What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

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What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by LunaMoonCat » 2022-04-02, 21:23

This is not meant as direct or indirect criticism of Pale Moon.

Lately, so many websites of all sizes have been completely broken for me (running Pale Moon) that I'm starting to wonder if there is any point in continuing to pretend as if there is a WWW anymore. Almost every website is now a "Chrome app", I would rather say. Even the simplest, most basic things are just completely broken due to incompetence, ignorance and malice.

I cannot even extract the menu and prices from the local pizzerias because they were made by somebody with zero understanding of HTML and CSS, instead knowing and using only Chrome-only "frameworks". Nothing happens when I click any of the links. Logos are repeated. Everything looks like it's been hacked and defaced, only it hasn't. They are just completely indifferent about the existence of anything besides the "One Engine", meaning Chrome.

Not only are there no alternatives (seriously), but even if I were to completely disregard all privacy and security and install a Google-infected "browser" (which includes modern Firefox, with Mozilla being completely compromised since a long time), they are just awful even from a *usability* point of view. I hate how they work, feel and function.

This has been going on for many years but has become *much* worse lately. It's ridiculous. And if you point it out to the companies, however politely, you are aggressively and rudely told to go away, or to "try another browser". It's maddening, and I've made numerous mortal enemies just from trying to point out bugs on their sites and being told that I'm running a "legacy browser" and need to install the spyware that they "support". (Even though they should be supporting *standards* -- not softwares...)

Besides "jokes" related to ceasing to use computers entirely (which is tempting, but unrealistic), is there any hope at this point? The Pale Moon author(s) cannot be expected to fix others' incompetence and malice, but at the same time, here we are, desperately trying to use Pale Moon in a world which has decided that only spyware is allowed to render and use most websites.

I feel like I'm going insane because this topic is never brought up anywhere by anyone besides myself, and when I do, people have no idea what I'm talking about and seem to actually believe that there are "many alternatives" out there to just switch to. There isn't.

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Daniel Baran » 2022-04-02, 21:52

Hello LunaMoonCat,
You are not alone.
My experience is very similar to yours, and I can't
readily improve on your description of the problem.
Adherence to standards (as you point out) should help,
but how do we even begin to enforce that?

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by moonbat » 2022-04-03, 00:12

Frankly, this goes back to the days of Internet Explorer's monopoly when Firefox was the new kid on the block. Remember 'This site works best with IE5.5/6 at 1024x768 resolution' ?
Since then I've accepted that one will always need a backup browser. The present situation is similar but worse with Chrome and its engine taking the place of IE. As far as I've seen, the least bad of the Chrome clones is Brave, so I keep that around for sites that won't load in PM. Then again I eschew most of the popular sites that are there.

Youtube works fine for me along with the polymer engine fixes userscript, which requires Greasemonkey for Pale Moon.
I don't use social media websites and generally stick to smaller news sites and blogs so that's there.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by MrMobodies » 2022-04-03, 00:36

I think experimented with the useragent recently it worked a couple of times (with firefox 50 or s0) which sometimes work but go too high and some things don't seem to work.

I use the portable edition that I copy from what I call a template, rename the folder, ini file and executable, which is all setup nicely with the preferences I set, so no messing about and then I experiment.

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by hujan86 » 2022-04-03, 05:02

LunaMoonCat wrote:
2022-04-02, 21:23
I feel like I'm going insane because this topic is never brought up anywhere by anyone besides myself, and when I do, people have no idea what I'm talking about and seem to actually believe that there are "many alternatives" out there to just switch to. There isn't.
Have you considered or given LibreWolf a try?

I have come to terms with having a secondary browser. Most of the sites I frequently visited actually works just fine with Pale Moon (forums other than PM's, tech news sites, my local bank & government websites, Wikipedia, various Fandom sites). But whenever I want to browse sites like DeviantArt or Pixiv, or login to sites that uses Web Assembly, I'll temporarily switch to LibreWolf.
Last edited by hujan86 on 2022-04-03, 07:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-04-03, 05:32

Honestly, I just use the new Chrome-based Microsoft Edge for most of the "mainstream web" now. I don't know if I would say I "recommend" it per se, but it appeals to my laziness and inertia.

