The Australis mega-thread

[TwoTankAmin]

I am still on FF 28. I have had auto-updates set to never for all things for a number of years. For FF its been set that way since they did the forced update from 3.6. I have now stored the version 28 DL and installer on my PC as well.

But in the past I have uninstalled versions in order to DL the newer version. I found that doing it any other way let FF put stuff on my box I did not want. The only way to avoid it was a clean DL rather than an upgrade. Never once was I ever asked why I chose to uninstall. But then I use a separate uninstaller which also removes other files left behind by an app in strange places on the drives or in the registry. It wipes it all out.

Only a fool would fail to read the handwriting on the wall re Australis. Not only are the folks at Mozilla in denial, but so too are the folks on Mozillazine. Even though I have owned a PC since 1989, I am not a geek and the more terminology and methodology that is required to use a piece of software, the less inclined I am to use it. I might have been willing to experiment with Australis except for the fact they the very act of downloading it would likely trash all the bookmarks it took me years to accumulate. And even if it did not and I wanted to revert, then I would for sure lose them. At best I figured a week or two to get FF working and looking close to how it did before the new UI.

I have seen the same stats from several of the browser usages tracking sites. They may use different methods and get different numbers relative to each other, but one thing is consistent across them all. Australis has caused FF to lose significant share. Some say its more and some less, but they all show a clear drop since April which accelerated in June and or July. These were really the first two months since the official release of ver 29 which realistically started to indicate the effects of the new UI on the user base. And the data is crystal clear. While I am no computer geek, I used to make my living dealing with statistics relating to investments and managers and I know a clear trend when I see one. In May they got to try it and in June and July they decided whether or not to stay with it.

I am also a bit reticent to make the move to PaleMoon yet. It is where I will likely head when I can no longer use FF 28. But I have so learned to mistrust new or upgraded software that I am dragging my feet. The whole thing just has me down.

What I do know is why I first began using FF. I distrust Google. Microsoft, Apple etc. because thy are invasive. I will never join any Google site, Facebook, Twitter etc.. I loved that I could block ads, block cookies, etc. with FF. I would like not to be tracked ever and I really hate personalized ads. FF helped me avoid most of this stuff to a great extent. But not any more. I have gone from believing that Mozilla is a viable alternative to this sort of corporate activity to believing the exact opposite. Mozilla is headed down the path of being an intruder and almost everything done since (and likely some before) ver 28 points to am every increasing loss of security and privacy if one uses Firefox. My whole reason for believing in and using FF apparently is being dismantled at a breakneck pace. It is so sad.

And possibly the greatest risk that comes from Australis is the fact one needs so many addons for it. Every addon one has (except maybe styles) is another potential security hole. So the more addons one has, the more at risk their system must be. And then does anybody believe Mozilla actually does any serious due diligence before they approve the addons? I mean look at how many security holes they find in FF itself. Look at how often they warn users to upgrade for security reasons. How can they even come close to telling us the addons are all safe? But then what about the continued support of the addons? Most are created by an individual or two who maintain them. What happens if the person who created CTR is killed in an accident etc.? Will CRT die with him? What if a company makes a job offer to good to turn down that makes it impossible to continue maintaining/upgrading CTR? And this is what worries me about PaleMoon to some extent.

I have used Windows since 3.0. All other things aside, I know Microsoft will not suddenly vanish because a programmer is lost. I can not say the same about most addons or "fork" browsers such as Palemoon. This has nothing to do with the quality of the products but with their potential longevity.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

What happens if the person who created CTR is killed in an accident etc.? Will CRT die with him? What if a company makes a job offer to good to turn down that makes it impossible to continue maintaining/upgrading CTR? And this is what worries me about PaleMoon to some extent.

The difference here is that add-ons are relatively small, and almost invariably open source and can easily be taken over by someone else. Programming an add-on has a fairly short learning curve because it is a relatively standard way of doing things and the Mozilla APIs are fairly well-documented.

