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Mathwiz

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Mathwiz last won the day on June 18 2023

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  1. Mathwiz
    I wonder if this could be done with a plug-in? I realize that NPAPI plug-ins are considered passe and aren't supported by more modern browsers, but UXP still supports them; if it would work it would be a perfect way to add support for new image compression formats without having to add bloat to the browser itself. They may be right; I don't know. But that's a question for Web sites to consider, not for browser developers like MCP! The question for MCP should be, are there enough Web sites using AVIF that lack of support is a barrier to using PM? If not, don't spend time on it; there are other areas that need more attention. But if there are, then MCP needs to support it, even if it's crappy; or PM will lose even more users. MCP is not Google! (Thank goodness!) They can't kill something they don't like by refusing to support it; they can only hurt themselves.
  2. Mathwiz
    I have a great deal of appreciation and respect for what Moonchild, MCP, and you have accomplished with PM, Basilisk, and the UXP platform, but, "always?" I think the word "originally" would be more accurate. I first downloaded and used PM back in the early 2000's when I was still using Windows 98. At that time, PM was basically just a clone of Firefox, but compiled for better performance; much appreciated on that old 733 MHz Pentium machine. But PM and Basilisk (and @roytam1's versions of those) have gotten quite a bit away from just being Firefox compiled with better optimizations. Today, folks (including me) turn to them for many good reasons, but I daresay no one uses them nowadays because they want a higher-performance FF clone! The words in bold are doing a lot of work there. In fact, I believe that not running on older CPUs was a strong implicit motivation, as opposed to an explicitly stated reason, for the change. I chose the word "noticeable" poorly when I said "... not to give PM a noticeable performance improvement on newer 64-bit processors that do support AVX instructions." Perhaps I should have said "significant," as the meaning I wanted to convey was "enough performance improvement to turn the use of PM on Javascript-laden sites from a painfully slow experience into a reasonably responsive one."
  3. Mathwiz
    Well, the only reason I made that point was to argue that PM architecture doesn't benefit from AVX instructions as much as a "modern" browser does; hence my conclusion that MCP's decision (to build the 64-bit version to use/require AVX) was primarily done to block it from running on older 64-bit processors that are presumably "too slow" (in MCP's opinion), not to give PM a noticeable performance improvement on newer 64-bit processors that do support AVX instructions. Despite its non-modern, pre-Quantum architecture, I'm sure MCP would love to implement all significant features required by "modern" Web sites in PM, if they could. It's just too big of a task for a small outfit like MCP to backport the constant fire hose of JS/CSS "enhancements" to its old engine. I would've gone with a simple block diagram. Face it: Quantum doesn't work anything like a jet engine! The Quantum browser engine doesn't have/need an air intake, compressor, fuel injectors (or even fuel), or anything remotely analogous to them. The only purpose of the jet engine diagram was to imply extreme speed and power; i.e., it's hype.
  4. Mathwiz
    Yeah but PM isn't a "modern" browser, so it doesn't work like a 3D game engine and doesn't really need AVX.... I had a hard time taking that article seriously after I saw the diagram of a jet engine, with its components labeled "Quantum" this and "Quantum" that.... Talk about hype - and that was from 2017! Is that how we're supposed to "understand" modern Web browsers now? What's next - an "explanation" of Chromium illustrated by a diagram of a rocket? OK, the Web has officially jumped the shark. Web sites are dictating processor architecture now? How the heck is that supposed to work if you have an ARM processor, or one of Apple's new processors, or really, anything but Intel / AMD?
  5. Mathwiz
    AVX instructions would be of some benefit on CPU-intensive applications like AI, but probably not much on a typical Web browser, and certainly not on an email client. PM might be an exception because its old FF 52 Javascript engine takes a lot more CPU than the corresponding engines in more modern browsers. Back in 2017, the JS engine could afford to be inefficient, but Web sites are much more bloated with JS in 2024. But if MCP is merely using AVX as a proxy for "faster CPU," then it seems silly to me. Instead of AVX, the PM installer could just run a simple loop to test CPU speed, and pop up a warning if the CPU is found to be "too slow." It'd be interesting to run some side-by-side tests of AVX and SSE2 Pale Moon builds on the same PC (with an AVX processor), so we could see how much improvement actually comes from AVX vs. the improvement just from a faster CPU. I suspect it's mostly the latter, but either way, it seems to me there would be a much greater ROI from backporting a more modern JS engine to UXP than from just building PM with AVX instructions to try to brute-force their way out of an old, slow JS engine. (Their stubborn insistence on a single process doesn't help either. Most modern CPUs have at least eight cores, but PM will basically use only one of them.)