Other than that, just stick with sites that do work in Pale Moon, and try to support them over the ones that don't work if you can.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by gepus » 2022-04-03, 08:08

LunaMoonCat wrote:
2022-04-02, 21:23
What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?
The overwhelming majority of sites I visit regularly are working fine in Pale Moon.
If you are locked out from almost every site, you should really consider to choose a browser that works for you.

I can't imagine using a browser that gets locked out from almost every site I visit.

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by mseliger » 2022-04-03, 08:57

Pale Moon works fine for me for most sites, that I visited daily. But if not I use the add-on Open With 6.8.6 by Geoff Lankow (Classic Add-On-Archive) to open the page in another browser (mostly LibreWolf).
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Trippynet » 2022-04-03, 11:44

Pale Moon works for 95% of sites I need it for, hence why it is my primary browser still. I do agree that a second "backup" browser may be required, for me its Vivaldi, but I only have to use it occasionally.

Have you checked your user agent setting? Its under Preferences > Advanced. You could try changing it to "Firefox compatibility" to see if this fixes anything?

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by andyprough » 2022-04-03, 14:32

I don't have this problem. I wouldn't trust a site that doesn't work with a standards compliant browser like Pale Moon, so I wouldn't visit it. But I have a big list of bookmarked sites and they all work great.

The title of this post is clearly false in my experience.

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2022-04-03, 15:21

Yes, in general I tend to be sympathetic with "if it can't be browsed with Pale Moon, it's not worth browsing". With a few exceptions ... for WebRTC stuff (google meet, zoom) which sometimes I'm forced to use, I use chrome, and ideally I would use it only for that. Unfortunately sometimes there are sites which are broken (recently for instance I had to subscribe to a free-market offer from the prime electricity and gas supplier in my area, and that got stuck with PM and I had to fall back to chrome)
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by LunaMoonCat » 2022-04-03, 21:51

gepus wrote:
2022-04-03, 08:08
If you are locked out from almost every site, you should really consider to choose a browser that works for you.
The whole point is that there is no choice. Why do some people refuse to listen or believe this?

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by back2themoon » 2022-04-04, 09:37

I can only confirm increasing issues with food/ordering/pizza websites and their stupid hamburger menus. Perhaps most of them implement the same platform? Guess that's why it's named after a hamburger? Don't know what's the deal with them. :D

Other than that and as already mentioned, the 95% of my visited websites work fine and I also use Open With when needed.

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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-04-04, 09:55

LunaMoonCat wrote:
2022-04-03, 21:51
gepus wrote:
2022-04-03, 08:08
If you are locked out from almost every site, you should really consider to choose a browser that works for you.
The whole point is that there is no choice. Why do some people refuse to listen or believe this?
Why do people refuse to take my (and other's) advice that they should use the browser that works best for their workflow?
Going on this forum and greatly exaggerating the situation claiming it's locked out from almost every site is hardly constructive. Nor is a defeatist follow-up that doesn't actually help us become more web-compatible and just complains about other people not being equally defeatist.

I think the people who "refuse to listen" are the ones genuinely interested in an alternative.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by moonbat » 2022-04-04, 10:33

Moonchild wrote:
2022-04-04, 09:55
Why do people refuse to take my (and other's) advice that they should use the browser that works best for their workflow?
I think the issue here is one would rather want to use Pale Moon exclusively and avoid having to fallback on other browsers altogether because they like Pale Moon over others. Of course, in an ideal world we all would but that can't happen.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Night Wing » 2022-04-04, 10:42

hujan86 wrote:
2022-04-03, 05:02
Have you considered or given LibreWolf a try?
I have four browsers now. I used to have three browsers but since some people suggested LibreWolf, I decided to take it for a "test drive".

Even LibreWolf has a problem with a site that I use. That site is my Hotmail email account via Microsoft's Outlook email since I have to login to Outlook to get to my Hotmail email account. But I will admit, I don't use Hotmail very much anymore, but when testing sites, I always check browsers with all three of my email accounts.

Pale Moon, Waterfox and Firefox renders me the "new interface" look of Hotmail. But LibreWolf does not. For some reason, even though the version I use for LW is 98.0.2 and up to date, Microsoft (via Outlook) thinks LW is a very old, outdated browser and gives me a prompt to that effect.

