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Classilla 9.1

avw, thanks for trying, at least. It seems the new YT layout has screwed up a lot of other older browsers, too.

Nathan, HTML 5 is in my pipeline, but not imminent (I FAQed this since I get asked it a fair bit ;) ). Many of the document tags are secretly already in the parser, but the really glitzy stuff will be hard. I might support and by, if nothing else, offering download links, but this also requires a piece on the other side to translate the video into something QT 6.0.3 can play (i.e., also porting ffmpeg, or at least libavcodec). That's getting a little ahead of myself, especially since I don't have HTML 4.01 working fully yet (getting there!).

I'm ploughing through the diffs for JavaScript in the meantime. Btw, Classilla 9.1 even in its old brown state can run the SunSpider benchmark. Just be prepared for a long wait: on my TiBook/867, it clocked in at a horrific 53000+ ms. For comparison, Classilla 9.1 under Classic on my quad G5 took 25000+ ms, and Firefox 3.6.3 on the same hardware took just 4100. Got some work to do there.

 
I just did a processor swap in my G3 today, and decided to do a little messing around online and I found that Facebook's status updates page no longer loads. I just get the blue toolbar, an inch of empty space, and then the bottom of the page. I've messed around with the preferences, but nothing seems to help. Also, the rest of the site seems to work fine. I can view profiles, change my options, post comments on pictures, and use applications without any real trouble, its just the status updates part that doesn't work.

 
I'll be honest; I'm surprised anything with Facebook works at all. It uses fairly sophisticated scripting. I will be looking at, at minimum, supporting Facebook Lite for 9.2 with JavaScript, but I hadn't had much luck with it previously and I'm impressed it was working for you at all before.

 
... which is a shame, because I quite liked Facebook Lite.

But I do have some new news to report: I just pulled the switch on the new JavaScript interpreter in my internal build. There are still some glitches, but the SunSpider benchmark dropped from 31 seconds on the 1.8GHz build MDD to 16 seconds -- half the execution time! Also, eBay now works right. I'm ironically enough having some trouble with unresponsiveness in Facebook -- this might not be JavaScript but could be weirdness with XMLHTTPRequest, so I have to go through that code as well. But even as it is now, Facebook actually works, somewhat. And remember that Mozilla uses JavaScript as glue code just about in everything, so the whole browser is faster.

Btw, this improvement is "only" with SpiderMonkey, the pure C implementation. I'm not sure if I can wring TraceMonkey into Classilla, but if I can, hold onto your hats -- performance could shoot up another full level with that. There is a PPC nanojit but I'm a little leery on whether CodeWarrior can digest it.

Also, this is a major internals change and I bet there will be regressions I haven't noticed yet. But 9.2 is on the horizon!

 
Well, we have a problem with TraceMonkey already. This is important -- if you are a 601-based Classilla user, I need to hear from you ASAP (post in this thread).

TraceMonkey fetches the processor's timebase using mftb/mftbu instructions. While these technically exist on the 601, they work completely differently from the 603 on up, and CodeWarrior refuses to use them or compile (if I force the issue with 'machine 601' I get a compilation error). This is a critical portion of the nanojit's inline assembly code and cannot be coded around. It does compile if I use 'machine 603' or 'machine 604', so it is clearly an architectural limitation.

This means that 6100, 7100, 8100, 7200 and 7500 users, and any other 601 Power Macintosh, cannot use TraceMonkey as written. I need to know *now* if you are such a user -- if there is a significant number of 601-based systems out there using Classilla, I will not continue with TraceMonkey at this time. I can't even guarantee I can port it to the 603 or 604, although if I encounter incompatibilities with those, then TraceMonkey is a no-go because I know of many people using systems with those CPUs. However, I already know that the 601 is dead in the water unless there is someone with bigger PPC assembler gonads than I that knows a solution to this. (johnklos? trag?)

This should not affect you if your system has an upgrade card in it -- I am pretty confident that the instruction would be handled by the upgrade card, not the internal CPU, even on systems where the original internal CPU remains present. I can't promise this, however, especially for weirder upgrades like the 7200 Sonnet CPU card.

