[0427] Are you forking Firefox Extensions? Because time is almost up!

[Moonchild]

IMO as far Basilisk keeps compatibility with the legacy extensions

Topsy-turvy world. Basilisk has no requirement to keep compatibility with what is extending it. I will not be able to guarantee legacy and unmaintained Firefox extensions will continue to work unaltered but it will simply be a slower process of breakage. But that breakage is going to be inevitable. The platform will evolve, and extensions will break even if the application code isn't touched.

Let me make one thing abundantly clear: this is inevitable but not intentional. It is the logical outcome of growing discrepancies with unmaintained extensions and I will not take on the impossible task of trying to keep backwards compatibility. It will be up to users to make sure it works; that has always been the case for any extension of the thousands that have been created over time.

[francesco bat]

For a long time I have been able to pass to the only extensions of Palemoon and I feel good like this.
The only exception is the "Select Like A Boss" extension which allows you to select the text of the links without clicking the link to visit the page or avoid doing the Drag & Drop of it.
This was a cult option for all users like me who at the time used Opera when it was the real Opera and not the crap it has become since it became that Chrome Fork.
Maybe you could add this option directly in the settings of Palemoon as it is an exceptional feature and that at the time really made Opera an exceptional browser.
Bye
Francesco bat

[Moonchild]

Why are you suggesting a core feature change that will be confusing and against long-established behavior of the browser?
I suggest you fork Select Like a Boss yourself if you want to use it.
Bye
Moonchild

[prengle]

'cause i feel like being obnoxious: refusing to provide support for unmaintained ff addons you didn't make is ok, encouraging people to learn xul and fork the ones they like is fine, stepping aside and saying "what we're doing now is unsustainable, we need to make changes" is a reasonable thing for a guy running any ship to do, arbitrarily breaking those still-kinda-functional ff extensions en masse because WE ARE YOUR GODS AND WE DEMAND IT is bull and you know it. there is nothing that justifies this decision for the end user, this is just you making these extensions harder to use for the people who know how to circumvent the blocklist and giving them the middle finger. warning people is nice but that doesn't change the fact that you're still barging into their houses and breaking stuff that was working fine beforehand. this isn't going to solve the problem you claim it's going to fix.

not saying any of the uxp contributors are literally as bad as google/microsoft/apple/hitler/whatever but this is the exact same reasoning that big tech chucklefucks and lazy devs use when they want to strip out "legacy" cruft from old software - i don't use [x] and i don't want people to use it, so i'm going to forcefully remove it because haha get bent. you're fine with people running deprecated plugins (yes i know there is no reason to remove npapi itself) like java and silverlight and god knows what else, but some rando still using old firefox extensions in Current Year that he can't replace yet is an active danger to society? blocking ads and telling manipulative advertising firms to bite it is cool, but using adnauseam is going too far? i'm not surprised, this mentality is an irreplaceable part of pale moon's branding and it has been for years, but this decision in particular just feels incredibly unnecessary to me.

if you want to complain about people tearing you apart for this and how waterfox is supporting xul without any backup plan, fine, but you incited this to begin with by continuing to support these addons up until now, and you're going to piss off people by taking away things that haven't broken yet; i don't even use a lot of ff-specific extensions, but some people do, and most of them aren't going to magically learn xul and javascript and start cranking out addons, because learning is hard and the vast majority of people physically can't be assed to maintain an extension. instead, they're just going to give up, ditch pale moon, bitch about it, and this'll go down in the books as yet another pr disaster - like that openbsd thread on github that people still link to. i want to see pale moon/uxp thrive in a future where everything is chrome, but it's hard to encourage people to develop uxp addons when all of those users have moved away and the devs keep antagonizing their own niche, fractured userbase. i'm not even trying to viciously tear anyone apart here, i'm just incredibly frustrated

i don't think pm-specific addons are rare just because the old ff ones still work, they're rare because (as much as i hate it) xul and other old mozilla/netscape technologies are becoming increasingly obscure, pale moon is fundamentally niche (and becoming gradually less viable to use as a daily driver. thanks webcomponents!) and the few diehards that still care enough to work with/learn xul either get driven away or lose interest. breaking ff addon support and telling people "JUST FORK IT" isn't going to fix the multitude of issues that have led us to this point

