willywanker

Better off disabling advertising components, which of course needs root. There's tools like AppManager for that - https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/

In general, this generation of application developers (not just mobile) never learned one of the most basic rules of UX, that goes back to the 90s - don't bug the user with unnecessary information and absolutely avoid using modal popups unless it's really important (to the user, not you). Those responsible for the business decision to add newsletter subscription and 'try our mobile app' popups in addition to app review ones need to be strung up with piano wire.

Blackberry was primarily a corporate vendor, their phones were geared for email and Exchange server support, not end users, and their corporate users presumably weren't surfing the internet on their phones regularly. By the time of the iPhone, these features were available to the consumer market as well and it was no longer a unique advantage for them.

Another minimalism obsessed project talking of 'cluttering' up the screen. Because we do all our writing on a smartphone where screen real estate is at a premium. And the supreme irony of using bloatware max Electron to deliver this supposedly 'simple' experience.

The OpenBSD issue was pretty clear - building against system libraries alters the browser configuration and behavior, for which Moonchild would end up being held responsible. Even now there are contributed 3rd party builds on the downloads page for Mac OS and OpenSolaris among others, these are vetted to follow the build procedure and are authorized to use the official branding as a result. OpenBSD can make their own build if they want but they can't call it Pale Moon. Hyperbola Linux does exactly that - their Iceweasel and IceApe browser/suite are built on Pale Moon's Unified XUL Platform (which is forked from the old Mozilla application platform) but are clearly seen as separate products.

There is already a similar issue with forks for Windows XP called New Moon and My Pal - Pale Moon long since dropped support for XP yet users of these builds show up on the forum asking for help instead of asking the fork maintainers.

He's moved the URL here - the site continues to be updated - https://digdeeper.club/articles/mozilla.xhtml True, no mention of Mr. Robot though I'd say that was minor compared to whatever else they've been pulling off.

>a browser that replaces content on web pages.

Mozilla went hardcore political and Chrome copycat long after his time. There was no such controversy there under Eich, and even now as Brave's CEO he isn't doing anything to 'influence public opinion'. Browser CEOs aren't newspaper editors or activists, Mitchell Baker excepted.

He was opposed to it as a private citizen, not as Mozilla CEO. His beliefs and supported causes as the former are nobody else's concern; had he been discriminating in terms of employment or otherwise making public statements it would be a different story. Or are we now witch hunting people for wrongthink?

The author of this is has some pretty ridiculous allegations, from blaming the browser for analytics on its homepage provider (when you can directly change the homepage to whatever you want right from the preferences without digging into about:config or elsewhere) to automatic updates, which is set to notify about them by default, not download and apply them. Firefox was(is?) known to install a separate updater service on Windows, FFS.

And he's complaining about NoScript, which doesn't play well with Pale Moon to the extent of destabilizing the browser and whose Pale Moon compatible XUL version is long abandoned by its developer while there's an alternative (eMatrix, forked from now abandoned uMatrix that was made by uBlock Origin's author) available. (https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=17619)

Pale Moon is what Firefox used to be once upon a time in terms of customization and privacy before Mozilla became Google's controlled opposition to guard against browser monopoly allegations.

The toxic developer in question quit 2 years ago - things are peaceful now with the community. Pale Moon isn't a rebuild of Firefox - it's a complete fork with its own rendering engine Goanna based off Gecko 52 and developed independently. Several of the security vulnerabilities introduced due to the larger code base and complexity of a multi process browser (to say nothing of Firefox's additional bloat of adding what are better as extensions to the browser core such as a PDF renderer or Pocket) are simply not applicable to Pale Moon, but the release notes detail the ones that are and have been patched.

The only thing 'outdated' is their not jumping on the minimalist, mobile focused UI that Chrome invented and Firefox copied and retaining a sane, desktop user focused and fully customizable UI that doesn't need digging into about:config or userChrome.css tweaks and can be directly done from the preferences dialog or context menus. The way Firefox used to be until version 4 onwards when the copying Chrome and limiting user choice began. To your last point, why should you have to tweak Firefox for privacy at all when they keep proclaiming how privacy friendly they supposedly are? Pale Moon is private out of the box - there is no baked in telemetry (they don't run a telemetry server, for starters), analytics, tracking, advertising or anything else on those lines.

That isn't a Signal exclusive flaw. If the phone OS is backdoored, everything on it is compromised.

Or use Pale Moon, forked long ago and developed independently, that respects your privacy out of the box without needing 50 different 'hardening' Arkenfox type changes or having to keep watch every time Mozilla tries to screw over end users like this. Zero telemetry, zero advertising and no mental gymnastics over how we're financially dependent on Google but still value your privacy. And bonus, it retains XUL extension support and the full customizability that went with it (including full support for full themes that can make it resemble Chrome or modern Firefox if you want to).

Websites today offer little over the ones from 15-20 years ago functionality-wise. In fact they have less features in the name of 'simplicity' that results in their being bloated memory hogs with javascript.

