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Message from discussion Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 support in Gecko 1.9.3
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Phillip Jones  
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 More options Feb 5 2010, 11:17 am
Newsgroups: mozilla.dev.planning
From: Phillip Jones <pjon...@kimbanet.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:17:56 -0500
Local: Fri, Feb 5 2010 11:17 am
Subject: Re: Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 support in Gecko 1.9.3
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Absolutely Not. I still have two PowerPC machine That use OSX.4.11. My
Laptop I could if I had the funds go to OSX.5. but it would make it
slower than the molasses It already is. As it stand now it impractical
for me update either machine due to lack of funds. Maybe in 2011 I can
upgrade my Laptop. But not this year . I am going to have to dip into my
savings to maintain a decent amount in my Checking this year. My Desktop
will have to wait even longer. Its a G4-500 and and even OSX.5.8 is not
recommended for it.  So if support for 4.11 is removed then that means I
will have to go to something else such a iCab, Opera, or OmiWeb rather
than FF. (FireFox) and you don't need to loose users.

And I am not the only one. I just happen to be the only one to voice an
opinion. Most just take  what they are given and stew in the background.
Silly me I don't. So in the end my opinion doesn't count for anything.
You' do what you do. Do what a lot of shareware do, use a two track
method. designate one for older versions and one for newer versions.

You can create a one with all the fancy new stuff. Then one for us poor
people that can drop 3k at the drop of the hat and have to hang on to
older equipment out of necessity.

Josh Aas wrote:
> In September of 2009 we stopped supporting Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") on
> mozilla-central but we left much of the code required to support that
> platform in the tree in case we wanted to reverse that decision. We
> have come to a point where we need to make a final decision and either
> restore 10.4 support or remove this (large) amount of 10.4 specific
> code.

> Here are usage numbers from 2010-01-25:

> ===========
> Firefox 3.5
> ===========
> 10.6 (Darwin 10.x): 1,497,221 (26%)
> 10.5 (Darwin 9.x): 2,855,842 (50%)
> 10.4 (Darwin 8.x): 1,379,770 (24%)
> All versions of Mac OS X: 5,732,833

> ===========
> Firefox 3.6
> ===========
> 10.6 (Darwin 10.x): 186,825 (59%)
> 10.5 (Darwin 9.x): 91,478 (29%)
> 10.4 (Darwin 8.x): 35,960 (12%)
> All versions of Mac OS X: 314,263

> Mac OS X 10.4 was released in April of 2005 and a lot has changed
> since then. We would like to take advantage of more modern
> technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance. Where
> we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time
> and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this.

> The approximately 25% of our Mac OS X users still on 10.4 would
> continue to be supported by Firefox 3.6 until that product reaches end
> of service, which won't be until several months after the next major
> version of Firefox is delivered (built on Gecko 1.9.3) later this
> year. Past data shows that we do not lose appreciable market share
> when we stop supporting a Mac OS X version. We are often one of the
> last vendors to continue supporting older Mac OS X releases, and I
> suspect that by the time this becomes an issue Apple may themselves
> have stopped issuing security updates for Mac OS X 10.4.

> Adding 10.4 support back to mozilla-central would mean switching back
> to ATSUI from Core Text, switching back to gcc-4.0 from gcc-4.2, and
> doing a bit of porting work for code that has been added to the tree
> since we dropped support for 10.4. Other areas where 10.4 support
> consumes our time, makes our code more complex or error-prone, and/or
> limits our capabilities include complex text input (IME), out-of-
> process plugins, printing, native menus, and Core Animation.
> Furthermore, Apple's upcoming JavaPlugin2 will not support Mac OS X
> 10.4.

> We are planning to make the decision to remove 10.4 support final and
> remove the code from the tree. If you have any strong objections
> please let us know now.

--
Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.    "If it's Fixed, Don't Break it"
http://www.phillipmjones.net           http://www.vpea.org
mailto:pjon...@kimbanet.com

 
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