TenFourFox, at least for the short term, has to occupy the front burner because if we fall off the wagon (drop source parity), we won't be able to get back on it. I want to get as many revisions ported to 10.4 before we give up and go to feature parity. Because Mozilla is pushing releases out so fast now, it forces me to make it job 1 because we won't get another chance at it. If I tried to make the leap from, say, 3.6 to 7 now, it would be insuperable odds. It only worked out because I had already done the work in 4, 5 and 6, so I could carry that forward. And 8 is turning out to be a death march -- there were a huge number of widget changes I need to port back to 10.4.
Also, do remember (since you point this out) that most of the ARM-based browsers have some sort of ARM-targetted JavaScript compilation: they are not strictly using the interpreter. Fennec, Android and Safari all can compile JavaScript to ARM object code, so they will run much faster on seemingly more limited machines. The JS interpreter in Classilla is from Firefox 3.0.19, and has no facilities for compilation. Porting the current Mozilla JS (including the JS PPC tracing compiler that TenFourFox uses) is probably close to impossible within CodeWarrior's limitations; porting 3.5 and 3.6's interpreter may be possible, but would require some rewriting of the TenFourFox tracejit to make it compatible, let alone worth the effort. The bottom line is that this is, at best, non-trivial.
Mozilla has given us a way off the treadmill in the LTS releases, but even so (and the LTS releases are only a plan so far), the minute we give up, the technological growth of Mozilla on any Power Mac dies, requiring me to adopt the piecemeal approach with Classilla. This worked for a lot of things, and even worked well for some things (JavaScript), but less well for others (layout and DOM). So for the time being, 10.4Fx gets first crack at the development resources I have available and Classilla gets what I can do with the remainder until source parity ends. It doesn't end Classilla development, but it is admittedly a temporary drop in its priority, and I know this won't make you and others happy. However, I'm just one guy, after all.
Also, do remember (since you point this out) that most of the ARM-based browsers have some sort of ARM-targetted JavaScript compilation: they are not strictly using the interpreter. Fennec, Android and Safari all can compile JavaScript to ARM object code, so they will run much faster on seemingly more limited machines. The JS interpreter in Classilla is from Firefox 3.0.19, and has no facilities for compilation. Porting the current Mozilla JS (including the JS PPC tracing compiler that TenFourFox uses) is probably close to impossible within CodeWarrior's limitations; porting 3.5 and 3.6's interpreter may be possible, but would require some rewriting of the TenFourFox tracejit to make it compatible, let alone worth the effort. The bottom line is that this is, at best, non-trivial.
Mozilla has given us a way off the treadmill in the LTS releases, but even so (and the LTS releases are only a plan so far), the minute we give up, the technological growth of Mozilla on any Power Mac dies, requiring me to adopt the piecemeal approach with Classilla. This worked for a lot of things, and even worked well for some things (JavaScript), but less well for others (layout and DOM). So for the time being, 10.4Fx gets first crack at the development resources I have available and Classilla gets what I can do with the remainder until source parity ends. It doesn't end Classilla development, but it is admittedly a temporary drop in its priority, and I know this won't make you and others happy. However, I'm just one guy, after all.