Can no longer access primary Gmail acct in PM Topic is solved

[cyberreine]

After clearing PM's cache and disabling add-ons to identify a problem earlier this evening (and then re-enabling them), I found to my dismay that I can no longer access my primary Gmail account in Pale Moon. I have 2 Gmail accounts, and both of them are now missing my avatar in the upper right, plus the cube of dots to access Google apps, and the large search box. All these are normally located near the top of the screen.This problem only occurs in PM (28.4), not in Firefox (65.0).

For months now, the way I access my major Gmail account is by clicking on the avatar in my secondary account (which for some annoying reason Gmail treats as primary), which brings up the avatar to my main account. Clicking on the main avatar gives me access to the messages. Without the avatars, there's no easy way for me to access my main account. I realize that I could use Firefox, but I don't want to do that. I want to stay with Pale Moon, which I have used and loved for years. I have no idea what I could have done to make the avatar, etc. disappear. The add-ons have been re-enabled. Clearing the cache has never had a bad effect before, and I doubt that it could have caused this bizarre occurrence. I'm really at a loss and would be most grateful for some help.

[therube]

First thing I would do, as a test, would be to create a new, clean Profile & see if that works.

If not, then in that Profile, I would spoof the useragent sent to google, gmail (whatever the case may be) to a FF UA & see if that makes a difference.

[Scribe]

I doubt that it's anything to do with clearing the cache. Since things are missing, it actually sounds as if an extension might be causing it. Maybe the disabling and enabling triggered an update in one of them which is now incompatible.

So if you haven't already, try restarting PM. If that doesn't help, disable your extensions again then restart PM. Alternatively, in the Menu, go to Help > Troubleshooting Information, and click on Restart in Safe Mode, which disables extensions and a few other things, like Hardware Acceleration. (Just restart PM to exit Safe Mode).

If none of the above helps, and since you've already cleared the cache, the only other thing I can think of, is to delete all the Gmail cookies.

[adesh]

Without the avatars, there's no easy way for me to access my main account.

As a workaround, you can access your accounts using a direct URL:
First (main) account - https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/
Second account - https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/
Third account - https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/
... and so on.

[cyberreine]

MANY thanks to therube, Scribe, and adesh for your very helpful suggestions. Special thanks to adesh for providing the workaround! It works, though Gmail treats my secondary account as my main account for some reason I fail to understand. It didn't used to do that, but for months now it has, and the only way I've been able to get to my real main account is by clicking on the avatar in the other account. That's why the avatar's disappearance is so upsetting to me. But the URL you provided for the secondary account does indeed get me into the inbox in my main account. THANK YOU!!! When I have time, I will explore the suggestions made by therube and Scribe. I very much appreciate them. But I'm relieved to know that I have a workaround until I can fix whatever went wrong.

You guys are great!

[cyberreine]

I think the culprit is UAControl. I disabled all the add-ons, which resulted in my getting back the normal Gmail features that had gone missing. I then enabled the add-ons one by one and looked to see whether that made a difference. When I enabled UAControl, BINGO! The problem was back. I'm not sure what UAControl does, and whether I need it. From the little I could find out, I think it may have something to do with the User Agent strings I mess with to fool some sites into thinking Pale Moon is Firefox. If that's the case, that's a useful feature that I wouldn't want to lose. Then again, the UAControl add-on on my Pale Moon hasn't been updated since April 27, 2016. That seems a bit strange. It claims on its web site (http://neko.tsugumi.org/UAControl.html) that it was made for Firefox, but Firefox has undergone major changes since 2016. So, in a word, I'm CONFUSED. I don't know whether I need this program or not. Will getting rid of it affect my ability to mess with the useragent overrides?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Moonchild]

I'm not sure what UAControl does, and whether I need it.

If you're not sure what it does then there's a good bet you shouldn't have it installed.

To control user agents on a site-by-site basis you also don't need an extension -- see the many posts on this forum how to enter user-agent overrides for sites you may need them.
As for Firefox compatibility, I also suggest you make sure the default (Firefox compatibility) is set in Preferences -> Advanced -> tab "General" -> "User agent mode"

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Maybe we need to blocklist the old FIREFOX user agent extensions or bust the global preference and only allow ssuao.

[Isengrim]

Maybe we need to blocklist the old FIREFOX user agent extensions or bust the global preference and only allow ssuao.

Both of these seem like very heavy-handed approaches. I occasionally use User Agent Switcher 0.7.3.1 to see if setting the UA globally affects a compatibility issue before drilling down into SSUAOs. I have never had an issue with this add-on that could not be solved by resetting the UA to default.

Are we even sure that UAControl itself is to blame, rather than a configuration that was made using it?

[JustOff]

Both of these seem like very heavy-handed approaches.

I totally agree with that. Let's not treat users like babies, as Mozilla and Google do.

[gepus]

Maybe we need to blocklist the old FIREFOX user agent extensions or bust the global preference and only allow ssuao.

Make software for idiots and you'll end up with only idiots using your software.

[cyberreine]

I'm not sure what UAControl does, and whether I need it.

