Please Support Pale Moon

[Sichuan]

I realize that many of you have had issues related to the latest version of Pale Moon. Having experienced two of these issues myself I made a few decisions. I've decided to use the P-S version of ABP, I've decided not to downgrade to PM 24.7.2 and I've decided to drop the new MSN as my home page on PM and IE 11. Instead of ranting and raving about how "Pale Moon is broken" or "Why did you do this" you should stop and think for a few minutes about why these problems have occurred. Although PM may indeed be a customized version of Firefox it should be considered a browser in its own right and website developers and add-on developers should acknowledge the same. PM is standing its ground. PM is putting its own mark on the browser. Are the majority of PM users forgetting why they left Firefox behind or switched from other browsers? Are you forgetting that the Mozilla developers seem to have long ago ignored the needs and desires of Firefox users? Have you forgotten that the developers of PM go above and beyond what is necessary to see to it that your concerns and needs are met, if possible, and in fact respond to you on a personal basis? I, for one, have not forgotten.

Certain changes that have been made have been made on principle and I fully support these changes even if it means that my PM browser may be temporarily or permanently "broken". Moon child and others are bending over backwards to produce P-S extensions for those in need and making other changes that will once again allow you to have a fully functional browser. I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for them. Some changes will be successful in eliminating problems but there are other changes that only the developers of software that interacts with PM can accomplish. These are the people you should be complaining to, not the developers of PM. Moonchild and others are spending a great amount of time trying to overcome these problems to the best of their abilities, time away from their families and time away from other things that need done. To repeat myself, I have nothing but respect and admiration for Moonchild and the others who have made these changes based on "principle" and their willingness to work long hours to overcome the associated problems. I'll stick with PM, thank you very much. The solution I have arrived at is to financially support PM during these changes. I have never been a "sheep", one who blindly adheres to something or follows someone simply because "that's the way it is". Please do not misunderstand me. I am in no way insinuating that any of you are sheep and if you mistakenly take it that way I apologize. I am simply stating that when one makes changes based on principles and when one takes the time to personally converse with you while attempting to overcome problems related to those changes you should support them in their efforts and give them time to develop solutions.

Early today I decided to make a financial contribution to Pale Moon. The decision to contribute to PM was easy but to keep my finances in order I had to make some important decisions. Sending my contribution to PM meant that I had to reduce or eliminate spending money on other causes or something else I wanted. Should I reduce the amount of money I spend on political contributions to the candidates of my choice in certain states? Should I decide to put aside my decision to purchase the latest version of the "Star Wars Trilogy IV, V and VI"? Should I put off purchasing the boxed sets, by actor, of the different James Bond movies? Should I buy my wife that new perfume she wants? Well, even though I financially support politicians they couldn't care less about me. I already have a 2004 version boxed set of the Star Wars trilogy. My wife smells good enough already and has as many bottles of perfume as she does handbags and shoes and believe me, those are not trivial numbers. However, I don't have any James Bond DVDs or Blu-ray discs, so Pale Moon and James Bond are the winners. Pale Moon has benefited and my James Bond movies should arrive back in the U.S. before I do.

Have a nice day/night everyone, depending on where you're located. Please consider making a donation to Pale Moon and please consider promoting Pale Moon to others. I'm not a shill. I'm just an ordinary user of what I think is the best browser available.

C. B.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I am .. speechless.. stunned.. humbled.. words

Thank you, I so needed to read this. Thank.. you

[Sichuan]

I am .. speechless.. stunned.. humbled.. words

Thank you, I so needed to read this. Thank.. you

You're very welcome, Matt. I'm simply stating what should by now be obvious to anyone using Pale Moon. Keep up the excellent work.

C. B.

[x-15a2]

... Please consider making a donation to Pale Moon and please consider promoting Pale Moon to others...

Thanks for posting this and thanks for the bump that I've needed. I've been a PM user for quite a while, have posted PM release notifications on Reddit, promoted it to those in my sphere of influence and have been active on the forums for several months. It was time for me to put my money where my mouth is and your post encouraged me to do so. Like you, I encourage all PM users to donate what they can. Here's the link to get you started: http://www.palemoon.org/donations.shtml

[Sichuan]

Thank you, x, for including my obvious omission of the donation link. I appreciate it very much, and thank you for supporting the developers of Pale Moon and promoting the browser. Hopefully, they'll receive enough donations to be able to afford the hardware they need to make Pale Moon even better.

