
Waterfox – Firefox fork retaining XUL support - twobyfour
https://www.waterfoxproject.org/
======
MrAlex94
Huh, didn't expect to see this on here again!

Just before I continue I'd like everyone to know I have complete respect for
Mozilla and everything they have achieved with Firefox in v57! It really is
awesome and a testament to their engineering talent. I used to submit patches
to them to get the code base compiled with Intel's C++ compiler and they
really are great in communicating with you and even going out of their way to
fix obscure issues. I hope to return to submitting more helpful patches and
I'm excited to see where Firefox goes from here on out!

Now on to some other points:

* v56 with security patches from v57 is available to test here if anyone is interested: [https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/7ed9sf/waterfox_5...](https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/7ed9sf/waterfox_56_test_build_download_plans_please/)

* v56 will stay here with security patches remaining until the end of v59 ESR (I'll be using it to track security issues and patch them).

* In the spirit of YCombinator and HN, my next step after the release of v56 is to go to VCs (or other funding sources) and show that open source projects can be successful business ventures without having to sell out the user. Then hopefully set up a team and create a power-user focused browser based on all the exciting technology out there - (servo would definitely be a fun base).

Of course I'm young and Waterfox was a side-project that I thought made me a
real programmer at 16 because I managed to set the 64-bit flags on MSVC (oh
dear). I never thought it'd basically become a full time job, get me into
prestigious universities and even land me job contracts because of all the
years I spent working on it!

If anyone has advice I certainly wouldn't knock it and it would be much
appreciated. If you think I'm crazy go ahead and let me know as well haha!

~~~
bad_user
I have a lot of respect for open-source contributors and for OSS project
maintainers.

However in order for a fork to be sustainable it means that it needs to be
more than a rebranding, otherwise it cannot survive. In particular, if
Waterfox is retaining the XUL support, then it's going to get harder and
harder to merge upstream Firefox into it, which means a bigger and bigger
burden on you.

> _my next step after the release of v56 is to go to VCs (or other funding
> sources) and show that open source projects can be successful business
> ventures without having to sell out the user_

If you succeed, that's going to be great, since it means more funding for
open-source.

However the elephant in the room is that you're dependent on Mozilla's
developers for continued development. That's much like greenwashing, you know,
how some companies claim to be "green" by outsourcing pollution to other
countries.

And implicit in this claim is that Mozilla is selling the user out and I don't
see how. I understand the reticence for Google being the default search
engine, but as a DuckDuckGo user and as an European I can tell you that the
difference can be night and day. And it's easy to change the search engine,
there's no other browser that makes it easier, desktop or mobile.

Speaking of which, Ecosia might be cool for having trees planted from its
revenue, but it kind of has the same problem — being dependent on Bing and
thus Microsoft. And I'm going to guess that the results are at least as poor
as DDG and the problem for users is that most users will apply the "three
strikes you're out" rule, because you don't want to second-guess your search
engine on every search, unless you really, really care so much about privacy
that you can take that pain and most people don't.

~~~
MrAlex94
Sorry for the delayed response!

> However in order for a fork to be sustainable it means that it needs to be
> more than a rebranding, otherwise it cannot survive. In particular, if
> Waterfox is retaining the XUL support, then it's going to get harder and
> harder to merge upstream Firefox into it, which means a bigger and bigger
> burden on you.

I am aware, but the plan is to keep XUL support going for now until the end of
ESR 59 (Q1 2019) and by then having an appropriate replacement.

One path was the idea to keep following Firefox except to extend the APIs
available (and submit them to Mozilla as well in-case they get would like to
merge).

> And implicit in this claim is that Mozilla is selling the user out and I
> don't see how.

Sorry I didn't mean it to be interpreted that way! Just meant that the general
stigma about OSS + business not working together (although the last few years
that has been changing).

> Speaking of which, Ecosia might be cool for having trees planted from its
> revenue, but it kind of has the same problem — being dependent on Bing and
> thus Microsoft. And I'm going to guess that the results are at least as poor
> as DDG and the problem for users is that most users will apply the "three
> strikes you're out" rule, because you don't want to second-guess your search
> engine on every search, unless you really, really care so much about privacy
> that you can take that pain and most people don't.

