Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

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back2themoon
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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by back2themoon » 2014-10-20, 17:11

I think Jonguy30 meant "to support websites in the acceptable ads whitelist through ads", not those websites the user chooses on his/her own to support, by manually white-listing them. Admittedly, it is a bit of a grey area but websites have to follow some strict rules to get into that list. Don't know how many of them actually honour the rules. Official info here.
Supernova wrote:Acceptable ads are not here for people wanting to support websites through ads, but to allow the sites on the whitelist to not suffer from the blocker. (I also read rumors about ABP adding sites to list vs money ; I don't know if true or false but wouldn't be surprising)
The acceptable ads list is definitely not needed for a user wanting to support a certain websites : ABP & ABE both have option to disable per site, easy to use with the toolbar icon, which is exactly what a user wanting to support a site (and that, of his decision) would use.
Obviously an opt-out ready whitelist leads way more people to some ads (aka, not hurting money of some sites), but I'm not convinced that opt-in would be better than the manual solution : the whitelist has great chances of not including what the user want, and even greater to include some things he don't want.

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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2014-10-20, 19:02

If you want to support websites (like this forum) by allowing ads on them, then you do that through "allowing on (domain.com)" from the AdBlock icon or menu. The "acceptable ads" are an ever-growing list of basically not using ABP on certain domains, where the "acceptable ads" rules are pretty much in line with the big advertiser networks. So... You'd be using ABP to block ads, but it will only block particularly annoying ones. many Google ads, amazon ads, ask.com ads etc will get through.

And.. since it's just done through an additional filter subscription, you can still do it manually, as well.
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mikeysc

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by mikeysc » 2014-10-20, 19:15

There are acceptable ads defined in EasyList which is the default one for AdBlock Edge as well. Haven't traced through the code but it's my understanding Edge simply ignores these. There was a version of the list without the acceptable ads but last time I checked it was no longer available. Maybe we should try to maintain a clipped copy of EasyList with the so-called acceptable ads removed (removal should be easy if somebody will take that on and post it).

GMugford

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by GMugford » 2014-10-20, 19:39

I've written elsewhere on these forums that I wish I had had more foreknowledge of the upcoming divorce from Firefox. On the other hand, any time spent thinking about the future would have brought the realization that the split was inevitable. And by split, I don't mean with Firefox, it is with the authorverse of Add-In Writers. The sites too dumb to allow for multiple access by different browsers have always been a source of irritation.

For YEARS, I've been plagued with sites (mostly banks and financial institutions), who mandate Internet Explorer and the installation of Adobe Reader (they call reader.exe by name rather than just passing through the temp PDF file name for use by Windows' default PDF handler). EVEN if we let all things through with Firefox/PaleMoon and NoScript, these sites demanded IE and the even worse Adobe product. But time has gone on and these sites have diminished in number. They are still out there, but younger, smarter programmers are helping to weed out the old ways.

So, I recommend having different browsers for different jobs. I access Google sites with Chrome. I have a portable version of Chrome set up for whenever my tech guy comes over and has to go Googling. He always mangled my session manager and I'd lost my multiple open tabs once too often. So he got his own browser. My main workday browser is Pale Moon 24.x. I've massaged it into a dependable tool that works and protects me. And, there's IE for dealing with some sites that believe in IE, still. I also have Opera and an IE variant installed, just to play with recalcitrant sites. I CAN get around the site issue. It's a pain in the posterior, but that problem is a straw man.

What I can't do right now, is use PaleMoon 25.x. That's not Moonchild's fault, although his timing on making the change hit me during a particularly busy time period. He had to do what he did for reasons he's explained and reasons we can ALL understand once we put on our thinking caps. He and Matt have announced workarounds for many of the affected disaffected Add-Ins. And his work will progress. Once he finds co-operation, time and inspiration to kludge away the problems with the Add-Ins *I* need, then I will be running 25.x.

Discussion about this direction really does boil down to timing doesn't it? Oh, technical skills to modify Add-In sources on a needed case by case basis would have helped. But that's a skill not all of us possess. What we DID possess was the mental faculty to abandon Firefox and their pell-mell dash off the cliff. We searched and we found the product to save us the aggravation of Australis and the rest of the make-work changes the Firefox employees subjected us to. But skilled or not, we all have to cope with a decision that has no U-turn capability.

Woudn't we all prefer Moonchild and Matt work away at making future versions of PaleMoon the best browser on the market and a major part of our own personal suites of browsing solutions, than answering wave after wave of these navel-gazing remarks?

