Windowblinds

[leveck]

Windows 7, 32 bit
Pale Moon 7.0.1
Add ons: adblock plus, image zoom, foxclocks, speed dial

When I am using Windowblinds, I cannot use Pale Moon. It flickers constantly, to the extent that it is unusable. I do not have this problem with regular Firefox or any other browser. Could you look into this for me?

[Moonchild]

As posted on http://www.palemoon.org/troubleshooting.shtml#v4:_I_use_Windowblinds

v4 and later: I use Windowblinds and Pale Moon 4 is unusable
Pale Moon 4 (and later [sic]) is incompatible with Stardock's Windowblinds' skinning engine when hardware acceleration is on. This is a rather hard conflict that makes the pages flicker and scrolling impossible.

There are 2 possible solutions:

1. Put Pale Moon on the Windowblinds "exclusion" list to prevent the Pale Moon window from being skinned.
   
   OR
2. Disable hardware acceleration in Pale Moon (Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Uncheck "Use hardware acceleration where possible"

[bladerunner]

As posted on http://www.palemoon.org/troubleshooting.shtml#v4:_I_use_Windowblinds

v4 and later: I use Windowblinds and Pale Moon 4 is unusable
Pale Moon 4 (and later [sic]) is incompatible with Stardock's Windowblinds' skinning engine when hardware acceleration is on. This is a rather hard conflict that makes the pages flicker and scrolling impossible.

There are 2 possible solutions:

1. Put Pale Moon on the Windowblinds "exclusion" list to prevent the Pale Moon window from being skinned.
   
   OR
2. Disable hardware acceleration in Pale Moon (Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Uncheck "Use hardware acceleration where possible"

Putting Pale Moon (palemoon.exe) in exclusion doesn't work - Win7 32bit, WindowBlinds 7.3 -. I disabled "Use hardware acceleration..." and it works.
Just a couple of question: are you planning to make a future release of Pale Moon compatible with WindowBlinds or it will never be possible, because of Pale Moon building architecture?
Whit "hardware acceleration where possible" disabled which kind of practical results there can be in browsing ? Is it a WebGL related issue? Is it possible to have some problems - less speed in some page or sites visualization,or something similar -?

waiting for Pale Moon 8

Thanks in advance

[Moonchild]

The exclusion list should work. if it doesn't, then they are doing something really bad in their engine because it still hooks the app while it shouldn't.

Whit "hardware acceleration where possible" disabled which kind of practical results there can be in browsing ?

You won't be able to use WebGL, and sites that use a lot of overlaid layers and similar will be slow. But otherwise it won't affect your browsing.

are you planning to make a future release of Pale Moon compatible with WindowBlinds

The question should be: are the Windowblinds devs going to make Windowblinds compatible with Pale Moon? If Firefox works, then so can Pale Moon. The HW acceleration part has not been touched.
Since I don't own Windowblinds (I used it in the past but stopped using it because of these specific issues AND the fact that they wanted full price for every updated version) I can't look into workarounds, either.

[bladerunner]

The exclusion list should work. if it doesn't, then they are doing something really bad in their engine because it still hooks the app while it shouldn't.

are you planning to make a future release of Pale Moon compatible with WindowBlinds

The question should be: are the Windowblinds devs going to make Windowblinds compatible with Pale Moon? If Firefox works, then so can Pale Moon. The HW acceleration part has not been touched.
Since I don't own Windowblinds (I used it in the past but stopped using it because of these specific issues AND the fact that they wanted full price for every updated version) I can't look into workarounds, either.

Well, I added again Pale Moon to the exclusion list, checked "Total exclusion"(don't skin at all), applied. Now everything works fine even with HW acceleration enabled.Just, Pale Moon has got now the Windows classic default skin (WindowBlinds doesn't allow to select Win7 default skin as specified skin for excluded applications;there are some things I don't like too about Stardock..)
However,is not a real problem...

I'm not sure I understood a few things... you said in your previous post that Pale Moon since version 4 is not compatible with WB..I didn't check, but are you saying that Pale Moon 3.6.x is compatible with WB?
If I remember well, since version 4 the Pale Moon GUI started to go in a different direction respect to FF one; for example, the status bar was removed in FF but not in Pale Moon...Even now,for example, navigation bar and bookmarks bar in Pale Moon are skinned in a different way than FF ones. So, it looks like the main reason about WB compatibility issues is probably the way the browser GUI is designed. Of course I don't know if the changes that has been made are necessary to make the browser lighter,faster, or anyway more functional, so I don't say nothing about this.

What I know is that usually WB works fine with FF; some skins doesn't work with IE9 or Chrome(if has not been skinned for those browsers. An inportant component is not only the software, but the kind of job the skinner has made as well; not all the WindowBlinds skins, even if designed for the same O.S. work in the same way with all components, especially browsers, as probably you know).


If Pale Moon 3.6.x is WB compatible, do you think it could be possible to make the major branch of the browser (at the moment version 8) WB compatible as well?

By the way,I updated to Pale Moon 8. Please, check the languages pack links; It looks like they are still the version 7 ones. I tried to instal many of them(German, French, Italian, Japanese,Spanish,Korean...) but I always got same message "....can not be installed because not compatible with Pale Moon 8". At the end I downloaded from FF site; everything OK.

[Moonchild]

It's not because the GUI is using a different configuration - that has nothing to do with Windowblinds not being able to handle the HW acceleration.
The HW acceleration is present in v4 and above of Pale Moon, and it's this that conflicts with Windowblinds, not the GUI configuration.

The fact that skinning works differently on Firefox tells you that the devs at Stardock have made special arrangements specifically for Firefox. If they could make the same arrangements for Pale Moon, it would work. I can't "make Pale Moon WB compatible" because it would mean removing the HW acceleration (which you can do yourself by disabling it).

Language pack links have been updated - was a small hiccup.

[bladerunner]

Understood, thanks. I prefer disabling the browser WB skinning instead of the HW acceleration.

[bladerunner]

Oh, I sent a message to Stardock and they told me Pale Moon issues has been fixed in the latest WB version (7.3).

So, I deleted Pale Moon fron the WB exclusion list, but still got a few problems: srolling was slow and visualization not so stable. I disabled and re- enabled HW acceleration and everything went ok, until the browser was open...After closing Pale Moon, when I opened the browser again, problem was still there; I had to disable HW acceleration and re-enabling it..and everything went fine again...

Well, everything is fine, but I can't keep HW acceleration on; I always need disabling/re-enabling it everytime I open the browser..

It's not a big problem, but I really don't know what's wrong...At the moment, for example, Pale Moon is fully skinned, HW acceleration enabled and no problem at all. Could you download the trial (30 days) WB latest version and check it?

WB 7.3 Win7 x86