Jump to content

The UOC and QUOC Patch - Optimize Firefox (and derivatives) for old hardware!


Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Oh, wow ... so did you have to move to a newer Windows version?

OK, unpacked FF 52.0.a1 into a new folder. Installed the UOC Patch for FF 45. Created a new, clean profile for it and installed the UOC Enforcer for 45.

Started it. (This version defaults to e10s on.) On Darksky.net I saw some of the same symptoms as you when scrolling up: black rectangles and/or incompletely-redrawn parts of the page. (Scrolling down seemed OK.)

Turned e10s off in about:config. (There seems to be a bug with the checkbox in about:preferences: it sets the wrong pref, and e10s stays on.) Much better; apparently e10s is incompatible with APZ and/or tiled compositing. But, one problem remained:

Capture.PNG.d3814ab19ad2a6b0c0d5584981697649.PNG

I couldn't get that dark grey overlay to completely disappear. Often it would cover the whole graphic, but if I scrolled up from below slowly, it would just cover the bottom part, as in this example.

As a control, everything looked fine on Serpent 55 (Moebius).

Do you remember if those were the same kinds of problems you had with SSErpent 52?

No, I'm not replacing XP. Yes, I had exactly the issues you have described. Sorry for the double post.

No, I won't switch to Windows Server 2003. My machine is having hardware issues. Not software ones. I will have to switch the graphics card and see if the culprit is the X1950 Pro.

Edited by looking4awayout
Link to comment
Share on other sites


OK that's progress; we now know the changes that broke APZ/tiled compositing came before that alpha release of FF 52.

We know that SM 2.48 works, so it's pretty likely that FF 51 works too; but I haven't actually tested FF 51. Perhaps I should do that next, just to be sure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Yes, definitely. It feels good to be finally operative again. While I silently lurk on the forum, I am working on the scrolling routines of 38 and 52 ESR, in order to find out if I can bring further improvements. I have made some progresses and if anybody wants to test the experimental 38 and 52 ESR versions of the Patch I am working on, feel free to let me know.

I still haven't ported those experimental routines to the 45 ESR version yet, because I want to fully test them, before attemping a port, especially considering the issues 45 ESR SSE has when it comes to scrolling in the old fashioned way.

Edited by looking4awayout
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Not a new release, but since the thread is not sticky'ed here, I just wanted to keep it up and posting an update.

A new version of the UOC Patch is under development. This one will bear the N2O codename. As I have delved deeper into the scrolling routines, I have managed to improve them further, but the new changes I have introduced have forced me to split the Patch into five parts (four for the 52 ESR version), in order to make sure everything would work properly. 

It is quite annoying to find out that Mozilla browsers tend to ignore JS files if they go beyond a certain length. It also fragments the patch and makes it more difficult to develop. Anyway, as I have been developing and more importantly, testing this new version on different hardware that I got in the latest months, I have come to the conclusion that there is no "best" UOC'ed foxbox for an old machine. It's pretty  much a YMMV scenario: some computers might run Serpent SSE great with the Patch, while some other ones might run better with New Moon 27 or K-Meleon Goanna. Everything depends by the video card. Firefox 45 ESR SSE, on the other hand, runs like crap on every setup even though the UOC Patch improves it, but it's still not up to my expectations, but you all already know that anyway.

I don't know when the new version will be released, because I am trying to improve the poor video performance of New Moon 27 with ATI cards and so far, my efforts have proved to be vain. But I am not the kind of guy who gives up easily and so, I will keep doing my tests, even if it will take an entire year before I release a new version. Since the UOC Patch and the Enforcer are pretty much a one-man-job, don't expect me to announce an exact release date for the new version.

Until then, stick with N2M.

Edited by looking4awayout
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

for Firefox 52 ESR* based browsers

alerts.disableSlidingEffect - animation of notices

app.update.checkInstallTime -

app.update.service.enabled

app.update.staging.enabled

browser.aboutHomeSnippets.updateUrl

browser.cache.disk.max_chunks_memory_usage

browser.cache.disk.max_priority_chunks_memory_usage

browser.download.animateNotifications

browser.fullscreen.animate

browser.meta_refresh_when_inactive.disabled

browser.migrate.chrome.history.limit
browser.migrate.chrome.history.maxAgeInDays

browser.safebrowsing.allowOverride
browser.safebrowsing.blockedURIs.enabled
browser.safebrowsing.downloads.enabled
browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.block_dangerous
browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.block_dangerous_host
browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.block_potentially_unwanted
browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.block_uncommon
browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.enabled
browser.safebrowsing.enabled
browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled
browser.safebrowsing.phishing.enabled
services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled
services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.safebrowsing.phishing.enabled

browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.timeout_ms

browser.selfsupport.url

browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser

browser.shell.skipDefaultBrowserCheckOnFirstRun

browser.slowStartup.notificationDisabled - true !!!!

browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone - ignore
browser.tabs.animate

browser.uitour.enabled

canvas.capturestream.enabled
datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnabled

dom.event.highrestimestamp.enabled

dom.gamepad.enabled

dom.ipc.plugins.flash.subprocess.crashreporter.enabled

dom.ipc.plugins.reportCrashURL - false!!!!

dom.ipc.processHangMonitor

dom.ipc.reportProcessHangs

dom.indexedDB.logging.details
dom.indexedDB.logging.enabled

dom.mapped_arraybuffer.enabled

dom.mms.requestStatusReport
dom.mms.requestReadReport
dom.mms.retrieval_mode

dom.requestIdleCallback.enabled

dom.serviceWorkers.enabled

dom.storageManager.enabled

dom.vibrator.enabled

experiments.enabled

experiments.supported

extensions.blocklist.enabled

extensions.getAddons.cache.enabled

extensions.getAddons.showPane

full-screen-api.unprefix.enabled

full-screen-api.warning.timeout - 0
gfx.canvas.skiagl.dynamic-cache

javascript.options.wasm
javascript.options.wasm_baselinejit

layout.css.contain.enabled

layout.css.float-logical-values.enabled

layout.css.font-display.enabled

layout.css.grid-template-subgrid-value.enabled

layout.css.shape-outside.enabled

lightweightThemes.update.enabled

media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground

media.cache_readahead_limit
media.cache_resume_threshold

media.encoder.webm.enabled

media.getusermedia.aec_enabled
media.getusermedia.browser.enabled
media.getusermedia.noise_enabled
media.getusermedia.screensharing.enabled

media.ondevicechange.enabled

media.peerconnection.enabled

media.seekToNextFrame.enabled

media.suspend-bkgnd-video.enabled - true

media.video_stats.enabled

media.webspeech.synth.enabled

media.webvtt.regions.enabled

network.allow-experiments

network.dns.disablePrefetch

network.prefetch-next

network.http.speculative-parallel-limit

network.warnOnAboutNetworking

plugin.scan.WindowsMediaPlayer - 13.0

plugins.rewrite_youtube_embeds

privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins

privacy.usercontext.about_newtab_segregation.enabled

security.family_safety.mode

security.sandbox.content.level

security.ssl.errorReporting.enabled

dom.IntersectionObserver.enabled - ?

services.blocklist.signing.enforced
services.blocklist.update_enabled

stagefright.disabled

svg.transform-box.enabled

xpinstall.signatures.required

Edited by grey_rat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 7 months later...

Sorry for necro-ing, but are you still working on UOC, or is foxPEP/tenfourfoxpep considered a successor to it now? If so, will the OP (or the thread at all) be updated to reflect the current developments?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Not my project of course, but the last time i talked to Looking4awayout, he was very, very busy with his job and life in general, but was still planning to at least release the version he has been working on. Whether or not that is still the case I am not sure, it was a few months ago now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

That's an old version of K-Meleon, but I don't think it would hurt to try. Follow the instructions I posted here:

On 7/24/2019 at 7:47 PM, Mathwiz said:

One little correction: the UOC Patch for FF 38-based browsers also applies to the K-Meleon browser, but you have to extract it into a different folder. Instead of <browser folder>\defaults\pref, for K-Meleon you should extract the patch into <browser folder>\browser\defaults\preferences.

If you have any problems just remove the extracted files and you'll be back to normal.

If you're using an older browser, I'd guess you have an older PC. Personally, the only thing I've noticed that may be a problem with older PCs is that the patch sets the browser to a frame rate of 120 fps, which may overload slower CPUs on sites with lots of animation. If you have CPU-related issues, try removing layers.offmainthreadcomposition.frame-rate and layout.frame_rate from the .js files with a text editor.

Edited by Mathwiz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...