As someone who was vocal about the virtues of Palemoon as a browser, some updates/info on the upheavals created by the introduction of Palemoon 25.
History
Palemoon was created to provide legit 64 bit version of Firefox when Mozilla decided to quit development of such a version, the focus also shifted to remaining true to the original vision of FF as Mozilla moved towards ignoring it's users and following a path most suspect is dictated by the source of the bulk of their current funding... this has culminated in the new Australis interface which makes FF a virtual clone of Chrome and eliminates virtually all ability to customize the browser in any meaningful way... a total betrayal of what FF has always been. The developer of Palemoon has remained true to that original vision. All the major funding for Mozilla these days comes from... Google, which has now succeeded in gutting a major competitor in the browser marketplace.
Why Palemoon 25 has to be:
As FF and Mozilla move ahead, it is inevitable that the underlying code makes it more and more impossible to retain the features and structure FF had prior to the introduction of the Australis interface. Inevitably Palemoon would either have to abandon it's philosophy or become a true fork of FF. In forking, it was decided to end support for XP, retain both 32 and 64 bit versions (as well as an Atom version which... truth be told, will actually run on XP...).
What problems this creates:
Two really, both minor, if you understand:
1. How do websites 'recognize' Palemoon. Palemoon could continue to report itself as some older version of FF, but inevitably some sites will start scolding you or insist you're using an 'outdated' browser. Palemoon also, legitimately wants to be recognized for what it is... a legit separate entity. For all sites, the changes necessary to recognize Palemoon are trivial since it's totally compatible with all recent versions of FF, but some are stubborn and some have snarky reasons to refuse. More on how to simply cure this below.
2. Some addons now refuse to work or install. Well addons that rely on the new FF Australis interface won't fly, but everything else is probably totally compatible, except that for security reasons addons interrogate the browser for specific info as to version and Palemoon 25 isn't a response that's understood, so they refuse to install or work. Again, changes to understand about Palemoon are a few trivial lines of code, many developers already are handling this, again a few are stubborn or have reasons to want to screw them. Palemoon has simple solutions to 99% of this, but not clearly explained for the non-techie ... hence this post.
If a site refuses to understand Palemoon 25 you simply need to take 1 min to add a 'spoof' for that site. Here's EXACTLY what you do:
1. In the url line type 'about:config'
2. anywhere inside the screen, opposite click and select 'new:string'
3. insert 'general.useragent.override.xxxexample.com' where xxxexample.com is the site in question (and of course it doesn't need to be a .com site, just whatever the url to the site really is).
4. insert into the string 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0'
The above string is about the 'best' general purpose spoof that will work for 99% of sites, similar strings will be available for some snarky sites ... see below.
Done. Next time you go to that site, Palemoon will recognized as if it's FF.
A perfect example of a site that's snarky is...suprise... Google. Go to Google, for example and Google 'moon' and images and you'll get a old style limited version of the page... Google has decided that Palemoon is an unrecognized primitive Mozilla browser, incapable of handling their latest features and formatting... riiight.
Using the above instructions create an exception for 'google.com' and use this string:
'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2125.10'
now Google (all of Google) will stop crippling your experience.
btw that string will also probably work for most sites...you might have to fiddle on a few really snarky sites...
Finally, Palemoon has a site already with mods made to the few addons that haven't already been modified to handle Palemoon 25:
https://addons.palemoon.org/
The most common are Adblock Plus or Adblock Edge (both actually work, but interface is limited, Palemoon 'versions' solve these minor issues).
Now, understand, virtually all themes and all but 2 of my addons worked perfectly when I upgraded. Extensions don't require any changes or fiddling to work. I myself haven't had any site, besides Google, that needed any spoofing, but I understand some gaming and social sites may require this. You may have to fiddle for a whole five minutes, but it's no reason to discard Palemoon just because their forums make the issues appear to be excessively complicated.
History
Palemoon was created to provide legit 64 bit version of Firefox when Mozilla decided to quit development of such a version, the focus also shifted to remaining true to the original vision of FF as Mozilla moved towards ignoring it's users and following a path most suspect is dictated by the source of the bulk of their current funding... this has culminated in the new Australis interface which makes FF a virtual clone of Chrome and eliminates virtually all ability to customize the browser in any meaningful way... a total betrayal of what FF has always been. The developer of Palemoon has remained true to that original vision. All the major funding for Mozilla these days comes from... Google, which has now succeeded in gutting a major competitor in the browser marketplace.
Why Palemoon 25 has to be:
As FF and Mozilla move ahead, it is inevitable that the underlying code makes it more and more impossible to retain the features and structure FF had prior to the introduction of the Australis interface. Inevitably Palemoon would either have to abandon it's philosophy or become a true fork of FF. In forking, it was decided to end support for XP, retain both 32 and 64 bit versions (as well as an Atom version which... truth be told, will actually run on XP...).
What problems this creates:
Two really, both minor, if you understand:
1. How do websites 'recognize' Palemoon. Palemoon could continue to report itself as some older version of FF, but inevitably some sites will start scolding you or insist you're using an 'outdated' browser. Palemoon also, legitimately wants to be recognized for what it is... a legit separate entity. For all sites, the changes necessary to recognize Palemoon are trivial since it's totally compatible with all recent versions of FF, but some are stubborn and some have snarky reasons to refuse. More on how to simply cure this below.
2. Some addons now refuse to work or install. Well addons that rely on the new FF Australis interface won't fly, but everything else is probably totally compatible, except that for security reasons addons interrogate the browser for specific info as to version and Palemoon 25 isn't a response that's understood, so they refuse to install or work. Again, changes to understand about Palemoon are a few trivial lines of code, many developers already are handling this, again a few are stubborn or have reasons to want to screw them. Palemoon has simple solutions to 99% of this, but not clearly explained for the non-techie ... hence this post.
If a site refuses to understand Palemoon 25 you simply need to take 1 min to add a 'spoof' for that site. Here's EXACTLY what you do:
1. In the url line type 'about:config'
2. anywhere inside the screen, opposite click and select 'new:string'
3. insert 'general.useragent.override.xxxexample.com' where xxxexample.com is the site in question (and of course it doesn't need to be a .com site, just whatever the url to the site really is).
4. insert into the string 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0'
The above string is about the 'best' general purpose spoof that will work for 99% of sites, similar strings will be available for some snarky sites ... see below.
Done. Next time you go to that site, Palemoon will recognized as if it's FF.
A perfect example of a site that's snarky is...suprise... Google. Go to Google, for example and Google 'moon' and images and you'll get a old style limited version of the page... Google has decided that Palemoon is an unrecognized primitive Mozilla browser, incapable of handling their latest features and formatting... riiight.
Using the above instructions create an exception for 'google.com' and use this string:
'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2125.10'
now Google (all of Google) will stop crippling your experience.
btw that string will also probably work for most sites...you might have to fiddle on a few really snarky sites...
Finally, Palemoon has a site already with mods made to the few addons that haven't already been modified to handle Palemoon 25:
https://addons.palemoon.org/
The most common are Adblock Plus or Adblock Edge (both actually work, but interface is limited, Palemoon 'versions' solve these minor issues).
Now, understand, virtually all themes and all but 2 of my addons worked perfectly when I upgraded. Extensions don't require any changes or fiddling to work. I myself haven't had any site, besides Google, that needed any spoofing, but I understand some gaming and social sites may require this. You may have to fiddle for a whole five minutes, but it's no reason to discard Palemoon just because their forums make the issues appear to be excessively complicated.
