I get the feeling that some things haven't come across very well, even among our own people; let me try and clarify (some) things here.
I'm
aware Pale Moon has issues with web compatibility. I'm not trying to say it doesn't; it's there for everyone to see. Those things
must be addressed, regardless whether it is ultimately the fault of Google or webmasters or frameworks or the general idea in the web design business that everything has to be JavaScript driven or any of the many other factors that weigh in to the situation we have now on the web where
anything but the latest Chrome or Chrome derivative not "just works" or even works at all. To be able to address that we have to be able to focus on those issues and find inventive and sometimes radical ways around the fact that we aren't Blink-based and we aren't Firefox and the solutions implemented in either
can't easily be made compatible with us without
completely pulling the underlying plumbing apart and reconstructing it in a way that can do things in the way it's expected. I've personally tried tackling several of the major compatibility issues over the past year and have run into many brick walls. It's not for lack of trying to directly adapt Mozilla solutions (which are still the closest of the mainstream engines to us, although distinctly different) but it's just too many hurdles and we'll need to try a different approach to address these web compatibility issues in our core. Maybe that even means doing away with UXP and rebooting the underlying platform code; however, the base premise behind Pale Moon, even in that case, will not change and it will not go "Quantum".
XUL is too powerful and versatile of a concept to abandon. It has so much potential and if nothing else I want to bring that potential to our users.
Even without distractions, that will, undoubtedly, take
considerable amount of time, and while these things are worked on, Pale Moon will simply be less useful as a general use browser or a "one app fits all" solution for the obscenely complex web that "mainstream" spec writers continue to pile more and more on, seemingly just to keep their jobs as spec writers. The volume of specifications out there is a behemoth, and a lot of stuff added after, say, 2013, I think, is even optional/unnecessary and catering only to trying to make
everything do everything (not in the least trying to introduce a lot of C++ paradigms into JavaScript
which isn't needed if people would actually use the paradigms that have been present in JS from day one). Unfortunately a lot of those things require repurposing of parts of the language that simply isn't compatible with what we had, and is a massive detriment to efficiency and performance of any engine -- which has been masked in no small part by going multi-process in Chrome and Firefox.
However, we do have distractions. Trying to extend ourselves to, on top of all that, also redefine the extension rules of engagement and asking people to invest time, effort, and goodwill into a more efficient way of handling extensions by cutting away ancient manifests, ancient unsupported pure-Firefox extensions, and additional abstraction, is
stretching our scope too much with what is already a mammoth task that will require more time and focus. On top of all that this is seen as
arbitrary decisions to "make them incompatible" as if we would
willingly want to cripple what is one of our greatest strengths here is something I honestly don't understand,
but I can yet understand that for people looking from the outside in, it may,
at the surface, seem like this -- especially if there are vocal groups of people who
genuinely hate our project for one reason or another keep painting the impression that we are arrogant and don't have the user at heart. Given that context there simply won't be any desire to do any of what is needed to make this project succeed; there won't be any involvement, there won't be any support, and for the casual observer it may seem as if we're just "trying to be different". That has
never been my goal or my direction. Pale Moon has never been released "because it was different"; it has grown that way over years when Mozilla kept making strange and undesirable decisions for my view on what a web browser should offer.
So, giving that plenty of thought I decided that at least for Pale Moon, and despite the fact that wanting to improve the ecosystem of extensions to something purely focussed on Pale Moon with a clear separation from the inherently increasingly incompatible Firefox legacy that isn't maintained by anyone being the reasonable thing to do, it wasn't going to do anything but undermine our own foundations.
Aside from that, another distraction obviously being the dragging on of a conflict with people in support of a couple spin-off projects over clear licensing issues, it simply wasn't a sustainable thing any longer.
As said in my initial post I have given all this plenty of thought and setting on this new path moving the whole extension issue out of our main scope and making it entirely community driven to make sure stuff works in a hands-off approach where there are no "arbitrary" (even if they are not...) barriers, or at least as few as possible barriers, to making "Firefox" extensions work on Pale Moon will allow us to more solidly focus on finding ways, over time, to restore more web compatibility with the insanity which has been slowly spreading over the web (in whatever version they call it now...).
I don't have all the answers to all of the questions. Not everything is planned out and not everything is set in stone or even worked out into a vague action plan, but reducing the barriers to extension use in opposite to what we've been trying to do (which is creating some form of guarantee that stuff will at least work...) is, in my opinion, absolutely necessary. If there will be breakage and no clarity which extensions are "supposed to work" and which ones "are likely to not work" then that will ultimately have to be on everyone else to find solutions for, not us. All we can do is facilitate and continue to facilitate centralised distribution of the extensions and vetting to keep malware out.
It's the best compromise I've been able to find given the clear divide in what people really seem to want from Pale Moon.
With the direction I sketched here:
- If web compatibility on every site is your #1 concern and you don't want to use more than one browser, ever, then Pale Moon currently can't suit you. That is just a matter of fact regardless of our direction, but at least with this new direction we have a fighting chance to solve it.
- If extension compatibility with the legacy Firefox extensions is your #1 concern then the thresholds for that will be removed as much as they can, which would make things easier. Also, it will (I hope!) take away this misconception that we're trying to be "purist and different" over all else which simply isn't true.
- If customization of the UI is your main concern we can retain that because we will continue to build on XUL and the power of it as a UI language.
And none of the other options would provide that... Switching engine or going Quantum would destroy customization and extensions. Going on the way we were would just have us "bleed to death" for lack of a better term with insufficient people and resources to make happen what must happen.
So... I hope that makes some more sense to everyone.
And since while I was writing this Tobin butted in with a reply which is more swearing, clearly not having been temporarily having reduced thinking capacity and not wanting to do shit that's needed just because it doesn't align with his "perfect" view of the project, let me address that too.
So this is mainly for you, Tobin:
You'd best not try to redefine history here which is what you're doing regarding Basilisk. You were
on board with it being used as a development application for the (back then) UXP-in-development. Don't try to tell everyone now you weren't because it's convenient ammo with it having outlasted the time you envisioned it would last because there was some utility value in an Australis browser based on the platform code. Then you're just being hypocrite. And I can't stand hypocrites.
Yeah you'll have to do some work for transitioning back to the Firefox GUID. But hey, guess what? You designed the addons site specifically to handle multiple GUIDS, didn't you? Also
thanks to Basilisk. And since you're taking the time to basically shit on everything now I've done to actually be more accessible to users (Basilisk, language packs, wanting to have less barriers for extensions now) I get the feeling you think you are literally the boss of me!? I'm sick of your increasing levels of bullshit and anger on display towards everyone within striking distance.
I may have been OK with you labelling yourself the "UXP coordinator" because you seemed to function better having some label of importance, but
if you think I'll let you single-handedly sabotage the only way we can survive going forward you're dead wrong, no matter how much you decide to whinge about "you having to do everything" -- last I checked you've been mostly doing your own thing for a browser you never released and pushing your own ideas for improving the addons site while it was already working pretty well as-is and you call that doing work I
made you have to do?....
So you better get on board with this and stop giving me BS reasons to try and push your unrealistic vision on
MY project,
or you can just right fuck off and take your ideals with you to Binary Outcast and spin your own platform and Borealis off into whatever you want it to be. I will not have any of it! If necessary I'll maintain everything myself; I don't
need your fucking server you INSISTED you wanted to keep running "for the project". How much of that was charity, really? Or did you just want to have some leverage and control? Because that's what it looks like to me now.