Use a G4- or G5-optimized Firefox build

Nov 12, '04 11:17:00AM

Contributed by: robg

Over on Beatnik Pad, Neil Lee has posted an article explaining how to download and use a G5-optimized build of Firefox. This is an unofficial Firefox build, tweaked with compiler options to take advantage of the G5's features. I've been running it for a few days now, and it's clearly faster in some situations -- primarily I notice it when opening a bunch of tabs (such as when posting hints each day), and when scrolling longer pages. Others have commented that it feels notably quicker even when working with single pages, but I didn't really notice that much difference. But if you've got a G5, it's probably worth the download time to test it out.

Since this optimized version is built on the official 1.0 release, all of your extensions and other tweaks should still work. He's also included Kevin Gerich's pretty widgets, which, though not native, are about 10 times better looking than the stock widgets

If you have a newer G4, you're not left out in the cold, either. Neil links to Kai Rune's G4-optimized Firefox build. I've been using this one on my PowerBook, also with no issues. Finally, if you'd like to build your own Firefox from source, an anonymous reader sent in a pointer to this set of instructions (which I have not tested).

With both apps, you'll have to live with a (different but cool) icon, as only official builds are allowed to use the Firefox icon. If it bothers you too much, though, just paste the standard Firefox icon in its place!

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