About using Firefox extensions on Pale Moon (discussion)

[Moonchild]

watch/unwatch was never standard.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Exactly.

[Drugwash]

Kinda late to the party but hopefully not too late.

So... I got quite a lot of add-ons in my profile, most of them inherited from a previous profile used in XP. I've been on Linux Mint for a year or so already, using Steve Pusser's builds (BTW, what's the difference between Steve's builds and Trava90's? ).

Most of those add-ons were not explicitly made for - or tested by their developers in - Pale Moon. However I had already performed the GUID "surgery" on them back then, as detailed in this thread. All this time I had no major issues with any of those add-ons or with Pale Moon in general.

But... on several occasions I have been "nudged" here on the boards for using and/or recommending obsolete/incompatible add-ons. Now, as mentioned I didn't have any major issues but for the sake of getting in line with the upcoming changes I'd like to review all the installed add-ons and try to fix any potential issues that may arise.

For that purpose can anyone recommend tools and procedures that could reveal existing or future problems between the add-ons and the Pale Moon core?
The Error Console is one good place to start (and it's quite crowded in there as I just took a peek). There may be other useful tools in the Web Developer menu. Anything else, such as useful resources or add-ons?

I wanted to gather and publish here the list of installed add-ons complete with their versions but couldn't find a way to do it. Suggestions? It would help if someone pointed out the most incompatible/obsolete/harmful of them so I could prioritize.

[Tharthan]

Most of those add-ons were not explicitly made for - or tested by their developers in - Pale Moon. However I had already performed the GUID "surgery" on them back then

Please remember that that is merely a minor, temporary measure. Those non-Pale-Moon add-ons will not work forever, and (indeed) will stop working entirely sooner than you might be expecting.

You need to either get someone to actually fork and maintain for Pale Moon special versions/derivative add-ons of the non-Pale-Moon add-ons that you use (if you cannot fork them yourself), find acceptable alternatives that are made for Pale Moon (see the Pale Moon Add-Ons Site), or accept that you will be unable to use those add-ons and give them up.

But... on several occasions I have been "nudged" here on the boards for using and/or recommending obsolete/incompatible add-ons.

With all due respect, Drugwash, does that really surprise you?

If you are explicitly recommending non-Pale-Moon add-ons to Pale Moon users for attempted use with Pale Moon, you are potentially setting up other users who are not using non-Pale-Moon add-ons to become dependent on an add-on that was never designed for Pale Moon in the first place, and soon will not work.

Which potentially creates headaches for us in the future when said user inevitably creates a forum post where they exclaim "My add-on is disabled and/or broken! HELP!"

[New Tobin Paradigm]

For that purpose can anyone recommend tools and procedures that could reveal existing or future problems between the add-ons and the Pale Moon core?
The Error Console is one good place to start (and it's quite crowded in there as I just took a peek). There may be other useful tools in the Web Developer menu. Anything else, such as useful resources or add-ons?

I wanted to gather and publish here the list of installed add-ons complete with their versions but couldn't find a way to do it. Suggestions? It would help if someone pointed out the most incompatible/obsolete/harmful of them so I could prioritize.

No.

[Drugwash]

@ Tharthan:
That's precisely why I asked for guidance. I could at least attempt to fix myself whatever could/should be fixed instead of waiting for others to do it for me.
I've looked at the add-ons site and it doesn't help much, only a couple of items were upgradable. No replacements for the most important ones - such as YARIP, Screengrab! and others that I just can't give up. I'd rather give up the Internet, for that matter. Hopefully that won't be the case though.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I will get ScreenGrab done eventually.

[moonbat]

uBlock Origin already lets you hide selected parts of a page and create rules to make the change permanent. IMO it's better to use a smaller set of multifunctional extensions than separate ones for each and every thing.

[Drugwash]

uBlock Origin already lets you hide selected parts of a page [...]

If you're referring to that as a replacement to YARIP no, I can't work with it - already tried long ago and doesn't fit my mind's wiring.
Besides, if you didn't know YARIP can also modify chosen CSS elements on a page/site, which can yield amazing results. For example, the Linux Mint forum board has a green theme, a color I strongly dislike, so I used YARIP to turn it purple.

Also, something about the Linux philosophy started to grow on me; a single multifunctional tool when broken affects all areas at once, whereas one small tool broken will only affect its own area, and there may also be some functional overlapping just to be on the safe side. That's why I use NoScript in conjunction with RequestPolicy, YARIP and Redirect Cleaner.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Shit.. If you just want to modify CSS.. Then just use userContent.css.

AS AN EXAMPLE here is my current one:

Code: Select all

/* This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
 * License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
 * file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. */

@-moz-document url-prefix(https://github.com/) {
  .sticky-file-header {
    position: initial !important;
  }

  .Header-link[href="/marketplace"],
  .Header-link[href="/explore"],
  .team-left-column[aria-label="Explore"],
  .js-notification-shelf,
  .js-notification-top-shelf,
  .js-notification-inboxes li:not(:first-child),
  .js-notification-sidebar-repositories,
  .gh-header-shadow,
  .sticky-content {
    display: none !important;
  }
}

As an aside, NoScript disqualifies you any support and severely compromises your credibility on this forum.

[Moonchild]

And as long as you keep using NoScript, Your options for help and support will be very limited. Including the willingness of people to fork stuff for you.
Why don't you take that philosophy you praise so much to heart and learn how to fork your "it's the only solution for me" extension and contribute to the ecosystem?

