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Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

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xtabber:
I didn't want to dilute the discussion of the Pale Moon/Firefox transition with talk of other browsers, but Opera (the original Opera) did not work successfully as a browser. It was based on their proprietary browser engine, Presto, and when users clamored for extensions to functionality, they were shot down. And down also went their popularity and, some would say, their usefulness.

So, there was much grumbling among the Opera devs regarding their browser was dying. The radical decision was made to move Opera to the WebKit browsing engine. Oh, yay. Another Chrome-like browsing experience...except without the Chrome-like extensions. Let's make a browser like Chrome & take everything that users love about Chrome...and not use those parts.
-Innuendo (September 13, 2015, 09:42 AM)
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This is very confused and mostly wrong.

Opera was always at the forefront of browser innovation and a lot of their features were copied by the big guys.  The problem they faced is that it required simply too many resources for a relatively small company to compete with the big guys (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple) and they did not have the clout to get their cross-platform Presto engine considered in the adoption of standards.

What they did was to stop development of Presto (which remains licensed to other software companies and apparently still maintained on various platforms) and start building a new browser based on the Chromium Blink rendering engine that powers the Chrome browser and is developed and maintained by Google.  This allows Opera to spend their own resources on browser UI while keeping up-to-date on security and standards, courtesy of Google's vastly greater resources.

I've used Opera since 2000 and loved many features that have yet to be added to the Chromium version, but there is no doubt that the company made the right decision to survive.  I've been using the Chromium Opera for about a year now and even though it still has some rough edges, it has become my favorite browser for Web surfing, although Firefox is still my default for many purposes, particularly if they involve printing or page capture.

I'd guess that the Mozilla Foundation is also taking a hard look at the future and that their announced plans, while upsetting to many of us who depend on current Firefox extensions, are part of a strategy they hope will keep them around for the next decade. Given the power wielded by Microsoft, Google and Apple, that's probably the only way to go for most independents.

Innuendo:
This is very confused and mostly wrong.

Opera was always at the forefront of browser innovation and a lot of their features were copied by the big guys.  The problem they faced is that it required simply too many resources for a relatively small company to compete with the big guys (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple) and they did not have the clout to get their cross-platform Presto engine considered in the adoption of standards.-xtabber (September 13, 2015, 10:57 AM)
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You (along with NigelH) had very different experiences with Opera than I did. I tried Opera numerous times over the years & every time I did the web sites I visited never rendered properly. I loved what they were trying to do on some fronts, but their refusal to open up to extensions/add-ons and the inability to render the web sites I visited rendered it not a viable alternative for me...or my friends. One friend held on to the dream of Opera longer than most of us, but he was often having to switch to another browser to accomplish what he was trying to do on a lot of web sites he frequented.

The original Opera's market share was abysmal even at its heights. As talented as their programmers may have been, the general public at large did not share their vision. I'm sure there were a lot of people who shared the experience of their web sites not rendering correctly in Opera as well.

And if Opera's biggest failing was the mismanagement of senior management, what chance does Vivaldi stand when it was founded by Opera's CEO, the most senior management member? I'm going to try out Vivaldi once it hits 1.0...I don't want any failings of the technical previews to possibly color any opinions I might form about it.

But to swing this back on-topic, not having the clout is what I'm worried about for Pale Moon, but the second beta of their Goanna engine works remarkably well for being as early in the development process that it is. It's going to be interesting to see how a Firefox fork can exist when (eventually) the extensions dry up.

As for Vivaldi, it's got a lot of work ahead of it if it is going to become the "advanced browser built with power users in mind" that it's advertising itself as. Although, I now see that Vivaldi supports Chrome add-ons as well.

Maybe that's what Pale Moon will need to do in order to move forward as well? Regardless, I guess it may be time to start seeing if my favorite Firefox extensions have Chrome equivalents.

JavaJones:
I haven't looked into this *at all*, so pardon my ignorance. But why can't the Pale Moon (and other branch) developers fork from a newer dev branch and re-make whatever changes are needed to make Pale Moon what it is? Maybe that's no easier than maintaining their own rendering engine... but given the challenges other bigger companies doing their own browser engines have run into, I doubt it's easier to go that route than to simply do a new fork. After all Pale Moon is basically about removing all the social connectivity and updated UI BS, right? How hard can it be to do that stuff to newer Firefox?

Once again I apologize if this is an idiotic question. ;)

- Oshyan

f0dder:
To further the divide between the Firefox and Pale Moon browsers, the Pale Moon team has decided to abandon the Gecko engine and develop their own, code-named Goanna. This holds numerous advantages for them moving forward. However, this is more code that they will solely be responsible for to ensure that no vulnerabilities crop up in the code.-Innuendo (September 12, 2015, 10:18 AM)
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What could possibly go wrong? It's not like as if a browser engine is one of the most complicated pieces of general software... ;)

Last, but certainly not least, is a change that may very well be a devastating blow for the browser. Mozilla has declared that extensions will no longer be supported by Firefox in the future and the browser will be moving to a model that exclusively supports Chrome add-ons.-Innuendo (September 12, 2015, 10:18 AM)
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I assume this only relates to extensions and not Add-ons, since I hadn't heard about it - and if that's the case, it's a good move. The NPAPI should have been dragged out back and buried many years ago. It's pretty darn unsecure, and has mostly been used as a malware infection vector for the last many years. Good riddance!

If they're getting rid of FireFox specific Add-ons, though, it's time for pitchforks and torches.

Innuendo:
Once again I apologize if this is an idiotic question. ;)-JavaJones (September 14, 2015, 02:18 PM)
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Definitely not an idiotic question! What you suggest is a way to go for developers of forked versions, although it would reset the code base to zero & they'd have to re-integrate all of their tweaks and changes. Another thing using the ESR source code would do is reset the clock on deprecation of the code to zero...but the clock would still be there. In 18 months' time the current ESR code base will be deprecated and we'll be right back to where we are now...except by then the main Firefox line of development will be on Chrome add-ons only.

Opera, as a browser, never worked well for me, but for a lot of people it did & it must have upset quite a few people to be forced to leave something behind that worked the way they worked because running an out-dated browser is running an insecure browser. :(

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