GM

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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by BobbyP » 2014-10-20, 21:29

Matt A Tobin wrote:That is already done. It is called... Reading the Release Notes and unless you missed it there is a link to it presented by the update manager.
update.png

Добрый вечер! comrade Matt! Thanks for your reply. _I_ am aware of the link, and importance of following it, and reading Release Notes, but my poorly made point concerned the expanding numbers of recent converts, and soon to be converts, many of whom will not be aware, nor concerned, for some of the reasons addressed in the intervening posts above. There is no need, on my end, at least, for you to respond to this reply, as I mainly want to thank you again, for all of your work! :thumbup:

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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by BobbyP » 2014-10-20, 21:47

Moonchild wrote: I do, however, stress once more that simply pretending to be a specific different browser is a bad idea. It has its own set of attached issues ....
Another thing to consider is that a default override will also prevent those very problematic sites from seeing the amount of traffic from Pale Moon clients (it'll be counted towards whatever is faked) and if that result in "insignificant traffic" from this client, the sites will simply not do anything about it (because it's not worth their time). ...
Hello Moonchild. Thank you very much for your hard work at this great project! Being very much not an expert in this, a suggestion: would a reasonably helpful "compromise" to this dilemma be the inclusion somehow in the passed browser info of a message that would identify PM as having called, if that is even possible to have it appear in the commonly used traffic analysis tools (that is without the "Kilroy Was Here" message being determinative of the browser type for how the site interacts with the browser)? There is no need for you to reply. Thanks again for this fantastic project!
Last edited by BobbyP on 2014-10-20, 22:09, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by BobbyP » 2014-10-20, 22:04

GMugford wrote:I've written elsewhere on these forums that I wish I had had more foreknowledge of the upcoming divorce from Firefox. On the other hand, any time spent thinking about the future would have brought the realization that the split was inevitable. And by split, I don't mean with Firefox, it is with the authorverse of Add-In Writers. ....

So, I recommend having different browsers for different jobs. ... My main workday browser is Pale Moon 24.x. I've massaged it into a dependable tool that works and protects me. ....

What I can't do right now, is use PaleMoon 25.x. That's not Moonchild's fault, although his timing on making the change hit me during a particularly busy time period. He had to do what he did for reasons he's explained and reasons we can ALL understand once we put on our thinking caps. He and Matt have announced workarounds for many of the affected disaffected Add-Ins. And his work will progress. Once he finds co-operation, time and inspiration to kludge away the problems with the Add-Ins *I* need, then I will be running 25.x.

Discussion about this direction really does boil down to timing doesn't it? Oh, technical skills to modify Add-In sources on a needed case by case basis would have helped. But that's a skill not all of us possess. What we DID possess was the mental faculty to abandon Firefox and their pell-mell dash off the cliff. We searched and we found the product to save us the aggravation of Australis and the rest of the make-work changes the Firefox employees subjected us to. But skilled or not, we all have to cope with a decision that has no U-turn capability. ...
Hi GM, great summarizing post! I have 24x running in at least four profiles, as I continue to test the maturing 25x, along with the plethora of extensions I use. I have postponed recommending PM to those that do not already have it, pending stabilization of 25x/extensions. For me, it is the customization through extensions that makes Fx/PM.

Your point of timing is dead-on. The very occurrences that are driving many to seek PM as an alternative to the MoFo shenanigans, is _temporarily_ also causing diaper-rash with PM... Life is like that. In a few weeks the sailing will be much smoother, long-term!

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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by bawldiggle » 2014-10-21, 00:52

.
As a late finder of this thread ...

I would like to thank all the clever people for your dedication to the cause.
- as a dinosaur I wish I was a few years younger with sharper brain cells (killed by radiation) to contribute something other than words
Patience is not rocket science ...
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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by BlakeyRat » 2014-10-21, 04:54

Matt A Tobin wrote:Well maybe i should start a poll since it would be effective the Pale Moon official adblock addon

like have it off by default ..optin instead of optout should satisfy abp and abe users

among other things is making sure backhanded telemetrics and call home junk is also stripped out and mirror the block lists so you know what you are getting and from where ..
Matt,

When I finally figured out that it was Palemoon 25 that was causing my problems with AdBlock Plus not working properly I was very disappointed. I thought "Oh no, not this nonsense again, just like Firefox". But now that I've read the explanation of what happened and found out that you are working on a fork of AdBlock Plus. -- that's GREAT news.