So Outlook renders my Hotmail email account, when using LW, with something called "Outlook Lite" which looks like a very old email format that Yahoo used 22 years old with many of the features associated with the "new interface" of Hotmail missing. I'm assuming this also happens if one has an Outlook email address and is using LibreWolf. I'm only saying this since I don't have an Outlook email address.

To sum up, I have a simplified rating system based on preference if Pale Moon does not render a site properly. The backup browsers are in order of preference:

1) Waterfox
2) Firefox
3) LibreWolf

BTW, I am using the 64 bit version of linux LibreWolf 98.0.2 running in, as of this post, 64 bit linux Mint 20.3 (Una) Xfce.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by hujan86 » 2022-04-04, 11:23

Night Wing wrote:
2022-04-04, 10:42
Pale Moon, Waterfox and Firefox renders me the "new interface" look of Hotmail. But LibreWolf does not. For some reason, even though the version I use for LW is 98.0.2 and up to date, Microsoft (via Outlook) thinks LW is a very old, outdated browser and gives me a prompt to that effect.

BTW, I am using the 64 bit version of linux LibreWolf 98.0.2 running in, as of this post, 64 bit linux Mint 20.3 (Una) Xfce.
I don't know what the cause might be, but in my case my Hotmail account (I always logged in from Bing.com) looked identical on LibreWolf as it is on Pale Moon. I disabled both extensions uBlock Origin & I Don't Care About Cookies and reloaded the page but I did not get any such prompt. Is because there's something about the Windows & Linux versions of the browser? Beats me.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Night Wing » 2022-04-04, 18:46

Off-topic:
@ hujan86

If linux LibreWolf rendered my Hotmail email account with the new interface instead of; in my opinion, the old classic look, then I would rank LibreWolf ahead of Firefox.

But I will add this. Linux LibreWolf runs on five of my linux Mint hard drives, but LibreWolf is "not installed". I run run LW from it's executable files and since LW is not installed, it makes no entry in the Mint Menu under the Internet heading.

Since LW is not in the Mint Menu under Internet, there is no launcher icon for it. I create the LW logo icon launcher and place it on the Mint Panel (taskbar).

Linux Pale Moon as well as linux Waterfox are "not installed" either. I run both Pale Moon and Waterfox the same way as I do LibreWolf. Why do I not install Pale Moon, Waterfox and LibreWolf? Because if I want to install all three of these browsers, I would have to use the linux Terminal to install them and I'm no fan of the linux Terminal. For me, the less I use the Terminal in linux, the better it is for me.

The linux Firefox browser is the only browser installed in Mint since it is one of the programs which comes packaged with Mint when it is loaded onto a hard drive.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Moonraker » 2022-04-04, 19:03

hujan86 wrote:
2022-04-03, 05:02
LunaMoonCat wrote:
2022-04-02, 21:23
I feel like I'm going insane because this topic is never brought up anywhere by anyone besides myself, and when I do, people have no idea what I'm talking about and seem to actually believe that there are "many alternatives" out there to just switch to. There isn't.
Have you considered or given LibreWolf a try?

I have come to terms with having a secondary browser. Most of the sites I frequently visited actually works just fine with Pale Moon (forums other than PM's, tech news sites, my local bank & government websites, Wikipedia, various Fandom sites). But whenever I want to browse sites like DeviantArt or Pixiv, or login to sites that uses Web Assembly, I'll temporarily switch to LibreWolf.
I fail to see the point of librewolf actually.It is just firefox with a hardened preferences file provided by arkenfox which can easily be obtained over at github and implemented by the user.
Sorry to p%%s on the librewolf parade but i don't see how it is a viable alternative.
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Re: What to do when Pale Moon is being locked out from almost every site?

Unread post by Mæstro » 2022-04-04, 20:14

I mirror troublesome Web sites in Archive.is if a page will not open in Pale Moon. Many bad sites can thus become the static HTML they ought to be. The Wayback Machine works well as a proxy also. Should these fail, I use Epiphany or Ungoogled Chromium, in order. Another way, albeit one I seldom use, is setting another site-specific user agent. I use few sites that need accounts: Teddit, Invidious and Nitter mirror social networks’ meaningful content well enough for my ends. I can log into Pixiv’s, my uni’s and credit union’s sites through Pale Moon with ease. Relict Flash sites amuse me, and I otherwise study history and science or look at moe girls. My needs are simple.
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