Continued support for 3.6.x

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Moonchild
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Continued support for 3.6.x

Unread post by Moonchild » 2012-03-30, 20:32

A question asked regularly these days is:
With Firefox 3.6.x being abandoned in April, will Pale Moon continue to provide updates and support for its 3.6 branch?
The answer is: Yes.

Reasoning:
The Firefox 3.6.x code base is one that has literally seen the efforts of many people put forth leading to an ultimately stable browser with a not-too-large footprint.
Drawing on proper GDI rendering, it doesn't rely too heavily on having a finely tuned combination of hardware and is therefore robust in the rendering department. It is therefore also much more compatible for advanced use in virtual environments, emulators, and similar use cases than any later version.
It also isn't loaded with tools, effects and gadgets that have debatable value.
Many toolbars that people have come to use, and a number of extensions rely on the add-on interface that has been changed (several times now) in the next generation code base. It is therefore compatible with the tools you have come to love.
Even though standards compliance has its quirks and HTML5/CSS implementation is limited, it is exceedingly good at doing what it does support.

In short: it is a valuable alternative to keep around and to keep supporting for quite a while yet.

The "version 10 ESR" of Firefox doesn't seem at all interesting enough to be considered a branch for pale Moon to maintain, and doesn't provide this kind of alternative people have in 3.6.x - it is easily enough lumped together under the "Gecko 2.0" development that the current version 11 is just as much a natural continuation of.
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