Pale Moon - web browser

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webfork
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Re: Pale Moon

#46 Post by webfork »

SYSTEM wrote:Interesting. Anyway, see http://www.palemoon.org/faq.shtml#Why_d ... e_in_speed.
The speed item in the FAQ has been deleted, I suspect just because they're not doing well generally in comparison to other browsers. There's a rather poor performance report over at Ghacks:

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/16/is-mic ... b-browser/

... Some caveats:
  1. The numbers weren't terrible, just the lowest on a list of recent browsers and this was only one mid-range system tested. Reliable benchmarks use a variety of systems (old and cutting-edge) for analysis.
  2. I acknowledge browsers are more than just speed but with the shift to a new browser engine, I think it's important they're able to keep up.

freakazoid
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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#47 Post by freakazoid »

I'm not surprised. Pale Moon is running a fork of the Gecko engine (some v20 ESR), so that is to be expected.

Heck, even K-meleon is running Gecko v31!
is it stealth? ;)

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SYSTEM
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Re: Pale Moon

#48 Post by SYSTEM »

webfork wrote: I acknowledge browsers are more than just speed but with the shift to a new browser engine, I think it's important they're able to keep up.
I doubt that the few Pale Moon developers can keep up with all of Mozilla.
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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#49 Post by smaragdus »

A bit off-topic- I tried different methods to integrate Free Download Manager with Pale Moon but to no avail- the procedures I followed might work with the installer versions of Pale Moon but didn't work with the portable version of Pale Moon (or at least for me). Has anybody managed to integrate Free Download Manager with portable Pale Moon? This failed integration is one of the reasons why I am still using the evil behemoth (an old version- 28, the last one before the advent of evil Australis).

grayducks
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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#50 Post by grayducks »

Hi smaragdus,
You may try using FlashGot to integrate FDM into Pale Moon. An old thread on the Pale Moon forum listed steps to manually integrate FDM into Pale Moon, but recent posts in page 2 of said thread state that current versions of FlashGot allow integration of FDM into the browser with full functionality.

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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#51 Post by smaragdus »

@grayducks
Thank you for your response. I know that I can use FlashGot to integrate Free Download Manager with Pale Moon but I prefer FDM's native add-on because using it the downloads start automatically and there is no need to confirm anything.

Another bad aspect of FDM plug-in for Firefox- it is not backwards compatible with older versions of Firefox and I spent about an hour performing tricks to be able to use the latest version of FDM with the last compatible with Firefox 28 FDM plug-in. It seems that the last version of FDM plug-in that works with Firefox 28 is 1.6.0.9, with later versions FDM doesn't integrate with Firefox.

Once I posted a message in FDM forum about this problem (integrating FDM with old versions of Firefox) and I got and advice to update to the latest version of Firefox. For me FDM forum is one of the most unfriendly ones I have ever seen so I promised myself never to post there again.

I am a bit surprised that the Pale Moon developer hasn't contrived a workaround or an official tool to integrate FDM with Pale Moon since FDM is by far the most popular free download manager.

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Re: Pale Moon

#52 Post by webfork »

Update here:
SYSTEM wrote:
webfork wrote: I acknowledge browsers are more than just speed but with the shift to a new browser engine, I think it's important they're able to keep up.
I doubt that the few Pale Moon developers can keep up with all of Mozilla.
That appears to be the case; they're considering dropping their current fork effort and switching back to a newer Gecko. No surprise as browser engines are complex and difficult, probably not something that a small dev team can manage.
Last edited by webfork on Sun Mar 20, 2016 12:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: (edited to make clear it's not a done-deal)

Stoik
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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#53 Post by Stoik »

Pale Moon deciding to fork off from mainstream Mozilla
and make many add-ons (extensions) incompatible
was an incredibly dumb idea !

The main value of a browser like FireFox
is the ability to customize via add-ons.
No add-ons, no special value !

I stopped upgrading Pale Moon
since the version 24.7.2,
and I hope they will come to their senses.

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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#54 Post by billon »


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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#55 Post by webfork »

billon wrote:Basilisk
Pale Moon uses the current hybrid platform we use. Basilisk will use UXP as a platform.
Pale Moon will have the classic interface, Basilisk will have the Australis interface.
Pale Moon will focus on users desiring a very high degree of configurability of their browser.
Basilisk will focus on being a replacement of (pre-Servo) Firefox, with support for NPAPI plugins, unsigned extensions, and with some (very) long-standing Mozilla bugs fixed.
Pale Moon will see active front-end/application development. Basilisk will see little front-end development since it will be catering to platform development instead.
Pale Moon and Basilisk are two different applications. Even if Pale Moon switches to UXP in the future, they will still be two different applications.
There's such a thing as trying to do everything for everyone and really doing nothing at all. Unless they have a small army of developers on their team, what's described here is at best extremely difficult.

Still, I guess if it means one more person isn't using Chrome, that's fine with me.

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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#56 Post by billon »


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Re: Basilisk - web browser

#57 Post by Midas »

billon wrote:Basilisk home page
FTR:
https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ wrote:Basilisk is a free and Open Source XUL-based web browser, featuring the well-known Firefox-style interface and operation. It is based on the Goanna layout and rendering engine (a fork of Gecko) and builds on the Unified XUL Platform (UXP), which in turn is a fork of the Mozilla code base without Servo or Rust. Basilisk as an application is primarily a vessel for development of the XUL platform it builds upon, and additionally a potential replacement for Firefox to retain the use of Firefox Extensions.
Image

Ghacks.net review at www.ghacks.net /2017/11/17/pale-moon-team-releases-first-version-of-basilisk-browser/.

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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#58 Post by JohnTHaller »

For anyone curious how much speed you give up using one of these alternate Firefox-based browsers, here are their JetStream 1.1 scores on my i7-4790, 24GB, SATA SSD rig (all 64-bit variants):

Firefox 57.0: 189.73
Basilisk 2017.11.12 (~Firefox 55): 178.50 (5.92% slower)
Pale Moon 27.6.1 (~Firefox 52): 179.23 (5.53% slower)

JetStream doesn't represent all use cases, of course, and doesn't really illustrate how much better UI performance is in Firefox 57 vs previous versions.
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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#59 Post by webfork »

I guess they finally found their niche: working with old Firefox plugins as Mozilla moves away from them.

I'm a little concerned that they had a fork going for quite some time ("Goanna") that was then abandoned for an "early-2017 fork point." That code wasn't working out for them? Are they just going to keep doing a new fork from whatever trunk every time Mozilla makes a decision some of their user base aren't happy with?

I can say I'm pleased the additional (and very odd) redistribution license requirement for the old Pale Moon seems to be gone.
JohnTHaller wrote:Basilisk 2017.11.12 (~Firefox 55): 178.50 (5.92% slower)
Pale Moon 27.6.1 (~Firefox 52): 179.23 (5.53% slower)
Good to know.

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Re: Pale Moon - web browser

#60 Post by webfork »

webfork wrote:I guess they finally found their niche: working with old Firefox plugins as Mozilla moves away from them.
Update here: another project is *specifically* aiming to maintain old Firefox plugins: Waterfox. It's a little clearer an objective than whatever it is that Pale Moon is planning.

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