SeaMonkey and Ghostery

[DonB77]

I was running a version of SeaMonkey and Ghostery, and unfortunately I don't remember which version of SeaMonkey it was. SeaMonkey then updated itself and I lost the use of Ghostery. Different guys on the Ghostery forum posted compatible versions of Ghostery and SeaMonkey they were using that worked which I tried and it still wouldn't work on mine. The operating systems were also the same Windows XP. The only difference may have been the version of windows, I am running am running Professional and they didn't specify what version they were using. I even tried shutting my firewall down and that didn't work either.

Another piece of the puzzle is I have a desktop running XP Professional that I bought, running SeaMonkey 2.1.3 and Ghostery 5.1.1 which works fine. This laptop came with Vista on it and also had disks that would let me take it back to Windows XP Professional which I did. Not being a programmer as dumb as it might sound I don't know if the version of XP Professional that is on the laptop has some elements of Vista embedded in it and that would be part of the the problem or not. Anyone have any ideas?

[Anonymosity]

If by "lost the use of Ghostery" you mean that it was marked incompatible, you can increase the max version number of SeaMonkey in the install.rdf file of the extension, put the file back in the .xpi file and install it again, and it will probably work. I have 10 extensions for which I had to do that to get them to install, and they all work.

[DonB77]

I know what you mean by being incompatible I had that happen once But I'm not up to speed on what you said you did with the files or where those files are even located. But what I meant by losing the use of Ghostery it doesn't put the little ghost head in the toolbar and if I put it there manually and go to a website I don't get the drop down window showing me what is tracking me. If I click the ghost head it just tells me it didn't scan the website. Like right now I have SeaMonkey 2.23 installed and Ghostery 5.1.1 installed and it's doing nothing.

I'm still wondering if there is something different about the XP Professional I have on this computer, because it wasn't installed like windows normally would be, it was as Toshiba put it, a downgrade from Windows Vista. I just wish I could remember what both versions of SeaMonkey and Ghostery I was using when it worked.

[Lemon Juice]

I tried Ghostery 5.2.0 in SM 2.25 on Win 7 from here and the effect is it works but only in one browser window. When I open a new window then the ghost icon is not there and no page scanning is being done. Perhaps you should tell Ghostery developers about this problem?

[neophil]

Hi there

I'm using SM since a while (V 2.19 ?) and ever used it with Ghostery.
With SM 2.26.1, Ghostery was stuck to V 5.2.1 'newer version/builds are no more avible for SM), BUT with SM 2.29 and without any compatibility advert when installing it, SM makes Ghostery no more working !!!!

Anyone from rhe Mozilla team and /or the Ghostery developpers to take that bug in consideration ?

Thanks in advance

N.B: using SM in french under XP SP3 & Seven

[Anonymosity]

I tried Ghostery with SeaMonkey and it did nothing. So, I guess it is a lost cause the way it is now.

[d4rkn1ght]

It looks like Ghostery support for SeaMonkey has ended.

https://getsatisfaction.com/ghostery/to ... 2-29-today

[neophil]

It looks like Ghostery support for SeaMonkey has ended.

https://getsatisfaction.com/ghostery/to ... 2-29-today

The post you're refering to is a user question, not a Ghostery Team answer (still waiting for it in fact ... )

As far as i'm concerned, i did a rollback to SM 2.26.1, and Ghostery 5.2.1 is working back perfectly (including bugs updates lists)

[unbeleevabull]

I'd rather not roll back. Is there a best alternative to replace Ghostery? Something that does what it specifically did well (block tracking beacons for example).

I already have NoScript, RequestPolicy, AdblockEdge and Bluhell Firewall. But Ghostery appeared to still catch other things (can't be sure it blocked things that otherwise would not have been blocked). Disconnect won't work either and I had some concerns about it anyway.

