Pale Moon has changed its GUID.

[LoudNoise]

The licenses likely allows this. That said, I would assume that there will be s slight number of confusing "This doesn't work" emails sent.to the folks who wrote them. I see no attempt to take any responsibly to support the change. Trippy doesn't care since everything works for him.

[malliz]

Out here it's called the I'm all right Jack system

[LoudNoise]

Apparently, things haven't worked out well. https://addons.palemoon.org/firefox/incompatible/ .

Yeah, a few issues were to be expected unfortunately, although thankfully a majority of extensions are still compatible. Of the six I use, only one of them had any issues. It's worth noting that a number of the extensions on the PM incompatible list have had tweaked versions created that are compatible - AdBlock Plus being a good example.

And on the plus side, it's a new version of PM that's no longer tied to Firefox 24 ESR and it's still free of Australis

Apparently, Adblock Plus doesn't really work with Palemood. It seems you need the Pseudo-Static version.

By the way, I am all for Pseudo-Static. I am planning to use the term the next time I make a argument where I suddenly find myself unable to defend my point.

[LoudNoise]

That said, I will still would like to hear from Matt if he took my suggestion.

[Trippynet]

Apparently, Adblock Plus doesn't really work with Palemood. It seems you need the Pseudo-Static version.

Yep, the pseudo-static version is what I'm using at the moment as it restores the button to the toolbar which went missing originally (although the unmodified/original one does still block ads and can be configured by going through the addons screen, but it's not ideal obviously). Other than that, Custom Tab Width, Greasemonkey, Video Download Helper, FlashBlock and IETab all work fine without modification. Like I say, there are of course some addons which have problems, but a sizeable pile of them work fine. All depends how they're written.

Not sure how Matt handled the communication in the end. I'm sure if he sees this he'll let you know

[LuvKomputrs]

Came across this at adblockplus.org
https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/1331

[LoudNoise]

As noted, this isn't to be unexpected at this point Trippy, Since it is basically still Fx 24, they have not made enough changes to break compatibility. Since version 24 is no longer being supported, the extensions will start breaking since the folks making the extensions will not bother to test against the version 24 code base. As Palemood changes, the problem becomes worse.

Matt's argument in the bug listed in LuvComputer's post is amusing. Matt from the bug: " I am rather disappointed at this type of discrimination to the Pale Moon project as ABP supports other browsers than Firefox." ABP supports other browsers (with large user-bases) and therefore should support Palemood (which does not). Since it will not, ABP is part of the conspiracy to keep PM down.

[patrickjdempsey]

For those of you not up-to-speed, GUID and UI ID's are no longer the limiting factors to extensions compatibility. SeaMonkey devs are currently working on getting JetPack style extensions to run in SeaMonkey and there are several (rather bizarre) baked-in limitations in what applications JetPacks will work under. Several popular extensions including Ghostery are now based on JetPacks and you can bet more will be coming as developers move to that framework as it is compatible with Mobile. Also, since Bootstrapped extensions like AdBlock Plus borrow some JetPack APIs to do their business, some JetPack issues will also impact Bootstraps.

To Matt Tobin specifically: I discussed some of the issues that would be a problem with continued extensions compatibility, including switching the GUID about 5 months ago. But you and no-one else seemed interested in having an adult conversation about the real problems. One thing I mentioned but didn't go into fully was that it was going to be difficult to convince extension developers to add specific support for PaleMoon. Probably the worst possible way to go about this process is to just do it and then bug everyone after the fact that their work is broken with a form letter and then redistributing modified versions of their work without permission. Why no advance notice? Why no attempt to contact extension authors privately or through official channels and ask their OPINION on supporting a fork before doing it? Why only a 6 weeks notice when you guys aren't even on the rapid releases train, and even on rapid releases it takes 18-24 weeks for changes on the Trunk to work their way to a release?

On the issue of redistributing modified extensions... it's apparent to me that in order to get many of these extensions to work in PM it requires more than just a GUID switch. Under MPL license requirements, you are free to redistribute an unmodified version of an extension, but if you modify it you have to make the source code available online. And despite MPL licensing, it's generally considered good manners to contact authors and ask permission before redistributing. In the case of Themes, the source code may be freely licensed, but the imagery may not, and any Theme specifically supporting current versions of Firefox is not likely to work, AND older versions of Themes and Extensions designed for pre-Austrailis Firefox may be already starting to run into issues with CSS, XUL and XBL changes in Gecko.

[LoudNoise]

It also needs to be renamed so that the original dev is not asked to support the extension.

[Trippynet]

Since it is basically still Fx 24, they have not made enough changes to break compatibility. Since version 24 is no longer being supported

Sorry, that's incorrect. The whole point to changing the GUID, ditching the Firefox 24 part of the useragent and rolling out a new major version number is because PM is no longer depending upon Mozilla's development of the Firefox 24 codebase of old. That's why compatibility with FF24 is no longer guaranteed - particularly from a website point of view. It's also why PM continues to receive updates, security fixes and new features despite the 24 ESR codebase being abandoned. If you like, PM is now a combination of FF24, elements of code from later FF/Gecko releases, plus some original code as well.