  6. Mathwiz
    Not really surprising. Every time it hits an AVX instruction a software interrupt occurs; interrupt handler has to save everything, do what the AVX instruction would've done (if you actually had an AVX processor), restore everything and return to Pale Moon. Then a few nanoseconds later, it all happens again - over and over. Only reasonable solution is to use the build of Pale Moon without AVX instructions that you discovered above. Not really clear why MCP did this (as opposed to why they say they did it); perhaps by limiting Pale Moon to AVX processors, they're effectively limiting it to newer processors, and thus (indirectly) to faster processors that can handle the Javledygook on modern Web sites without bogging down.
  7. Mathwiz
    I'm just glad he's OK.
  8. Mathwiz
    Is @roytam1 on vacation? He certainly deserves one, so I have no problem if he is. I never thought we really needed weekly browser updates - or even monthly, unless some significant new feature is added or security flaw is fixed. Personally, I'd be fine with quarterly updates! But usually, each week there's either an update or a post telling us otherwise. And he's held to that pattern for so long, it stands out when the pattern breaks. So I was just a bit concerned.
  9. Mathwiz
    Supermium got mentioned by Micro$oft: I thought their typo ("Supremium") is actually a better name than Supermium! Seems to roll off the tongue a little more easily since "supreme" and "premium" are both common English words.
  10. Mathwiz
    I think that's better; yes.
  11. Mathwiz
    Amen. There is some truth in that. Case in point: MCP's refusal to support modern EMEs like WideVine because they're opposed to EMEs philosophically. Or for that matter refusal to support e10s because "I'm a browser, dammit, not an OS!" Do they really think those decisions have caused anyone else to rethink their own decisions?
  12. Mathwiz
    I think a big part of the problem is that Javascript wasn't originally designed to do the kinds of tasks modern Web sites have it doing now. Originally it was just intended to do simple "bells and whistles" tasks that the site could live without - hence you could disable it and still use the site, albeit with less functionality. But since then, it's evolved into a complex programming language that folks even write .PDF viewers in! In a perfect world, perhaps we'd start over with C-script or something; some kind of language easy to JIT compile into efficient machine code. Come to think of it, didn't Micro$oft try to push VBScript as an alternative, many moons ago when IE was the dominant browser? The effort failed because no other browsers supported VBScript, but perhaps we'd be better off now if M$ had succeeded. Or not. Just a thought.
  13. Mathwiz
    Yeah, that's unusably slow on St 55 (not strictly UXP but close), even with e10s enabled on 64-bit W7 with 8 GB RAM. But I'm not surprised an Android developer site uses Javascript that's only fast on "modern" browsers. After all, everyone who goes there (present company excepted) probably uses Chrome on at least an 8-core processor. Just bloat the site up with as many "cool" features as you can think of, and if someone finds it slow, just quote "system requirements" at them rather than making the slightest effort to optimize the code. It's the modern way of the Internet. My point was only that UXP meets @j7n's definition of "retro" - new functionality with an old UI. I even conceded that it was slow! Not many sites are as bad as that one, though.
  14. Mathwiz
    I don't know if this is possible, but could you set up (say) an 8GB RAMdisk and then put the page file there? Obvious problem would be, how do you create the RAMdisk before the page file? Seems like you'd have to have XP boot without any page file, load the RAMdisk driver, then create a page file on the RAMdisk. Perhaps some sort of startup script could be used, IDK.... Edit: And if I'd just read two posts further down before posting this: https://msfn.org/board/topic/173201-gavottes-ramdisk-automation-package/
  15. Mathwiz
    I think in this context, "older" means post-EOS, so Win 10 won't count for a few more years. Of course anyone is welcome here, whether they use an "older" NT-based OS or not. I was only pointing out that the very nature of this subforum will attract a disproportionate share of Win XP diehards, since XP was one of Micro$oft's most popular "older" OSes. I like that definition, even if not everyone uses the term that way. ReactOS is meant to be a Windows clone in the "style" of XP, although to be practical it must support at least some functionality of newer Windows versions. UXP browsers are another good example of that "retro" definition. They have the look and feel of older Firefox versions, but they do a halfway decent job of rendering many modern Web sites (as long as you're very patient).
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