[vannilla]

when they want to strip out "legacy" cruft from old software

The funny thing is, none of this is "legacy". XUL has been called "legacy" only because of Firefox, but from the perspective of UXP, it's "current".
In fact, a vast majority of unmaintained Firefox-targeting extensions do work just fine with the current XUL system in UXP.
However, they are unmaintained, and that's what this is all about.
It's not about removing technologies, because XUL is and XUL will be "current" instead of "legacy", so the same technology powering the Firefox-target extensions is still there.
As past threads have shown, often you just need to edit the install.rdf file to get the extension to work and in fact, to "fork" (bear with me for a moment as I use this word) an old extension, license permitting, all you need to do is to edit the install.rdf file, change the name and the main icon. The extension will still work and will target Pale Moon or whatever.
So why aren't people doing this for all the license-permitted extensions? Because extensions need to be maintained.
To maintain an extension you don't have to write code, but you need to put a way to contact you (e.g. your e-mail address) so that if there is a bug the users can notify you and most importantly you need to be there to address those bugs. It is fine to ask someone else to write the code for you, but the point is that there needs to be someone who makes sure that the extension still works whenever a new milestone is out.
Not everybody who knows XUL wants to take this responsibility, especially as they usually have their own extensions to take care of in addition to their personal life.
Can you (a generic you, not you user with name prengle) take the responsibility of placing your working e-mail address together with a rebranded extension?
That's what it takes to maintain an extension, and that's why unmaintained extensions are shown the door.

[billmcct]

The only exception is the "Select Like A Boss" extension which allows you to select the text of the links without clicking the link to visit the page or avoid doing the Drag & Drop of it.

I am now and have been for the last 15 years or more, been able to right click a link and select "Copy link location". Now if this was added by one of the 84 add-ons I use or not, I can't really remember with my old and Alzheimer'ed brain.

[francesco bat]

The only exception is the "Select Like A Boss" extension which allows you to select the text of the links without clicking the link to visit the page or avoid doing the Drag & Drop of it.

I am now and have been for the last 15 years or more, been able to right click a link and select "Copy link location". Now if this was added by one of the 84 add-ons I use or not, I can't really remember with my old and Alzheimer'ed brain.

No!
I wrong to write.
With this addon you can select the link and to copy the text wrote without to copy the link (this is very useful when the text is different from link address.
For example: in this forum here's the link "Forum index"; with this addon (and like Opera Presto) you can to select "Forum index" and copy "Forum index" or partial text and no the link: index.php
Bye
Francesco bat

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Off-topic:
Because the Reddit Shithole is going to continue being Anti-Pale Moon (and not allow me to speak) regardless I should be clear.

As you may have noticed in the topic there are numbers. These numbers are a date. That date is the release date of Pale Moon 29.2.0 (April 27th). This is the intended release when the Dual-GUID hack that has been disabled for months and finally removed on unstable builds will bubble up to the release channel.

You have that long to produce forks or create new replacements for Firefox extensions that actually target Pale Moon and won't be unmaintained for over five years now. The technology remains the same, everything that worked before will work after just the requirement to actually target Pale Moon will be different.

Otherwise, back up your profile, never update again, and leave the spacetime continuum. You can always rejoin later, I guess. Assuming some zero day security flaw doesn't get you.

Though there is always Basilisk where Firefox Extension entropy will play out in slow motion within a much more suitable environment.

We think of everything, don't we?

[Lurker_01]

never update again

To answer the forum topic, i did my own part, i forked the browser a year ago for my own personal use and i don't accept these kind of patches when i self-build it. (obligatory, i don't report bugs without testing official version, because otherwise you will get mis-interpreted here, though i never encountered my own bug once)
Up now, i never had any problems or conflicts.
Sorry, this scary security talk doesn't work on me since i am up to date (yes, extensions can also have their own share of problems), just without the unnecessary pain points.
I don't even use any Firefox extensions currently, and if they break because the browser changes, so be it, but not because someone turned a switch.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

So people will fork the whole thing rather than make a fork of an extension with a minimum of maintainance?

