Outreach to add-on developers? Topic is solved

[redblade7]

Do you think we should have some kind of outreach campaign to Firefox add-on developers who have left/are leaving over the non-WebExtensions ban and continue to develop the addons "only for Pale Moon" or "for Pale Moon and Waterfox"? It would provide good press and increased market share for Pale Moon, and since Pale Moon doesn't do rapid-release it won't be nearly as much work for them. Don't you think we should start some kind of campaign and contact add-on developers which do not want to redesign their software for WebExtensions and would otherwise just quit?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Two years ago called and wished you good luck with that. Also, last week.

[Fedor2]

redblade7
How are you going to do this, contact them all individually, or make exclamation note?
One i would amplify, that this must not be importunate.

[redblade7]

Two years ago called and wished you good luck with that. Also, last week.

God, I only returned to Pale Moon last week after I realized the fate of Vimperator. I wouldn't have known about the campaign last week since I returned to the forum at the same time. You don't have to be rude.

[redblade7]

redblade7
How are you going to do this, contact them all individually, or make exclamation note?
One i would amplify, that this must not be importunate.

I'd say a good start is contacting developers of our favorite addons who are unaware of/know little about Pale Moon. But we can also find some tech blogger to publish a positive review of Pale Moon.

[kizo07]

a good start

If you contact developers and say 'I shouldn't be telling you this about Waterfox' at the beginning of a conversation people will pay attention to you.

[redblade7]

a good start

If you contact developers and say 'I shouldn't be telling you this about Waterfox' at the beginning of a conversation people will pay attention to you.

Well as a start, I just e-mailed the developers of DownThemAll, who abandoned the project with an angry message on their page. I told them a bit about Pale Moon and why addons don't need to be updated so much, and to consider actively developing DownThemAll for Pale Moon only, and mentioned that the Pentadactyl developers only develop for Pale Moon now. I also mentioned that many Pale Moon users rely on DownThemAll in conjunction with Flashgot as the "Browser Built In" option does not work on Pale Moon. Flashgot I believe is aware of Pale Moon as they have acknowledged the bug.

[Shadeclan]

Here is a suggestion, something that occurred to me while emailing my friend Ziggy (creator of the LavaFox themes) who is gearing up to support us.

Mozilla is preparing to abandon all (real) add-ons. Most Firefox users are probably still unaware that, sometime in the next 8 months, their browser is going to update and none of their add-ons are going to work.

The only way (apart from Moonchild winning the Lotto ) that PaleMoon is going to get general support from web developers like the "Big 3" (Chrome, Firefox, IE) receive is if we do a little "evangelizing", spread the word about PaleMoon and get people to start bugging web programmers to give their support. They won't listen to Moonchild - as he has stated in these forums numerous times, he continually reaches out to these people and they continually ignore him.

One thing I thought of is this: we can get a little easy advertizing if we simply post reviews for add-ons we use on the Mozilla add-on site and include "Works with PaleMoon" - maybe even include a link to the download page. Has anybody tried this? Does Mozilla routinely remove comments with PaleMoon in them? Maybe it doesn't matter if they do - our persistence is what matters. This is something I was going to start doing today.

It couldn't hurt and can only help to get the message out there that there still exists a browser that is keeping the old promise of Firefox alive.

[adisib]

I would love to see Firefox extension developers migrating to Pale Moon, but I think the focus should rather be on teaching people who are not extension developers on how to become extension developers. From what I've glanced at, Pale Moon addon development generally just says "Go look at how to make Firefox addons". And then being confronted with numerous different types of Firefox extensions, the most recent of which doesn't even work with Pale Moon at all. It doesn't look easy to learn how to make addons as a result, and I for one don't want to try to sort it out when it could be easier to learn if someone made it so. There should be more of a focus on creating new developers, as Pale Moon continues to become more divergent.

[GreenGeek]

We could help each other. I suggested an extension developer section for this forum (or a separate forum), and it was ignored. The real gurus probably don't want to be bothered with teaching, but those who are just learning could help others get started. Since we wouldn't likely be expecting any monetary compensation for our extensions, there shouldn't be any reason not to collaborate. One thing that was disappointing to me last summer was that there aren't any good books or offline tutorials on the subject. What we wouldn't want is anybody being mean to the people trying to learn - if you can't help/teach, butt out!

