Sunday, May 15, 2011

4.0.2pre now available

4.0.2pre "beta" is now available for testing. The only TenFourFox specific change is issue 58, suggested by chtrusch for those systems that don't react well to plugins forcing smooth scrolling; you can now set tenfourfox.layout.smooth_scroll_plugins to false if you don't want that to happen. Speaking of plugin prefs, there are now separate prefs for full-page and embedded plugins, and actually now would be a good time to open about:config and type tenfourfox in the filter box to see all the custom prefs that are available presently. There will be more in the future.

The compiler changes we were hoping to take advantage of unfortunately made the browser dreadfully unstable -- it couldn't even open a window. We will not mess around with the compiler again until we must use gcc 4.2.

As mentioned previously, there will be no official Firefox 4.0.2 -- TenFourFox 4.0.2 is the same as Firefox 4.0.1, with security patches I have reviewed and applied while we wait for Firefox 5 to enter the beta channel and I can investigate if I can port it. This is part of our commitment to maintain a secure browser regardless of what actual version of Mozilla/Gecko we are using. There should be no compatibility issues. You can see the security issues applied (please note that some will require security privileges to view) by reading the rough draft of the release notes. On final release, these will be in the maintenance changesets, minus test cases so that we don't leak proof-of-concepts for any bugs that are still sec-locked. The patches in question were already approved for Firefox 5 and we are simply backporting them to Firefox 4.

Firefox 5 goes to beta channel tomorrow and I plan to pull source and do some preliminary work on it in between moving into my new house. For now, please try 4.0.2pre. UPDATE 5/17: See comments; a crash bug has been isolated and repaired. Stand by for a rebuild tonight or tomorrow. If there are no issues, it will be converted into final release on June 1st.
  • G3
  • G4/7400
  • G4/7450
  • G5

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the scrolling pref, works perfectly on my G3 and G4 7450 machines.

    I encountered a crash bug which I'm unable to test against the official FF4 right now (do to lack of computers that can run FF4), which might affect many people, so I'll mention it here. I can reliably crash TFF 4.0.1 and 4.0.2pre (both on G3 and G4, both on 10.4 and 10.5) at amazon.com when clicking "Sign in to get personalized recommendations." Setting javascript.options.tracejit.content to false prevents the crash.

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  2. I wish you had mentioned that about 24 hours ago :P

    However, this is a very strange bug. I *can* confirm it on my 7400. I *cannot* confirm it on my 7450, even running the 7400 version, nor on my G5, running 7400, 7450 or G5. There is a clear wallpaper fix, but doing so could have a serious performance impact, and I want to see if the issue is more widespread. Please follow up with me in issue 62 and see if the crash dump matches yours.

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  3. I didn't know this about 24h ago :) I finally made TFF the default browser on the G3s yesterday, and (of course, with my luck) encountered this crash 10 minutes later when I wanted to make a purchase at Amazon. See crashlogs & comments in issue 62.

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  4. Due to the imminent fix of issue 37 and issue 62 (which was a manifestation of issue 62), I'm retracting the beta and preparing for a rebuild. Watch this space.

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  5. Er, manifestation of issue 37, even.

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  6. Another comment about the plugin smooth scrolling pref:

    When I switch this off, I don't ever experience "smearing" of flash content on the G4 Powerbook (1.3GHz, Mob.Rad.9700, 64MBvram) or the G3 iBook (800MHz, Mob.Rad.7500, 32MBvram). Here, all flash content stays perfectly in place when scrolling; often you don't even notice it's flash.

    Only the Pismo PowerBook (400MHz, Rage.Mob.128, 8MBvram) has the smearing (very badly), the plugin "shakes" around when scrolling and draws too high or too low. Might this have something to do with the video card or the amount of video ram available?

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  7. I don't think so, because the computer here that does it the worst is the G5 with an nVidia 7800GT (256MB VRAM). It could simply be unpredictable or a factor of the pages involved. Anyway, now it's tunable, so people can adjust it to their taste.

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