What universe is this?

[prengle]

snip

lol i went on another tirade so i'll reiterate: i'm fine with the team not wanting to support unmaintained extensions, i'm not fine with them forcing this decision onto people since i think that's stretching the definition of "your browser, your way"... even if it's fairly easy to get them working again (and i bet most people are just going bypass the blocklist out of spite instead of forking extensions), that's still a lot of unnecessary effort that the user has to put in for no real reason. it's not surprising and it's not nearly as bad as saying "lol we're switching to a new extension format because of SPEED and SECURITY, get used to it" but i guess i'm the kind of stubborn shut-in that sees no reason to "fix" things that aren't broken yet, and i would generally assume that most people championing old mozilla tech in [current year] are capable of realizing that this is one of the most annoying things any software dev can do

yes, xul is still relevant... in semi-niche uxp-only browsers. i'm willing to assume that pm users are more likely to be able to maintain/write browser addons, but it's unreasonable to expect the majority of them to be proficient in doing so, the prevailing mindset these days is "lol can't be bothered" and it's hard to convince people to exclusively write xul extensions for the few browsers that support them when everything else uses crappy webextensions. not blaming pm for that, yes xul is better technology but that's just the grim reality at the moment. i do think people should be motivated to write xul addons by readily available documentation and a community that's willing to help them with development, not by moonchild and tobin pushing the big red "nuke firefox extensions" button hidden under the desk

also, considering how many people are complaining about sites breaking because of webcomponents (which i know you can't really blame on the browser), shouldn't fixing that be a bigger priority than gimping firefox extensions for ideological reasons? those addons play a big role in persuading people to use pale moon, this may be the worst possible time to take them away from that group. i guess asking them to learn c++ might be pushing it a bit though

happy easter everyone

[josephd]

i went on another tirade so i'll reiterate: ...........

Off-topic:
Now that you got all that off your chest. Tell us all how you really feel.

[jobbautista9]

this may be the worst possible time to take them away from that group.

No, it would be the worst possible time to delay this move to finally end support for unmaintained Firefox-only extensions, considering that a lot of them will break now that they are going to assume that Australis is present (since it's introduced in Firefox 29, the same version number as Pale Moon currently is now), when it's not.

And no, Moon Tester Tool is not a proper solution, even if it workarounds the Australis issue.

[dapgo]

So people will fork the whole thing rather than make a fork of an extension with a minimum of maintainance?

What universe is this?

The reality is that most user of a browser are not developers or have no enough time to learn or code. However some loyal user to some addons will happily collaborate paying for it.

It is clear to me that this ultimatum is not going to produce enough new "XUL developers".

But maybe paying them some developers with time can be interested in the task, if there are developers, then the community can decide importance and priority of addons, and through a crowdfunding raise money to update them.

[jobbautista9]

If they don't have time to maintain the add-on, then they don't really care about that add-on at all. Simple as that.

So I'm not sure why there are people who act like their life depends on a particular add-on they are using, yet when they are asked to maintain it, they quickly cower. It's not like you're going to be alone in maintaining it anyway. You can always ask for help. You don't even have to learn everything about XUL and JavaScript in order to maintain an add-on. When I forked DerBrowserTimer (which is a very old add-on from like 2006) into BrowserTickTock, I had very little knowledge about XUL and JavaScript.

Thankfully FranklinDM from the add-ons team helped me polish it for first release to the add-ons repo. Maintaining an add-on is not as bad as you think.

[snertev]

If they don't have time to maintain the add-on, then they don't really care about that add-on at all. Simple as that.

People have a life beyond the browser/extension they use.

Developers can drop support, but don't pretend users will provide it.

It's simply irrealistic an whole ecosystem can survive in such a way.

[jobbautista9]

You are correct that most users are too busy to be able to maintain an add-on. I have no problem with such people.

I have problems with people who say that some particular add-on is their life, but when asked to provide maintenance for it, they quickly refuse. In that case, they are lying. They don't really care about the add-on at all.

[vannilla]

People have a life beyond the browser/extension they use.