[Drugwash]

All I ever asked was some guidance as to where to look for problems and what could be used to test and fix. Not for others to do it for me.
Currently I have no issues with my setup - the only issue is what is to come.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Release Notes and UXP Change Log will make an effort to mention backwards incompatible changes as they happen. Though the simple fact is that Firefox Extensions won't be usable on Pale Moon without cooperative and coordinated effort by the community to breath new life into them.

AND No, you can forget about just simply adding a targetApplication block. That is NOT going to be sufficient in the future. I will also not facilitate rogue mods shared or not. One HAS to be willing to not only do things properly but also consider others instead of ones own petty desires. Otherwise, we all may as well stop right now cause there would be NO FUTURE to speak of.

[Drugwash]

I did read this entire thread before posting. No clear guidelines as to where people may start to work on fixing/updating add-ons in order to make them compatible with the upcoming changes in Pale Moon.
Should we download and install an alpha to work with? Would that affect the current profile? Is there a portable alpha that would use its own profile?
Where should we look for errors? What kind of errors should be targeted first? Are there any page templates for testing purposes? Are there any specific tools to use?

I don't see answers to these and other questions. All I see is "you use NoScript - you're bad".
Then there's the talk about licences. So you don't want rogue mods but also consider others but also the licence may not allow modifying/redistributing. It's a mess!

I know what I want: for things to work. Whenever I built something for myself I shared with the others for free. Now I want to fix my installed add-ons to make them compatible with future Pale Moon. If licence allows I'll submit them for testing to whoever is in charge and let them be shared; if not, I still want to use them myself. Simple as that.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

It may help to start small.. You can't just jump in and go crazy. Consider which of your questions is most most important and we can focus on that one and then widdle them down.

All I see is "you use NoScript - you're bad".

Well that is entirely up to you. You are until you aren't. Make a decision.

[vannilla]

To begin with, as a rule of thumb you first should seek if the addons site (addons.palemoon.org, addons.basilisk-browser.org, etc.) already has something doing the same as one of the old extensions you use.
For example, to change CSS you can, among other things, use Stylem.
It's very likely that you will find some substitutes.
Finally, fortunately developing UXP extensions (regardless of the application being extended) is one of the few remaining tasks that don't force you to use a certain tool (aside from UXP itself) or interact with specific services, so you can just take the application (even the stable release), write the code using whatever editor you like, package it, do a test run (maybe in a new profile) and you are done.
Experiment, read other people's code, eventually ask for help here if you are really stuck, and you don't have to bother searching for all the things you asked for.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

That exactly.. Read code from the over nineteen thousand examples in the back catalog and maybe follow some of the development progression of the application frontends themselves. Especially Pale Moon through Tycho into UXP. Seeing as the majority of Pale Moon's UI code came from ESR24 originally, it has had to be adapted to stay Pale Moon as we have progressed over the past 6 years.

Remember, Jetpack (and some aspects of bootstrap) aside, the front end application code and extension code use the same rules, features, and apis to accomplish their tasks.

[Drugwash]

You can't just jump in and go crazy.

Couldn't even if I wanted to. I'm getting old, I'm not in my 30s anymore to stay up 30 hours in a row as I used to do back in the 2000's on the now defunct Miranda IM forums. So if I'm gonna do something it will be one step at the time. But the initial setup is important.

I'll need a Linux alpha and from what I've seen only one is available, Steve Pusser doesn't seem to release alphas. So far I've only used Steve's stable builds and didn't get an answer to my question what is the difference between them, if any. Shouldn't be a problem though.

With current profile there are a lot of infos, warnings and errors in Error Console. A fresh profile is required, and working with only one add-on at a time. What to do if the info/warning/error is unclear whether it pertains to the core or to the add-on? There may be cases where the problem is triggered by the presence of the add-on but it actually lies in the core. How to find out whose blame is exactly, are there any specific tools for that?

Read code from the over nineteen thousand examples in the back catalog and maybe follow some of the development progression of the application frontends themselves.

That'd be great if I didn't have a bad memory. Most of what I learn today I'll forget by tomorrow, so I need to move quickly. It may be trial and error more than anything.

you first should seek if the addons site already has something doing the same [...]

Been there, not much choice if at all. But that aside, an important thing is that some of us got used to a certain tool performing certain operations in a certain way, it's already part of our habit as it has been for years, and any replacement - if available - might look and work more or less differently thus breaking our habit. Young people may find it easier to switch but some of us won't, and that's where fixing rather than replacing comes into play. I'm not gonna build anything from scratch, that's for sure because web languages are not my cup of tea, but I will do my best to attempt fixing whatever and wherever possible. And if anything newer fits as a replacement in most/all aspects then sure I'll go for it.

I'd post my list of installed add-ons - 33 + 2 temporary - but someone might say I'd tempt users with non-compatible stuff so dunno how to find out if people know of similar replacements that may not be listed on the official pages, or if some of them are simple enough to remain compatible with the upcoming changes.

[Tharthan]

Off-topic:

I'm getting old [...] I'm not [...] anymore [...] as I used to do back in the 2000's on the now defunct[...]

[Drugwash]

Off-topic:
Sometimes a discussion needs a little bit of context in order to establish some of its parameters, maybe find some common ground.
Programming may all be about ones and zeros but we're all coming to it from real life where there are so many shades of grey.