Going back to 2.40

Discussion of general topics about Seamonkey
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neilgunton
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Joined: January 2nd, 2017, 7:05 pm

Going back to 2.40

Post by neilgunton »

I run Debian Wheezy on amd64, xfce desktop. I have been using Seamonkey for years, mainly since I was using Netscape since back in the 90's and this is a familiar environment for me.

A couple of days ago I noticed that a new version of Seamonkey was out, 2.46, so of course I decided to try it out. Worked ok, at first, but now after a while I notice that it is much, much slower than 2.40. Even moving the mouse around a web page (normal html, no javascript going on behind the scenes) it has a delay between clicking and actually following links. It's gotten so noticeable that I just went back to 2.40. Everything works as it should again. Weirdly, I didn't have to delete the .msf files and everything worked as it did before for mail.

I thought software was supposed to get better, not worse, with new versions. As a developer myself, this has always mystified me.

Anyway, the main reason for looking for the new version is my perennial hope: That someone had finally fixed the most annoying feature in an otherwise very nice environment. Namely:

1. Open the mail window. I keep the preview pane hidden.
2. There is one new message in my inbox, which is highlighted. It is spam.
3. I click the spam icon for the message.
4. The message is moved to spam, but then for some reason the preview pane opens up. I have to then close it again. PITA.

I don't know why Seamonkey needs to work this way... does it annoy anyone else? If the message is NOT highlighted as the current message in the right pane of mail when you click 'spam', then it doesn't open the preview pane. But if it is the current message, then that !@#$ing pane always gets opened again.

I have been hoping for years that someone will fix this... I have seen several bug reports (which I haven't tracked, they were from years ago) which seemed to claim that it couldn't be replicated or whatever. I don't see what's so hard to replicate this, it's easy - you just click 'spam' on the current highlighted message in the right pane of the mail window, with the preview pane minimized, and BAM the preview pane gets brought up again.

Sorry, didn't want my first post here to be a bitchfest, but I just wondered if anyone else is irked by this behavior. It's my main email client so I tend to notice it a lot and have to be careful when marking spam that it's not the current message.

I'm also sad that I can't use the latest and greatest version of Seamonkey any more, because it's worse (read: slower) than the previous version. I hope this trend isn't here to stay.
barbaz
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by barbaz »

neilgunton wrote:1. Open the mail window. I keep the preview pane hidden.
2. There is one new message in my inbox, which is highlighted. It is spam.
3. I click the spam icon for the message.
4. The message is moved to spam, but then for some reason the preview pane opens up. I have to then close it again. PITA.

I don't know why Seamonkey needs to work this way... does it annoy anyone else?
Yes! Me for one - http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=2946377

Never did find a chance to get around to dealing with that. :(
neilgunton wrote:I'm also sad that I can't use the latest and greatest version of Seamonkey any more, because it's worse (read: slower) than the previous version.
Is it still slow in SeaMonkey Safe Mode?
What about in a new, clean profile?
neilgunton
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Joined: January 2nd, 2017, 7:05 pm

Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by neilgunton »

I haven't tried safe mode, but if I decide to go back and re-try 2.46 at some point then I will certainly try that. Thanks.

I don't want to do a clean new profile, because I like my profile and don't think it should be necessary to completely wipe everything when upgrading to a new version of software like this. I don't like the tendency of some developers to think that it's ok to just abandon whatever went before and tell everyone to start anew. You should write your software so that it gracefully evolves from what went before - evolution, not revolution. Just my personal opinion, of course.
barbaz
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by barbaz »

neilgunton wrote:I don't want to do a clean new profile, because I like my profile
So just make sure to NOT delete your existing profile then. The clean profile is only a test. If it works, then the next step would be troubleshooting your existing profile. :)
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Frank Lion
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by Frank Lion »

neilgunton wrote:I don't like the tendency of some developers to think that it's ok to just abandon whatever went before and tell everyone to start anew.
Yeah, where you read that? How would they get their bookmarks, passwords, etc. back?

Troubleshooting is about the elimination of possibilities and a new additional testing profile is a useful indicator for that. As a developer yourself, you should already know that.

Here's how I wrote about this subject - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_ne ... on_Windows
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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neilgunton
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Joined: January 2nd, 2017, 7:05 pm

Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by neilgunton »

Sorry, I thought this was a major release, not alpha or beta test. As such, I would expect it to "just work", not require me to immediately go into debugging mode. I would have also expected it not to break any previous profiles or corrupt data, that is just lazy programming (imho).

I have already gone back to 2.40 at this point. I don't really have time to be debugging other projects, that sort of thing should have been done at beta test stage, not put onto end users.

