I have just gone and read through this entire thread. (Which is rare for me to do) I'm going to respond to a few posts, and give my thoughts. I was only notified that this existed today, sorry for being late.
I think this is a positive change, even though I wasn't really impacted by it. (Mainly because I use Waterfox) When I tried Pale Moon 29.4.4 AVX, I was able to use the classic Firefox extensions I wanted with little modification. (I didn't even realize that they work without modification now) I have a couple WebExtensions that somewhat hold me back from being able to use Pale Moon though on the addons side.
Massacre wrote: ↑2021-12-15, 05:25
Pale Moon is the best browser for running multiple tabs and using classic addons and plugins.
I dunno, Pale Moon can get very, very slow when dealing with lots of tabs due to not having e10s.
Cassette wrote: ↑2021-12-16, 21:42
I think there's interesting possibilities with Pale Moon rebasing on Firefox ESR. It would solve the issue of constantly trying to work in new web standards that are difficult to implement and instead focus on improving the Firefox experience. Give user choice back like re-enable NPAPI plugin support, tab on top/bottom option in the menu so CSS tricks aren't required, reimplement a functional status bar, and etc. Instead of trying to make your own browser which is a massive undertaking, improve one that already exists and basing on ESR would make that process easier.
You've basically described what modern releases of Waterfox have been. Releases of Firefox ESR with some modifications like that. At that point, I'd rather just use Firefox and get the benefits of a non-ESR engine.
m3city wrote: ↑2021-12-17, 12:43
As time has shown, webext got embraced, some extensions died, some adjusted and some replaced. I feel that holding onto legacy extensions is the most user base narrowing factor, you simply cant grow with that. And growing userbase should be one the aims of a projects anyway. I read Mr Straver's comment that webextensions cant be implemented, and yet I need to ask - why? That one change exposes PM to all users that feel uncomfortable with FF.
WebExtensions are getting more and more necessicary to implement as time goes on. It's all some people know, and easier to work with. I have been able to figure out how to modify some WebExtensions, but modifying legacy extensions, let alone creating a new one to replicate a existing WebExtension is near impossible for me to do. Nobody else seems to want to make legacy versions, so I just don't know what to do.
For adding WebExtensions to Pale Moon, I think looking at Waterfox Classic development could help, they were able to get some modern 57+ WebExtensions working on a pre-quantum codebase. I'm actually using a few of them right now in my browser.
Drugwash wrote: ↑2021-12-17, 17:29
There are a few people I know using XP daily, on bare metal not in virtual machines, at home or at work, and this cannot be changed for various reasons other than sheer moronic stubbornness. They recently complained about not being able to log into their Wordpress blog accounts with any available browser. And there aren't many such browsers at all. Irony is I currently can't log in myself either with Pale Moon on Linux Mint 19.2. The XP users and the Pale Moon users and who-knows-how-many-others in time are like the unvaccinated in
New Brunswick, Canada that are being
denied access to grocery stores.
Although it would probably never happen, making Pale Moon compatible with XP would be an easy task due to the browser having no Rust code. Firefox extension support combined with that would basically kill the need for the forks that people here love to hate on so much.
Also comparing XP users or users not using whatever is current to anti vaxxers is an ignorant comparison that the wider Rust loving internet uses. We shouldn't act like them.
pm4eva wrote: ↑2021-12-21, 19:36
On the other hand in PM i just miss now a UserAgentSwitcher.
Last I checked, general.useragent.override in about:config works just fine.
There's also one last thing I want to mention on this topic, but I don't know what to quote for it.
I think the addons site isn't that big of a task to redo/rework. Gecko and Goanna based browsers have no trouble installing from a simple download link. I would prefer that the addons site just be a bunch of html pages that give info on the addon and have a button to install it, instead of what it is now where I have to fake my useragent on Waterfox Classic to be able to install Pale Moon extensions that also work with my browser.
Off-topic:New Tobin Paradigm wrote: ↑2021-12-22, 14:40
As I MAY have a lot of work once to do once I am set up in Texas
Why are you moving to Texas? Everything is worse there, especially the people.