Development direction feedback

[Jimmy3434]

My 2 cents, and fwiw I am not a tech nerd whatsoever and don't understand half the tech shit you guys talk about here.
What I DO understand very well is human nature.
I think that you (Pale Moon as a unit) underestimate how many people use your browser who are still using Win7 boxes with only 4GB RAM solely because it is fucking secure and stable.
I appreciate you trying to keep up with the Joneses, but most people who flocked to PM when Moz went mainstream did so because they didn't want to be Joneses at all.
I very humbly and appreciatively suggest you look at your user demographic and see if the direction you are heading is actually serving the majority of people who use your browser.
Every release that you issue requires more and more RAM.
Meaning you are leaving more and more people behind...the very people who you appealed to with PM in the first place.
Are you evolving in a profitable direction?
Certainly!
But are you evolving in the direction you originally intended to?
It no longer looks that way to me.
To me it looks like you are evolving in a direction which caters to the rest of the mainstream browser configurations and handicaps...and privacy issues, and totally unnecessary system demands, which only serve to require users to "upgrade" their hardware and OSes to less secure alternatives.
Don't get me wrong, I am not being critical here, or trying to tell you what to do.
This is YOUR browser, and you can make it what you want.
I have no right to try directing that.
I am just making a suggestion...that you re-examine, critically, what you are trying to accomplish with this whole effort, and whether the direction you are going is the best way to fulfill it.
If it is, great! More power to you!
But if not, changes are clearly in order because indy Mozilla forks are being forced out of modern hardware and the OSes which support them.
It is not going to be much longer and you will have to decide between accepting mainstream contraints or being shut out.
I know you can see it coming, I have read your posts for years and you have said as much.
I will leave you with one thing to consider...Irfanview.
There is a piece of software which someone running WIN95 with 500Mb of RAM can use.
It has adapted to modern tech demands without sacrificing anything.
Indeed, it is more powerful than ever, with very little increase in demand for RAM.
I understand it is an apples to oranges comparison in many ways, a media viewer is not a browser.
But the principle is the thing...a piece of *independent* software should ALWAYS remain FULLY independent.
If it isn't, then we all might as well use Chrome.
Bottom line: compatibility is a trap.
It is a carrot on a stick.
Make good software, and people will buy the hardware to run it.
And they will stick to it, even if it means they won't be able to see CNN's webpage or stream Taylor Swift's cameo at the Superbowl.

No reply necessary, I am not interested in a conversation, I am just dropping some feedback.

[Lootyhoof]

I'm pretty sure in your situation you'd be best using the 32 bit version anyway, which won't be changing its system requirements.

[Pentium4User]

I think that you (Pale Moon as a unit) underestimate how many people use your browser who are still using Win7 boxes with only 4GB RAM solely because it is fucking secure and stable.

Please cross out secure here.

[Moonchild]

I think that you (Pale Moon as a unit) underestimate how many people use your browser who are still using Win7 boxes

I think you over-estimate that number. A quick statistics check (on our web log for update requests) shows me that of a total of 184139 requests, 2749 were from Windows 7 systems. That's 1.5%

EDIT: and of those 1.5% the vast majority seems to be on a smattering of old versions, not the latest... I'm talking v28-v29

Every release that you issue requires more and more RAM.

Every release we are adding more of the obscene web standard that increases complexity of the engine. We must do this, because otherwise we will continue to fall behind in web compatibility.
If, however, you don't want to update or run an older/lighter version, you can do so any time you wish as well, just hop over to the archive server and grab whichever historical version you want.

Are you evolving in a profitable direction?
Certainly!

We are feeling the global recession and inflation as much as anyone else. The project is kept afloat with careful balancing of revenue and expenses but nobody is getting rich here (the opposite, actually - I had to move to a cheaper apartment last summer because of the crunch). We are non-profit as a principle. Our direction is primarily for the user's benefit.

But are you evolving in the direction you originally intended to?

Oh there are things I would love to do differently, sure. But they may not be things you are having in mind here. We're actually getting back to more of the originally intended direction last year and this year. External factors play an important role for a web browser, though, like the mentioned ever-growing collection of web APIs and specifications, constant changes to those specs by the well-known market forces in the web space, and also for a large portion exactly the wishes of users, which not always align with what I would personally want.

I will leave you with one thing to consider...Irfanview.

Apples and oranges. You cannot compare an image viewer handing well-established, clearly-defined, static data, where a developer can focus on making user-facing improvements, to a web browser that needs to handle constantly-changing, poorly-defined, active data and scripting, where the focus is forced to be on being able to display ever-more-complex and large websites. Maybe you don't understand why this is such a difference (in which case someone else could try to explain this to you) but trust me when I say it's not even in the same universe.

No reply necessary, I am not interested in a conversation, I am just dropping some feedback.

