Pale Moon is doomed to fail, here is why.

[Sun-Glasses]

PM works for me. If and when you come up with something better. I will give it a try.

What's up with you? I did never put into question that Pale Moon works well, I just wanted to describe some areas where I see room for improvement. That's actually more than everything you have done here. Is it forbidden to voice an opinion? If so, just state it so that we can avoid further discussion. I am going to develop a browser if YOU show me how.

[back2themoon]

Sun-Glasses, you keep talking about "important missing features" but still fail to understand that for the Pale Moon project these have always been secondary, if not useless and unwanted. You are not the first to talk about them and they've already been discussed in this forum in the past - a lot. You really need to search the forum more, and read up on the info available in the main page.

You are asking for stuff that belongs to other browsers. It's like asking for Microsoft Edge in Linux - pointless.

[Luna Tic]

Also, please note that I am arguing in favor of general user satisfaction and market share expansion which I deem to be forms of "success", rather than open source principles. Sometimes you have to compromise in order to satisfy the general audience.

Well, you see Sun-Glasses, that is just your definition of success. Would you consider Ferrari a failure because it has fewer cars on the road than, say, Toyota? Do they have to compromise to satisfy soccer moms?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Sun-Glasses.. Yes one PERSON can do a lot. But only having one person on the Pale Moon team hasn't been true for almost 3 years.

Do you want to see specifically what ONE and ONLY ONE person can do? Besides Pale Moon up till version 24?

Have a look at https://github.com/binoc-file13/tycho-contrib/commits/vNext.. That page and a few on the second page is what one person did to move the application code to Tycho's base to an 85% working state in 2 some weeks. That person? Was me.. Look at the commit history for the main deprecated Tycho repo and the main Pale Moon repository I would argue 75%+ of it (since the repo was established) was done by Moonchild by himself.. Additionally, Travis has put an unprecedented about of long term work in as well for Linux.. Others have done quite a bit for Tycho to get it to release and beyond. Not to mention everything before Tycho..

One can begin to reshape the landscape with a single flower

If one person can accomplish all this.. What can happen with a team of people like Pale Moon has now.. What can happen with a whole bunch of people. That is where I see Pale Moon going.. It was one of my original goals when I joined the project on my birthday in 2014 was to prove that anyone can join up and contribute what they can.. I did it.. Travis did it.. Sugis did it.. The previous mac developers did it.. access2godzilla did it by founding Pale Moon for Linux.. Others who have come and gone have..

While I am not as directly active on the Pale Moon project as I was a few short months ago we all worked and continued to work for god knows how many hours unpaid and mostly transparently to accomplish something that will.. MUST endure.

I am the New Tobin Paradigm and I approve this message.

[Thehandyman1957]

Sun-Glasses, you keep talking about "important missing features" but still fail to understand that for the Pale Moon project these have always been secondary, if not useless and unwanted.

You are asking for stuff that belongs to other browsers. It's like asking for Microsoft Edge in Linux - pointless.

And this is the best point of all the great points made in argument of your terribly titled post.
You are basically asking Pale Moon to be just like all the other browsers.
I can't speak for everybody, but I can speak for myself.
The whole reason I came to PM was because it was NOT like the other browsers.
I like many others, came here because MC took a stand against bad policies, bad code and his large concern for privacy.

Unlike Google Chrome who was busted for turning on the microphone on your computer and sending everything they could get to their servers.
Or like M$ who after W10 took the cheap $2 mask off to show the whole world that it was going to steal, beg and borrow everything you ever do on it.
There are reasons why I don't want the likes of Google on my browser.
And just because "others" don't care about privacy or how low a company will go does not mean PM should cater to them.

And if you had done 5 minutes of search on this forum you would understand why MC took Google off. They like M$ are showing their true colors.

DRM is a no go and I completely agree with why MC did not put it in.
This is about morals and I see that some folks simply don't care what other companies do as long as they get their "movie fix".
Can you imagine what would happen if people actually stood up for whats right and simply said "NO WAY" to this kind of crap.
None of the other browsers would be using it. But instead we have a corrupted closed box code (that goes against
everything about open source) that is a resource hog and does things that we cannot see by companies we do not trust.

