Pale Moon's PR Problem

[Mæstro]

Thank you for telling us your story!
Let us try to draw lessons from that. One is that supporting older operating systems can, ironically enough, bring new people aboard. Since Pale Moon, unlike the giants, still supports 7, I think we are already doing everything right on this front. If Australis had brought you aboard here, then I think that just means BasiliskDev is onto something.

As you have told it, I think intelligent, curious users like you will look into the actual diversity of browsers on their own initiative. In this sense, even Wikipedia counts as advertising! I want to have enough hope in the youth that they would not treat YouTube videos (or even worse, LLM queries) as exhausting the subject.

Ubuntu and Mint release otherwise identical editions with different desktop environments, so laymen unaccustomed to appearance being mutable in an OS can learn this concept in their own time. React OS releases just one version of itself, but lets the user pick whether to pick a classical, Luna- or Metro-like interface on first launch. Either approach could work for Pale Moon, to make it more obvious to a generation which has grown up with nothing but guano minimalism that Pale Moon can easily look familiar if they want, without upsetting us older users who see nothing wrong with Firefox 2, 3 or 4.

Reflecting on our reputation also calls attention to how unfair the whole matter is. If someone went to law claiming that Pale Moon was insecure, he would need satisfy the judge that Pale Moon fails to patch vulnerabilities at a rate substantially greater than the major browsers, such that it poses a risk to the prudent user going about his day online. He could never meet this burden of proof, of course. Gossip, online or off, has much lower standards, forcing us to prove our innocence. The wrong idea that browsers are too complex for a small team to secure is, as we know, hard to displace.

[Moonchild]

In the meantime, I've changed the Pale Moon home page's wording a bit to put focus on a few things discussed here.
I'm not entirely happy with the result so it probably needs some more tinkering or moving around of information, but it now leans a bit more heavily on the independence factor and single-process security is explicitly highlighted.

[UCyborg]

One is that supporting older operating systems can, ironically enough, bring new people aboard.

I sometimes forget Windows 10 is an older operating system now. I imagine people being drawn to these circles don't see it that way.

Though it's the first time that I'm hanging in the land of the deprecated and unsupported for a longer period when it comes to a desktop OS.

Maybe Pale Moon has it easier development wise not needing the latest OS level sandboxing techniques.

[athenian200]

I sometimes forget Windows 10 is an older operating system now. I imagine people being drawn to these circles don't see it that way.

Yeah. Though I admittedly still think being able to make sure it still works on Windows 11 is important. It is a good point that Windows 10 is an "older operating system" though most people here don't see it that way and usually think of anything newer 7 as "new" still. I at first wasn't happy with that part of Maestro's conclusion because of the XP connection, though I think he was fair and balanced and also gave weight to the importance of a more modern theme that could also be taken from that story, so I didn't want to complain too much. It's just annoying to constantly hear all these implications that stop just short of saying we made the wrong call dropping XP support (though he probably wasn't saying that at this point), all the praise heaped on ancient versions of GTK, just... these constant admonitions implying that we don't get to move beyond 2006 to 2012 and need to stay in our lane, reject anything modern, because our users are hardcore Luddites that will basically never forgive us if we do. And now I'm even seeing implications that they'll drop us if we so much as use AI to write one line of code and they find out about it. Like, yes, I'm not saying I want to integrate AI in the browser like Edge does (though I do wind up using and enjoying the Copilot integration in Edge more than I like to admit), but saying we can never use it, that people might get mad if an XUL extension that enables AI usage is listed? I'm just... feeling like the more I listen to our users as time goes on, the more I understand why Mozilla and other companies turned their back on them, decided they were too hard to please and there are plenty of users they'd be passing up to appease that crowd.

I mean... it's not like the era we're allowed to target changes much as time goes on. There will always be people talking about Windows XP, dropping even 7 is probably out of the question (though I don't really mind that because 7 isn't really a pain to support like XP was), and I expect there would be arguments if we ever drop 32-bit support. Like... I can understand wanting 10 years of legacy support, maybe 15, but with our users, it really feels like however far away 2006 to 2012 get, that's still the era they want support for, no matter how ridiculous it gets.

I do think when it comes to legacy support, we may not be able to listen to our users and give them what they want in this regard forever. There are times when we have to bite the bullet and take the reputational hit to move things forwards. The problem is that it's hard to do that if retro users who resent the future that's coming are almost the entire userbase.