[Philip Chee]

Bug 1060858 - Ghostery 5.3.1 does not support SeaMonkey (was Ghostery toolbar button doesn't work)

TL;DR: Ghostery relies on addon-SDK. The addon-SDK has been rewritten for Firefox post-Australis. SeaMonkey uses the older toolbar customization code. AMO reviewers won't allow Ghostery to use a patched SDK that supports SeaMonkey.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29307983-Seamonkey-New-Ghostery-version-5.3.1-no-longer-supports-SeaMonkey#29310345

Code: Select all

> SeaMonkey support is not longer possible because Ghsotery relies on
> addon-sdk and it, in turn, does not work correctly on SeaMonkey. 5.2.1
> will be the last available version until such time that support for
> SeaMonkey is re-added. The actual reason for this is because the
> underlying API for icon placement has been re-written in addon-sdk to
> support Australis, and since Ghostery relies on it, there is no simple
> way to re-add it to SeaMonkey. On top of this, AMO (official mozilla
> distribution store) has denied our submissions with older addon-sdk
> patched to support SeaMonkey, so were out of luck for now.

http://logs.glob.uno/?c=mozilla%23seamonkey&s=18+Sep+2014&e=18+Sep+2014#c625919

Code: Select all

17:18   bmcdermott   (ghostery developer)
17:18   bmcdermott   I mean we know how seamonkey support worked
.....
18:58   RattyAway   bmcdermott: hi! Thanks for your email
18:59   RattyAway   I've fiddled with the addon-SDK and managed to get the start page to show up resource://firefox-at-ghostery-dot-com/ghostery/data/walkthrough.html
19:00   RattyAway   What I did so far. in tab.js tabs.js and windows.js I added a section for SeaMonkey support e.g.
19:00   RattyAway   'engines': {
19:00   RattyAway   'Firefox': '*',
19:00   RattyAway   'SeaMonkey': '*',
19:00   RattyAway   'Fennec': '*'
19:00   RattyAway   }
19:00   RattyAway   bmcdermott: w00t! shows up in the Tools menu too!
19:08   bmcdermott   RattyAway: nice! we do a lot of custom stuff with the toolbar button so i wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't work automatically
19:10   RattyAway   bmcdermott: yeah I haven't found where the toolbar button code lives. It's 3:10 am here so I'll continue tomorrow
19:11   bmcdermott   RattyAway: ok cool. let me know if you have any questions or need me to do anything

Phil

[Lemon Juice]

Phil, RattyAway is you?

I can sense some hope in the above conversation, which is good!

BTW, wouldn't it be best if SM was shipped with the same SDK as firefox - there are more and more firefox extensions based on the SDK and it's difficult to port them to SM - at least I think it is, I don't really know what needs to be done to port a Fx SDK extension to SM...

[therube]

> Phil, RattyAway is you?

Yes.

[Philip Chee]

BTW, wouldn't it be best if SM was shipped with the same SDK as firefox - there are more and more firefox extensions based on the SDK and it's difficult to port them to SM - at least I think it is, I don't really know what needs to be done to port a Fx SDK extension to SM...

The SDK packed into the SeaMonkey omni.jar file is [as far as I can tell] the same as the one in Firefox. I now have a working patch for the SDK:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1071048

Code: Select all

 module.metadata = {
   "stability": "unstable",
   "engines": {
     "Firefox": "*",
-    "Fennec": "*"
+    "Fennec": "*",
+    "SeaMonkey": "*"
   }
 };

But the SDK reviewer wants me to do it this way:

Code: Select all

 module.metadata = {
   "stability": "unstable",
-  "engines": {
-    "Firefox": "*",
-    "Fennec": "*"
-  }
 };

Phil

[Lemon Juice]

If removing the engines altogether will have the same effect then why not?

If this patch gets implemented in SM does this mean that not only Ghostery but many other Fx extensions will work in SeaMonkey (or at least attempt to work) and will no longer complain that some module doesn't support SeaMonkey in the console log?

[Philip Chee]

If removing the engines altogether will have the same effect then why not?

If this patch gets implemented in SM does this mean that not only Ghostery but many other Fx extensions will work in SeaMonkey (or at least attempt to work) and will no longer complain that some module doesn't support SeaMonkey in the console log?

Well that's the theory anyway. Whether those particular modules are really SeaMonkey compatible is another question. But we do try to implement the more important Firefox APIs (Australis excepted).

Phil