Just using the thing, my intuition was that the slowdown was not due to anything in my profile. Every aspect of the program was slower, even bringing up windows and clicking on links. I read that a lot of the rendering code was rewritten, which sounds about right - the trend with developers has been to go further and further down the abstraction rabbit hole, which adds layers and makes everything dynamic and just slows everything down. That's what I think has been going on here for a while.

Sorry, don't mean to be so negative, but I don't have time to help debug what is supposed to be release level software and wasting my time jumping through hoops to create new profiles (or whatever).
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James
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by James »

SeaMonkey is still fast as 2.40 on Linux as a web browser on my system and did not have any Profile issues going from 2.40 to 2.46.

Just because you are having some issues does not mean the SeaMonkey devs are breaking things with bad code.
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Frank Lion
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by Frank Lion »

neilgunton wrote:Just using the thing, my intuition was that the slowdown was not due to anything in my profile.
Yep, very professional approach, 'How about we use intuition to solve this?'

Chum, you are basing your entire rant on a sample of just 1. I don't see 1000's of others queuing to complain about 2.46.

Seriously, just go away, you are a windbag waste of time.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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neilgunton
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by neilgunton »

Frank Lion wrote:Seriously, just go away, you are a windbag waste of time.
Is this considered ok on this forum? What are you, twelve years old?

Chasing people off with personal insults when they don't want to waste time jumping through useless debugging hoops... ok, that seems like a great way to run a forum.

And yes, intuition can be a perfectly valid way to judge software, since I've been developing since 1982, when I was 15. That's over 30 years, starting off with assembly language programming and over the years going through C++ and more recently settled on Perl website development. Over time you get a sense for when software is getting more bloated and weighed down with layers of non-optimized abstraction, and I do believe that this is what's going on with Firefox and Seamonkey.

The release notes for 2.46 are not encouraging - it seems quite amateurish, in fact, to release code that has admitted major bugs and issues with corrupting your data, without marking it as "beta". So, let's see... setting the default search engine no longer works, it defaulted me to DuckDuckGo for some reason and then wouldn't let me switch back to Google. It lists "extensive changes" in the Gecko rendering engine... for a minor .06 release increment? Perhaps this should have been a more major release, so that people would be able to realize that there's more changed here than just minor tweaks. A minor release shouldn't break this many previously working features, such as remember passwords, asking about cookies, or SSL 3.0 encryption (ok, so that is not recommended, but seriously, just taking it out so that it breaks any website that uses it? That's just being a thug). Jerky scrolling and text input. This seems more like an alpha release than something I would foist on the end users as if it's the "latest and best" that Mozilla has to offer.

And as for me being required to debug this mess: Yes, I am a developer, and I use probably several hundred (or more, I haven't counted) open source software packages during my everyday work. The standard Open Source riposte seems to be "if you aren't willing to help fix it, then you can't complain", but that doesn't work when you have all these hundreds of different codebases, development environments and weird code written by who knows over the last couple of decades. If I was required to help fix every one of these packages, then I would never get any of my own work done. I just don't have time. I am a *user* of most packages, and as such I expect a major release to "just work". Back in the day when Linux was just a hobby toy for people to play with, then it was fine to expect the user to be willing to put up with bs such as data loss or crashes, but when this stuff has been around for 20 years it has started to be used by people to do real work in their real lives. You can't have your cake and eat it - if you release something for people to use, then you can't be surprised when occasionally they come back and complain that it doesn't work. You get all the kudos and reputation and peer pats on the back and resume padding and so on from working on a popular piece of software, so you get something out of it alright. You can't then turn around and claim that it's all just a game and nobody should use it seriously and if you can't help fix it then you can't complain. That's just disingenuous. It's supposed to be production level code; at least, when something works relatively ok (as 2.40 has been for a while now), then you should NOT be releasing a minor .06 level increment as production, latest and greatest, with all these issues. The thing is slower than before, it's obvious to me, same system, all that changed is Seamonkey. If everybody is ok with that, then I guess maybe over time people will drift away and start using other software. It's that simple. So, have fun with your heads stuck in the sand, I don't believe in jingoism in any form, including software. If something is wrong then I'll say so, if you want to run me out of town for it then that's your prerogative - but it's still slower and more buggy than the last release, and calling me names and telling me to go away won't change that.

Neil
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Peter Creasey
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by Peter Creasey »

Neil, as a developer, what do you think might be the reason that no one else is reporting a slow-down with 2.46? As one thought, have you looked into whether your malware software might need tweaking?

My PCs seem to run just as fast with 2.46 as with 2.40.

As a former developer myself, I can say that you do make the valid point that some of the bugs e.g. search engine reset probably should be caught and remedied before the final release. And speaking of the search engine bug, it was easily remedied on my PCs. How did you try to reset it?