But yeah, I like Moonchild's changes to the front page, he said we don't integrate AI, but didn't make any kind of commitment to not using it in code, and he went with "lightweight" rather than saying "works well on old hardware/software," which I think is more sustainable and makes sense.

[Moonchild]

said we don't integrate AI, but didn't make any kind of commitment to not using it in code

There is nothing wrong with using AI as an assistive tool for rapid prototyping of code, especially since most of the code-centric LLMs are trained on Open Source anyway, so it can effectively distil a lot of (grunt) research into something efficient and (hopefully) effective at solving a specific problem. I have no issue with contributors wanting to submit AI-assisted code, but I do require that the other 50% of the work is done by a human. i.e.: always check and verify generated code, and don't submit for review what you don't understand. AI is a tool. It still needs someone to use it properly to be a meaningful aid.

So no: we won't be integrating "A.I." into Pale Moon's feature set or operation, but it's not going to keep us from speeding things up on the development side. If you are completely anti-AI/anti-LLM and want to be a purist about it, then that's a pity but "not wanting to be a luddite" extends to software development, not just how far back we're going to reach. You can decide for yourself if it prohibits you from using the browser out of principle or not.

Speaking of luddism and OS support: Athenian is right; Windows 7 and 32-bit support is there for as long as it is reasonably doable, but people must understand that it will eventually no longer be that way. As for Windows 11: there's a good reason I've worked on specific Windows 11 support and theming for its quirks not too long ago, as it is the only officially supported mainstream Windows version at the moment. So yes, "making sure it still works on Windows 11 is important". Extremely so. While I don't daily drive it for a plethora of reasons, it is absolutely front and center in Pale Moon development.

[andyprough]

In the meantime, I've changed the Pale Moon home page's wording a bit to put focus on a few things discussed here.
I'm not entirely happy with the result so it probably needs some more tinkering or moving around of information, but it now leans a bit more heavily on the independence factor and single-process security is explicitly highlighted.

That's beautiful, I'm loving it! Any way to add a one-liner near the top to emphasize your being located in Europe and the servers being located in Europe (if accurate)? And/or some of the other Pale Moon developers being located in Europe? It's a really big deal these days. Anti-American big tech bias is ripping through your continent like a wildfire.

This stuff is soooo so good - may need to do a press release with this kind of great material:

Safe and secure independence
Pale Moon is built from its own independently developed source and is regularly updated with the latest security patches. The browser also offers additional security features like a clear indication of a site's identity and security level, and prioritizes security awareness with many defense-in-depth considerations aside from addressing any applicable vulnerabilities (CVEs) on a regular basis.

Secure by design and lightweight
By keeping everything in a single process, Pale Moon keeps a close eye on data security without exposing browser internals to the operating system. In contrast to multi-process browsers, it does not have to wrap every internal operation into a fragile messaging system to send to other processes, which has been a major attack surface for well-known browsers for years now. This also means Pale Moon is lightweight and doesn't use nearly as many system resources, or fill up your task manager with dozens of copies of itself.

True privacy with zero telemetry
At Pale Moon, privacy considerations will always remain at the forefront.
This is why we have chosen to be fully community-supported and the browser does not contain any ads, telemetry or data-gathering.
There is no DRM or A.I. integration in the browser and it does not spy on you or your browsing habits. You are not for sale. This extends to our deliberate choices for default search engine (DuckDuckGo), Geolocation (IP-API), and start page (start.me, but freely configurable to anything you like). We deliberately avoid inclusion of Big Tech services and if we can offer something in-house, we will.

[Mæstro]

Ultimately, you are free to develop whatever kind of software you want, however you want. Your users are your fellow pilgrims on this great journey into the future, not your taskmasters. If some users believe one day that Pale Moon concedes too much to contemporary IT trends, they might part ways, and there is no reason this should not be on friendly terms if this should happen; you have faithfully accompanied them for this leg of the journey. Sometimes, people’s interests are just incompatible, and there is nought to do but move on.

Empirically, the people most adamant about retaining every last bit from 2006–12 intact, the ones who are really still using XP today, seem to be tending their own garden without bothering you. (Correct me if I am wrong.) The conservative pressure here would seem to be from people afraid to be cast off from Pale Moon if it no longer meets their needs after enough time has passed. Their interests would be better met by arranging now an alternative plan, which might well involve a Roy Tam-like UXP fork for Windows 7, 32-bit processors or whatever else, before some Microsoft compiler update or whatnot brings the matter to sudden boil. You would have no part in their plans, although this board would, if they can be civil about it, be the ready place for them to discuss their plans.