And yet there are addons developers, both now and in the past.
Do you think your favourite extension would exist if everyone reasoned like that, saying "I have a life, I don't have time to extend the browser"?
As jobbautista9 said, the point is not about becoming full time developers, it's about people having an outrage saying their life depends on something, yet they don't even try to keep their life-saving tool alive, citing excuses like "I don't have the time", while also saying the extension is a deal-breaker.
If it's so important, you make time for it. Otherwise, you are full of crap and the extension isn't as important as you tout.

[Moonchild]

Developers can drop support, but don't pretend users will provide it.

Stop right there.

You are absolutely correct that there is no guarantee that users will provide it, but that is never what we said.
All we have ever said is that users have always been the ones to provide extensions (99% of all existing extensions were created by users like you!) and if users want to continue having the benefit of extensions going forward then they must provide what is in their best interest or the result is simply that they will no longer have the extension available.

There seems to be this misconception here that any of us are saying "You must do this because we say so!". That is not what is going on. But: there is a "must" involved: people MUST step up and do something OR they will lose access to their extensions. That "must" is one of necessity, not one of command. Maybe that distinction is difficult to understand (e.g. for people who are also dealing with a language barrier) but it is most definitely there.

I'll rewrite this without using the term "must":
If you don't step up and take responsibility for extensions in use that nobody else has taken under their care yet, then those extensions will no longer be available. If the extension is essential for your workflow, then you have the choice to give something back to the community for the privilege of being able to use powerful extensions by becoming a maintainer (= designated point of contact and responsible for managing the extension more than anything else, as you can always ask for help when stuck with code). If you decide that that's "not for you" then there is the risk that nobody else will do it and you will have to do without the extension going forward.

There are other options like forever staying on a non-updated browser or hacking installs for your personal use but none of those are optimal or in any way contributing to our collective future.

[snertev]

People have a life beyond the browser/extension they use.

And yet there are addons developers, both now and in the past.
Do you think your favourite extension would exist if everyone reasoned like that, saying "I have a life, I don't have time to extend the browser"?
As jobbautista9 said, the point is not about becoming full time developers, it's about people having an outrage saying their life depends on something, yet they don't even try to keep their life-saving tool alive, citing excuses like "I don't have the time", while also saying the extension is a deal-breaker.
If it's so important, you make time for it. Otherwise, you are full of crap and the extension isn't as important as you tout.

I really want a new house in the Alps. It's my dream.

But I won't learn how to build it. I'll pay an architect to project it and a construction company to build it.

Developers can drop support, but don't pretend users will provide it.

Stop right there.

You are absolutely correct that there is no guarantee that users will provide it, but that is never what we said.
All we have ever said is that users have always been the ones to provide extensions (99% of all existing extensions were created by users like you!) and if users want to continue having the benefit of extensions going forward then they must provide what is in their best interest or the result is simply that they will no longer have the extension available.

There seems to be this misconception here that any of us are saying "You must do this because we say so!". That is not what is going on. But: there is a "must" involved: people MUST step up and do something OR they will lose access to their extensions. That "must" is one of necessity, not one of command. Maybe that distinction is difficult to understand (e.g. for people who are also dealing with a language barrier) but it is most definitely there.

I'll rewrite this without using the term "must":
If you don't step up and take responsibility for extensions in use that nobody else has taken under their care yet, then those extensions will no longer be available. If the extension is essential for your workflow, then you have the choice to give something back to the community for the privilege of being able to use powerful extensions by becoming a maintainer (= designated point of contact and responsible for managing the extension more than anything else, as you can always ask for help when stuck with code). If you decide that that's "not for you" then there is the risk that nobody else will do it and you will have to do without the extension going forward.

There are other options like forever staying on a non-updated browser or hacking installs for your personal use but none of those are optimal or in any way contributing to our collective future.

I perfectly understand your point of view and the necessity to do something by users to keep using older extensions.

And some users may have skills and time to become new maintainers.

It's simply irrealistic, in my opinion, to replicate such method for the whole ecosystem.

Of course, it isn't your duty to maintain endlessly the older ecosystem.

Things evolves, collapse or simply die (or barely survive). It's Nature.