If you're not sure what it does then there's a good bet you shouldn't have it installed.

To control user agents on a site-by-site basis you also don't need an extension -- see the many posts on this forum how to enter user-agent overrides for sites you may need them.
As for Firefox compatibility, I also suggest you make sure the default (Firefox compatibility) is set in Preferences -> Advanced -> tab "General" -> "User agent mode"

Moonchild, I'm most grateful to you for Pale Moon and for the abundant help you've offered on this forum. However, I would really appreciate a more substantive response than simply "if you're not sure what it does then there's a good bet you shouldn't have it installed." I'd very much like to know what UA Control does. Moreover, as I indicated in my above message, I know how to control user agents on a site-by-site basis. Also, yes, my default is already set for Firefox compatibility.

I'm hoping that someone on the forum will be kind enough to explain to a relatively non-technical but experienced Pale Moon user what it is that UA Control does and whether I can safely leave it disabled or even remove it. Thanks in advance.

[coffeebreak]

I don't know whether I need this program or not. Will getting rid of it affect my ability to mess with the useragent overrides?

I'm hoping that someone on the forum will ... explain ... whether I can safely leave it disabled or even remove it.

Removing UAControl will not remove the ability to add or modify overrides.

UAControl and other "user agent extensions" provide an interface that make it more convenient to manipulate user agents.
But the ability to add or change user agent overrides does not rely on any extension. That ability is built in to the browser.

[Moonchild]

I'd very much like to know what UA Control does.

I'm sorry but I don't know in detail what every extension out there does, exactly. At least not without educating myself first by looking it up -- which I don't have time for, but I'm assuming you do, so... educate thyself!

[John connor]

I use UAControl with PM since like forever! It's pretty versatile and the best UA mod add-on I've used. You can set custom UAs for individual URLs in the add-on and set the default UA to something like Firefox which I do.

The current Firefox version is 66. You don't use 66.02 or 66.03, etc, just 66.0. So to change your default UA to Firefox as a Windows 7 64 bit OS it's:

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0

To stay abreast of FF releases bookmark this page. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/

If you Google useragentstring, you can see all kinds of UAs.

A companion add-on to UAControl is UserAgent JS Fixer which apparently does some Java Script UA trickery at that level depending on your UA. In fact, when I installed it the page said it worked with UAControl.


If you don't already have it, download and install the Classic Add-ons Archive add-on. This is where you can get former FF XUL-based add-ons to work in PM. https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases Then once installed go to Tools in PM and it will be there.

Then again, the UAControl add-on on my Pale Moon hasn't been updated since April 27, 2016. That seems a bit strange.

This is because in large part due to FF using the Webextension code for add-ons now instead of the old XUL-based code for add-ons. PM uses XUL and it will stay that way. Unless the developer wants to also code UAControl for XUL to maintain it, it will stay at that version.

I have a felling the main reason why gmail didn't work was you had a strange UA Google didn't like in UAControl. It's not UAControl's fault. You need to know how to use UAControl. If you go top UAControl's options, what UA is listed for Google? UAControl should be in the bottom right side of your browser. Left click it for the options.

Some sites don't like UAControl though. Which I found true for Github. I had to set Github's URL to Normal UA and by default I use the FF compatibility UA in PM.

Why don't you use an email client instead of logging into Gmail's asinine website?

http://pop2imap.com/thunderbird-gmail.php

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/th ... -and-gmail

[cyberreine]

Many thanks to coffeebreak, Moonchild, and especially F22 Simpilot, for your responses. Coffeebreak, I found your brief explanation quite helpful, and together with the detailed information provided by F22 Simpilot, I think I now have a better sense of UA Control's purpose.

For me, the most interesting piece of information was F22 Simpilot's suspicion that "the main reason why gmail didn't work was you had a strange UA Google didn't like in UAControl." After he said that, I took a look at the Options set for UA Control, and for mail.google.com the user agent was Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0)! I changed that to the more up-to-date user agent F22 Simpilot provided:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0. Sure enough, the missing Gmail avatar, access dots, and Search feature reappeared!

Now that I have the missing Gmail features back, I'm in no hurry to take F22 Simpilot's recommendation that I access Gmail from Thunderbird rather than from Pale Moon. I know that Thunderbird is a capable email client, but I already have two other email clients on my desktop. At some point, I may decide to replace one or the other of the two, in which case it's quite possible I'll install Thunderbird (that is, unless the email client I LOVE on my Android tablet and phone--Aqua Mail Pro--becomes available for Windows).

Again, thanks VERY much, F22 Simpilot, for your immensely helpful response.

[John connor]

No problem.

[doman26]

Is this still a problem for people? Today I couldn't login into youtube or gmail. I tried other browsers and no problem. I disabled everything and still no go. Ive never had issues with palemoon until now. Its quite bizarre. TIA

[coffeebreak]

Is this still a problem for people?

This was not a problem for "people".
It was a problem specific to the original poster, caused by that person having changed the user agent to one that didn't work, and has been resolved.

I'll add that I have no trouble logging in to either gmail or youtube with Pale Moon.