Regarding the disappointment from Matt, the main issue is that a lot of extra work will have been required to re-code the addon for Chrome, IE, etc. The changes required to support PM however are currently very, very minor (a couple of minutes of coding). Although a small browser in the grand scheme of things, PM does have over 200,000 users accordingly to recent 3rd party stats, so it's understandably disappointing to see a developer shun those users for the sake of a few minutes of effort. Still, this was not completely unforeseen of course, hence the pseudo-static versions of these addons which are PM compatible.

Jetpack is of course a completely different kettle of fish, understandably.

Palemood

And it's "Pale Moon", as you well know. We do not resort to deliberately misspelling Mozilla product names, so please be civil. Thank you.

[LoudNoise]

Small changes are not the point, Continued support is. You are asking these folks to spend time and resources that could better used supporting larger projects. As the code diverges, they will have to spend even more time supporting code that is based on an old code-base. That isn't likely to happen with such a small user base.

Like it or not, most of the code in PM is still from Fx 24. PM did not magically rewrite the browser overnight.

[patrickjdempsey]

If you like, PM is now a combination of FF24, elements of code from later FF/Gecko releases, plus some original code as well.

I really don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. Although that's probably not entirely your fault as the PaleMoon website is notoriously bad for hiding information about what version of Firefox/Gecko it's code is based on. Which, FWIW is a pretty serious violation of the MPL licensing for that code.

Based on digging around the supported features in the Release Notes page for PM 25, as well as the very silly Gecko build-date in your UA string, it is clear to me that PM 25 is based on Firefox 31 ESR. Abandoning Firefox/Gecko's numbering scheme is risky. Another thing I notice in your UA string and the Release Notes:

"Disable Firefox Compatibility mode by default.
This means Pale Moon will no longer have a Firefox/xx.xx indicator in its UserAgent string."

This is pretty much browser suicide. SeaMonkey users can attest to how bad of an idea this is. If PaleMoon is based on Firefox 31, it needs to advertise that it's based on Firefox 31. Period. Maybe it's not a huge huge issue right now, but next spring if they release PM 26 based on ESR 38 then there will almost certainly be major problems with website support for new technologies.

Dropping XP support is also likely not a good move. There's also so technical aspects of telling extensions that they are seeing Firefox 24 that is a bad idea. I also have to wonder what services.appInfo.version reports? There's going to be some very confused extensions from all of this I think.

[mightyglydd]

We need more evangelism and boosting...

Well done Trippy, good work, a free 'PM: the Browser for "civil" Folks' T-Shirt's on the way, postage due...

Dropping XP support is also likely not a good move.

Very elitist if you ask me, screw all those folks around the world who can't afford, are not allowed or don't have the equipment to support Win 7/8...

[Frank Lion]

The changes required to support PM however are currently very, very minor (a couple of minutes of coding). ...
... so it's understandably disappointing to see a developer shun those users for the sake of a few minutes of effort.

Yeah, that makes sense. Take an unknown browser whose dev and users bang on endlessly to stress that it's not Firefox, don't bother to test it or have any learning curve time on it, but just take their word for it.

Then, don't bother, as you usually would with any compat changes, to betatest with your extension/theme with it on Mac, 3 different OSs of Linux, WinXP, Win Vista, Win7 Aero, Win7 Basic, Win8 or 8.1. Again, just take their word for it that it'll work fine.

That is the only way it would take 'a few minutes of effort' and meanwhile it's still your name on it, you have to support it and the guys who told you it would be all fine are nowhere to be seen.

Incidentally, XP still has between 25% and 30% marketshare, so PM dropping XP support has just cost them at least a quarter of their userbase. Good move.

Come clean, Trippynet, your aim both here and on the PM forums is to see just how long you can get away with knowing damn all about this stuff before people catch on, isn't it? Next time, send what passes as the organ grinder.

[patrickjdempsey]

The changes required to support PM however are currently very, very minor (a couple of minutes of coding). ...
... so it's understandably disappointing to see a developer shun those users for the sake of a few minutes of effort.

Yeah, that makes sense. Take an unknown browser whose dev and users bang on endlessly to stress that it's not Firefox, don't bother to test it or have any learning curve time on it, but just take their word for it.

And even worse? How is any extension author supposed to know beforehand if their extension only requires the alleged few minutes of work, or an entire separate compatibility layer as is often required for SeaMonkey? Sure, it might only require changing the GUID, or it might require an entire rewrite and as I indicated in my previous post, the standard methods for detecting application version may fail, which may require some really wonky coding. PM advocates and developers also seem to be uniquely ignorant of the fact that most current extension authors have no desire to continue to support pre-Austrailis versions and have already dumped that code.... and many authors of pre-Austrailis-compatible extensions have simply abandoned their work... so I'm really not even sure who they think they are appealing to.