Is SeaMonkey falling behind again?

[TimAdye]

Hi,

The SeaMonkey 2.53 update based on Firefox 60 ESR was a huge step forward, but unfortunately SeaMonkey now seems to be falling behind again.

Quite a few sites now complain again that the browser version is no longer supported (eg. Google docs, Grafana), even with the User Agent as "Identify as Firefox". Setting a general.useragent.override gets rid of the warning, but some sites still don't work properly (eg. GitHub) or at all (eg. some Grafana instances). I guess this is because of the version of JavaScript that came with Firefox 60, or maybe something else (CSS, WebAssembly,...?).

What are the prospects for a new version of SeaMonkey based on a more recent version of Firefox, or else backporting newer JavaScript/CSS/WA into SeaMonkey? Or is there some compatibility add-on I could use, something like Babel on the client?

I'm sorry for asking such a demanding question, when I know how hard the SeaMonkey developers have been working to keep our beloved platform going. I am very grateful for all the recent updates to SeaMonkey. I'm just hoping that you may be able to provide a glimmer of hope for a nice improvement on the horizon.

Thanks,
Tim.

PS. Although I'm here raising the general question, here are a few details of some of the specific issues - in case anyone is interested. I'm using SeaMonkey 2.53.4 Win64 with User Agent as "Identify as Firefox". I tested also with other User Agent settings, and with Add-ons disabled - without joy. I compared against Firefox 81.0.1 which works correctly.

https://github.com/ : Commenting doesn't work properly with SeaMonkey. The easiest to see is in the Markdown editor preview: in a repo, select "Issues", "New issue", and type in some text. When you click "Preview" it claims there is "Nothing to preview". You can still submit the issue, but it sometimes doesn't show up immediately.

Google docs complains "This version of Firefox is no longer supported. Please upgrade to a supported browser." So far I haven't spotted any problems with its operation, but messages like this make me nervous that some day soon it will break and I'll lose my work.

Grafana complains "Your browser version is not fully supported". https://grafana.wikimedia.org/ seems still to work, but another instance I use all the time fails to accept the site authorization. I have to switch to Firefox.

I've had problems with many other sites, but haven't investigated those in such detail. Usually you want to get on, so switch to Firefox, Chrome, or Edge for that job. This is a great nuisance, but faster than fully testing each site with SeaMonkey. Which is sad.

[4td8s]

you could try using an unofficial Seamonkey 2.57.x build from wg9s which should work with some of those problematic sites, TimAdye.
I'm already starting to consider dropping the SM 2.53.x versions on some of my PCs and going with the unofficial 2.57 versions and I will be using just the 2.57 or higher versions of SM starting in 2021.

web standards have been changing so fast that the Seamonkey devs (which are now few of them) just cannot keep up.

[ndebord]

Hi,

The SeaMonkey 2.53 update based on Firefox 60 ESR was a huge step forward, but unfortunately SeaMonkey now seems to be falling behind again.

TimAdye,

For what its worth, a kludge has been essential for my continued use of SeaMonkey. I use IE View (set up for Edge Dev) and Open in Chrome (Vivaldi) for those sites that SM barks on. Not ideal, but it works for me. If perchance, some rich type decided to throw real money at SM, we could entice more developers to help out. Right now I'm just happy that Netscape Communicator redux is still alive.

Nick

[ndebord]

you could try using an unofficial Seamonkey 2.57.x build from wg9s which should work with some of those problematic sites, TimAdye.
I'm already starting to consider dropping the SM 2.53.x versions on some of my PCs and going with the unofficial 2.57 versions and I will be using just the 2.57 or higher versions of SM starting in 2021.

web standards have been changing so fast that the Seamonkey devs (which are now few of them) just cannot keep up.

4td8s,

So, by the end of this year, you will be moving to 2.57. I considered that, but as that version is still in Alpha, I ahve resisted the move. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Nick

[Anonymosity]

I have been using user-agent overrides for some sites. They seem to work.

[Peter Creasey]

Can someone explain exactly how to do the user-agent override? Is the override global or site-oriented? Etc.?

Thanks.

[TimAdye]

I have been using user-agent overrides for some sites. They seem to work.

I must admit that I don't find this helps any more for the sites I use. A user-agent override can remove warning messages, but doesn't fix broken sites.

The problems we had before that needed user-agent overrides were fixed with SeaMonkey 2.53.3's "Identify as Firefox" option.

Thanks,
Tim.

[Frank Lion]

I must admit that I don't find this helps any more for the sites I use. A user-agent override can remove warning messages, but doesn't fix broken sites..

Then, as ndebord wrote, use Edge Beta for those sites.

I don't know why people seem to have this huge life and death internal struggle over doing this. Would the world end if you, once in a while, listened to music using VLC instead of Winamp?

You have to use something like Edge Beta anyway to watch DRM stuff and with a 'Open With' extension, it takes as little time to do as opening a new tab.

I also don't get why people keep coming to this site with their 'evidence' of broken sites, when it was US who told YOU lot that this would happen more and more in the future.

The SeaMonkey 2.53 update based on Firefox 60 ESR

Nope, it's based off Firefox 56 with additional security backports....the 'identify as' bit being a simple general spoof override.

[Anonymosity]

Can someone explain exactly how to do the user-agent override? Is the override global or site-oriented? Etc.?

Thanks.

Here is one of my overrides. Change the hostname for other sites, and the platform for other operating systems.

Code: Select all

general.useragent.override.techblog.willshouse.com/2012/01/03/most-common-user-agents <set to> Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.87 Safari/537.36


[frg]

> Nope, it's based off Firefox 56 with additional security backports....the 'identify as' bit being a simple general spoof override.

At this point in time you can basically call 2.53.x and 2.57 forks to keep the good stuff only Security and feature backports.

Another bad example is https://www.acronis.com/

If SeaMonkey is in the UA you will see a 503 error. Switch it to Firefox in the prefs and all is well. These companies and sites all just s*ck and you should not support them.

FRG

[Peter Creasey]

Here is one of my overrides. Change the hostname for other sites, and the platform for other operating systems.

Code: Select all

general.useragent.override.techblog.willshouse.com/2012/01/03/most-common-user-agents <set to> Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.87 Safari/537.36


Thanks, but that reminds me why I haven't pursued this up to now. I don't understand any of that.

I believe I prefer to just leave things alone...stay totally lean and clean!

[Justinh]

I don't know why people seem to have this huge life and death internal struggle over doing this. Would the world end if you, once in a while, listened to music using VLC instead of Winamp?

Because people don't want to have to remember 'use this browser for this site, that browser for that site' and switch back and forth and such. I don't have two cars, two phones, two TVs, two toasters, etc. Yeah, users can manage, but it is a pain, for multiple reasons.

No, the world won't end because of a web browser...

[Frank Lion]

Because people don't want to have to remember 'use this browser for this site, that browser for that site' and switch back and forth and such.

Then those people should use a modern browser and not SM.

I don't have two cars, two phones, two TVs

I do, don't most people?

[WaltS48]

Because people don't want to have to remember 'use this browser for this site, that browser for that site' and switch back and forth and such.

Then those people should use a modern browser and not SM.

I don't have two cars, two phones, two TVs

I do, don't most people?

I'm not most people and use public transportation, don't have a TV or cable, and use Hoopla, Movies Archive, Tubi TV and torrents for entertainment. One cell phone and a landline.

[Frank Lion]

I'm not most people and use public transportation, don't have a TV or cable, and use Hoopla, Movies Archive, Tubi TV and torrents for entertainment. One cell phone and a landline.

Thanks for sharing.