---

I think disclosing more about my own attitudes might help. My own principal interest, since I have abandoned anything to do with the great IT combines, is to continue to use this physical computer (mid-2012) as long as it still works. (I have already discussed my current plans for should this computer fail, but the successor would inherit this goal.) It arises, among other places, from a deep-seated belief that one ought to cherish what one already has instead of demanding more and offence at planned obsolescence as business practise. Minding my psychical limits, I also believe in never changing a running system. Conversations here have helped me gather such information that I need to plan, and the facts are such that I doubt I should end up stranded as Pale Moon’s developers pursue their desired direction. Conceivably, if eg Pale Moon adopted a minimum instruction set beyond what this computer can support, and I were thus separated for a time, I could come back after this computer broke, bringing me within the new boundaries.

[athenian200]

Empirically, the people most adamant about retaining every last bit from 2006–12 intact, the ones who are really still using XP today, seem to be tending their own garden without bothering you. (Correct me if I am wrong.) The conservative pressure here would seem to be from people afraid to be cast off from Pale Moon if it no longer meets there needs after enough time has passed. Their interests would be better met by arranging now an alternative plan, which might well involve a Roy Tam-like UXP fork for Windows 7, 32-bit processors or whatever else, before some Microsoft compiler update or whatnot brings the matter to sudden boil. You would have no part in their plans, although this board would, if they can be civil about it, be the ready place for them to discuss their plans.

We would really prefer to avoid another such fork, if I am being honest. That is a part of why we haven't dropped 32-bit support, and also why dropping Windows 7 isn't on the table yet. So far I don't even think we're taking full advantage of what VS2022 can do, as far as using C++ standards newer than C++17.

It all really depends on what Windows 12 looks like, or if Microsoft is even still shipping Windows by the point that would be needed. If Windows 12 is a radical departure, it may become difficult to support anything older and we'd have to cut a lot of older versions painfully. If it's more like Windows 10 and 11 with a new coat of paint and more AI integration, then we probably won't go out of our way to drop older Windows.

As much as it sucks to say it, I feel like we "learned our lesson" (even though I think we did nothing wrong) from XP about dropping support for an OS before Mozilla does. While we're not going back on that decision, we are also not eager to repeat it and deal with the fallout. Especially since we know there is no version of Windows people have "liked" since 7, whereas back when we dropped XP there was a clear upgrade path most people considered reasonable and sane. There was a time when smaller projects could choose to be leaner than the big ones and drop support for older stuff earlier than their upstream, and people got it because the smaller project has fewer resources... we don't live in that time anymore, and the burden seems to be on smaller projects to support old stuff long past its "sell-by" date now, with us being seen as selling out and "acting like a big corporation" if we do drop it.

Let me put it this way... I hope that by the time we drop Windows 7 support, Windows 7 is basically dead enough that we can "get away with it" without having to tolerate someone creating a popular hostile fork. I'm hoping to hold until 2030, so that hopefully Windows 12 will be out, we can say "Windows 7 hasn't been supported in 10 years, come on," and people will be forced to chew on that before getting too mad. Unlike when we dropped XP and tons of people were finding ways to get extended support, Mozilla was being more generous, etc.

I think disclosing more about my own attitudes might help. My own principal interest, since I have abandoned anything to do with the great IT combines, is to continue to use this physical computer (mid-2012) as long as it still works. (I have already discussed my current plans for should this computer fail, but the successor would inherit this goal.) It arises, among other places, from a deep-seated belief that one ought to cherish what one already has instead of demanding more and offence at planned obsolescence as business practise. Minding my psychical limits, I also believe in never changing a running system. Conversations here have helped me gather such information that I need to plan, and the facts are such that I doubt I should end up stranded as Pale Moon’s developers pursue their desired direction. Conceivably, if eg Pale Moon adopted a minimum instruction set beyond what this computer can support, and I were thus separated for a time, I could come back after this computer broke, bringing me within the new boundaries.

We have a much more colloquial version of that saying where I live, and so I am painfully familiar with the concept. People here say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Your version sounds like an attempt to say the same thing without sounding like someone who lives in the countryside, LOL.

