GTK3 support

[squarefractal]

Since many applications are moving over from GTK2 to GTK3, is it possible to have native GTK3 binaries of Pale Moon?

As far as Firefox is concerned, there is an ongoing attempt at this BMO bug. Maybe Pale Moon could integrate the patches made for this purpose?

[Moonchild]

Base GTK3 support should already be working in Pale Moon. You can try to build with ac_add_options --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk3 in .mozconfig

Maybe something for Travis (our Linux maintainer) to have a poke at?

[squarefractal]

Base GTK3 support should already be working in Pale Moon.

That support, if any, is very minimal, and many things are broken. (Speaking from my experience of gtk3 Firefox builds with roughly equivalent codebases wrt Pale Moon).

I did try applying some of the patches from Mozilla, but my ignorance of Mozilla code quickly got in the way -- some of patches don't apply directly: and while some seem doable by hand (e.g. bug #958868), others refer to locations (e.g. bug #624422) that aren't even present in the Pale Moon codebase.

[trava90]

Base GTK3 support should already be working in Pale Moon. You can try to build with ac_add_options --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk3 in .mozconfig

Maybe something for Travis (our Linux maintainer) to have a poke at?

I'll give this a go after 25.2.0 is released.

[Moonchild]

I did try applying some of the patches from Mozilla, but my ignorance of Mozilla code quickly got in the way

Well, the bug you referred to has a wall of dependencies, and even the bug itself has a string of patches ranging from 2011 to 2014. Mozilla never implemented this as proper support in their code base through normal feature development, and with constant refactoring done between patches you can't expect things to apply cleanly or at all (in which case stuff needs rewriting).

If the present, basic GTK3 support is broken in the Pale Moon code base, then Pale Moon will just have to be considered a GTK2 application for the Linux platform.

Also, I think just about all NPAPI plugins out there are GTK2 only, meaning you'd have to mix GTK2 and GTK3 in a single application -- I'd rather not, because you can expect issues...

[trava90]

Also, I think just about all NPAPI plugins out there are GTK2 only, meaning you'd have to mix GTK2 and GTK3 in a single application -- I'd rather not, because you can expect issues...

From the research I've been doing, that does seem to be a major issue (Flash, specifically) with GTK3 builds of Firefox (although in some cases people have managed to get it working).

I will still give a GTK3 build a go, but (as I said before), it won't be until after 25.2.0 is released.

[squarefractal]

@Moonchild:
The reason for asking for GTK3 support is primarily the fact that most desktop environments are already porting over either to GTK3 (and others are moving over to Qt), and GTK2 applications that did hold on to GTK2 for a long time are also planning to make the switch. At present it does not matter, but in the foreseeable future, staying on to GTK2 is simply not an option.

Regarding plugins: other than Flash which is not maintained by Adobe any more, other plugins are already undergoing changes to reduce their dependencies. The bug linked above (624422) has some interesting details regarding this.

Unfortunately, since I'm not a developer, I can't help with the actual porting process.

At the end of the day it is your browser, and your say is final on what goes into and what does not into Pale Moon. But, in my opinion, adding full GTK3 support should be benificial for the project as well as its users.

[0strodamus]

<snip> then Pale Moon will just have to be considered a GTK2 application for the Linux platform. </snip>

That sounds fine to me. GTK3 brings along slew of headaches for anyone not using the GNOME DE. GTK3 applications look horrible, compared to GTK2. See Audacious for one example.

[squarefractal]

I will still give a GTK3 build a go, but (as I said before), it won't be until after 25.2.0 is released.

Was this tried out?

Firefox will apparently have GTK3 support in a few versions.

[trava90]

Yes, but I was never able to get a successful build (let alone fix some of the other issues with GTK3). I've not forgotten about this, but at the moment it is low priority and I have not had time to revisit it yet.

I'll try to take another look into this soon.