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Waterfox Browser

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61–70 of 111 posts

Re: Waterfox Browser

#61
I really think that it is cool that there is a browser that is looking towards maintenance of what we had (XPCOM, NPAPI for old plugins) versus creating something new.

Very little of that out there nowadays.

It seems like a very conservative project.

It is good that we have this choice.

Re: Waterfox Browser

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not me. I lost DownThemAll[1] and TabWheelScroll after the extension overhaul [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DownThemAll !

I loved DownThemAll, but I'm not sad to see it go because I realised how rarely it was actually needed these days. The downloading interface built into Firefox really is fine 99% of the time. On the rarer occasions that I need to download extremely large files, I send them to an HTTP download client (pyload) that runs directly on my NAS in docker.

One thing that DownThemAll got right that I am not sure any other downloader I have found does is that if a download is terminated by the server before the reported file size of the file had been downloaded, it would see that as a failure and retry. Unreliable servers often terminate the download partway through and it seems most other download mangers, browsers etc. will just leave the truncated file on the disk and report the download as successful, not allowing you to continue from where it got to.

Re: Waterfox Browser

#63

I really think that it is cool that there is a browser that is looking towards maintenance of what we had (XPCOM, NPAPI for old plugins) versus creating something new. Very little of that out there nowadays. It seems like a very conservative project. It is good that we have this choice.

It feels a bit like SeaMonkey, repeated a decade later.

Re: Waterfox Browser

#64

I really think that it is cool that there is a browser that is looking towards maintenance of what we had (XPCOM, NPAPI for old plugins) versus creating something new. Very little of that out there nowadays. It seems like a very conservative project. It is good that we have this choice.

Seems like a security nightmare, especially as the development team appears to consist of one person.

Re: Waterfox Browser

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if someone really needs to use a legacy extension, it's a good thing that it's around, but I'm personally glad that XUL is dead both from a developer standpoint and as a user.

Not me. I lost DownThemAll[1] and TabWheelScroll after the extension overhaul [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DownThemAll !

And FireFTP http://fireftp.net/! Man did I love FireFTP

Re: Waterfox Browser

#66
post #31

I don't see why I wouldn't use Firefox itself over a closed-source fork with no visible advantages.

I fire it up from time to time to use some extensions that don’t work anymore in the newer Firefox.

Re: Waterfox Browser

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if someone really needs to use a legacy extension, it's a good thing that it's around, but I'm personally glad that XUL is dead both from a developer standpoint and as a user.

Yeah, projects like this give me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. NPAPI and XUL were discontinued for really good reasons. Some users say they still want them, but that's because (1) people hate change, even when it's good for them and (2) they don't really appreciate all the security baggage those old APIs were lugging around with them. Projects that assure those users that they can keep on trucking with their old…

Saying that "people hate change, even when it's good for them" has to be the most arrogant thing I've read today. If someone is most comfortable using their browser with a certain extension for which there is no good WebExtensions-based alternative, how can you say that forcing them to stop using that extension is "good for them"? Even if there is a suitable alternative, which requires re-learning a bunch of things the user is used to, how is that change "good for them"?

The move away from XUL and NPAPI is great for Mozilla, it makes it easier to maintain and develop the browser, it's probably good for extension developers (except for those who now can't port their extension to the new API because it's more limited), but it's not good for users who are forced to take time out of their day to find and alternatives or users who just have to accept that what they were previously using their browser for just isn't possible anymore with Firefox.

Saying that change is "good" for users even if the users don't realize it and resist, prevents us from considering the very real negative effects of introducing breaking changes or removing features of our software.

Re: Waterfox Browser

#68
post #42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't linked from https://www.waterfox.net at all, so hard to say

I mean, about page says Alex Kontos, MrAlex94 is Alex Kontos, so it almost certainly is. Not linking the source code is somewhat understandable because it is likely to increase support burden without any increase in contribution.

What empirical data do you have to back up that claim?

Re: Waterfox Browser

#69
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK the main selling point is xul (legacy) extension support.

I guess if someone really needs to use a legacy extension, it's a good thing that it's around, but I'm personally glad that XUL is dead both from a developer standpoint and as a user.

To this day I miss vimperator. There are substitutes but they don't come near the glory of vimperator.

Re: Waterfox Browser

#70
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not worded precisely, but I believe what they have in mind is tracking performed without prior consent by the browser author. Obviously if you don't block tracking scripts that doesn't protect you from websites that want to track you, but that's not the point of the statement.

> It's not worded precisely, but I believe what they have in mind is tracking performed without prior consent by the browser author. That was my interpretation. If I tell someone "I'm not collecting any data on you, so you don't have to worry about being tracked", it would be odd for them to accuse me of lying or being incompetent since obviously the government is tracking them.

> obviously

No, it's not obvious. If you don't have any idea how it works, it's easy to read in that statement that not including telemetry in the browser prevents all tracking, including by sites.

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