I see. Well I believe it's still worth it and from feedback I've heard, many
people don't mind the results as they find Bing results fairly decent and are
more than happy to support the project. I don't think it's too unreasonable to
not want to have to rely on Google for everything? People are free to use it
if they want to though.

~~~
bad_user
It's not unreasonable to want to be free of Google. I went through this
process already, which is why I'm a Firefox and DuckDuckGo user and a FastMail
customer, having used Google Apps before.

I'm glad to see your attitude, I guess I've read too much between the lines —
personally I'm a little annoyed by a double standard I've seen here regarding
Firefox, which is somehow held to a much higher standard.

So good luck to you and your project.

------
pmoriarty
Apart from retaining XUL support, it also:

    
    
      * Disabled Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)
      * Disabled Web Runtime (deprecated as of 2015)
      * Removed Pocket
      * Removed Telemetry
      * Removed data collection
      * Removed startup profiling
      * Allow running of all 64-Bit NPAPI plugins
      * Allow running of unsigned extensions
      * Removal of Sponsored Tiles on New Tab Page
      * Addition of Duplicate Tab option
      * Locale selector in about:preferences > General
    

Judging by that feature list alone, this seems like a browser that respects
user privacy, is against DRM and advertising to its users, and gives the user
the power to run any extension they want instead of limiting them to running
only signed extensions.

~~~
frik

      * addition of duplicate tab option 
    

Why can't Firefox and Chrome add this functionality?

How it should work: In IE11 it's Ctrl+K and it opens a new tab (a deep-copy of
the current one, incl history so one click on the back button in the new
cloned tab.

~~~
Santosh83
Duplicate tab option is present here in Firefox 57. It's in the right click
context menu on any tab.

~~~
frik
Is it too much to ask for a simple shortcut, like Ctrl+K

Ctrl+T ... new Tab

Ctrl+K ... dublicate Tab

Ctrl+W ... close Tab

I won't start clicking around on the tabs. Please add the missing shortcut
(Ctrl+K)

~~~
zbraniecki
can you file a bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org? It should be easy to do!

source: I added the duplicate tab context menu option in Fx57

------
tomc1985
On another note, XULRunner was a JS runtime with XUL for UI markup, like an
early Electron. It's a shame the project was scrapped, I really enjoyed
writing XUL+ES5 and seeing XML become native widgetry. (It's the platform that
Firefox was initially built on, I don't know how much of it is still there
now)

Bring back XULRunner :'( That project was way ahead of its time

~~~
MrAlex94
XULRunner was a great piece of tech!

> (It's the platform that Firefox was initially built on, I don't know how
> much of it is still there now)

Looks like it was completely removed in this bug:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1221724](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1221724)

Although I suppose some form of it is used in Firefox now (although I imagine
XUL will get removed some time after XBL has been replaced with
WebComponents).

~~~
tomc1985
I wonder what kind of effort would be required to port it to node/V8? IIRC
XULRunner's main handicap was relying on Moz's older-gen JS engine

~~~
dom96
I would personally be interested in using XULRunner's innards to create a
dependency-less cross-platform GUI framework (as a C library ala libui). Does
anyone know how easy that would be and where I should start looking?

~~~
tomc1985
I don't have any answers for you, but it's worth noting that Moz worked around
the JS speed limitations with bespoke C++ via XPCOM.

------
mmastrac
Developers are free to spend their time on whatever projects they wish, but I
suspect that Waterfox users will quickly run into the tradeoffs between
customizability and performance that the Firefox team made.

It's a noble effort but I suspect there just isn't a big enough community to
keep a XUL-based browser (plus the extensions themselves) moving forward while
being as secure, web-standard-current and fast as Firefox proper.

~~~
moosingin3space
I'm not sure that there will be many XUL extensions left maintained after a
while -- since no major browser supports them and the fact that WebExtensions
is a much easier framework for development. As a result, I don't see much of a
future in Firefox pre-Quantum forks.

~~~
bkdbkd
Yes, in time there won't be any XUL extenions. But what do they say we are all
supposed do with that tiny nagging:'it worked yesterday, but not today'
problem?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Firefox's Extended Support Release, which will keep getting updates for almost
a year, certainly helps.

I've been on ESR because of vimperator/pentadactyl not being portable, plus
some other extensions like FoxyProxy, Tree Style Tabs etc.

But today I discovered tridactyl works well enough on latest FF to suit my
vim-ish needs, while the other two have been fairly completely ported.

~~~
michaelmrose
Neat saka tridactyl and vim vixen several interesting choices

~~~
Elvewyn
I did not like Saka Key (some weird behavior sometimes), but Vim Vixen comes
close to VimFx.

------
minitech
Using forks of unsupported Firefox versions/features (this, Pale Moon, etc.)
is a good way to introduce vulnerabilities into your daily browsing.

Firefox ESR should be the addons stopgap of choice while they’re ported.

