Best Firefox fork...

Discussion of third-party/unofficial Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey builds.
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OtherAccountsLocked
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Joined: June 24th, 2017, 6:29 am

Best Firefox fork...

Post by OtherAccountsLocked »

What is the best Firefox fork for when Firefox 57 breaks much needed extensions?

The extensions I use are as follows...

SECURITY
-----------

Adblock Plus
Noscript

I probably don't need to explain these.

ACCESSIBILITY
-----------------

Video Downloadhelper
--------------------------

- I am hard of hearing. There is simply nowhere near enough volume in a browser - any browser - for me. I download videos and play them in VLC, with it's life changing volume boost function. I also use a slightly older version of VLC, which has mono playback as hearing fluctuates in each ear....so, a modern VLC add-on is probably no use to me. (Why do so many 'improvements' make life harder for people that rely on accessibility features?)

Stylish
-------

- White sheet backgrounds hurt my eyes. I am also colour-blind. I have spent a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears styling both Firefox itself and all the websites I use regularly.

Classic Theme Restorer
---------------------------

- Again, for my eyes. I don't really care if tabs are a little bit rounded or square, but, I do care about text being 'washed out', lower contrast and therefore, virtually impossible for me to read. This 'aero' c***p, or whatever it's called these days is impossible for those that are colour blind or have poor eyesight.

Make address bar font size4 bigger
----------------------------------------

Self explanatory.


I speak as someone that needs - NEEDS - both security and accessibility extensions.

I've been with Firefox since Firefox 3 - and have always called it "MY Firefox", because I see the web the way *I* want it. Mozilla is breaking that. It utterly breaks my heart to say this.

For the time being, when I get my new machine up and running, I'm going with Firefox 52-ESR.

But, I would like to ask, as this is likely not a solution for more than a year, what Firefox forks should I try out that will meet my security and accessibility needs?
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BruceAWittmeier
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Re: Best Firefox fork...

Post by BruceAWittmeier »

Can't help with all but these might get you started.

uBlock is very similar to AdBlockPlus:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... sions/beta

Video download professional -- works with Firefox Ver 57:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... rofession/
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smsmith
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Re: Best Firefox fork...

Post by smsmith »

For Stylish, there is Stylus, but it will only work with web pages, not the Firefox UI. Supposed to have a way to import Stylish styles, but I haven't played with it at all. If you have both installed at the same time, you could always copy from Stylish to Stylus by opening each style. A pain if you have many styles.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/

For other accessibility needs, you may need to explore options available via your OS. Screen magnifier, inverted color schemes, etc. Mozilla is actively taking away the ability to change the Firefox interface (UI) to "prevent people from rendering their browser unusable" or "mischievous extension that may be installed outside the user's knowledge or are broken with new Firefox releases". These are two of the excuses I have seen. I'm sure there are others.

Or, you could start looking at other browsers. Others have mentioned Vivaldi as a nice alternative. I've seen Opera mentioned. Of course, there's SeaMonkey, too. I don't know that a "Firefox fork" has much life expectancy, though I've seen the developer of Waterfox has said he would be giving it a go for as long as he could. I don't have a source for that quote. :D
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avada
Posts: 1932
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Re: Best Firefox fork...

Post by avada »

@OtherAccountsLocked

Good question. So far it seems not many are even active anymore. So the choices are little enough
The only one I know of that even updated to FF56 so far is Tete's custom build. Also Lawlietfox and pcxFirefox if they get updated. But these are not much more then custom compiled FF versions.

The only more derived forks that I know of and are still active are Pale Moon and Waterfox. Both claimed to keep supporting XUL addons.

Pale Moon former is already a bit dated since they forked the platform early this year, I don't know how/if they'll be implementing new features from newer FF versions. (For me the lack of virtual tabs and APZ for scrollbar/arrow-key would certainly be a deal breaker if they don't.)

Waterfox so has been a one man custom build, so it remains to be seen how the dev will manage to do this.
The only thing I found resembling a plan is this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comme ... d/deut7uq/

But this is already seven months old, so who knows what he will do.
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Reflective
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Joined: February 15th, 2007, 11:13 am

Re: Best Firefox fork...

Post by Reflective »

Forgive me but it's a contradiction in terms to say security is important to you and yet you continue to run an outdated version of Firefox which according to the forum software is version 42 which dates from November 3, 2015,

Are you aware of how many vulnerabitlies can be exploited in FF42? Here's a list of them: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/

I'd recommend you update to FF ESR 52.5 immediately: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/o ... tions/all/

There's no immediate rush to switch to another browser yet since ESR will be supported until June 26, 2018.

As regards other forks of Firefox, most of them are still in their infancy and it's best to wait until the kinks have been ironed out before switching to any of them right now.
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LuvKomputrs
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Re: Best Firefox fork...

Post by LuvKomputrs »

Cyberfox is very good and I've got Cybefox Portable on a USB stick.
It's been around for a few years.
Here is a link to the site:
https://8pecxstudios.com/
Toady is very respectful of Firefox(and their users) and is the creator/developer of the browser.
The future about this browser isn't 100% clear at the moment. It just might continue on after 2018.
There might be a possibility that another developer might help Toady or take over the development or Toady may decide to continue on with maintaining the browser. It's not 100% clear yet. AFAIK.
As you can see in my UA string when I'm posting this it's based on Firefox 52ESR and also has the option of using Australis when you load it or using CTR. And this is also done with respecting Aris the creator of CTR.
Here's an image of what my Cyberfox looks like.
https://s8.postimg.org/j0f3tn9yd/Cyberb ... mputrs.png

Note: I mainly use Firefox, SeaMonkey as my main browsers and Cyberfox(on occasion).

Note2: Posted here with Cyberfox browser to show another fork as an example.
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LuvKomputrs
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Re: Best Firefox fork...

Post by LuvKomputrs »

SeaMonkey is my favourite browser. :D
Even while not officially a fork...
The SeaMonkey Council just revealed its plans for the future; core points are plans to migrate to Firefox ESR.
The was in May 2017.
As you can see in the UA string Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0 SeaMonkey/2.49.1
It's the one I find myself constantly using on a daily basis. :)
I ♥ SeaMonkey.

note: to admins/mods of the forums I hope this is not off topic for this thread.
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