Never could see the difference between a so called web app and a shortcut to the site in question on the desktop. It is not a standalone application when it depends on the browser runtime. Much rather prefer Mozilla's sadly vanished application platform, where you could create powerful standalone cross platform desktop applications with knowledge of just XML(XUL being a subset) and Javascript. Firefox and Thunderbird themselves were great examples of such apps and it would have been any day a better alternative to Electron, these applications actually respected the look and feel conventions of each OS they ran on.

Mozilla had a separate XULRunner runtime to bundle with your app for it to be fully standalone, or you could invoke it with the locally installed Firefox instance. There were several, like Songbird (media player), FireFTP/FireSSH (originally began as extensions and now available as standalone software)

Ancient Roman statues were designed so the heads could be detached and switched, for eg when there was a new emperor on the throne.

Not really-they don't care about this despite multiple complaints from users. As it is non mainstream browsers (having their own rendering engine that isn't Blink or Gecko) are few and far between.

It's exactly the same attitude of 'this site requires IE6' from the early 00s, but with worse results.

They are a gatekeeper for a huge number of websites, this effectively blocks anyone from using a browser that isn't a wrapper around Blink, or Firefox itself. As it is there are very few independent browsers given Google's absolute monopoly over web standards and constant stuffing draft specs into Chrome. This is far worse than the IE6 days.

>and sending me a polite email telling me to pound sand.

Mostly not even bothering to inform you that you didn't make it to the interview round.

You're describing userscripts, which is what site focused web extensions essentially are anyway. Install the Grease/Tamper/Violet monkey extension and you can find scripts from Greasyfork.org, or author your own. Each script defines a scope listing the sites it's allowed to run on.

If XUL were to continue as it does on Pale Moon, here is no need for Web Extensions given they are a reduced subset in terms of functionality compared to the previous XUL/XPCOM versions.

And ironically for all the talk of making it more secure, the amount of cross browser malware has only shot up since Mozilla decided to dump XUL in favor of copying Chrome's extension system.

Firefox has enshittified itself if your reference point is the original Firefox of the early 2000s that unseated Internet Explorer's dominance. User customization has steadily eroded since version 4 when they started copying Chrome, from multi-process to removing the statusbar to introducing the hamburger menu to the insane practice of incrementing major version numbers into the triple digits.

>While FF is still the best browser for me (barely)

Give Pale Moon a try and ignore the FF fanboy propaganda of it being oLd aNd iNSeCuRe. It isn't, it's regularly updated to keep up with Google dominated web standards and security patches, and runs on an independent fork of Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. It is not a mere rebuild like Librewolf, Waterfox etc but a separate browser that retains all the full customizabiity of pre 2017 Firefox with full XUL extension and NPAPI plugin support.

>you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing!

about:config already has a warning when you first open it that you'll screw up your settings if you don't know what you're doing. So if someone borks their install as a result, it isn't Mozilla engineer's job to apologize or hand hold them through it.

Every software until the 2010s (Windows itself, with its registry) has had this implicit disclaimer that you forfeit all official support if you dick around with the internals in an non standard way. So why is it now at the other extreme of 'fuck all power users, we will only target those who can't walk and chew gum simultaneously' ?

It's a bullshit trend that goes away from the past where the UI was customizable to whatever level of simplicity or complexity one preferred to now where the developer decides what's good enough for you (in this case a totally dumbed down and limited UI targeted at the great unwashed, who despite all this effort continue to stay with Chrome). Don't like toolbars? Hide them. Remove buttons you don't want. This used to be the norm with all desktop apps until the 2010s when UX mandarins decided that nobody but smartphone users with their constrained screen space and system resources mattered anymore.

And this is why I stick with Pale Moon. The desktop UX reached maturity years ago, Pale Moon in the spirit of pre 2011 Firefox (which introduced version 4 with many of the controversial Chrome imitating changes beginning from then) offers a powerful and fully customizable browser out of the box with no telemetry or third party bullshit needing 'hardening' tweaks to get rid of. You get the separate search bar, tabs below addressbar and other features that can be changed to your liking directly from the preferences without having to go near about:config.

And goes without saying, full support for powerful XUL extensions and full themes that actually extend the browser's functionality and change its appearance the way it used to be on Firefox back in the day.

Now do population density of Japan vs the US, or even the size of all of Japan vs various American states.

Blech.

WA3 was an AOL production so of course it sucked. Buggy out of the box and introduced the media library feature. Version 5 fixed it. Also best part is the media library and extra features were themselves written as plugins so if you didn't want the feature you could disable it and use it just as a simple player.

I see in this an attitude that's become increasingly common since the 2010s among developers as well as software companies regardless of open source or proprietary - "We know what's good for you, the end user and we will decide on your behalf." and use this as an excuse to strip out features that had been long available. Firefox is a classic example.

In stark contrast to the previous norm of highly customizable software that catered to both newbies and power users. Right here we see the example of the maintainer unilaterally deciding to strip out a feature that's already been disabled, just because he decided he knows better what KeepassXC users ought to do.

e-readers can go for days to weeks on a full charge depending on how often you use them. Definitely much longer than the average smartphone.

Assuming there's one within walking distance for the kid.