Optimized Firefox 1.5.0.4 for G4, G5, and Intel

firefox I just finished building optimized Firefox builds and have now posted them for download. There are now optimized builds for every Mac CPU currently available (G4, G5, and Intel Mac) and Firefoxy and native aqua form widgets available for the G4 and Intel builds. The G5 build is aqua form widgets only (and no, there won’t be a Firefoxy build for the G5 so don’t ask).

Here’s what’s new according to the Mozilla changelog for Firefox 1.5.0.4:

Improvements to product stability
Security fixes (more details on this here)

The usual caveats apply: I don’t support these builds, they’re called DeerPark because of trademark issues, and please don’t run these if you’re not comfortable running untested, unofficial releases. In lieu of donations, I ask that you take the time to phone your mom and / or dad - I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.

Now that I’ve spun these builds and posted them, who wants to lay money on how long before Firefox 1.5.0.5 is released? I hope for later rather than sooner - a guy’s gotta do real work with his computer sometimes, you know.

Downloads

Edited 07/29/06: A new version is now available and you can get the details (and downloads) from here.

After banging my head against a tree and cursing loudly in German (hey, you never know) I finally gave up on trying to figure out how to set up an auto-update server for these builds. The instructions made my head throb mightly and I had to rush off and take a long, cold shower before I inadvertently burst something valuable. Ah well.

Okay, comments are back on. The Digg effect coupled with a nasty CPU issue related to Movable Type’s comment CGI file basically crippled my server. Thankfully the fix was fairly easy: read how to fix the comments.cgi CPU issue here.

This here entry was posted June 04, 2006 11:55 PM

Comments

1 | dead phish head said on June 5, 2006 1:25 AM

Awesome builds, thank you soooo much.

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2 | Lachy said on June 5, 2006 4:51 AM

Thanks for compiling these! I love them and recommend them to everyone (who I know on a Mac) :-)

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3 | build6 said on June 5, 2006 5:42 AM

Thanks again, Neil!

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4 | Luke said on June 5, 2006 3:52 PM

Thanks bro. I've been a Safari guy since it came out, but lately I've been spending more and more time in Firefox. Using your builds.

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5 | Bjorn Nitmo said on June 5, 2006 4:41 PM

Neil,

While I appreciate your efforts on behalf of the Mac community, I can't help wonder if you're aware of the Firefox Mac Community Builds site. There one can download nightly builds or release versions of Firefox which have been optimized and compiled for the G3, G4 7400, G4 7450 and G5 processors.

http://www.furbism.com/firefoxmac/

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said on June 5, 2006 4:41 PM

Sterling work.

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7 | Jean Pierre said on June 5, 2006 5:10 PM

Thanks a lot for your work.

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8 | Thankful said on June 5, 2006 7:08 PM

Thanks, much appreciated.

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9 | tim said on June 5, 2006 8:00 PM

thanks :)

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10 | Martin said on June 5, 2006 8:36 PM

Firefox + Mac doesn't feel right, but I don't want to use Safari; I recommend Camino: www.caminobrowser.org

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11 | Neil replies: (June 5, 2006 9:27 PM)

Bjorn said : While I appreciate your efforts on behalf of the Mac community, I can’t help wonder if you’re aware of the Firefox Mac Community Builds site.

Yup, I know about that site - I used to contribute to it when I was building more frequently. The differences between my builds and those are that some don't use the aqua form widgets, and more importantly, I use a different optimization string than those - I'd like to think my optimization is better, but who knows.

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12 | oldman said on June 6, 2006 5:22 AM

could you post or e-mail me the optimization string you are using on Intel macs. I build the universal binary for ezquake.sf.net and XCode seems to default to optimizing for G4/G5 and offers no suggestions for the intel build

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13 | Dustin said on June 6, 2006 1:21 PM

I was curious, how is the Intel Mac binary any more optimized than the one included in the Universal binary from mozilla.com? I can see that a G5-optimized PPC binary would be faster than a generic PPC binary on a G5, for instance, but aren't all Intel Macs running Intel Core processors? Do the mozilla.com Intel Mac binaries only use 80486 optimization or something?

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14 | Neil replies: (June 6, 2006 11:22 PM)

Dustin - the Mozilla universal binaries are built with a basic, generic level of optimizations that works across all platforms. This build has specific flags turned on for each processor to take advantage of optimizations for that CPU.

As I've said before, the optimizations will not make these builds load pages faster... but overall application responsiveness should be better. It is for me, at least.

