#TENFOURFOX BROWSER SOFTWARE#

Sure, others likely helped him, but he was the person out front and it’s not like he was making millions of dollars by continuing to program a browser that has basically no modern commercial use case.

#TENFOURFOX BROWSER SOFTWARE#

This is what is particularly interesting about Kaiser’s comments: Because of what he was producing, he effectively became one of the most important people in the vintage Mac scene almost by default, because he was producing software that anyone who was at all serious about continuing to use their vintage computers probably needed. Unfortunately, the ones that are _un_helpful are at best annoying (and at worst incredibly frustrating) because they mean unhappy people with problems that may never be solvable. Many are legitimately helpful and improve the quality of the browser, and I did appreciate the majority of the reports I got, but even helpful bug reports objectively mean more work for me though it was work I usually didn't mind doing. This is true whether or not your request is reasonable or achievable, but it's certainly more so when it isn't.Īs kindly as I can put it, not all bug reports are welcome. Whining is exhausting to read and 'doesn't work' reports are unavoidably depressing, disparaging or jokey comments are unkind, and making reports nastier or more insistent doesn't make your request more important. There is a human at the other end of those complaints and unless you have a support contract, that person owes you exactly nothing. If you aren't paying for the software, then please don't be a jerk. TenFourFox, as seen in a special dark theme, circa 2016.īut the thing that really stands out about Kaiser’s announcement is less about the retirement, and more about what he says about the challenges he faced as a creator of open-source software on a platform where his app was literally the only show in town: (Kaiser, who also produced the last pre-OSX Mac browser, Classilla, also released an incomplete final update for that.)ĭespite the age of the hardware it supported, Kaiser’s TenFourFox maintained a continued base of users-he said in a blog post that an average of 2,000 computers pinged his server for updates on a daily basis, which is impressive for computers that generally are a bit hamstrung in 2021.

Based on Firefox, the browser had a reputation of running sites reasonably modern but nonetheless ran up against the realities of its hardware, which is, let’s face it, really freaking old at this point.Īnd this week Kaiser announced that he was winding the project down and eventually putting it into “hobby mode,” in which any further work done on the browser is done in private.

That person is Cameron Kaiser, and that project is TenFourFox, one of the last continually developed browsers that supported Macs from the pre-Intel days.

It takes a certain kind of person to create something for an audience of die-hard enthusiasts for years on end, but it takes another kind of person to transition away from that project.

Tenfourfox browser