If anyone feels that I've ignored their post please be advised that I am currently in Asia, twelve hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time in my home state of Ohio, so when you are awake and pounding your keyboard I could very well be sleeping.

C. B.

[henrypijames]

Certain changes that have been made have been made on principle and I fully support these changes even if it means that my PM browser may be temporarily or permanently "broken".

One can only support a principle despite of its impracticality if one feels so strongly about the principle and so little about the practicality as to be willing to suffer the consequence of things not working - which, by definition, makes you an ideologue. There is, of course, nothing wrong with being an ideologue, and everybody has the right to do so. But once you turn ideologue, you can't fault other people for not wanting to following you off the cliff.

Plus, the technological realm generally and the world wide web specifically may be among the worst places for ideologues. 100% of all web developers consider IE 6 to be the devil, yet 99.9% had to force themselves to cater to it for years. and did so for good reasons - namely, for the sake of the users, who are entirely innocent in this struggle.

Some changes will be successful in eliminating problems but there are other changes that only the developers of software that interacts with PM can accomplish. These are the people you should be complaining to, not the developers of PM.

I disagree. It's totally reasonable for an average extension developer - an amateur programmer with limited time and motivation - to ignore PM since it's a negligible minority. On the other hand, it's totally unreasonable for PM to ignore the incompatible extensions since they're the majority.

Are the majority of PM users forgetting why they left Firefox behind or switched from other browsers?

Not at all: We chose PM over Fx for the increased usability. The newly introduced extension incompatibility constitute a massive decrease of usability that more than offsets the original gain of switching to PM.

But forget Fx / PM for a moment and consider why people like myself chose Mozilla in the first place (before there was Fx, let alone PM) - for the great repertoire of extensions (among other things). I've been using Chrome as my secondary browser ever since it came out, but the main reason I'm still sticking with Fx/PM as my primary browser are the extensions - an area Chrome still hasn't caught up (yet).

I am heavy extension user, with over 20 active extensions, of which at least a handful are no longer working. Some may be easy to fix, others (like Scriptish, which hasn't be updated for over a year) seems rather hopeless. Fx/PM and the multitude of extensions are so central to me (including my day job) that I simply cannot afford to lose them - especially not for an unspecified period of time with no end in sight.

Right now, I'm temporarily replacing PM with Chrome as my primary browser, before I find time to carefully downgrade to 24. If that doesn't work, I'd rather return to the insufferable Fx than to stick with a dysfunctional PM. The dysfunction is not PM's fault, but it *is* PM's responsibility to avoid escalating it *at the cost of the common user*.

[Moonchild]

C.B., thank you for your clarity and putting into words what people "too close to the actual project" have trouble doing - an outside perspective that words exactly the driving forces behind the project and the current direction.
Also, of course, many thanks for choosing to support Pale Moon over your boxed movie set! it has been well-received and you can expect an exclusive item in the mail coming your way as thanks for your support.

henry: keep in mind that Pale Moon is now used more in the world than SeaMonkey, looking at net statistics. Ignoring PM is an add-on developer's choice, of course, but the number of users is not negligible. We are also not ignoring incompatible extensions (see the efforts we are making to even provide temporary solutions while add-on devs are given even more time than they already had) but it is primarily the add-on dev's task to target all compatible applications. Not doing so is negligent or at least discriminatory, if you want to put it into direct terms. Also, limited time is all that is needed to make 24.7-working add-ons compatible with 25.0; and since a browser developer has to focus on the core product above anything else, extensions will fall into the realm of the people who wrote the code in question in the first place. Pale Moon is in no way less compatible now than it was before 25.0 - if you don't understand that then I suggest you go back and read the most recent FAQ post on this forum once more. Despite all that, we are going out of our way to cater to your (the user's) needs in these days of converting non-working add-ons to a working pseudo-static state. That is a task we take upon ourself for you and is a lot of work that should not be needed but is done anyway. If you want to spit in our faces for that effort, go ahead, I'll turn the other cheek too. In the meanwhile I hope you enjoy Chrome that likely will have not even close to the extensibility you have wanted and had previously (and can have again in a little while)... It makes you the ideologist wanting something that is 100% perfect and static, and throwing even temporary partial extensibility out the window by switching to Chrome. There is no "all or nothing" here. it's an evolution. Evolutions have rough spots and this is one.