Personally, I think MC already knew that his browser would not be for everybody, and found that it was ok.
He is not looking at being one of the "popular browsers" or like all the rest.

As for the rest of those issues, if you are not willing to take just a bit of time to "learn" your new browser and take the few steps
like "adding Google back on" or "activating PDF" then perhaps this is not the browser for you.
Also, I think you underestimate MC and his abilities to keep this browser safe.
You don't have to have a "huge team" to keep up with security issues.
He has done very well for many years and to my knowledge I have not seen anyone come here and
say they have been hacked because the browser was insecure.

In fact, I would bet you money that PM is more secure than just about any browser out there and because of this,
we have had issues because lazy site people are not willing to take the time needed to update their security, not the other way around.

In the end, Pale Moon serves a very important role that NO OTHER browser out there even cares about.
That is why most of us are here. Yes add on's are great, but no one ever said that was the reason they made this browser.
And where will you go when FF shuts off 98 percent of the add on's? It was never MC's goal to make PM work with FF add on's.

It was a bonus. And perhaps when FF goes the way of the Dodo bird we will see more add on folks work their way over to PM.
In fact, there are multiple posts going on right now about how to make more add on's work with PM.

Your argument about advertising is not well thought out. Do you even remember FF in their early days?
They did not become big because they spent a bunch of money on advertising.
No, they became big because of word of mouth. Because they broke the mold from I.E. and made a browser for the people.
And now what are they doing? The very opposite. And that is why their market share is continually shrinking.

Doomed to fail! I don't think so. By saying that, you obviously don't understand what PM is and why it's here.
If you want a Cadillac browser with OnStar listening and logging everything you do then by all means, go get one.
If you want a browser that will handle the web without all the bloat, then your home.

In fact, PM kinda reminds me of the Vette Kart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD3y7yl ... C&index=25
This is what happens when you strip all the bloat off of something, freaking awesome. Thanks MC

[Nigaikaze]

I am sorry for having to say this, but you shpuld really read up the release notes of Pale Moon before making such a claim.

You should really understand that you know nothing about me before making such a claim. I read up on the release notes. I have to do that since I'm one of the beta testers. Plus I read up on them because I'm trying to learn what why and how Moonchild is doing what he's doing because I'm trying to learn how to code so I can help out.

Being angry about something like this is whining to be honest. But if you think that's a problem for you, so be it.

How does "I would not want that, either" become me being angry, me whining, and this being a problem for me? Please explain. I said nothing about any of that, I simply said that I considered it unwanted.

Why doesn't Pale Moon just use the Adobe Acrobat or Sumatra plug-in by default once it detects it? Why do I have to set it up manually in settings -> applications? Care to explain?

Beats me. Pale Moon has always used Okular for PDFs out of the box on all of my PCs. I've never had to set anything up manually to get Pale Moon to view PDFs in an external program.

Having said this, again, please acknowledge that not everyone has the skills to help out even if they wanted to.

What I will acknowledge is that users who are not developers can learn enough to be able to help full-time developers out. It just needs to be important enough to them for them to make that change.

[Nigaikaze]

In no way is it a collection of suggestions. In all ways it is a rant and very polarized opinion presented as "fact".

Overall, I agree with this assessment. Sun-Glasses, whether or not you feel it was a rant, it also came across as a rant to me. How you think you presented yourself and how you were perceived by several other people are two different things.

But I would disagree with you regarding this post not containing facts. I mean, it contains multiple facts and I tried to keep my own opinion on DRM etc. out of the post completely. This is more of a "Look, those things are missing. They should be included if Pale Moon is to be a long-term project." kind of post. And those are just the features that are missing in my opinion.

From my reading of this part of your post, you are saying: "These facts are that these features are missing in my opinion."