In summary, we can (read: should) all be grateful to the developers for their fine work in keeping SeaMonkey viable, even superior.
. . . . . . . . . . Pete
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Frank Lion
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by Frank Lion »

neilgunton wrote:I don't really have time to...
neilgunton wrote:Chasing people off with personal insults when they don't want to waste time jumping through useless debugging hoops... ok, that seems like a great way to run a forum.

And yes, intuition can be a perfectly valid way to judge software, since I've been developing since 1982, when I was 15. That's over 30 years, starting off with assembly language programming and over the years going through C++ and more recently settled on Perl website development. Over time you get a sense for when software is getting more bloated and weighed down with layers of non-optimized abstraction, and I do believe that this is what's going on with Firefox and Seamonkey.

The release notes for 2.46 are not encouraging - it seems quite amateurish, in fact, to release code that has admitted major bugs and issues with corrupting your data, without marking it as "beta". So, let's see... setting the default search engine no longer works, it defaulted me to DuckDuckGo for some reason and then wouldn't let me switch back to Google. It lists "extensive changes" in the Gecko rendering engine... for a minor .06 release increment? Perhaps this should have been a more major release, so that people would be able to realize that there's more changed here than just minor tweaks. A minor release shouldn't break this many previously working features, such as remember passwords, asking about cookies, or SSL 3.0 encryption (ok, so that is not recommended, but seriously, just taking it out so that it breaks any website that uses it? That's just being a thug). Jerky scrolling and text input. This seems more like an alpha release than something I would foist on the end users as if it's the "latest and best" that Mozilla has to offer.

And as for me being required to debug this mess: Yes, I am a developer, and I use probably several hundred (or more, I haven't counted) open source software packages during my everyday work. The standard Open Source riposte seems to be "if you aren't willing to help fix it, then you can't complain", but that doesn't work when you have all these hundreds of different codebases, development environments and weird code written by who knows over the last couple of decades. If I was required to help fix every one of these packages, then I would never get any of my own work done. I just don't have time. I am a *user* of most packages, and as such I expect a major release to "just work". Back in the day when Linux was just a hobby toy for people to play with, then it was fine to expect the user to be willing to put up with bs such as data loss or crashes, but when this stuff has been around for 20 years it has started to be used by people to do real work in their real lives. You can't have your cake and eat it - if you release something for people to use, then you can't be surprised when occasionally they come back and complain that it doesn't work. You get all the kudos and reputation and peer pats on the back and resume padding and so on from working on a popular piece of software, so you get something out of it alright. You can't then turn around and claim that it's all just a game and nobody should use it seriously and if you can't help fix it then you can't complain. That's just disingenuous. It's supposed to be production level code; at least, when something works relatively ok (as 2.40 has been for a while now), then you should NOT be releasing a minor .06 level increment as production, latest and greatest, with all these issues. The thing is slower than before, it's obvious to me, same system, all that changed is Seamonkey. If everybody is ok with that, then I guess maybe over time people will drift away and start using other software. It's that simple. So, have fun with your heads stuck in the sand, I don't believe in jingoism in any form, including software. If something is wrong then I'll say so, if you want to run me out of town for it then that's your prerogative - but it's still slower and more buggy than the last release, and calling me names and telling me to go away won't change that.

Neil
Yep, I can see you really don't have time to waste.

Meanwhile, a new additional testing profile takes less than 4 minutes to create.

neilgunton wrote: What are you, twelve years old?l
Yeah, as you can see by the date under my avatar on the left, I joined here as an embryo. I do so hope that wasn't your best shot.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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isaacschemm
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by isaacschemm »

Each release of SeaMonkey has a lot of changes in it that were made by Firefox developers in code shared between the projects. Have you tried using Firefox 49 (compared to Firefox 43) to see if you have the same problems?

Unfortunately, if a SeaMonkey developer can't make a particular problem happen on their own computer, it would be incredibly difficult to fix it. I'm just glad that they got a new version released at all - it had been a long time. It's been working OK for me.
neilgunton
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by neilgunton »

Based on the level of interaction that seems to be tolerated here, I won't be continuing to post.
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mightyglydd
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by mightyglydd »

neilgunton wrote: I won't be continuing to post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqHb7RFpoxU
Ooh! please do, you're our first New Year bloviating know it all..for all your amazing skills unwilling to do basic troubleshooting an 8 year old can do.
PS: Somehow I managed to post this with a very snappy SM 2.46. :-k
#KeepFightingMichael and Alex.
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smsmith
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Re: Going back to 2.40

Post by smsmith »

Done.
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