4 ms·

TenFourFox 38.7.0 available – thanks, Mozilla, for making the web little-endian

21 points by bobajeff 11y ago

brudgers 11y ago
TenFourFox homepage: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
fsiefken 11y ago
I installed TenFourFox on a friend's powerpc 2 months ago. The older browsers gave issues with certain sites. It's great people put effort in maintaining a crucial piece of software on older hardware which is still capable enough.
mwcampbell 11y ago
Why does anyone find it worthwhile to put this much effort into supporting this dead platform (PowerPC-based Mac)? Why not just let it go, acknowledge that the world has gone all little-endian, and buy a newer (but not necessarily new) computer?
- yuhong 11y ago
  They even do Classilla, the latest version of which even support SHA2 certificates and SNI!
- fractallyte 11y ago
  My mom has an old PPC iBook (from 2003!). It's still working perfectly. It looks clean and white. She can edit documents and spreadsheets, check email, peruse photos. I've even fitted an IDE SSD. Why dump it for a newer 'better' model? TenFourFox was the crucial factor - by providing a connection to modern internet - in our decision to maintain this old machine. My mom's happy, I'm happy! (And sincere thanks to "Contributors to TenFourFox.")
  - gsnedders 11y ago
    > Why dump it for a newer 'better' model? Because no PPC release of OS X receives security fixes.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      That's why software needs to become public domain if it's abandoned. We already do this for everything else - if you abandon land, you can lose it through "adverse possession". If you abandon your car, someone else can claim title. When you abandon your stuff, society will eventually let someone else clean up the mess you left.
  - frozenport 11y ago
    It maybe cheaper for us to buy your mother a new computer than to support two endian standards.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > buy a newer (but not necessarily new) computer? Are you paying for it? I know quite a few people that would like to have a replacement. Hardware costs money, and it's hard to justify that expense when you 1) already have a working (if slow) computer, and 2) are living near the poverty line. (why that little money? Try living on SSDI (disability) or the realities of living with racism/sexism/ageism/etc. A computer can be a worthwhile expense, but that doesn't mean it's something that can be replaced easily)
gsnedders 11y ago
With regards to endianness of the web: this goes back to the original Khronos spec for typed arrays where the only view was machine endianness. At least now there are both machine, big and little endian views… Exposing machine endianness was largely criticised by Mozilla and Opera people (AFAIK, only the latter were still really shipping on big-endian platforms). It was largely motivated by a desire to ensure WebGL could have good performance when copying data on all machines. Of course, plenty of us saw how that would end: everyone testing only on their hardware (which would inevitably be little-endian), and nothing working on big-endian hardware. Sadly, the majority of the WG didn't really care, given the only big-endian stuff they cared about was things like TVs where they only cared about (web-platform based) widgets, and they only cared about the WebGL case, and didn't believe anyone would use them for anything else…

21 points by bobajeff 11y ago

brudgers 11y ago

TenFourFox homepage: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

fsiefken 11y ago

I installed TenFourFox on a friend's powerpc 2 months ago. The older browsers gave issues with certain sites. It's great people put effort in maintaining a crucial piece of software on older hardware which is still capable enough.

mwcampbell 11y ago

Why does anyone find it worthwhile to put this much effort into supporting this dead platform (PowerPC-based Mac)? Why not just let it go, acknowledge that the world has gone all little-endian, and buy a newer (but not necessarily new) computer?

yuhong 11y ago
They even do Classilla, the latest version of which even support SHA2 certificates and SNI!
fractallyte 11y ago
My mom has an old PPC iBook (from 2003!). It's still working perfectly. It looks clean and white. She can edit documents and spreadsheets, check email, peruse photos. I've even fitted an IDE SSD. Why dump it for a newer 'better' model? TenFourFox was the crucial factor - by providing a connection to modern internet - in our decision to maintain this old machine. My mom's happy, I'm happy! (And sincere thanks to "Contributors to TenFourFox.")
- gsnedders 11y ago
  > Why dump it for a newer 'better' model? Because no PPC release of OS X receives security fixes.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    That's why software needs to become public domain if it's abandoned. We already do this for everything else - if you abandon land, you can lose it through "adverse possession". If you abandon your car, someone else can claim title. When you abandon your stuff, society will eventually let someone else clean up the mess you left.
- frozenport 11y ago
  It maybe cheaper for us to buy your mother a new computer than to support two endian standards.
pdkl95 11y ago
> buy a newer (but not necessarily new) computer? Are you paying for it? I know quite a few people that would like to have a replacement. Hardware costs money, and it's hard to justify that expense when you 1) already have a working (if slow) computer, and 2) are living near the poverty line. (why that little money? Try living on SSDI (disability) or the realities of living with racism/sexism/ageism/etc. A computer can be a worthwhile expense, but that doesn't mean it's something that can be replaced easily)

gsnedders 11y ago

With regards to endianness of the web: this goes back to the original Khronos spec for typed arrays where the only view was machine endianness. At least now there are both machine, big and little endian views… Exposing machine endianness was largely criticised by Mozilla and Opera people (AFAIK, only the latter were still really shipping on big-endian platforms). It was largely motivated by a desire to ensure WebGL could have good performance when copying data on all machines. Of course, plenty of us saw how that would end: everyone testing only on their hardware (which would inevitably be little-endian), and nothing working on big-endian hardware. Sadly, the majority of the WG didn't really care, given the only big-endian stuff they cared about was things like TVs where they only cared about (web-platform based) widgets, and they only cared about the WebGL case, and didn't believe anyone would use them for anything else…