MyPal browser is dead - Licensing spergfest kills browser for Windows XP

[Ufssz B. Ebwjt]

Just an update on this project shitshow. Moonchild decided to change course on some of Pale Moon's technical approaches.

A change of direction for Pale Moon in 2022 - Pale Moon forum

Tobin threw a fit (see image for his first post in the thread) for what he saw as "reversing every major decision we have collectively made and I fought hard for in the past 7 years" without consulting him.

Long story short, Moonchild and Tobin have agreed that Tobin will continue as a developer but would not be involved with the community.

Perhaps signs of improvement for the project.

 

[Kot Johansson]

Feodor2 has quietly announced the return of MyPal through the README.md of the MyPal repo, now having a more modern Firefox Quantum base instead of Pale Moon

Tobin threw a fit (see image for his first post in the thread) for what he saw as "reversing every major decision we have collectively made and I fought hard for in the past 7 years" without consulting him.

You forgot to mention that Moonchild lashed back at him because he'd had enough of Tobin's whining and he thought he had only helped him to get leverage on the Pale Moon/UXP project.

Spoiler: Moonchild's responses to Tobin

(source)(archive)

(source)(archive)

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

I never liked the idea of Pale Moon, it was only made to satisfy a small user base who stuck to old Firefox extensions because they stopped working on newer versions.

I don't agree with everything Mozilla does, but if your first instinct after a retarded FF update is to spergout, then you entirely deserve this browser that can't even load a normal webpage without fucking shit up.

Yeah, but that's fine. The simple fact is that if XUL is not relevant anymore, then Pale Moon has no reason to exist. If Flash Player, JAVA, Silverlight, aren't things you need, don't use Pale Moon. That's fine. No point trying to track web 'standards' changes.

Interesting. They have dropped NPAPI support unfortunately, but good to hear about XUL still working.

This is one thing I don't understand from the giga autists nostalgiafags here and everywhere else, what's even the point when these things were becoming less and less used anyways? Flash was for a long time dying, except for Kongregate and Newgrounds which were still popular for Flash content.
I remember vividly seeing Flash banners and whatnot on a ton of websites even as far as the early 10's, slowly it got replaced by better javascript practises which then spawned its own framework for web development now known as HTML5, so the player got more and more unused on my browser.
Having the Flash player on your browser nowadays is as pointless as pointless can be, you might as well download one of these Flash emulation projects if you come across Flash stuff on the web every once in a while. Hell Newgrounds took the time to make a functional Flash browser to play their old Flash games if you still REALLY want to play them.

 

[seri0us]

Hell Newgrounds took the time to make a functional Flash browser to play their old Flash games if you still REALLY want to play them.

OT but I just run Newgrounds' Flash Players in WINE instead of Trashpoint (Flashpoint)

 

[MysticLord]

@Kiwi & Cow The issue for me was that I hated the new layout: tabs above url bar, lack of customizability, retarded minimalist nu-menu, general loss of functionality, and a ton of useful add-ons at the time had to be remade.

Now that Pale Moon is nearly useless and there are some alternatives (none of which have everything I want), people are moving on.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Pale Moon ran a lot better in general in the beginning too, as in slimmer usage-wise. Just plain old Firefox runs a lot better than Pale Moon at this point though and is faster on the same hardware.

 

[Jump]

They also managed to keep its UI pretty much the same since 2002-2006 (although you'll need to install Orthodox theme):

Ok this is cool.

Its current on Win7 but it looks like the last version that supported XP/Vista came out in 2019.

 

[Kot Johansson]

Moonchild announced the final update for the Basilisk web browser, due to him saying it was no longer needed in the "change of direction" post. He previously made an offer to anyone who may want to take over, telling them to get in contact (except for "traitors" like roytam1 and Feodor2).
A user of the Pale Moon forum made an offer to talk to dbsoft, the developer of White Star (a Pale Moon fork for Mac) and former developer of the official Mac port of Pale Moon before the whole MyPal fiasco, to see if he wanted to take over but the deal fell through because Moonchild didn't want to give dbsoft full control over Basilisk.

Anyway, in more recent and lighearted news, Feodor2 just updated the MyPal README.md again to announce that he got the upcoming Quantum version of MyPal working.

Its current on Win7 but it looks like the last version that supported XP/Vista came out in 2019.

Roytam1 (New Moon/Serpent guy) maintains a fork of Seamonkey for Windows XP called IceApe, in case you want to check it out.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Whatever happened to the day when developers who forked other peoples programs didn't give a shit about the other developers? Just do your own thing and grow a pair. Coders today are just spoiled children.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Eh, it's always been kinda like this. Just like with many other things all the social media and terminally online personality disorders turned the knob to 11. Especially FOSS has always been full of gay drama.

 

[Don Yagon]

Anyway, in more recent and lighearted news, Feodor2 just updated the MyPal README.md again to announce that he got the upcoming Quantum version of MyPal working.

Relevant picture from /g/:

 

[Hannibalistique]

Why is Go better than D or Python? Because Rob Pike and Ken Thompson wrote it.

Only reason I haven't even bothered to look at Go is because of Rob "Monochromatic Is Not Problematic" Pike.
I don't see a point in wasting time learning something from someone I can't respect intellectually, he has never had a good take on anything in his life.