Similarly just providing feedback to your feedback. I understand where you're coming from, but unfortunately your understanding of the situation seems to be a bit lacking.

[suzyne]

As a small-time Taylor Swift fan (her 2022 album Midnights is actually very good) I think it is a beautiful thing when a browser makes an effort to show content that I like!

The idea that Pale Moon users as a group largely restrict themselves to phpBB (or whatever their preferred peak web technology from the past is) types of sites doesn't sit right with me.

[athenian200]

My 2 cents, and fwiw I am not a tech nerd whatsoever and don't understand half the tech shit you guys talk about here.

You're entitled to an opinion regardless, but stating this up front doesn't mean you get a free pass from having that opinion picked apart by people who understand things you don't. That's not how the Internet works, my friend.

What I DO understand very well is human nature.

Better than me? Well, I've studied psychology for years in general, actually spent time helping a friend of mine get a degree in it by tutoring them on some fairly complicated aspects of it, despite not technically having a degree in it myself. Oh, and I also know a lot about European History and philosophy, a lot of which informs our subconscious minds in ways most people aren't even aware of. I'd love to pit our predictions of human nature against one another sometime and see who comes out on top, some day. But anyway, now that you've thrown down the gauntlet, let's get on with the thread. LOL.

I think that you (Pale Moon as a unit) underestimate how many people use your browser who are still using Win7 boxes with only 4GB RAM solely because it is fucking secure and stable.

If that were true, we would have dropped Windows 7 support immediately after it went EOL 4 years ago. We've continued to ensure that Pale Moon works with Windows 7 for a reason, and we still provide 32-bit builds partially to accommodate the sort of people who might be running Windows 7 32-bit for as long as we can. And I think it has been worthwhile. But as you've noted, it's getting harder to provide a decent web browsing experience within 4GB of RAM without sacrifices. We're looking into ways to address memory leaks and such already, to try and mitigate some of it, but the fact is the engine is just becoming more complex and some additional RAM use is unavoidable as web standards become more complicated.

I would counter that you underestimate how much consideration we've already given to people who are still using Windows 7 boxes with 4GB of RAM, and how patient we have been with people still using older hardware and operating systems in general. I think we've met them more than halfway, and you (and others like you) have demanded that we surrender our entire project to servicing the needs of such people. I think someone is being unreasonable, but I don't think it's Moonchild.

I appreciate you trying to keep up with the Joneses, but most people who flocked to PM when Moz went mainstream did so because they didn't want to be Joneses at all.
I very humbly and appreciatively suggest you look at your user demographic and see if the direction you are heading is actually serving the majority of people who use your browser.
Every release that you issue requires more and more RAM.
Meaning you are leaving more and more people behind...the very people who you appealed to with PM in the first place.

Now, I would counter that the reason we opposed modern Mozilla was because they were dropping support for things like XUL extensions and themes, and also because we don't like Rust. It wasn't because we specifically wanted to create a browser that is light on RAM use, less RAM use was just a temporary side-effect of pursuing some other goals we had related to streamlining the last usable version of Mozilla's code and adapting it to our purposes. I get what you're saying about human nature, though. When we rebelled against Mozilla and declared that we would stop rebasing on newer versions, we attracted a lot of what I would call, for lack of a better term, "fellow travelers" who were obsessed with unreasonable things like older OS support and older hardware support, who just naturally assumed that their cause was our cause, and felt entitled to our unconditional support. When you stand up to Mozilla like we did, in a way few people would, you attract all types of people who don't like their direction, for reasons both reasonable and unreasonable, and who encourage you to go in a variety of directions.

One of the most common ones is unfortunately people who are mad at them for dropping support for ancient crap, which sucks because that is the least sustainable way of being different from Mozilla and other major browser vendors. Believe me, I get why our project appeals to old-stuff worshippers, they see a lot of opportunity in something still based on Firefox 52 and think it can be brought "back to its roots." Plus, unfortunately the age of people who remember XUL is increasing, so our core demographic is getting older, and unfortunately a lot of people who appreciate one older thing (like XUL) that can theoretically be kept alive also appreciate other older things that are not sustainable, and just fail to see the difference, thinking we are betraying our principles. In reality, they never understood our principles to begin with and heard what they wanted to hear, because as you said, they were "not nerds" and didn't understand what we were saying. It takes a nerd to understand what Pale Moon is about. Simple people on older hardware and operating systems who think Pale Moon is primarily a mindless rebellion against planned obsolescence and seeks only to preserve older hardware and let people use older operating systems longer are missing the bigger picture.