[Supernova]

henry: keep in mind that Pale Moon is now used more in the world than SeaMonkey, looking at net statistics. Ignoring PM is an add-on developer's choice, of course, but the number of users is not negligible.

Also, amount of users of Pale Moon using addons is probably higher than for mozilla firefox.
There are somewhere between 20 and 30 millions users (probably closer to 20) who use at least one addons.
Pale Mon has around 500 000 users. If half use at least one addon (it's all rough guess anyway), PM already represent 1% of gecko's extension usage. If we take into account that the part using more than one or two addons is also higher, we get an even more important usage. (In fact, what should be compared are the sum of the number of addons used, but it's not available ^^)
Comparing to the 0,02% desktop browser share, this is a significant difference in term of interest to change a little bit the extension to have it compatible with both Firefox and Pale Moon.

[Sajadi]

Problem is, user's do not want to give up their preferred add-ons, and even if broken stuff gets repaired, there is often the quite irritating "broken equals loss of thrust" mentality.

There is in most cases no chance to argue in a reasonable way with such kind of users, because at that point they argue just with emotions and reason ceases to exist sadly.

[Moonchild]

There is in most cases no chance to argue in a reasonable way with such kind of users, because at that point they argue just with emotions and reason ceases to exist sadly.

I just ask one thing of people who have decided they can never trust Pale Moon again because of a one-time breakage: Please do not keep complaining or sending /ragequit messages to the community or me personally. It serves no purpose and will yield nothing but unnecessary digital waste. Even if you'd like to spout it... just, don't, please. Instead, take the positive approach and focus on your replacement browser.

[nana2]

Great post Sichuan and I agree wholeheartedly in what you said. Can't thank Moonchild and Tobin enough.

I have been promoting Pale Moon on various forums since I discovered it and will continue to do so. When I became aware of Fx's "Welcome: Firefox Input" website, https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/ I have been writing numerous times in favor of Pale Moon and that I ditched Fx. That site shows which browser one uses. Prior to 25 it used to say Firefox and version # while writing with Pale Moon. Now it says: unknown.

[Sichuan]

Hello henry,

Thank you for your reply. You're certainly entitled to have a personal opinion. I'll be as brief as possible.

I'm far from an ideologue and your labeling me as one is quite a stretch. In my opinion, it's a pompous and condescending attitude to have. I'm simply one who is willing to stand on principle and in this case I stand with the developers of PM. According to your thinking, we should simply accept the reasoning of website developers and to a lesser extent the reasoning of add-on developers, their thinking being that the minority of users are of no importance. A case in point: The United States of America was founded by a minority of British citizens. They wanted something "better", something better than the majority of British citizens "succumbed" to and "complied" with. They were sick and tired of the "status quo", of having to accept what was shoved down their throats, their needs and desires ignored. They were more than willing, at great sacrifice, to stand their ground, to have the courage and stamina do so because it was the "principle" that mattered. Of course, I'm not comparing the users of PM to the founders of my nation. I'm merely pointing out that to some people principles hold great importance. Were they ideologues? Were they impractical idealists? I don't think so.

"namely, for the sake of the users, who are entirely innocent in this struggle."

Absolutely, and the users of Pale Moon are certainly innocent in this struggle. Thank you for supporting my decision to take a stand with the developers of Pale Moon.

"to ignore PM since it's a negligible minority"

Your labeling of Pale Moon users as being negligible, as being trifling and unimportant, is an insult and is totally unnecessary.

"We chose PM over Fx for the increased usability. The newly introduced extension incompatibility constitute a massive decrease of usability that more than offsets the original gain of switching to PM."

Another reason I chose PM over Firefox is the Firefox developers' almost total disregard for the needs and desires of its users, their "it's our way or the highway" attitude, which I consider to be offensive in nature, which is the very same reason I chose to dump MSN and choose to do without the extensions developed by people who care nothing about the minority. Furthermore, the new PM in no way constitutes a "massive decrease of usability".