Just to show the stark contrast between whatever Rob is and a proper beastmode intellectual:

Baldness is the result of high levels of testosterone if you have the genetic predisposition for it, hence why Bjarne wears it with pride. And why Rob tries to cover up the fact that he barely managed to get a tiny spot showing.

Pale Moon ran a lot better in general in the beginning too, as in slimmer usage-wise. Just plain old Firefox runs a lot better than Pale Moon at this point though and is faster on the same hardware.

It's not really surprising that the more the retards fucked with code they didn't understand the worse it got.

 

[CatButts]

About MyPal and Feodor2, it's worth adding to this thread.
Feodor2 is ukranian, so he's likely busy with Russia war situation at this time. Hasn't been active since shortly after it started.

Project survival hangs by this now.

 

[CatButts]

Oh, he's back!

GitHub - Feodor2/Mypal68: web browser

web browser. Contribute to Feodor2/Mypal68 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Don Yagon]

Oh, he's back!

GitHub - Feodor2/Mypal68: web browser

web browser. Contribute to Feodor2/Mypal68 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Glad to hear he's fine. He also didn't upload the code to Goihub, instead putting a zip to Mega for whatever reasons. Saved it all just in case, might try on older machine later.

 

[IamnottheNSA]

Oh, he's back!

GitHub - Feodor2/Mypal68: web browser

web browser. Contribute to Feodor2/Mypal68 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

>6 days ago
Oh thank God he's fine. I hope he managed to get out of dodge.

Gotta say, Firefox 68 on XP is looking good. Maybe it was for the best, abandoning Manchild and Tubbin's codebase.
Kinda wish you could launch it on Win98 and 2000 with KernelEx, like you could palemoon-based versions. But hey, the simple fact that it works on XP is already a small miracle, can't complain there!
EDIT: Oh shit nevermind! Windows 2000 is down, only 98 is left to go.
EDIT2: We got a fresh release just a few hours ago, along with the source code now on Github.
Looks like, wherever Feodor is right now, he is safe (for the time being, at the very least).

 

[llllIllIllIIIIllI]

It's for Windows XP. Why is anyone wasting their time developing software for Windows XP? Other than embdedded systems who is still browsing the web on Windows XP systems?

The answer is "ActiveX". ActiveX is Microsoft's version of flash that was very popular from 2000-2004. Basically companies spent millions of dollars developing for it and at the time it was the best client side solution, for just a couple years it was better than flash, javascript sucked even worse at the time, and HTML5 didn't exist. When they made new Windows after that (Vista, 7, etc) they did not port Active X right at all. They have "compatibility modes" but they don't work. You literally NEED a copy of XP and NEED Internet Explorer 6. It is cheaper for companies to just stick to XP. Normal office NPCs don't know how to work a VM or RDP/etc so there is a little niche obsession to have modern tools that work on XP, the #1 of this would be an internet browser. It's really attractive if you are this type of business and your dipshit employees are the type that just say "lol I'm not clicking minimize every time to get back to my browser, you have to accommodate and put it all in one place just for me". Yes, you can just have XP as a slave system on a VM or remote into it to use your shitty 20 year old business ActiveX app but normies are too stupid. Microsoft tried to have an "Internet Explorer 6 Death Party" but it didn't work, not even the first party company can kill it now because they didn't port it properly.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

The answer is "ActiveX".

The question was "Who is still browsing the web on Windows XP systems?" and this is in regards to a browser with no ActiveX support.

When they made new Windows after that (Vista, 7, etc) they did not port Active X right at all.

Citation needed. It's true, ActiveX is still everywhere, I see it all the time but I've never seen an ActiveX control that only works on IE 6/XP.

They have "compatibility modes" but they don't work.

I'm not an expert in ancient shitty versions of IE but afaik compatibility mode affects the rendering behavior of the pages. The dev tools in IE refer to it as "Document Mode" which would suggest it just messes with the standards support (or lack thereof) to render the page "correctly". There are Compatibility Flags for ActiveX Controls in the registry but it just looks like a giant pile of random tweaks.

Normal office NPCs don't know how to work a VM or RDP/etc so there is a little niche obsession to have modern tools that work on XP

This is why tools like Citrix XenApp, RemoteApp, VMware Horizon, etc. exist, but you're implying here that there's a corporate user out there with an XP machine that the organization expects them to use like a regular computer? Maybe in the third world but first world companies subjected to constant security audits would never manage to make that work.

I still see XP machines all the time, even SP2 ones, (WTF) but every single one I've seen still exists because it's hooked up to a million dollar piece of equipment that still works fine and therefore cannot be easily replaced. Maybe vendors should upgrade their shit but at this point XP is fine as long as it's not hooked up to the network.

Things like MyPal exist because there's a tiny group of insane people who will never ever stop using XP.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Whatever happened to the day when developers who forked other peoples programs didn't give a shit about the other developers? Just do your own thing and grow a pair. Coders today are just spoiled children.

Like when JWZ and RMS had passive-aggressive flamewars about the GNU Emacs / LEmacs (later XEmacs) fork in 1992?

https://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html