. Duh, Mozilla! I cannot be the only person with a non-Intel Mac. Can you add the system requirements to the promo page to save others the same trouble?
All Replies (5)
There is a third party version of Firefox 4 that runs on OS X 10.4/10.5 and PPC Macs, for details see http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox
Mozilla are working to prevent Mac users with non-compatible systems from getting the notification about Firefox 4, and also not displaying the "Download Firefox 4" button on http://www.mozilla.com
Hey Mozilla, please WakeUp! There are maybe millions of MAC Firefox users WorldWide that are using Panther O/S 10.5 & the PPC Processor. If Third-Party developers are creating a compatible FireFox 4 - what the heck is wrong with the Mozzila developers?? Solutions: Do it right the first time Mozzilla try http://www.mozilla.com/support The MAC PPC processor is more reliable and more secure than the Intel. MAC users are more sophisticated than your average Geek or PC weeny. Think this move to FireFox 4 maybe caught the Mozilla developers sitting down on the job? Think of all the lo$$ to your advertisers...
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Thanks for the response, Jeff. But Panther is OSX 10.3. 10.5 is Leopard. You said what IU wanted to day, however!
Jeff if you are so sophisticated then compile your own build of FF4, or join Mozilla to help them maintain the PPC branch. PPC is dying as a desktop platform, if you haven't noticed Adobe just stopped developing flash for the platform. Some of the optimization to the JS engine requires processor specific code, if no one verse in PPC assembly code has been working to port the code to PPC then there won't be any PPC build, but as fare as i can tell others have managed to build PPC versions of FF4, they may have just switched that code back to the 3.6 way of doing it, so go look for that if your not "sophisticated" enough to do something constructive.
Tenfourfox is the best Mac browser ever, up to standard with Chrome. It's way way faster on ppc hardware than any previous Firefox version, showing it is possible to write a fast competent web browser on Mac OS X. Something Mozilla practically never did before version 4.
Floodgap not only improved the javascript interpreter, but have shared their work back to Mozilla. If the Mozilla project chooses to not care enough to even market the tenfourfox version to the FF3.6 users, then obviously that is sub par on any relationship standard scale. IMNHO it's spitting in the face of the work the developers at Floodgap have done.
Open Source apps should be about the users, not the developers. Dropping PPC support should be out of necessity, not to make the work of the developers easier. I'm sure there are people willing to maintain PPC code if necessary, if only the main project have the flexibility to accommodate different branches, also for old hardware.
Even if previous Mac users get Intel Macs it is typical for Mac users to keep their old machines around, which tend to be ticking on quite well. Naturally they want the latest version of the best browser on those old boxes as well if that is possible.
And the bottom line is this is possible with TenFourFox.
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