As for Pale Moon, that's a different story. Pale Moon is much more complex as a project and it'll probably take at least a few different people to take over. Still, it's all Open Source and the knowledge and info is there for anyone else to pick up the torch.
A company making me an offer too good to turn down will have to be an extremely "out of this world" offer; it's become my life's work, I'm not likely to abandon it for money. It's my livelihood, my current profession I've slowly rolled into from my previous work by phasing out freelancing. It's not a hobby.

[KNTRO]

Off-topic:

I might have been willing to experiment with Australis except for the fact they the very act of downloading it would likely trash all the bookmarks it took me years to accumulate. And even if it did not and I wanted to revert, then I would for sure lose them.

Hi TTA. Be welcomed.

Did you know you actually can backup manually all of your bookmarks? You better do it and save the JSON file in a/some very secure place(s). I suggest you to backup your bookmarks regularly as well, monthly or so.

Best.

[__NM64__]

If he's really paranoid he could even just manually make a copy of the places.sqlite file in the profile folder which contains all the bookmarks and history.


There's also Portable Firefox which is completely stand-alone and separate from any pre-existing installation of Firefox:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/

[Manabi]

Off-topic:

You know you can just disable updates completely via the options... I've got a copy of Firefox 24 that hasn't been updated in over 6 months - heck I'm using it to type up this very post right now.

Yeah, I'm just keeping it on to see what Mozilla does so I can report on it. I figure someone needs to, and I suspect they're going to do a forced upgrade at some point. Right now I'll probably wait to see if they do so before changing my portable install over to Pale Moon.

Also about "tabs on bottom" being sane or insane, I think that's one of those things like religion and politics that should not be discussed on the internet due to the volatility of such a subject.

I guess some people get bent out of shape over it, but while I use tabs on top, I don't see a big issue if someone else doesn't. As long as the option is there for me to change it the way I like, it's all good. That is the main issue with Australis of course, Mozilla took away user choice, all the while pretending they gave more choice. I don't think anyone likes being lied to, or having their choices taken away.

Did you know you actually can backup manually all of your bookmarks? You better do it and save the JSON file in a/some very secure place(s). I suggest you to backup your bookmarks regularly as well, monthly or so.

You can also use things like Xmarks or Firefox Sync to back them up. With Xmarks you can use your own FTP server to backup to if you don't want to use the Xmarks ones for privacy reasons. I can also report that upgrading to Australis didn't make my bookmarks vanish. Made me vanish from Firefox maybe, but my bookmarks are alive and well in Pale Moon.

The difference here is that add-ons are relatively small, and almost invariably open source and can easily be taken over by someone else. Programming an add-on has a fairly short learning curve because it is a relatively standard way of doing things and the Mozilla APIs are fairly well-documented.

And this isn't just theoretical, for example the Download Statusbar addon was quite popular, but was abandoned, and eventually broke. Multiple new versions showed up, with one being quite actively developed and adding new features.

[minimal-m]

Hello, so I thought this was pretty interesting. I was playing with the graphs on StatCounter [ http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-brow ... 401-201408 ], and decided to take a look at the CSV file they offered for the year to date in North America:

Date Firefox Pale Moon SeaMonkey
2014-01 17.46 0.02 0.02
2014-02 17.93 0.03 0.02
2014-03 16.53 0.02 0.02
2014-04 17.19 0.03 0.03
2014-05 17.24 0.03 0.03
2014-06 16.16 0.04 0.02
2014-07 15.75 0.04 0.02
2014-08 16.39 0.04 0.02

Looks like we have twice the user base and counting (according to statcounter) than SeaMonkey -- who I see MozillaZine constantly promote to those that dislike the new firefox.

[Supernova]

Very interesting stat indeed, glad to see a stat site which doesn't count browser with a small market share in "other".
How do look numbers in Europe, if it's available ?

[Moonchild]

Europe looks about the same, around 0.03, similar to SeaMonkey and Iron

[Ryrynz]

2 or more bugfix releases for the 24.7 branch
Pale Moon 24.8 release and some bugfix releases
Pale Moon 24.9 release and some bugfix releases

24.8 beta became 25 alpha six days before you posted this, Pale Moon 25 now in at beta 2.

One thing is clear though: Pale Moon 25 will be released after October; who knows.