I'm just going to be very blunt about something, and you'll know it's true if you look at Pale Moon's history. We never wanted these unreasonable users who are obsessed with running ancient versions of Windows on 20-year old hardware. That was never what our project was about. We never approached them, and asked them to become Pale Moon users. They came to us acting like they were owed something, and howling in pain every time we moved forward. They've been clinging to us like drowning men trying to keep their heads above water, nearly dragging us under the surface with them. We've always wanted to move the browser forward enough to no longer have to rely on people with that sort of mentality. There have just been times development was stalled, and more and more of the "wrong sort" of people started flocking to us as we lost users who had higher expectations for web compatibility and performance, rather than developers who could help us out of the trap we were in and move things forwards in a direction more suitable to us.

Now that we're finally making enough progress to get some of those people who wanted both powerful XUL extensions and decent web compatibility back into the fold, all those people who wanted Pale Moon to be a browser frozen in time that will support ancient stuff forever are suddenly mad at us. Understandably so, I suppose.

In my mind, what we want to create is simple. A browser with a traditional look and feel that supports powerful XUL extensions, but has modern web compatibility, modern hardware requirements, and requires those XUL extensions to be maintained. We want to move forward in a different direction from Mozilla, not remain stuck in the past forever. Most people fail to understand at least one aspect of this, because it's very complicated, and assume it's either about supporting older hardware forever, supporting EOL versions of Windows forever, or supporting unmaintained XUL extensions forever. Their minds can't conceive of something that isn't pursuing at least one of those goals, and don't understand why someone would create an independent browser that isn't doing one of those three things, if not all of them.

Are you evolving in a profitable direction?
Certainly!
But are you evolving in the direction you originally intended to?
It no longer looks that way to me.

Profit? Really? Probably there would be more profit in producing a browser that was primarily doing what you suggest, than in the direction we've chosen. If this were about money for us, we certainly wouldn't be running the project this way. I suppose it's true we are no longer evolving in the direction people assumed we originally intended to... I do not think they were right about what our intentions were, though.

To me it looks like you are evolving in a direction which caters to the rest of the mainstream browser configurations and handicaps...and privacy issues, and totally unnecessary system demands, which only serve to require users to "upgrade" their hardware and OSes to less secure alternatives.

You're conflating using newer hardware and operating systems, with the kind of issues Mozilla is creating in modern Firefox. They are not the same thing, using old stuff forever isn't a solution, and I don't know why people think it is. We are not here to address the issues with newer hardware and operating systems, in fact Pale Moon supports several alternate operating systems like illumos and BSD now if you care about that. And it could support alternative hardware in the form of RISC-V, especially if that starts taking off. We are here to specifically create a traditional-looking browser with powerful XUL extensions, that targets modern hardware and operating systems, as well as compatibility with the modern web. We struggle with being compatible with the modern web sometimes, sure, but that doesn't mean we want to be stuck in the past forever.

But if not, changes are clearly in order because indy Mozilla forks are being forced out of modern hardware and the OSes which support them.
It is not going to be much longer and you will have to decide between accepting mainstream contraints or being shut out.

No, that's not quite correct. We're being forced out of the modern web to some extent, but I don't see that happening with modern hardware and operating systems. We can adapt the browser to those things, though it will obviously take longer for us than it does for mainstream browsers.

But the principle is the thing...a piece of *independent* software should ALWAYS remain FULLY independent.
If it isn't, then we all might as well use Chrome.
Bottom line: compatibility is a trap.
It is a carrot on a stick.
Make good software, and people will buy the hardware to run it.
And they will stick to it, even if it means they won't be able to see CNN's webpage or stream Taylor Swift's cameo at the Superbowl.

No reply necessary, I am not interested in a conversation, I am just dropping some feedback.

So, if software doesn't target ancient hardware, it's not "independent," and the developers must be working for the interests of Intel and Microsoft? Interesting perspective... and a sad commentary on human nature and how prone people are to conspiracy theories of that nature.

It sounds like you're saying that having an independent browser engine isn't enough, that browser engine has to run on ancient hardware and ancient operating systems or else it's "not good software," and "might as well be Chrome." Got it. I'm horrified by your perspective, but I guess I understand it... it sounds like you just really, really dumbed-down what the browser was about inside your own head, making a lot of uninformed assumptions about what we stand for, and then proceeded to hold us accountable to your own version of what you thought our principles were. I guess that is what happens when non-nerds try to understand a project that is primarily for nerds.

[Massacre]

You know, if you will target only top-tier hardware and latest Windows 11, you will be no different from Mozilla or Google.

[Moonchild]

You know, if you will target only top-tier hardware and latest Windows 11, you will be no different from Mozilla or Google.

We won't, and we aren't.
And even if we were, our core values would still be considerably different from telemetry addict Mozilla and big-data Google.

[athenian200]

You know, if you will target only top-tier hardware and latest Windows 11, you will be no different from Mozilla or Google.

