Classic Addons Archive seems to lock up on anything later than 33.6.0 Topic is solved

[CodeLurker]

Operating system:
Win7 SP1 with platform updates
Browser version:
PM 33.6.0
32-bit or 64-bit browser?:
64
Problem URL:
caa:
Browser theme (if not default):
Installed add-ons:
Happens with only CAA 2.0.3 installed
Installed plugins: (about:plugins):
Nothing special

Not really practical to include troubleshooting info; as I've uninstalled later verss.

I tried installing the latest PM 33.7.0 via scoop; and it seemed to work at first. However, when I tried CAA, when I clicked its Tag Cloud link, the browser just froze. I tried also using scoop to install 33.6.1, but starting with an empty profile, trying CAA and trying it, it froze at that point, too. Only when I dropped down to 33.6.0 would it actually let me search on extensions without locking up. As a lot of CloudFlare changes happened in 33.6.1, it may be related to those.

Not sure if this should be in the Dev forum.

[adoxa]

Working fine here - 64-bit Windows 10, PM 33.7.0 & Basilisk 2025.02.22, installer and auto-update.

[Michaell]

Works for me too.

[therube]

Win7 x64, PM 33.7.0.


> latest PM 33.7.0 via scoop

Don't know what "scoop" is, but I "ran" the Portable version, x64.

> clicked its Tag Cloud link

What is that?
I install ca-archive-2.0.3.xpi & it asks me to refresh the page, at which point it displays the expected CAA "web page".



This, scoop.sh?
So what is the command line you use for the install; scoop install palemoon.exe (or some such)?
Where does scoop "get" PM from, PM?

If you don't use scoop, but the .exe installer or Portable, does that also freeze with ca-?

[Moonchild]

Scoop apparently pulls the portable version from the official website when installing and launches it through the portable launcher from a currentuser context. There shouldn't be any specifics there that influence how Pale Moon operates, but launching it from powershell has not been tested, so it's possible it's got some quirks.
Please see if downloading the portable outside of scoop and running it from a fresh extraction still causes issues. I did notice they will clone any system-installed profiles across if present, to the Pale Moon portable user folder, but I don't think they understand that the way they do it won't work because the portable only takes a single profile. Maybe that is causing issues...?

[Michaell]

> clicked its Tag Cloud link

What is that?

It's a jumbled mess that addled minds prefer to organized lists. Mostly for the kids.

tagcloud.jpg

[moonbat]

Mostly for the kids.

Funny given that tag clouds were in common use 20 years ago. It's us old farts and not kids who find tags useful for categorizing (until Twitstagram ruined it for all with hashtags which are a different beast)- at a glance you can see what tags are popular, as well as relative to others.

[back2themoon]

Works fine here, 33.7.0.

[Kerebron]

at a glance you can see what tags are popular, as well as relative to others.

Well, you can, if it's done properly. This alphabet soup that Michaell posted is completely illegible. I prefer simple graphs or maps anyway.

[Gemmaugr]

Off-topic:

at a glance you can see what tags are popular, as well as relative to others.

Well, you can, if it's done properly. This alphabet soup that Michaell posted is completely illegible. I prefer simple graphs or maps anyway.

Look completely jumbled to me too. I prefer lists that can be sorted by oldest/newest and alphabetically, etc.

[moonbat]

Renders fine for me:

Screenshot_20250417_114628.png

[Moonchild]

I don't really understand what good a tag cloud does for an archive of extensions, anyway. It's good to show "currently trending" for highly dynamic environments like social media, but for a static archive...? Nothing, other than "Look ma, I made a tag cloud!"

To get back to the issue, I'd still like to know if using the portable outside of scoop still causes issues for OP or not, because if not, it may in fact be a potential issue with scoop's script (e.g. the copying of a system profile folder upon "clean" install not actually making for a clean install... If there's some ancient data in there or the superstructure being copied instead of profile contents could cause issues, maybe)

[CodeLurker]

False alarm. Sorry guys.

Scoop is a grossly bloated, but non-crippleware alternative to Choclaty. It is free, but like anything that gets anywhere near Git, want's to draw in nearly a whole Linux ecosystem of about 1Gb size. (I find Mercurial much more intuitive and lightweight, myself.) Scoop downloads and installs programs conveniently and efficiently, when it doesn't encounter a bug; and even lets you choose old verss. I'm running PM in Sandboxie, of course, and I'm sorta evaluating scoop, but don't yet see a better freeware Win alternative. I figure it's pretty convenient for the things it does work right on.

I don't know what happened with the lockups. It just now started working on CAA, but that was only after deleting my sandbox contents. That usually means that some webpage I visited tried to do something to the browser; but since I have Sandboxie set to allow access my profile, but not the PaleMoon dir itself, nor most others, deleting the sandbox contents gets rid of mods to the the program dir itself, but not the profile. It wasn't something I saved there; nor had I had time to get into sites that that might have been malware prone.

Smooth sailing so far, on 33.7.0. Great work guys. Just now discovering the joy of using Tree Style Tabs with autohide enabled, and Tab Groups Manager reloaded; since I'm lazy about closing tabs I may want to come back to later. It can hibernate an entire group, freeing up resources. By contrast, I can do something similar in FF, but can't resize the vertical tabs without editing the CSS I use to create the effect. Sidebery is good, and saves sessions as "Snapshots", but doesn't have a hibernate feature, and "Tree Tabs" does but is too crashy. YouTube and Yahoo Mail Greasemonkey scripts don't work right on FF, but beautifully on PM. Prime Movies doesn't like PM, tho:

Problem occurred
The video player didn't load correctly. Please try opening the video again. If the problem continues, please contact Amazon Customer Service and refer to error 7131.

I think they're really aggressive about supporting only certain browsers for that, tho most of Amazon works fine.

I've never used a tag for a bookmark or an extension myself. I could see how some might care about them for bookmarks. I've clicked on a tag in that cloud a couple of times, but just a big one where I wanted something already on that subject. If tags are supposed to be helpful, why don't they have a simple list with no. of extensions for that tag?

[CodeLurker]

Aha! I can replicate it. I tried uninstalling the browser in scoop and recreating it by adding extensions. I got the same problem again! Yet, CAA was already previously installed and working.

When I had installed all my extensions from the PM Add-ons site, clicking Tools | Classic Add-ons Archive and clicking the search box appeared to cause a freeze. I went away for a while, and it started responding again. I began disabling extensions until the problem went away, and was able to determine it was the CanvasBlocker Legacy that caused it! I think a portable install with only that and CAA will replicate it.

[Moonchild]

Well, considering CAA uses a webby interface, it's possible that canvasblocker interferes there. The only solution would be for someone to investigate and either patch CAA, patch Canvasblocker, or both.