Classilla 9.1 released

[Cameron Kaiser]

> > It's still technically off-topic (2002 is only 8 years ago), but for Mac
> > OS 8.6 and 9 users, I released Classilla 9.1 tonight, the most current
> > version of the Mozilla-based web browser I maintain for the classic Mac
> > OS. It's still a work in progress, but I eat my own dogfood, and this
> > tastes good enough to put in the can. (And belabour the metaphor.)
> > 
> >         http://www.classilla.org/
> 
> I've been using it on occasion since you first mentioned it a few months ago.
> It is much better in rendering capability than the other old browsers I have
> here. I would like to use it more, but it seems to take quite a chunk of
> memory, right from startup and maxes out my limited old machine. Is 9.1 any
> better with regards to memory usage?

9.1 is about the same, but unfortunately it's probably going to be worse in
later versions. The reason is simply because Mozilla code tends to be piggish
about memory, and the increasing complexity of modern sites makes Classilla
very unstable without a generous allocation. I am planning to adapt a later
JavaScript interpreter to the next version of Classilla, but that is going to
require quite a bit more stack overhead, and later layout requirements may
be even fatter.

Note that the allocation can be made out of virtual memory; you don't need to
have sufficient physical RAM (though it is strongly advised) if you have
enough total addressing space, even if that space is virtual. For example, I
test and run Classilla on my beloved PowerBook 1400 by using RAM Doubler, and
it only has 60MB of physical RAM. Plus, RAM Doubler is much higher performance
than Apple VM, but Apple Virtual Memory will also work.

-- 
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  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
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