If I am unable to port TraceMonkey, and it was sort of a long shot anyway, the updated SpiderMonkey will still be in Classilla 9.2 and even that is still a significant improvement, so this is hardly catastrophic. But please, speak now if you are using a 601 system with Classilla so I can at least do some future planning.

 
While I do have a 6100 (with a NewerTech Nupowr G3 250Mhz CPU upgrade card with 1MB L2 cache,) I don't run Classilla on it. (the clock battery is dead so L2 cache won't enable. :p ) However if you need Classilla tested on such a machine I'm more than willing to test it for you. ;)

 
Just for curiousity's sake, can Classila even be run on a 6100 with it's original cpu? If so, is MacOS 9 the only OS version it will run on?

 
While I haven't run Classilla on a 601 (as all of mine are in storage,) there is no technical reason why it would not work on a 601 (well, not NOW, anyway; which is why CHC posted his latest post.) And Classilla will also (I can confirm,) run just fine on 8.6.

 
PowerPup, I appreciate it but actually I'm pretty sure that configuration will run even if I have to deprecate 601s. The only system I'm slightly worried about is the 7200 because I don't know enough about how the upgrade card works, though I imagine Sonnet has it covered.

That said, there are some other problems emerging with me porting TraceMonkey (not least of which being the source code is heavily gcc centric and the code generator needs quite a lot of rewriting for CodeWarrior). I'm pretty sure I can do it but I'm also pretty sure I don't want to do it right now.

And, today, I heard from someone using a IIci and a 601/66 to run Classilla. He has 96MB RAM installed and describes it as pokey, but useable. Now that is hardcore. 8-o

So I'm pretty much thinking I'm going to stick with SpiderMonkey for 9.2 and 9.2.1-9.2.2. When I go back to JavaScript, probably sometime after the 9.3 layout update, we'll have to take up this matter again. I've had a few suggestions to use mfrtcl/mfrtcu instead, though I am not sure how well that will work (it's ns resolution, but mftb/mftbu is cycle resolution, and I don't know how much precision is needed). I also have to confess I don't fully understand how TraceMonkey's code generator works, and there are many bigger fish to fry now that I at least have SpiderMonkey running in Classilla.

Still, anybody using a 601 (a 68K with a 601 or an x100/7200/7500) for this is definitely invited to post here so I can hear about it.

 
File Under the 'just because I could' category:

Classilla 9.1 on a Powerbook 5300c/100 with 64mb RAM

Slow but it works. Using wifi on a WAVELAN.

Thats one project completed.

 
And, today, I heard from someone using a IIci and a 601/66 to run Classilla. He has 96MB RAM installed and describes it as pokey, but useable. Now that is hardcore. 8-o
Still, anybody using a 601 (a 68K with a 601 or an x100/7200/7500) for this is definitely invited to post here so I can hear about it.
Wow, I have to congratulate them. I wish I could get it on my 6100/66, but I think it only had 16MB/32MB RAM and is currently running 7.6 which I wouldn't install over even if I had a Mac OS 8 install disc as then I'd want a 7.6 disc. It's got Netscape 4.08 and IE 4 I think.

Anyone have any suggestions on the possibility of inexpensively sourcing a new SCSI cdrom for the 6100 (2x/4x? can it go any higher?) ? The one I have doesn't seem to work. The drive churns audibly, but won't eject the tray. Either that, or some suggestions on possible solutions to fix it? It'd be nice if it had a working drive, not that I have any computers that can natively burn mac compatible cds.

 
. . . Still, anybody using a 601 (a 68K with a 601 or an x100/7200/7500) for this is definitely invited to post here so I can hear about it.
I'll fire my 6115 up and see how it goes. I've got still got the stock 60MHz PPC in there, but I upgraded it to 72MB of RAM.

 
Still, anybody using a 601 (a 68k with a 601 or an x100/7200/7500) for this is definitely invited to post here so I can hear about it.
FWIW, I'm posting this from a Performa 6214 with 48MB ram running OS8.5, from Classzilla. 'Pokey' is probably a good word for it, but it does the job better than most alternatives. Some keystrokes are lost as I type this, when I type too quickly or too far ahead. The auto quote stuff didn't work for me either. But other than that it seems ok.

Rob

 
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