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said on June 7, 2006 2:11 AM

Oh my gosh, Neil, I can't believe you have that Herb Albert album cover photo on your site. I grew up with that album, always loved that lady with the whipped cream. Anyway, glad the comments.cgi fix worked for you. Cheers, Elise

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16 | Shaun said on June 8, 2006 5:38 PM

Any pointers on why OSX builds have no keyboard shortcut for Home? And/or how to add one?

I realise this is also an 'issue' with the official builds, so nothing negative aimed at you :) Just curious ..

merci considérablement de partager vos efforts

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17 | OmniNegro said on June 10, 2006 5:44 AM

How about a optimized version of Portable Firefox?

I don't know about the rest of you but I like the idea of a browser I can just copy whereever I want and run it without problems.

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18 | Tim said on June 10, 2006 8:57 PM

With the optimised code and the aqua widgets (plus the ability to use Firefox extensions, which Camino lacks), this is really the only way to use Firefox on OSX without it feeling bolted-on.

Many thanks for providing by far the best Firefox solution for Mac users!

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19 | WileE said on June 14, 2006 3:37 AM

Hey, thanks again for this. And as far as optimised builds on furbism, 1.) these builds are in fact faster on my 1Ghz iMac 2.) as it was already mentioned, these offer the aqua widgets (which alone is a good enough reason for me to download them)

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20 | Pizarro said on June 15, 2006 6:35 AM

Will this work on a osx86 machine? I tried both versions (aqua and firefoxy) and Firefox seems to load but nothing show up except the File menu. I even tried opening a new window in Firefox.

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21 | Jason said on July 20, 2006 6:23 PM

not sure if this is an install or if I am supposed to just replace this with my current firefox?

sorry, new to macs.

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22 | Henrik said on July 21, 2006 11:05 AM

It would be great if the Icon of the optimized firefox would look like the original firefox icon...

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23 | Phil said on July 25, 2006 7:47 AM

Would be great, if the G5 build was also available with firefoxy form widgets. The aqua ones are a bit clumsy.

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24 | juiceman said on July 26, 2006 3:04 PM

i love these g5 optimized builds. huge improvement. has anyone had luck getting flip4mac to run on these? i haven't figured out how to get it to work yet.

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said on July 27, 2006 4:06 PM

Henrik, he can't. Anything that's not released from Mozilla has to be "Deer Park" and can't use the Firefox icon.

Hoping we might see a 1.5.0.5 build one of these days. :)

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26 | Jake said on July 27, 2006 7:52 PM

Are you going to make a version for 1.5.0.5 anytime soon?

Thanks,
- Jake

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27 | Reallynotnick said on July 27, 2006 9:37 PM

Jason just replace your old one with this new one.

1.5.0.5 is now out! ; )

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28 | pushkar said on July 28, 2006 11:08 AM

Hi.
Am a regular user of your optimized builds. They work great on the mac and take up far less memory! :) THanks.

Would be great if you can let us know if you plan to release the optimized builds for 1.5.0.5.

THanks.

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29 | Mike said on August 2, 2006 8:23 PM

1.5.0.6 is now released! Awaiting the optimized build.

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30 | Gav said on August 14, 2006 3:07 PM

Excellent work. One thing: I never liked the way that it shows up as "Deerpark" and not "Firefox". So I right clicked on Firefox.app in Applications and "Show Package Contents". Then took the Contents/Resources/firefox.icns and put it in the corresponding place for Deerpark. Then i deleted FF and renamed Deerpark as Firefox. Ding dang done!

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31 | Bernd said on September 9, 2006 8:43 AM

"Deer Park" as a name is MUCH, MUCH COOLER than "Firefox". Every idiot has "Firefox" on his lousy Dell Computer! So please, please keep the name "Deerpark" forever for your fucking great builds!

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32 | Tahir Ghafoor said on September 15, 2006 11:36 AM

Fantastic build.
Thanx a lot for your hard work here :)
Makes Firefox that much faster to work with.
Cheers.

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33 | Allan Odgaard said on October 6, 2006 2:52 PM

Would it be possible to name the actual executable for deerpark-bin or similar?

The reason is that I have an AppleScript which needs to address the currently running browser.

To test which browser is running, I use ps, but when both DeerPark and Firefox register as firefox-bin, there is no way to tell the difference, and just doing a tell app "Firefox" or "DeerPark" respectively will cause the browser in question to be launched.

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34 | Firefox Descargar

said on January 6, 2007 3:51 PM

La versiï¿½n mï¿½s ï¿½ltima del firefox 2 del mozilla es excelente. ï¿½Caï¿½ el Internet Explorer y el firefox de la transferencia directa y nunca irï¿½ detrï¿½s!

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35 | selkie said on March 25, 2008 6:26 PM

p.s. sorry - forgot to say MUCHAS GRACIAS for the build, super cool dude/ette!!!

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