Judging from the Git I'd say late September early Oct.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

One thing is clear though: Pale Moon 25 will be released after October; who knows.

Judging from the Git I'd say late September early Oct.

According to my best knowledge the official release date for Pale Moon v25 is currently scheduled for: When it is done!

[Ryrynz]

According to my best knowledge the official release date for Pale Moon v25 is currently scheduled for: When it is done!

And my guess it'll be done about then. MC doesn't tend to prolong the beta phase unlike some devs.

[Moonchild]

One thing is clear though: Pale Moon 25 will be released after October;

late September early Oct.

When it is done!

And my guess it'll be done about then.

** sits back and smiles, watching the guessing games continue **

[Night Wing]

Off-topic:
For me, I do not care whether Pale Moon 25 is released during the first week of September, the middle of September, the last week of September or the first week in October.

But if I were to "guess" on a release date, I'd guess the second week of September (7th-13th).

[Ryrynz]

Off-topic:
But if I were to "guess" on a release date, I'd guess the second week of September (7th-13th).

I don't think so.. I haven't seen any beta version bumps.. I'm going with early next month at this rate. Allowing for a couple more betas and a RC phase.

[Night Wing]

Off-topic:
But if I were to "guess" on a release date, I'd guess the second week of September (7th-13th).

I don't think so.. I haven't seen any beta version bumps.. I'm going with early next month at this rate. Allowing for a couple more betas and a RC phase.

If Pale Moon 25 is going to be released during the first week in October, my lament is going to be, "can't win them all".

At least with Firefox and Australis, I'm now using as my backup browser to Pale Moon, probably the last non Australis version of Firefox and that is Firefox 24.8.0 ESR in both Windows and linux.

[Parsifal]

Pale Moon 25? I know when it'll be released ...

Before the end of 2014

[11ryanc]

Anyone remember how cool the concepts were for how Strata was gonna be but never was? Australis is kinda that except for the part about being potentially cool and completely destroying the fundamental core tenants of Firefox.

Anyway.. Yeah.. Why is this a thing again? The current incarnation in the beta channel is I think even less inspired than the early half implemented incarnations from earlier UX builds. Truth be told, I have tried a few of the 3rd party themes and extensions relating to this and they are far superior than what Mozilla is even implementing. I don't know whatelse can be said really.

With that realization... Let us try an experiment for the new mega-thread:

Post all the POSITIVE things about the design, functionality, and concept of Australis. (Yes it is hard but try!)

The Strata UI from Firefox was nice, personally my favorite even now. The main advantage being that it crisply integrated along with OS theming. Gave it a good native look. I still use Firefox 3x inspired themes in PM, well whatever ones are left available anyways. Kempelton and FF3 Reloaded. Wish somebody would update the Firefox 3 Aero blue theme to work properly with PM. Loved the blue Strata skin.
As for Australis, I wouldn't say it's horrible, nor as bad as Chrome for that matter. It still is "somewhat" tweakable, but coming from earlier builds it's a massive downgrade. Anyone looking for a new browser that has no need or intention to fine tune and customize their browser, it might be a good fit. But all of us power users will immediately find it dismaying. Visual styling is kind of neat, but the shell totally sticks out from the rest of the OS. Addons breaking, well that's to be expected with any major update. Mozilla should at least offer extended legacy support for v. 24 ESR though for the sake of extension compatibility. I mean I think the Australis UI is a mistake to begin with, but they should at least give users more time to use previous version while 29x "somewhat" matures. Sort of like that of Firefox 3.6x as it was supported with security patched until 2012.

[Ryrynz]

Judging from the Git I'd say late September early Oct.

And it's just hit RC/final. I was right on the money with this one. Booyah.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Judging from the Git I'd say late September early Oct.

And it's just hit RC/final. I was right on the money with this one. Booyah.

Don't jinx it...

[Moonchild]

Depends on how the RCs pan out. Already had an issue that PM25 doesn't build on older gcc versions anymore and breaks hard.
And FYI: the only reason I'm finalizing right now is sec issues and I don't want to make another point release on 24.7 - too far along the dev track now to break off and shift focus for that.