Pale Moon forum

Perhaps I'm way off base here, but I've always gotten the impression that Mozilla has actually been the greatest force in making Mozilla Firefox and Pale Moon so different.

I am not in any way discounting all of the hard work that Moonchild and the other Pale Moon developers have done. The browsers would have become significantly different over time anyway, and I am certain that Pale Moon would have become the most User-oriented browser in the end anyway. But I'm simply suggesting that Mozilla has made Firefox so wildly different than Pale Moon on its own, and that that has seemed to help Pale Moon in crafting its own independent identity.

I don't know how a developer for the Pale Moon project would see this, so perhaps the truth is quite, quite different. But as a happy user of the browser, this is how I have perceived it.

Like I said, the development of more and more independent code (and, for instance, the development of independent or otherwise different engines), the implementation of different features (and the different ways in which such features would be implemented) would naturally lead the browsers to become quite different over time. All I am suggesting is that Mozilla has perhaps caused this process to speed up.

In my humble opinion, the most significant difference between these two is that Pale Moon develops and Firefox deteriorates. That wild, mindless mutilation can't be described as development or progress in any way. I parted my ways with Firefox when Australis came, but as it turned out, this was just a drop in the ocean of misery in which Firefox is drowning now.
It's a pitiful show, but, at least, we have our Ark.

Mozilla wants nothing more than the total destruction of everything Netscape and Early-Mozilla ever created. Not just to embrace new or different technologies and perhaps retire older ones but to erode, corrupt, refactor the very life code into non-existence to make sure the barrier for anyone to ever break off is damn near impossible forward and backward. Indeed, you would have to be crazy.. and NOT crazy like a fox but perhaps a lunatic to even attempt such a thing.

We did it anyway. That upsets them and their pre-programmed people to the Nth degree. Their only weapon in the fight is "old and insecure" and while it is an effective weapon to other such drones.. People have been waking up all over the planet albeit not as fast as one would hope to see that as just what it is.. Nonsense.

Everything Mozilla has created or done in the past 10 years and yes 10 years now for sure has failed and now Firefox its self is failing.. badly. Blame not the Mozilla of old though. They are long gone.. All but completely replaced systematically. Any glimmers of independent thought and opinion has been purged and their transformation was completed a while ago now.

WE are all that is left. Not Waterfox. Not the Pedophile Tor Network. Not the GNU people. Not PowerPC Macintosh people. Not the XP People. Not anyone else..

We may not have started the fire but we DO carry the flame. The more they throw at us the brighter that flame becomes.

New Tobin Paradigm wrote: ↑

2019-07-02, 13:41

Not the GNU people.

You don't think that GNU and the Free Software Foundation do good work? I think that their existence is good, and that they do a number of good things. I've said before that Stallman himself goes overboard on many things (including his own ideology), but nevertheless the existence of GNU and the Free Software Foundation is a benefit, is it not?

They are as authoritarian as any proprietary software corporation. I cannot abide that without comment.

Tharthan wrote: ↑

2019-07-02, 16:07

nevertheless the existence of GNU and the Free Software Foundation is a benefit, is it not?

I'm really not sure. I know that the landscape would have looked decidedly different without them, but would it be better or worse...? I honestly can't say; and that's saying something in its own right.

Mozilla decided that Firefox should look like Google Chrome, and have been chasing that ever since. I believe that they thought to get more users that way, by dumbing down the interface, but that idea has failed.

I'm afraid it runs much, much deeper than that. If it was just the visual appearance, then there wouldn't be much of an issue. no, the UI is actually not as heavily eroded as everything under the hood. If you look at what Firefox is now in the latest releases then you'll find that a good percentage is actually glued-in Google code or some hybridized code based heavily on it. More and more original Gecko code is being replaced and/or destroyed, and often not to be replaced by superior coding, either.

Moonchild wrote: ↑

2019-07-02, 22:43

If you look at what Firefox is now in the latest releases then you'll find that a good percentage is actually glued-in Google code or some hybridized code based heavily on it. More and more original Gecko code is being replaced and/or destroyed, and often not to be replaced by superior coding, either.

I would say so.

I remember ages ago, while I was testing out Linux and browsers other than IE 6 for the first time, I used Netscape 6 and the Mozilla Suite, and wondered why there were two browsers basically the same with different branding. Eventually Netscape disappeared, and the Mozilla project remained. For a long time, I thought Konqueror was the best browser on Linux, KHTML being somewhat more compatible with Internet Explorer's Trident engine at the time. But it seemed like Mozilla and Netscape kept getting better.