[fillerup]

Pale Moon is a browser that requires EFFORT and COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT. as such it probably will never reach any significant level of popularity (linux comes to mind). most of the points you listed might be a bad thing for a new user (and yes i do agree that new users with low technical aptitude will have a hard time fine tuning a fresh PM profile, in 2016 and beyond), but for those who do have the know how (the skill barrier isn't that high tbh) and the willingness to participate in the community, the solutions are there.

the one issue i will acknowledge is that, since Pale Moon was originally a Firefox fork, that is the impression outsiders will always have of it. someone who's never used it before might expect that all addons from AMO must be compatible, for instance, and will be disappointed when finding out that isn't the case. the hard part here is to change the public perception of Pale Moon, for people to see it as its own browser. however i do not think that is of much concern to moonchild, who imo seems to prefer quality over quantity when it comes to the userbase

[New Tobin Paradigm]

The Mozilla-based legacy that makes Pale Moon what it is today is both the greatest strength and its biggest hinderence.

Like all things it must be respected, balanced, and kept sane.

Just remember: Pale Moon is not Firefox and never will be again. That isn't because we all didn't want Pale Moon to be Firefox-like but because Mozilla didn't want Firefox to be Firefox-like anymore.

[Sajadi]

Just saying, i am happy that DRM is not included. It is a non free discrimination of free alternatives.

And NO non free discrimination should be supported in general at all. Otherwise i am happy that Pale Moon is and stays Pale Moon and is not becoming like the "other browser" where it's "developers/rippers" turn it slowly into an almost carbon copy of a big competitor's one!

[Sob__]

@Sun-Glasses: You have some valid concerns, but no good solution for most important ones, namely (1) and (2). Starting with (2), yes, development team is small and how successfully it will be able to handle big future challenges is a question. But what can you do about that?

Extensions are closely related. Let's face it, when FF ditches current extension system, most existing extensions will simply die sooner or later, because there won't be enough interest to keep them alive. If WebExtensions become universal standard one day, it would be bad if they worked everywhere else and not in PM. But it did not happen yet. And it also brings us back to small team, someone would have to add support for them.

I guess this all could be "solved" by discontinuing current PM and making a new one as "reskinned FF". But it wouldn't be exactly a win for us who like what current PM stands for, would it?

[ron_1]

I think some of the points Sun-Glasses mentioned were valid (for some users, not all), so let's not be so hard on him. That's just my opinion.

And just to be clear, I disagree 100% with the subject line. (I suspect it was the subject line that caused some of the semi-harsh replies.)

[Moonchild]

I think some of the points Sun-Glasses mentioned were valid (for some users, not all), so let's not be so hard on him. That's just my opinion.

Absolutely. But those points are mostly a matter of personal preference and what one person would prefer to see in Pale Moon (which doesn't agree with my own preference and attempt to keep a sane balance) -- and ultimately it's not Sun-Glasses' project.

Also, the way things are worded are very similar to what we've seen before from Firefox fanbois (no offense) that "Pale Moon must adopt Australis or die" and similar things we've done that were considered "impossible" by them a few years ago and which we did, regardless. Small team and all, to address that point in one go.

To OP:
I think if you have the opinion that Pale Moon is doomed to fail and not worth your time, then please, by all means, go and focus on something else. No point in using something you're convinced won't have a future, and even less of a point writing "open letters" on our forum about design choices that are made. The general relevancy of Pale Moon depends as much on principle, as it does on technical features, as it does on the Internet's attitude towards web clients as a whole. Especially in terms of the latter, nobody can predict the future. Once again: it's about balance. The no-DRM (and I call it Digital Restrictions Management) choice is a matter of freedom and principle (of not supporting an industry that doesn't care one bit about its customers). If that means that Pale Moon will be less attractive to consumerist masses, then so be it - and Pale Moon will in that case not have a majority audience. That doesn't mean it will fail or is irrelevant, quite the contrary. Having the choice to run Pale Moon and what it stands for is incredibly important to our current-day, ever-shrinking selection of client software we use all day, every day.