While I understand to a point, having lived through the 1990s and 2000s when people were expected to buy a new machine every 2-5 years, which was insane... I also think that if you get past the point of expecting about 10 years of support for older stuff, it goes from being "opposition to planned obsolescence" to being something like "burying your head in the sand and being stubborn while making developer's lives harder" Like, I definitely get not wanting to throw away serviceable older hardware, within reason... but I am somewhat less understanding of people insisting on making developer's lives harder when their older hardware could run a supported OS, or using 20-year old hardware as a daily driver outside of living in a third-world country.

The instruction set is never likely to go beyond AVX2, mostly because AVX512 support is spotty on consumer hardware anyway and thus the proposed standard for x86-64-v4 is essentially a bust since modern CPUs targeted to consumers don't support it fully.

It's like, yes, I get what was going on in the 1990s and 2000s probably wasn't sustainable, but I think now people are going to the other extreme of wanting to treat a computer like an appliance that should last a lifetime, and really don't want to replace it until it breaks, with a high chance of it being replaced with another old model because they don't like the newer models. One thing that makes me a little annoyed about this is I feel like if it continues, companies might stop making new computers and then we'll all be forced to do everything on the smartphone or keep old stuff on life support forever.

I don't want to live in that world... and sometimes it feels like the people holding out now and stubbornly using old stuff are almost like the opposite end of the post-PC Apple people saying something that almost affirms them, that sounds to me like, "Yes, the PC era is over, get over it and stop pretending... if you want a PC, you want pre-iPhone stuff, don't even waste your time with anything newer. In fact, I hope PC companies kill off newer PCs as no longer profitable so everyone is forced to either live the way we've chosen to live or move on to smartphones. We don't want a reasonable middle ground to exist, we want to force the choice and we're not going to move to newer stuff and keep the PC alive and supported in some form. It's dead and bound to an era, and we like it that way, we want the PC as a platform to be like retro gaming for the PS3 or something." Basically it's like smartphone fans believe the PC is dead and they're happy, retro-oriented PC users also believe the PC is dead and want to stubbornly stick to old stuff forever while being annoyed with anyone who wants to move on. While I and many others actually still don't accept that it's "dead," and want to keep using the newer PC software and hardware as it comes along, but also feel like the retro holdouts are accidentally proving the post-PC people right in the eyes of companies by making new PCs unprofitable.

[Mæstro]

We would really prefer to avoid another such fork, if I am being honest.

I understand why you wish to avoid such a fork, both from how this sort of forking tends to kill larger projects and especially after realising the (more realistic) scenario where the extant XP forks expand their scope to adopt Windows 7 users and capture most of them would be about equivalent. Alas, it is hard for me to see another peaceful way forwards without people changing their values. This is not to say none exists; I am ill tonight and might not be my most mentally acute. My hope is really that such forks not see themselves as hostile to you, when I believe they can do what they want, and you can do what you want, without stepping on each other’s toes.

Although I am striving to show you that not everybody is as hardcore, unwilling to compromise, ready to blame or otherwise hostile as it can seem at times, for I know you have often felt pressured to avoid doing what you actually want, I can understand that the fear that you might lose most of your community by pursuing your authentic interests is daunting. I am reminded a bit of the survey which had been held in 2022, where the community was equally split between those who wanted what Pale Moon had always been meant to be, and those who merely wished old Firefox extensions. I dare not propose such a (clearly non-binding!) poll about this topic be held today, but the situation is murky when we can only guess how many people would actually be lost.

I also think that if you get past the point of expecting about 10 years of support for older stuff, it goes from being "opposition to planned obsolescence" to being something like "burying your head in the sand and being stubborn while making developer's lives harder"

To be clear, the only developers who should be working on maintaining the older systems (or the newer ones, for that matter) are those who want to do so. This is why I lay such stress on the existence of the forks: they are being maintained by the people who want to be involved with that sort of thing. You do not, and I want to be clear I do not mean to urge you in that direction in any way. It just means you want different things in life, and that is alright.

I think now people are going to the other extreme of wanting to treat a computer like an appliance that should last a lifetime, and really don't want to replace it until it breaks…

Guilty as charged here. I should not hide it, and my statement was meant to wear it on my sleeve.

One thing that makes me a little annoyed about this is I feel like if it continues, companies might stop making new computers and then we'll all be forced to do everything on the smartphone or keep old stuff on life support forever. I don't want to live in that world[…]While I and many others actually still don't accept that it's "dead," and want to keep using the newer PC software and hardware as it comes along, but also feel like the retro holdouts are accidentally proving the post-PC people right in the eyes of companies by making new PCs unprofitable.