At some point, everyone started getting excited about this lightweight browser from the Mozilla project called Phoenix. I tried it out, and I didn't get the appeal. I thought it was too stripped down, kind of buggy, and not that great. Also, the name kept changing. First they called it Phoenix, then they called it Firebird, and eventually they called it Firefox. I kept an eye on it, but I didn't really start using it until around 2006 or so when they retired the Mozilla Application Suite and there was little choice but to either go with it or switch to SeaMonkey which always seemed to be playing catch-up with Firefox.

By this point, Firefox was at its peak. The Gecko engine was being used in a lot of different browsers and there were all kinds of plugins and extensions you could use with it. What I can tell you is that Pale Moon is much more recognizable and familiar to me as a Firefox user of 10 years ago than Firefox today. Modern Firefox seems like something totally different, and it's because they've ripped out several features, added a lot of telemetry, and basically changed it into a direct competitor to Chrome that offers almost the same thing. Pale Moon feels like an evolution and refinement of the Firefox I used to use.

It seems like way too many people in the tech community that should know better trusted Google completely, and bought into the idea that choosing not to trust Google is "a security risk" and that we need them protecting us on the Internet to be able to browse safely. That is why Google is still seen so positively by the people at Mozilla, who still rely on free Google products to support a lot of their infrastructure.

Pale Moon is still a browser for power users like old Firefox, while Firefox has become a very limited browser designed around a top-down security paradigm, telemetry, and the smartphone philosophy.

I would say that in an ironic way, Firefox has actually remained true to its origins as a buggy and stripped-down browser with no features that's probably a bit overhyped, but it abandoned the flexibility and power that improved its reputation enough to turn it into a serious competitor. I think it's interesting that Firefox may come full circle, ending much as it began having discarded everything it developed in-between. Pale Moon is a continuation of what actually worked and what people liked about Firefox in its prime.

athenian200 wrote: ↑

2019-07-03, 23:06

It seems like way too many people in the tech community that should know better trusted Google completely, and bought into the idea that choosing not to trust Google is "a security risk" and that we need them protecting us on the Internet to be able to browse safely.

Who says that they didn't know better? If they were anything like the ones that I know, many of them may have foolishly come to the conclusion that Google was gaining so much ground (in terms of control) that fighting against Google would be in vain.

That notion isn't accurate, of course, unless people choose to make it a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Wusses drink the Kool-Aid® all of the time. It's sad, but true.

Tharthan wrote: ↑

2019-07-02, 16:07

You don't think that GNU and the Free Software Foundation do good work?

I hate GNU. I actually gave up on linux back in 2004 due to how ridiculously inconsistent and messy its GNU userland is (I've been a very happy FreeBSD convert ever since).

After more than a decade of forgetting just how bad GNU junk was, I got a Raspberry Pi and tried playing with Raspbian. It really reinforced just how little GNU has progressed in the last 15 years and how correct I was in ditching that pathetic junk.

Goodydino wrote: ↑

2019-07-02, 21:58

Mozilla decided that Firefox should look like Google Chrome, and have been chasing that ever since. I believe that they thought to get more users that way, by dumbing down the interface, but that idea has failed.

I'm not sure what they're thinking was. If I want to use Chrome, I'll use Chrome, not some half-arsed Chrome-clone. If I want to use Firefox, that means I don't want to use some half-arsed Chrome-clone. Imitating Chrome doesn't gain or retain your users, it can only lose them. Mozilla's marketshare reflects this.

Mozilla basically destroyed their userbase and reputation. I was never a Firefox fan, and actually hung onto the Suit/Seamonkey for the longest time, and only gave it up once it had stagnated to the point it was no longer really usable. Firefox was never an option, since Mozilla had already stripped Firefox's functionality and configurability to the point even Seamonkey was superior. Thank god Pale Moon was there.

DarkSteve wrote: ↑

2019-07-31, 03:22

I'm not sure what they're thinking was. If I want to use Chrome, I'll use Chrome[.] Imitating Chrome doesn't gain or retain your users, it can only lose them. Mozilla's marketshare reflects this.

Their thinking was the same as that of most companies this decade. In this particular case, specifically, their thought process was: why bother offering alternatives to Chrome when Chrome is doing so well? "Follow the leader".