Well, to put it bluntly, a project that can only attract irrational users who cling to old hardware and unsupported versions of Windows for decades past their EOL has no future. I work to keep the XUL ecosystem viable longer and have an independent browser engine not based on Chromium or Rust, that lacks telemetry and stuff like Google Safe Browsing. I'm not terribly interested in maintaining a browser for ancient underpowered machines, if that's the only kind of user that's interested in Pale Moon, then the project is as good as dead anyway.

And honestly, that is a bit of an overreaction... catering to Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer is still pretty good legacy support, IMO.

[Moonchild]

catering to Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer is still pretty good legacy support, IMO.

It absolutely is.

[Massacre]

Well, to put it bluntly, a project that can only attract irrational users who cling to old hardware and unsupported versions of Windows for decades past their EOL has no future. I work to keep the XUL ecosystem viable longer and have an independent browser engine not based on Chromium or Rust, that lacks telemetry and stuff like Google Safe Browsing. I'm not terribly interested in maintaining a browser for ancient underpowered machines, if that's the only kind of user that's interested in Pale Moon, then the project is as good as dead anyway.

Well, a project that discards its existing users has both no past and future. I think, requiring only modern and overpowered machines running on latest unstable Windows versions for a browser is a dead end. If you want to build this, you can, but expect that even less people will use it than now.

[Nuck-TH]

Where you got impression that support for windows versions below 11 will get dropped?

There is no technical reasons(yet?) to drop 7-10 support, unlike XP and Vista.
As for AVX, it is what it is - just build settings, which nobody prohibits you to change. You can(could and will can) build UXP/apllications with SSE2, SSE and maybe evn just x87 optimization.
Also, as was discussed in specialized topic, what will happen is just swapping official and semi-ofical(mine) builds - AVX will go to offcial mainline, and i will build SSE2 instead. So in practice nothing changes.

[Moonchild]

I think, requiring only modern and overpowered machines running on latest unstable Windows versions for a browser is a dead end.

So okay you're just arguing with stupidity for the sake of argument.
Really dude, get off your horse.

[Massacre]

Where you got impression that support for windows versions below 11 will get dropped?

From mention of "old hardware", "unsupported versions of Windows", and so on.

As for forcing AVX in official build, it is very bad idea to do it in same channel as current official 64-bit version due to incompatible system requirements. The existing users will receive an executable that will not run on their machines.

[suzyne]

Where you got impression that support for windows versions below 11 will get dropped?

From mention of "old hardware", "unsupported versions of Windows", and so on.

It's a perplexing leap in logic from no support for Windows XP (or Windows Vista?) to thinking that Pale Moon will only run on Windows 11. I have been following the relevant threads about the upcoming change and never got that impression.

[Massacre]

It's a perplexing leap in logic from no support for Windows XP (or Windows Vista?) to thinking that Pale Moon will only run on Windows 11. I have been following the relevant threads about the upcoming change and never got that impression.

It is because even Windows 10 will become "unsupported" (by MS) next year.

[athenian200]

It is because even Windows 10 will become "unsupported" (by MS) next year.

We didn't discontinue Windows 7 support when that went EOL, though. The point isn't that we need to discontinue support for an operating system as soon as the EOL hits, but rather that it's reaching a point where people expect us to support operating systems for decades past their EOL. They want more than 5 or 6 years of legacy support, they want 10 or 20 years of it. To the point that critical libraries or compiler updates would require a newer OS. That's where we're trying to draw the line here.

[andyprough]

I think that you (Pale Moon as a unit) underestimate how many people use your browser who are still using Win7 boxes

I think you over-estimate that number. A quick statistics check (on our web log for update requests) shows me that of a total of 184139 requests, 2749 were from Windows 7 systems. That's 1.5%

EDIT: and of those 1.5% the vast majority seems to be on a smattering of old versions, not the latest... I'm talking v28-v29

That's a very small number. Maybe 0.5% that actually use the current version of Pale Moon on Windows 7? I would have thought it was much higher based on the number of Windows 7 users who post on the forum, more like 10% or more.

[Moonchild]

That's a very small number. Maybe 0.5% that actually use the current version of Pale Moon on Windows 7? I would have thought it was much higher based on the number of Windows 7 users who post on the forum, more like 10% or more.

It just shows you that most Pale Moon users aren't very vocal about it or don't feel the need to be active on the forum.
The numbers simply don't lie. This is from an automatic low volume request that almost no-one messes with in their settings, in my experience. While it could be slightly inaccurate due to the use of UA extensions or what not, the overall volume is pretty clear. Giving it the biggest benefit of the doubt it'd still be less than 1% of Pale Moon users using the current version of it on Windows 7.

[billmcct]

Giving it the biggest benefit of the doubt
it'd still be less than 1% of Pale Moon users using the current version of it on Windows 7.

I for one am still using Win 7 and if I remember correctly you also were using Win 7 til a few years ago.
Still at 83 YO I have no desire for learning a new OS so as long as the 32bit will still work for me I'm happy.
I also feel like there must be more than 1% using Win 7.