I see the matter otherwise. The good things in life are never profitable. If good PC are unprofitable, so much the worse for the profiteer. I do not think we need firms for profit to create hardware, any more than we do for software. Where the interest exists, matters can be arranged.

[athenian200]

I understand why you wish to avoid such a fork, both from how this sort of forking tends to kill larger projects and especially after realising the (more realistic) scenario where the extant XP forks expand their scope to adopt Windows 7 users and capture most of them would be about equivalent. Alas, it is hard for me to see another peaceful way forwards without people changing their values. This is not to say none exists; I am ill tonight and might not be my most mentally acute. My hope is really that such forks not see themselves as hostile to you, when I believe they can do what they want, and you can do what you want, without stepping on each other’s toes.

I think that you're very wise to point to this being a matter of values. Fundamentally, it does feel like to at least some extent, my values strongly differ from those of a lot of users here, to the point that I feel like half the threads on this forum make me a little angry/tired in terms of what they say about Pale Moon users and who I'd be working to help. It truly does feel like incompatibility at times... though usually it's different with MC. His posts usually seem fairly aligned with my values, at least enough that I don't feel alienated the way I do at times when other members of the community post.

I see the matter otherwise. The good things in life are never profitable. If good PC are unprofitable, so much the worse for the profiteer. I do not think we need firms for profit to create hardware, any more than we do for software. Where the interest exists, matters can be arranged.

I mean, if you want a future where the only way to get a new thing that is even remotely like a PC is to pay a high price for small-batch productions of RISC-V CPUs and maybe a GPU targeted at data centers that can still be used for such a machine, and of course for such a machine to have to run a specialized Linux distro because there's no more Windows or anything else commercially viable... then I guess this is how you get it. Can't say that I am a fan of pushing all the profit-seeking companies out of computing and having it be a boutique thing for people with an artisanal mindset, either with the money to get everything made almost custom or the stubbornness to keep old stuff viable until they die, but as you say, it is a difference in values and I guess there's no need to continue. We understand where one another are coming from, and I don't think either of us is likely to be persuaded by the other, although I appreciate the honesty.

We can both likely agree that we do not want to be forced to use smartphones in the future, at least, but have very different ideas of what compromises we'd accept and what it takes to stop that from becoming a reality.

[Gemmaugr]

Perhaps it's time to revisit this topic https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=32382 ? (Pale Moon Themes, and the making of them).

[andyprough]

In the meantime, I've changed the Pale Moon home page's wording a bit to put focus on a few things discussed here.
I'm not entirely happy with the result so it probably needs some more tinkering or moving around of information, but it now leans a bit more heavily on the independence factor and single-process security is explicitly highlighted.

I saw some language today on a new Linux distro's page that covers the "European development" language pretty well, I'm wondering if something simple like this could be tailored to Pale Moon's home page?

Vendefoul Wolf - Legal Notice

1. Project Identification

Vendefoul Wolf is a free and open-source software distribution based on Devuan GNU/Linux developed in Spain, within the framework of the European Union, by an independent team of volunteer contributors.

2. Applicable Legal Framework

This project is governed by Spanish law and the legal framework of the European Union, where applicable.

[frostknight]

My first impression wasn't good, as I felt the UI looked too old to me, so I quickly dropped it for Firefox instead which looked Chrome enough. I guess you could say that Australis worked in attracting people like me...

For me, the newer UI of firefox, looked like windows vista trash.

The post 2000s UI for me looks bad mostly, it doesn't add, it subtracts.

[Garland]

I looked today at https://www.palemoon.org/ and I find it states PM's advantages much better than before. However, if I were new to PM, I would not understand how important XUL is to security and privacy. I use uBlock Origin and eMatrix. They are able to block ads, privacy leaks and security threats to a much greater degree than other browsers the because XUL allows them to access the low-level workings of the browser. Browsers that have a foundation in ad revenue (including Mozilla paid by Google) have purposely limited what ads and surveillance that extensions can block. Simply stated: PM protects against web herpes.

[Falna]

In the meantime, I've changed the Pale Moon home page's wording a bit to put focus on a few things discussed here.
I'm not entirely happy with the result so it probably needs some more tinkering or moving around of information, but it now leans a bit more heavily on the independence factor and single-process security is explicitly highlighted.

Looks good

The main thing that stood out for me was 'legacy extensions (XUL)' - though I know that's qualified by 'so-called' further down the page. Time to drop 'legacy' in favor of 'powerful XLU extensions''?