By the way: DRM doesn't even have anything to do with piracy, and everything to do with giving content providers control over software and hardware providers. The fact that you, as an Open Source browser user, are forced to allow the on-demand downloading and use of a "black box" and wanting us to cater to this running of arbitrary 3rd party code that the user doesn't consciously install is exactly the kind of software provider control DRM wants (and that I won't allow).

[HaleSun]

Little late to the party, but I can collapse tetris-style the OP's first point regarding addon compatibility with this: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14157&start=60#p102938
Compatibility is about to make a huge comeback, and even if it doesn't pan out to be all sunshine and roses again it'll still be a user's dreamscape compared to Mozilla's "WebExtension only" future in 2018 (which Waterfox and Cyberfox will have to follow because they're not actually "forks").

Google search can easily be added by the user: https://addons.palemoon.org/search-plugins/
It was included by default at one time, but Google Adsense did not honor their end of the deal so Moonchild did what was natural and dropped it, as you would any bad business partner.

PDF viewer can be easily added too: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14024

As for features like audio indicators, reader-mode, XSS filter, and downloads window, there are addons for that:

XSS filter included in NoScript: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... n-2.9.0.14
Downloads Window: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ds-window/
Expose Noisy Tabs: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=13557
Reader (48.2 works with PM27) : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... rsion-48.2

I'd argue that the Reader addon is even better than a built-in option precisely because it can be further developed and modified largely independently from the underlying browser. There is also less bloat in the core browser for people who don't want/need a reader-mode baked into the browser itself. The addon model is more flexible and is almost always a win-win compared to a "native" solution.

Rather than "doomed to fail" I actually envision a mass exodus towards Pale Moon courtesy of Mozilla and their obsession with imitating Chrome.

[JodyThornton]

Rather than "doomed to fail" I actually envision a mass exodus towards Pale Moon courtesy of Mozilla and their obsession with imitating Chrome.

Actually I think that may be a distinct possibility, but only with those who are Firefox nerds and love their extensions. As they stop working, those users will flock here. But I think most users of Firefox have already migrated to Google Chrome (seemed all it took was the "blink" of an eye ... har har har). But heavy extension users might come over to Moonchild Manor.

Really though, I think that the OP was bang one. There are problems facing Pale Moon in its current incarnation. Too many responders became defensive, thinking he was insulting the browser or picking it apart, when in actual fact, he was just making suggestions. He even prefaced the posts with humble disclaimer-type statements. But most posters wouldn't hear that.

I find when someone criticizes a product that a forum supports, everyone gets all antzy about it. Software products don't have "feelings", so let's stop treating it that way. We should be able to criticize or praise as freely as we like.

See, I like "review" style posts. They breathe reality in to a situation. Nothing more boring or non-productive on a forum than endless praise on something. People both like and hate stuff. On the Windows 10 Forum (at tenforums.com), dare you say ANYTHING dislikable about the OS, the fanboys there will sentence you to fifty lashes. We all know how Loud Noise and Frank Lion are like about Firefox and SeaMonkey over at that other place. Even MSFN harps on about classic OS systems like XP. Now there's definitely valuable information on all of those sites, but if you dare disagree with something, they'll see you as having an agenda. That's unfortunate.

Some of the OP's suggestions dared to say that Pale Moon should conform to other browsers in certain respects (notably with DRM issues and the like), but they were just suggestions. Too often, we say, "well if you don't like Pale Moon the way it is, then go away and use another browser then." But statements like that just aren't helpful or productive. Sometimes, to make something better, you need to compromise on a principle, instead of clinging so tightly to it, because nothing moves forward as a result. So perhaps, caving in to website operators towards one area may garner you attention in another area, where website operators are more willing to help and co-operate. Now just can focus on making that better. More users come, and as you grow your market size and influence, you can now be in a position of power to dictate solutions in other areas.