"I am heavy extension user, with over 20 active extensions"

That's fine. I imagine that most users get along just fine without using so many extensions. However, I choose to stand with PM and allow the developers the time to attempt to create workarounds for those extensions and if that's not possible, I choose to disregard the extensions of developers who care nothing about the "minority". As I've stated before, I appreciate the fact that PM's developers are willing to take the time to listen to the needs and desires of their users and react accordingly, which includes conversing with us on a personal basis. You can always use a different browser until PM does all that's possible to accommodate your needs. You can then decide to either come back or leave forever. The choice is yours, henry, and nobody is going to fault you for it or speak of you in a derogatory nature.

"before I find time to carefully downgrade to 24"

I would rather see you downgrade to 24 rather than leave PM. That would, at the very least, show that you support the developers of PM and their desire to accommodate your needs and desires, which to me is always preferable to accepting the take it or leave it attitude of certain website and add-on developers.

I appreciate you taking the time to shave your views and opinions.

C. B.

[Sichuan]

Great post Sichuan and I agree wholeheartedly in what you said. Can't thank Moonchild and Tobin enough.

I have been promoting Pale Moon on various forums since I discovered it and will continue to do so. When I became aware of Fx's "Welcome: Firefox Input" website, https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/ I have been writing numerous times in favor of Pale Moon and that I ditched Fx. That site shows which browser one uses. Prior to 25 it used to say Firefox and version # while writing with Pale Moon. Now it says: unknown.

Thank you, nana2, for your reply and your continued support and promotion of PM and its developers. I'm sure they appreciate it very much.

C. B.

[henrypijames]

Pale Moon is in no way less compatible now than it was before 25.0 - if you don't understand that then I suggest you go back and read the most recent FAQ post on this forum once more.

And where is this FAQ? I'm willing to help fix some extensions (I have some experience with that in the past, since some of the extensions I use haven't been updated for years), but I can't find any documentation on exactly what's happened to the PM 25 status bar that no longer shows any extension icons. This, for instance, doesn't explain it (specifically, adding the PM GUID to chrome.manifest).

EDIT: Turns out that does help at least in some cases - but one has to go into customize mode again and re-add the icons. So, now I *am* going to help fix some extensions - when someone tells me what this "static linking" pretends to (I understand it's about preventing extensions from updating to non-compatible official versions, but how exactly is this static linking done?).

If you want to spit in our faces for that effort, go ahead, I'll turn the other cheek too.

I reject the notion that I did such a thing. What I posted wasn't a rant, but an argument. It was rather harsh in tone, and I apologize for that. Once again: I'm willing (and perhaps able) to help, if I'm convinced that the mass incompatibility is only temporary. Right now, I'm not (on the other hand, I'm not convinced PM will be doomed from now on, as some others do, either - I just haven't got enough information).

In the meanwhile I hope you enjoy Chrome that likely will have not even close to the extensibility you have wanted and had previously (and can have again in a little while)... It makes you the ideologist wanting something that is 100% perfect and static, and throwing even temporary partial extensibility out the window by switching to Chrome.

I've made clear that a) I've been using Chrome alongside Fx/PM for a long time and b) I'm switching to Chrome as my primary browser only temporarily. I'll be returning back to Moz, but whether it would be PM 25 or PM 24 or Fx remains to be seen. You don't need to tell me about the limited extensibility of Chrome - I've made that argument myself. But right now, while some of my most relied-on extensions remain unusable, the functionality of my PM 25 install has indeed dropped below that of my Chrome install.

[henrypijames]

Your labeling of Pale Moon users as being negligible, as being trifling and unimportant, is an insult and is totally unnecessary.

"Negligible" is not a insult, but a statical fact. And it wasn't meant as an insult, either, since I have been - and still am - a PM user myself (not to mention the fact that I've generally enjoyed belonging to the minority in many aspects of my life).

@Supernova talks about PM users representing more than 1% of Gecko extension usage. But in ergonomics, the top 5% and bottom 5% are generally considered negligible (for example, if you build a car, the seats have to fit the middle 90% of people, but not the largest 5% or the smallest 5%).

As a developer myself, I pay attention to the 1% - but I understand perfectly well that this cannot be expected from everybody because it's simply not economical (whether we are talking about professional software companies or developers doing stuff in their free time).

