Firefox ported to Intel-based Mac

Posted on Wednesday, July 06 2005 @ 3:11 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
It is reported that Mozilla successfully ported the Firefox browser to the new Intel-based Mac OS X platform with the help of Apple.

Josh Aas, Firefox developer, says Apple provided preliminary development as a basis for porting the browser onto the new platform. He says Apple wanted Firefox running on an Intel Mac as a demonstration of what it takes to port a complex application. After the demo Apple sent the patches to the Firefox team.

Josh first says the patches weren't really helpful but later he claims they were extremely valuable:
“I never tried to get Firefox running on Intel Macs by just applying their patches. For one thing, they were not worried about cross-platform patches or writing the code in such a way that we could actually land it in our [source code] tree," he added. "They just wanted it to run”

In any case, these patches were not very helpful, because some of them were rather obsolete, due to the developments Firefox's code had undergone since they had been created.

"However, the Apple patches were extremely valuable because they did a lot of work for us and at least pointed us right to many of the problem areas instead of us having to figure out what we need to do," wrote Aas.
More details at Softpedia


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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