Someone here posted to the OP on his comments regarding user reach and market share numbers having a direct impact on success, basically citing it was a bunch of hooey. If you don't think good, big numbers correlate with success, you need to put down that joint.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

The problem is not that he had opinions but he framed his opinions as objective fact and flip flopped back and forth between them being fact or opinion. It was presented in the form of a rant with the intent of trying to coerce a response out of the development team to either acquiesce or lose a user (or all users) and deem the project to failure.

What sets Pale Moon apart from everything else is the principles and the core mission statement of the browser which is to be a general use browser unbound by corporate politics or servicing a brand of services, to also provide choice and a sane middle ground between feature and stability. It isn't out for special intrests of faceless companies or to corner the market and drive users to it and lock them in.

Pale Moon is a choice as much as it is offers choice. One can take it.. OR leave it. It was never the desire of the project to cater any specific workflow or any specific target of users. However, the principles for which the Project stands for cannot be thrown aside because one may be disgruntled or one thinks the project isn't going in the direction that is perceived as the best coarse to become a major player like Chrome or IE.

Our principles are our principles and compromise in the way that this user and perhaps some others would want would serve to only destroy the browser's core tenets. The opinion of missing features can never be fact or should really be humored because only the development team and the project can determine the core feature set. However, choice comes into play with extensibility being a feature.

The point I am trying to make is.. This entire thread was not framed as constructive criticism nor was it framed as a non-bias review. It was constructed as a hissy fit by a special snowflake who didn't bother to learn anything about Pale Moon before hand assuming it would be just the old Firefox UX but otherwise exactly the same.

None of his opinions have any barring on the project because the so called missing features are NOT missing. For the ones that Pale Moon never had .. Pale Moon never had and for the ones that were removed.. They were removed for a reason.

[kizo07]

Pale Moon is a choice

Yes Matt,
I think we all value and welcome the honest feedback, suggestions and even critic, so that we can steer in the 'right direction'. If you honestly (not obviously) believe there is something misleading, misappropriated, not working etc, and tend to choose a positive representation please let us know.

As my IT friend (have clients all around world) says..."Red flag warning! When a client/user tell you 'I tried doing it myself, but…' Whether they are willing to tell you or not, this client/user has a vision in their head of what they want, and are unlikely to be satisfied with anything else."

Minority user's 'lack' of understanding of and insight into the issues is not a real problem.
Challenge is in that some of them have 'different'/'some others' agenda, which is not representative with majorities value here.
I think and believe that they has that 'vision' in their head and can't be satisfied with anything else.

So, I think, maybe more appropriate 'message' should be... 'We have big party here! If you don't like food, music or you know some other nice party just 3 streets down...Please, just go there!'

[Fedor2]

This is most ever ridiculous rant i have seen here
especially this

not having a PDF reader or being unable to use sites like Netflix properly is not positive at all

Whats the murmuring about Netflix? Is it such a web epitome?
I never had a need to use that Netflix, even never have seen it, and all is good. And for PDF? Pale moon doomed to fail because it does not integrate pdf?.. Ж) boo-oo. Don't make me laugh

As for DRM, i say that it is right not to include inside the browser. But there is are plugin to be for this, just like with Firefox, but it has to be installed manually only, not some autoinstalling things like in Firefox.

The whole reason I came to PM was because it was NOT like the other browsers.

And that's all, i do not want another chrome or mozilla clone.

[JodyThornton]

Whats the murmuring about Netflix? Is it such a web epitome?
I never had a need to use that Netflix, even never have seen it, and all is good. And for PDF? Pale moon doomed to fail because it does not integrate pdf?.. Ж) boo-oo. Don't make me laugh

Now that's ridiculous. I am ALSO not a consumer of Netflix, but in no way am I indicative of the majority. Netflix is a MAJOR way for people to consume television, and it's only growing. I also don't have my own Twitter account, but if I put my head in the ground and try to pretend it doesn't exist, I'd be a fool. So Netflix NEEDS to work if you want to grow the browser.

[dark_moon]

I also never use Netflix, dont see any reason why i should use that DRM crap and i dont know anyone which use netflix.
And no, netflix doesnt need to run. Its only a hype