Since you're working on a fork of ABP, would it ever be considered to just build it right into Palemoon instead of having it be a separate extension? By your own admission, ABP is one of the most popular, if not THE most popular extension. We know that Mozilla will never do that because they get a gazillion dollars a year from Google (who makes all their money from ads) but Palemoon doesn't have that problem. Seems like it would be another attractive feature for Palemoon.

New Tobin Paradigm

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2014-10-21, 05:42

No. This has been asked before and the rationals are in those threads. While I am forking adblock, the psuedo-static version currently on the add-ons site is fully operational but not a long term solution due to legalities with the brand.

That being said, how I am handling the fork is I started by branching at the 2.4.1 level and reverted Australis additions and then went through every commit between 2.4.1 to 2.6.5 and "cherry-picked" the ones that enhance ABP its self and left out ones strictly related to Australis and later Firefox versions. Making my fork as advanced as the current version of ABP but arguably MORE compatible since it is specifically targeted to our generation of technologies before they took a back seat to continued Australis-specific changes and relegated to being just a backward-compatibility layer.

Freezing Moon

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by Freezing Moon » 2014-10-21, 09:02

@Tobin
Is this ABP fork going to work with Element Hiding Helper and ABP Pop-up add-on ?
Thanks.

New Tobin Paradigm

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2014-10-21, 09:07

No clue. Doesn't the adblocker have this functionality built in? It blocks popups and allows for hiding of elements... Why are these even needed.


postbuz

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by postbuz » 2014-10-21, 11:06

Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus is an extremely useful addon. One I use most. It really adds a lot to the standard functionality of Adblock Plus. It also works as well with Adblock Edge. A1+

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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by BlakeyRat » 2014-10-21, 12:41

Matt A Tobin wrote:No clue. Doesn't the adblocker have this functionality built in? It blocks popups and allows for hiding of elements... Why are these even needed.
I don't know why an additional extension would be needed for Element Hiding since ABP can do that.

But popup blocking, unfortunately, is needed. When Firefox first came along, years ago, one of it's features was the ability to block annoying popup windows. I don't know the technical details but, either that feature no longer works or it wasn't properly designed and people were able to easily find a way around it. All I know is that websites have no problem opening annoying unwanted windows. As usual, the Firefox developers have been unresponsive to many requests to fix the problem and the ABP Pop-Up Addon takes cares of that.

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Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by Trinoc » 2014-10-21, 13:44

I can't post a reply on this thread in the Announcements section, so I'd like to thank Moonchild here for agreeing to re-instate Firefox compatibility in the default User Agent string. I'm sure it will head off a lot of avoidable complaints about web site incompatibility.

I suspect it will never actually be necessary to change the UA string back again. As Moonchild has said, there are correct ways to determine browser features (e.g. CSS), so any web sites choosing to support Palemoon explicitly would be well advised to use these rather than looking for "Palemoon" in the UA string. The User Agent feature can be allowed to fade away quietly as the web catches up at its usual snail's pace. I'm confident Palemoon can stay ahead of the game both in terms of supporting the new, correct ways of doing things and continuing to support those old web sites that refuse to move with the times (who, sadly but inevitably, are many).

sumiy

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by sumiy » 2014-10-21, 14:50

Matt A Tobin wrote:No clue. Doesn't the adblocker have this functionality built in? It blocks popups and allows for hiding of elements... Why are these even needed.
The element hiding helper, well, it helps you target the right elements to hide in the page. Instead of browsing that long list of blockable elements it's just click and it's gone. Everything that can be done with it can be done without it, but it's way easier with it.

New Tobin Paradigm

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2014-10-21, 15:20

It will require testing I'm sure. It may Just Work(tm) but i cannot be sure of that.

Samson

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by Samson » 2014-10-21, 19:05

Trinoc wrote:I can't post a reply on this thread in the Announcements section, so I'd like to thank Moonchild here for agreeing to re-instate Firefox compatibility in the default User Agent string. I'm sure it will head off a lot of avoidable complaints about web site incompatibility.
I think it's rather sad that this had to be done and that it's that pervasive. I must not surf a huge variety of places or something because I've not noticed any nag screens so far about not using a supported browser. Unless you call what Google did with their image search a "nag screen" of sorts when it drops back to the ancient bland results layout because it saw a useragent it didn't like.

Supernova

Re: Can we freely discuss the new Palemoon direction?

Unread post by Supernova » 2014-10-21, 19:52

I choosed myself to set compatMode to false back to 24.7, and I'll stay with it ; but I did it knowing what it imply, not being dependent of any big nagging websites.
This move is rather sad, but to not lose the average user who see that "bigunhelpfulsite.com" don't work anymore, it was necessary.

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