G5-optimized Firefox 1.0.1 released

In mozilla and firefox

firefox Alrighty then. I just built a Firefox 1.0.1 release version with optimizations for the G5 processor. According to the Mozilla folks, this is mostly security fixes and other small changes, but it’s probably a good idea to run this if you’ve been running the Firefox 1.0 release up until now.

As before, the main differences between this build and the official release are:

Speed. Sweet, sweet, optimized-for-the-G5 speed.
Different application icon (unofficial builds cannot use the sweet Jon Hicks designed icon)
Custom, more “OS X”-friendly form widgets, courtesy of Kevin Gerich, the man responsible for the equally sweet Pinstripe / Winstripe Firefox icons.
That damn history bug, where history spontaneously disappears. I think this is due to a bug in the G5 compiler.
Crashes on launch if URL Manager is running. Workaround: launch Firefox first, and then launch URL Manager. Again, I think this is G5 compiler issues.

March 19th: I have created and uploaded a new Firefox 1.0.1 build which has fixes integrated for the history bug as well as the URL Manager conflict. If you’ve downloaded this in the past, I recommend you download this build as it’s pretty much bug-free. Woo-hoo!

Besides that, this should be pretty much identical to the official release version. The usual caveats apply (not an official build, I’m not responsible for any explosions or system problems, you’re on your own, will not make you more appealing to the opposite sex, etc.).

» Download the G5-optimized Firefox 1.0.1 (disabled) A newer version than this is now available.

As always, enjoy! And feel free to post in the comments if you are overwhelmed with love or hate for this web site and its operator.

Update (July 20): I have created a special BeatnikPad Mozilla / Firefox feed for those of you who are interested in just Firefox and other Mozilla-related updates. See how much I care?

For those of you who want the full BeatnikPad feed (which includes Firefox updates) you can use this feed instead. Enjoy!

Subscribe to the Firefox / Mozilla feed

This here entry was posted February 27, 2005 10:10 AM

Comments

1 | Bill Nuttall said on February 27, 2005 1:36 PM

It's fantastic!
I've been using the firefox 1.0 g5 build since the day after you built it and i cant remember it crashing once.

just one question - is it multi-processor aware? lots of us g5 owners have 2 cpus so it would be nice to know if it uses them both, or not.

if not, is it easy to do? or have i just entered you into a whole world of pain by merely suggesting it?

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2 | Kaiwai said on February 27, 2005 11:20 PM

RE Bill Nuttall

You'll find that it will work on a dual CPU machine without a problem; Firefox is a nicely threaded application (right now there are 14 threads), so yes, it will use the extra CPU.

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3 | Skooks said on March 1, 2005 12:00 PM

I am using the FireFox 1.0.1 G5 optimized build, and I really like it. I am using it over Safari now, but there is one thing I really miss that Safari has... I can change tab names in Safari and they actually show up by the new and short name in the tabs. In FireFox, it acts as if the name is changed or shortened, but when the tabs open up, they still have the long drawn out names. Sometimes you can't really tell what the tab is representing, because the name is hidden outside the tab space. Can this be fixed?

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4 | cmoney said on March 1, 2005 5:20 PM

Just switched over from Safari and Camino after getting frustrated with Safari being so slow with long long pages (like Easynews binary pages :)) and with Camino for cutting downloads short and saying they're complete (like Easynews binary downloads!). I'll just have to get over losing spell checking and the close button on each tab but I digress.

Just how much faster is the G5 optimized version? And is there any advantage to running a G4 optimized version on my PowerBook G4?

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5 | TwisterMc said on March 4, 2005 4:35 PM

There is spell check CMONEY it's called SpellBound and it's an extension.

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6 | David Sanchez said on March 5, 2005 3:37 PM

I love the idea and the whole product, G5 Firefox. However, I would like to know more about the compiling process, what compiler you used, which flags you did enable, if the process ran smoothly and if you had troubles doing it. I would like to know also if you use the IBM compiler, or just an optimized build using GCC 3.3 (XCode). Congratulations, Great Job!

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7 | M-Rick said on March 14, 2005 2:16 PM

Just missing NVU and Thunderbird, and it will rock, already this G5 version of Firefox is really really faster than Safari on my iMac G5 !

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8 | Seth said on March 21, 2005 10:21 AM

Way to go with correcting the history problem!

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9 | reedone said on March 22, 2005 1:54 AM

Yes it's faster to open web pages, but still can't copy paste URL into Download Window.

I still use Safari as the first choice.

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10 | Shane said on March 22, 2005 5:50 AM

Sorry, but this is hype. This is significantly slower than Safari on my 20" G5 iMac with 2GB Ram. It just loads the images in sequence instead of all at once. Use a timer and you'll see Safari is a lot faster. Thanks for trying though bud.

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11 | Orlando Ortiz said on March 24, 2005 6:24 AM

If you don't like it, don't use it - it's that simple. Let people who enjoy the effort share their toughts and benefits. I've been using regularly the G3 optimized version on a 466mhz iBook and the G5 optimized version on a 1.8ghz PowerMac and i've noticed a speed increase on both cases.

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12 | Neal77 said on March 24, 2005 11:56 AM

http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/mfsa2005-30.html
just came out ,1.0.2. I know I'm using a different build,
does this one have the same problem? and how to fix.
I don't really know what I'm doing so I'm looking for advice.
I gave this to a lot of people.
Just wanted you to now it's so fast after adding the forevergeeks speed hints. No one can touch the speed.
I have a 20" G5 iMac Bluetooth 1G airport 160G

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