We - the PM user base - are a niche. We should face up with that fact and act accordingly instead of falling into a victim mentality. In fact, pretty much every software starts out as a niche, and there is no reason why PM couldn't become mainstream (the way Fx came out of nowhere to replace SM). But that is not going to happen if we pretend to be more important (in statistical terms) than we are.

@Sichuan: I appreciate that you appreciate my input.

[Sichuan]

Hello again, henry,

Let me start off by saying that if you feel that negligible, the meaning of which is to be "immaterial, meaningless, beneath notice, insignificant, not worth considering, to be discarded, to be dispensable, etc, etc, etc" is not an insult I'd hate to be on the receiving end of what you consider a real insult. You could have omitted the word negligible but you deliberately chose to insert it in the sentence. If you choose to consider what I take as an insult a statistical fact and it makes you feel better to do so then so be it. I'll leave it at that.

It doesn't matter to me what the statistical numbers are in relation to the Pale Moon browser. I don't make decisions on whether to use or purchase a product based on how many others are buying or using it. I'm not part of a herd. I'm an individual and as an individual two of the things that matter to me are a product's functionality and the "customer/technical service" that comes with the product. If that makes me a part of a minority I couldn't care less. I doubt very seriously that you can deny or rebut the fact that the tireless developers of PM consider these two aspects of PM to be very important to them. I would be an imbecile to suggest that the forums related to other browsers are not full of users ready and willing to assist those in need but how often do you see consistent input from the developers and their assistants in those other browser forums? This matters a great deal to me. It may mean absolutely nothing to you but it means a lot to a great number of PM users.

Pale Moon is a highly functional browser and has a sizable user base and I feel that it should be considered when developers are producing, altering or upgrading their software. Therefore, I choose to stay with PM as the developers seek solutions to the problems and as a matter of principle I stand with them as they continue to put their own "stamp" on the browser. PM is not staffed with an abundance of developers so I don't foresee a situation like that of Mozilla arising out of the ashes of Netscape or Apple arising somewhat from the work of others but hey, everyone has to start somewhere. Who knows where PM is headed?

I don't think the developers or users of PM consider themselves victims and I don't believe they want anything more than fairness from the developers. I've never considered myself "more important" than the users of other browsers and I would guess that the vast majority of other users of PM feel the same as I do. What I would like for you to do is to stop having the mindset that other users of PM, as a whole, share your views and I would prefer that you stop classifying us as whatever you see fit to classify us as.

Here's the bottom line, henry. The topic of my initial post is "Please Support Pale Moon". That is the intended nature of the post. You can choose to support PM or not support PM. It's your decision to make. I don't have any intention of getting drawn into any other issues. With all due respect, you should discuss your concerns elsewhere in the forum.

C. B.

[Rickkins]

Bleedin' edge baby, that's where I'm living.

Palemoon 25, on win10 preview...

No explosions yet...

[Sajadi]

My own opinion about extensions is that they are anyway overrated. In reality, a single external application does the job exactly as effective and good.

Most people install and install and install them tons after tons and in the end they complain "Why does my browser crash 20 times a day? Why is my browser slow as hell?

And in most cases it is once installed and again forgotten. The only real useful extensions in my opinion are adblockers and noscript - even if you could argue over no-script that it would be enough if the user watches a bit over his own brosing preferences and not browsing shady, not trustworthy or similar web sources.

Fireftp... Why not using an external not limited program with more options for finetuning?
Chatzilla - Xulrunner and Chatzilla as standalone app works fine!

Hell, even for adblocking there exist some external software which works exactly as good if not better!

If Pale Moon would be at one point after ESR 24y without future Add-ons, hell, i would enjoy it, fastest possible browsing experience!

After all, one should keep in mind that a browser is nothing more as a useful tool to browse the web. Everything additional is as it already has been said... additional and should not been taken as granted for life!

[Supernova]

Trying to explain to people for which some addons are really useful that it's just not that is totally useless.
Out of my ~20 addons I could live without more of them, however they each add a little bit - and no performance issue here, + usability count more -, and arguing that I shouldn't even care won't ever convince me... This is not to say I won't support in the future, but that thinking that Pale Moon can just be without addons - except say an adblocker - is foolish.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Obviously WE care about add-ons.. Or else we would have just not even built in the dual-guid system and let every single Firefox Add-on break without giving it a second thought..