First draft of an alternative:

Powerful add-ons
Extend the capabilities Pale Moon by installing powerful add-ons written in the XUL language. Actively maintained by our community, these enable extensive customization of the program's features, capabilities and appearance. In addition to providing expected functions such as ad-blocking, the power of XUL enables other extensions to alter or redefine the core functions of the browser and its user interface, in ways that are impossible in the prominent commercial browsers. Pale Moon also supports native Java and Flash plugins through the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI). Despite the evolution of Pale Moon, very many pre-2017 Firefox extensions also remain compatible, if unsupported.

[Moonchild]

Powerful add-ons
Extend the capabilities Pale Moon by installing powerful add-ons written in the XUL language. Actively maintained by our community, these enable extensive customization of the program's features, capabilities and appearance. In addition to providing expected functions such as ad-blocking, the power of XUL enables other extensions to alter or redefine the core functions of the browser and its user interface, in ways that are impossible in the prominent commercial browsers. Pale Moon also supports native Java and Flash plugins through the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI). Despite the evolution of Pale Moon, very many pre-2017 Firefox extensions also remain compatible, if unsupported.

Hey that's nice! I'd change the wording slightly, but the overall inset is really good.

Edited:

Powerful add-ons
Extend the capabilities of Pale Moon by installing powerful add-ons written in the XUL language. Actively maintained by our community, these add-ons enable extensive customization of the program's features, capabilities and appearance. In addition to providing expected web content functions such as ad-blocking, the power of XUL enables extensions to modify or completely redefine core functions of the browser and its user interface in ways that are impossible in the prominent commercial browsers. Pale Moon also supports native plugins like Java and Flash through the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI). Despite Pale Moon's independent evolution, many pre-2017 Firefox extensions (called "legacy" extensions) also remain compatible, even though unsupported.

[Gemmaugr]

Hey that's nice! I'd change the wording slightly, but the overall inset is really good.

Hmm, using "despite" and "pre-" and "legacy" and even "remain" sound a bit off.

How about;

Pale Moon also supports native plugins like Java and Flash through the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI). Though Pale Moon is an independent evolution, it has made effort to have backwards compatibility with XUL addons from Firefox (Targeting Firefox XUL as they were however, they receive no official support). ?

[Moonchild]

Maybe that sentence should just be dropped altogether. If people are curious enough they will soon enough find out they can try unsupported extensions from almost a decade ago.

[Gemmaugr]

Maybe that sentence should just be dropped altogether. If people are curious enough they will soon enough find out they can try unsupported extensions from almost a decade ago.

Totally fair. Trying not to sound "old" or invoke another browser and just expound on the power of XUL would stand us better.

---
I'd also like to reiterate that making it easier to make Themes and overall highlighting the GUI customization of Pale Moon would probably go a long way from making the browser "look old". As evidenced by Vivaldi, Opera, and even Firefox itself, making your browser look personal is a selling point.
Though I'm loathe to say it, making default Pale Moon look slightly more "modern" (a misnomer, but.. also also, please keep current default theme. Non-flat design? idk what to call it) would ease a lot of transition issues. Judging a book by its cover is sadly common today. Once they get over that initial threshold and start customizing it themselves, a lot of niggling stuff that now looks bigger than they are would surely be glossed over I think.

[UCyborg]

I'm just... feeling like the more I listen to our users as time goes on, the more I understand why Mozilla and other companies turned their back on them, decided they were too hard to please and there are plenty of users they'd be passing up to appease that crowd.

Users are never happy regardless of what you do. 🙃 That's all very familiar.

I do use Pale Moon a lot in both work and personal life. Its value to me becomes apparent when I try to main another browser.

I'm not sure on the whole modern vs retro aspect. I'd say it's a spectrum thing from my own point of view, depending on what we're looking at it. I mean, you could look at either how browser handles or not handles certain specs, you could look at its UI, you can look at what hardware users prefers or the operating system.

OK, being in IT myself, I do see supporting "the latest and greatest" being seen as the "professional" thing to do, even if it, from skeptical point of view, may be seen as merely social conditioning. I mean, realistically, wouldn't it be much easier to break some aspect of application on Windows 7 rather than Windows 11? Yet, it's always the latest version of whatever OS that is seen as having to get most care. At least I see it in the way that tackling issues on modern systems is trivial compared to not breaking an older one.

Though I also tend to question old ways of doing things at times.