"Last updated
2 years ago (Nov 26, 2019)"
2 years ago (Nov 26, 2019)"
It's quite useful where you have 50 PDFs on a school page and you'd like to download them all without manually clicking save link as on each one of them. I have fond memories of DTA from my bachelor studies.
> We are therefore limited to the tools the WebExtensions model provides to us, which sadly makes it impossible to provide some of the advanced features of DownThemAll! Version 3.
I didn't even know they attempted a WebExtension rewrite and am not surprised that it wasn't able to do the things that made the old DTA worth using.
Do you see any hope for a fork of modern Firefox that start with just the tiniest stuff, maybe adding back a simple tab strip api to let Tree Style Tabs work properly again, that kind of stuff, then go on to put Mozilla out of business as soon as the economy allows it?
I'm only halfway joking here, and only about putting Mozilla out of business.
Separately, keeping a browser up-to-date with new standards and security fixes is a huge undertaking. You would need a lot of engineers invested in such a project.
By the way, Nils from DownThemAll is a great guy. He wrote a scathing blog post at the time Mozilla announced dropping support for "legacy" extensions. Wish I could find it.
This is exactly the type of attitude which gives software dev such a bad rap.
I personally support every single user of my products and never force a new version on them.
I did not intend that. My intention is this: "the cost of maintaining a browser with up-to-date standards and security is enormous". A few hundred thousand users who are unlikely to pay anything for such a browser is just financially not viable.
- that would go from my tool budget paid by work as soon as it is better since my browser is my second most important tool.
- as mentioned above I propose starting with a soft fork, as set of patches to be applied to the latest Firefox
No, I want the few tens of million ex-Firefox users that have left during the last decade because of being annoyed or because of the pragmatic reason that Firefox doesn't offer any experienced direct advantage anymore while Chrome is pushed heavily and has a experienced direct advantage: that Google web properties are optimized, not sabotaged on it.
> Separately, keeping a browser up-to-date with new standards and security fixes is a huge undertaking. You would need a lot of engineers invested in such a project.
Here I should have been more precise: I mean to start with a soft fork. Start by building from ordinary Firefox with just small patches to fix the worst offenders like the tab strip API and restoring the UI.
Me too.
Leadership at Mozilla is interested more in social justice, diversity, and equity issues than engineering issues. Don't look for this to come from today's Mozilla.
There is lately a push for privacy issues at Mozilla, which is nice to see.
[0]https://www.downthemall.org/the-likely-end-of-downthemall/
[1]https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev...
[2]https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-changes-firefox-apis-d...
PaleMoon
Waterfox Classic
For example, I am quite happy with visiting only sites which do not require JavaScript, do not use cookie banners, paywalls, and registration prompts.
For my purposes of browsing Teddit, HN, and my own websites, there are more than 20 beautiful, usable, friendly browsers I can think of just off the top of my head.
For everything else, I just close the tab and move on. Past experience leads me to believe I'm not missing much, because sites which break these requirements usually have crap content too.
If I really need something, I can open Chromium (with UO and Vimium) for that particular site and then close it afterwards.
Only a couple years ago there was no Teddit or Nitter, and now they are here.
I'm finding more and more usable sites almost every day, and I'm missing anything less and less frequently.
A couple years ago, I was mostly down-voted for pleading for noJS support here on HN, and now it's the opposite.
I'm feeling optimistic. The biggest thorn in my side right now is SSL/HSTS, which is a very fast treadmill. I'm praying for an easy-to-use and transparent SSL-stripping proxy I can use in the near future, which will make things even better on machines I control.
Why bother with the overhead of a fork? Perhaps a team of volunteers could put together a good enough proposal to be accepted by the WebExtensions team.
My feeling as someone who has tried to look into it is that certain people are not only reluctant to doing it but also directly opposed.
I might be wrong though and it would be fantastic of someone else could fix it and persuade them to accept it.
I don't think anybody was directly opposed, but there were a lot of hidden edge cases that needed to be dealt with.
Even though full-time devs might not have time allocated to doing this themselves, they are open to accepting solutions as long as the contributions are thorough and follow up on their concerns.
Unfortunately IMHO most submissions these days are more like "this looks simple to me, just do it!" instead of a genuine engagement. To some people, that looks like opposition.
To prevent all downloading, not just automatic. When they remove a video, they don't want you to have an archived copy to prove the content ever existed, or to watch it without their permission.