[Shadeclan]

... I think the focus should rather be on teaching people who are not extension developers on how to become extension developers ...

Always great to get more people on board helping out PaleMoon; Moonchild & co., but putting out reviews on add-ons that DO work in PaleMoon serves 2 purposes:

• It informs the add-ons user that there's an alternative to Chrome-style browsers
• If we include info in our reviews about add-ons going away, it informs the developers that they won't be developing add-ons for Firefox much longer - many of them do this as a hobby and are unaware that this is even happening.

... There should be more of a focus on creating new developers, as Pale Moon continues to become more divergent.

I prefer to think of it as Firefox who is divergent while PaleMoon is staying the course. Mozilla is abandoning everything to conform to the herd. PaleMoon is staying true to the initial vision of a highly customizable, flexible and fast browser.

[Shadeclan]

We could help each other. I suggested an extension developer section for this forum (or a separate forum), and it was ignored. The real gurus probably don't want to be bothered with teaching, but those who are just learning could help others get started. Since we wouldn't likely be expecting any monetary compensation for our extensions, there shouldn't be any reason not to collaborate. One thing that was disappointing to me last summer was that there aren't any good books or offline tutorials on the subject. What we wouldn't want is anybody being mean to the people trying to learn - if you can't help/teach, butt out!

Yes, we should help each other. I think we don't really need a separate forum. This one is dedicated to add-ons - why not use it?

Found this after a quick search - it may help: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK
It's shown as being depreciated so I guess we'd better download the info and give it to Tobin for posting before it gets lost.

[Lootyhoof]

We currently have a (admittedly under-developed in several areas) wiki: http://developer.palemoon.org

If anyone has the inclination to do so, instead of just saying what should be done, maybe someone should just do it.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

The front page is out of date obviously.. As for contributing.. Just do it.. Locations and structure can be organized and changed later. Do not check with me lol.

[GreenGeek]

That's a wiki, not a forum. Forum is better for collaboration/discussion. Wiki is good for archiving knowledge, but first you have to work things out. We could find a way to host it somewhere else (I just gave up my webhosting account, but there are free alternatives.) Another point was separating extension development from browser development; that site seems geared toward browser development. And having it here in this forum is not good unless it's password protected (or user group members) because we wouldn't want the peanut gallery (regular users) installing incomplete code; it needs to be for extension developers only. Big question I guess is, is there enough interest? [And we'd need a way to keep trouble makers locked out.]

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Non-sense.. The wiki is the perfect place for documentation.. Also, why separate extension and application development.. Save for the SDK.. Everything else is virtually identical between Toolkit Applications and Toolkit Extensions.

[Shadeclan]

Non-sense.. The wiki is the perfect place for documentation.. Also, why separate extension and application development.. Save for the SDK.. Everything else is virtually identical between Toolkit Applications and Toolkit Extensions.

OK, Master Tobin - I've created an account in the PaleMoon developer's section and I'll transfer the Mozilla Add-On Developer pages over the next few weeks as time permits - that way, when Mozilla removes the pages, we'll still have them. Any particular place you want it?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Do not transfer the SDK documentation.. What is on MDN isn't exactly right.. In fact much of it is likely ranging between out of date to changes that we don't have.. It isn't as easy as copypasta.. If it was.. it would have been done already.

I doubt Mozilla is gonna remove anything anytime soon and we do have a couple of era dumps from MDN.. Don't copypaste things unless you know they are applicable.. You will be just creating more work for everyone else.

[Shadeclan]

... I doubt Mozilla is gonna remove anything anytime soon and we do have a couple of era dumps from MDN.. Don't copypaste things unless you know they are applicable.. You will be just creating more work for everyone else.

Don't wanna do that, for sure! Already enough work.

Do not transfer the SDK documentation.. What is on MDN isn't exactly right.. In fact much of it is likely ranging between out of date to changes that we don't have.. It isn't as easy as copypasta.. If it was.. it would have been done already.

If the SDK documentation is not applicable to us, what do we do? You guys can't really spare someone who actually knows anything to revamp the documentation. On the other hand, we can't get any newbies on board without it.

Got any ideas? How much different is PaleMoon add-on development from the Mozilla docs? I could learn it myself ...

[New Tobin Paradigm]

The Jetpack SDK documentation needs to come from our platform not the latest/last documentation from Mozilla.. Also, it should be written with a PMKit perspective in mind.