Pale Moon, Firefox 22 and NoSquint

Talk about code development, features, specific bugs, enhancements, patches, and similar things.
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Martinbr

Pale Moon, Firefox 22 and NoSquint

Unread post by Martinbr » 2013-07-05, 02:09

Hi, everyone!

This is my first posting on this forum. I only discovered Pale Moon some hours ago when I was looking for an alternative to Firefox, and I must say that the Pale Moon is really great. Thanks to the developers!

I came across PM when a problem occurred after the update to FF 22 (on Win XP). With NoSquint installed, the zoom level of all web pages was much higher. The problem occurs because FF 22 now adjusts the page zoom level according to the DPI settings in the system. On my PC, they're set to 120 DPI (125%) (and the default page zoom level in NoSquint is set to 120%).

Many users have had the same problem, and it's described in several forums, e.g. here. Workarounds are described in the forum discussions too, but even with them, the display of web pages doesn't seem to work as well as before the update in many cases. Some users have mentioned that the pages look more blurred, and it seems that this was the case on my PC too.

Anyway, with PM, everything's great now! With NoSquint installed for PM too, all web pages seem to appear like in FF before version 22 with the same zoom levels.

Now my question is: What will it be like in future versions of PM? Are you planning to change the way PM adjusts the page zoom level? I think if everything stays as it is, that'll save many users of NoSquint quite a lot of trouble.

Regards,
Martin

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Re: Pale Moon, Firefox 22 and NoSquint

Unread post by Moonchild » 2013-07-05, 09:00

You might want to read the comments on the Bugzilla bug #851520 about the background and implications of the change in the way high-DPI scaling is handled. Effectively, NoSquint/Default Zoom/etc. should no longer be needed on high-DPI systems, but if you had it installed before, the scaling would be magnified (since it was previously compensating for an (incorrect) lack of zoom on high-DPI systems).

Unless I'm missing something additional here, it's more a problem because some default behavior changed (and previous workarounds causing issues) than actually being a problem with how the scaling works. If there's something else that seems to be an issue, please attach some screenshots to this thread to show us?

Moving this to development discussion; certainly on-topic for that board.
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Re: Pale Moon, Firefox 22 and NoSquint

Unread post by Blacklab » 2013-07-05, 11:00

@Martinbr: Welcome to the forum! :) This has certainly started a few grumpy threads on mozillaZine Re: zoom, magnify, font, blurring, etc.

Hope you will enjoy using Pale Moon of course... but if you would like to have a stable and fully security patched copy of Firefox as well then try the ESR version. I'm using Firefox ESR as a simple way to keep two long-time favourite Add-ons going, both currently broken in Firefox 22. Obviously hoping the Add-on developers provide updates but, perhaps more realistically, also looking for alternatives/replacements! :(

The current ESR is based on Firefox 17 and will last until early December. Download link for Firefox 17.0.7esr is at the bottom of Mozilla's ESR Overview article: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/o ... tions/faq/ I have had no problems just running the 17.0.7esr installer on top of Firefox 21 & 22 - but you might want to back up your Firefox Profile first just in case: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ba ... nformation

Martinbr

Re: Pale Moon, Firefox 22 and NoSquint

Unread post by Martinbr » 2013-07-05, 12:50

Thanks for the helpful comments. Now I'm still curious to know how Pale Moon will behave in the future. Will the default behaviour be changed in upcoming versions, or will it stay as it is? Are there any plans?

TIA for your answers!
Martin

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Re: Pale Moon, Firefox 22 and NoSquint

Unread post by Moonchild » 2013-07-05, 19:48

Well, it all depends on if the behavior with auto-scaling on High-DPI screens is actually broken or not. The add-ons mentioned were, among other things, created because Firefox didn't scale up with the system-wide change in DPI. If that's corrected in Firefox 22, then you no longer need the "band-aid". I'm sure the Mozilla team will iron out any dependent bugs before v24, so, in that case, Pale Moon's behavior will change accordingly since it's actually fixing incorrect behavior on High-DPI screens. Until then though, Pale Moon will continue using the v20 code base which will retain the current set of features in that respect.

In addition, it seems that it's been something they have wanted to fix for quite a while, considering the comment along with the relevant default pref pre-22:

Code: Select all

// Disable auto-configuration of devPixelsPerPx until we're ready to turn
// it on.
pref("layout.css.devPixelsPerPx", "1.0");
(which, by the way, would be the setting to use to revert to 1:1 (no scaling) display on High-DPI screens.)
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
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