~~~
Santosh83
Pale Moon reportedly backports security patches.

~~~
minitech
Sure – not _trying_ would be obscenely irresponsible. But:

1\. I don’t trust them to do that right

2\. You’re later to get the same patches

3\. You can’t backport patches for removed features

~~~
superkuh
It's funny that you say these things with such confidence when you're
demonstrably wrong (ie, 3) by simply looking at the Pale Moon update logs and
the 'Defense in Depth' "fixes" for vulnerabilities that don't exist in PM but
do in FF which are changed anyway just to be sure.
[http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml](http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml)

~~~
minitech
#3 is a weird one to take issue with. Unless by “demonstrably wrong” you mean
“objectively right”? You can’t _backport_ a patch from a fork for a feature
that _doesn’t exist_ in that fork. You _can_ make your own patch. XUL ones can
come from ESR… except when you don’t fork ESR. Oops! A fork has to be able to
maintain the browser as well or better than the Firefox community does right
now, and again, I don’t trust any of the fork teams to do that.

You’re also misrepresenting what “Defense in Depth” changelog entries in Pale
Moon mean. For two of the five on the current page: CVE-2017-7809 was fixed by
Firefox; NPAPI plugins aren’t supported anymore. The other three aren’t
specific and don’t link to an issue tracker or patch, so it’s hard to say.

~~~
superkuh
Well, 1 is your opinion so it's hard to change that. 2 is obvious and not
really a problem. So the only thing you had was 3.

And no, I mean demonstrably wrong. But you are right that all the useless
attack surfaces that Firefox has (ie, WebGl, Websockets, Pocket, etc) aren't
in Pale Moon. Luckily for PM it doesn't need to do as well or better than
Firefox because it simply doesn't have all the excess "features".

~~~
minitech
Maybe an example will make it clearer to you what #3 means. Firefox stops
supporting certain types of extensions. Firefox stops making security patches
to this (eventually) removed feature. Because there are no patches, you can’t
backport them to your fork. From this, we have the objectively correct

> 3\. You can’t backport patches for removed features

which is just as obvious as 2 – and they _are_ important.

~~~
superkuh
Ah, I finally get what you're saying. You're complaining that forks will have
to support code that Mozilla no longer does.

Yeah. That's the point of forks.

~~~
tialaramex
They're not complaining, they are pointing out that this is a bunch of work
that Palemoon's authors need to do, just to be no worse than Firefox. Work
there isn't much evidence of them doing.

------
pnikosis
I used Waterfox long time ago, as a fast 64bit alternative to Firefox
(although never noticed a significant speed difference). Now I think the only
reason I'd still use it is because add-ons such as Vimperator, but I already
switched to the less powerful Vim-fx.

I love the idea that projects such as this one or Pale Moon exist, but I find
it hard for me to use them as a regular user, apart from sentimental reasons.

~~~
CaptSpify
FWIW, I've had much better luck with vim-vixen than I did with vim-fx.
Obviously ymmv

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Have you tried tridactyl?

~~~
CaptSpify
I don't believe I have, I'll give it a shot sometime

------
darklajid
I just completed my first Firefox for Android build and I have to say that
Mozilla makes it really easy to get started [1] - I plan to run a personal
fork/modified Android version from now on if this works this smooth.

Ignoring the huge download, this has been one of the easiest open source
projects to build so far. I'm impressed.

1: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Simple_Firefox_for_Android_build)

~~~
Santosh83
What's your reason for building your own FF for Android may I ask? Just
curious...

~~~
darklajid
Firefox improves greatly in speed and features - I like that and don't want a
long term release thing or a radical fork like the one discussed here. I can
live with some plugin issues on the desktop (web extensions being less
powerful). But I refuse to use Firefox on Android without 'Share To Bottom'
[1]. Feel free to link to xkcd's "you broke my workflow", but without this
feature my blood pressure is constantly too high.

Whenever I long-press on a link I want either (80% of the time) 'Open in new
tab' or (the rest of the time. No exception. Never anything but these two
things) 'Copy link'. I never ever want 'Share', but some time in the past
Fennec/Firefox for Android moved that option to the top of the menu. I filed
bugs for that, got shot down rather quickly and stumbled upon the addon [1] as
a workaround. The workaround is now broken and so is literally nearly every
single (I rarely just click links, always long-press them. I have sometimes
more than 90 tabs open on my Android phone) interaction with a link on the
internet. The menu is annoying me with a prominent button that I never want,
but press in error again and again (probably adding to Mozilla's heatmap, so
that they'll conclude in the future that this was a very good change indeed!
Lots of people click "Share"!).

So right now I created my own Firefox build and I'm trying to do this the
nasty way (still searching my way around in this codebase, but I plan to
completely remove the 'Share' menu item. A hardcoded 'Share To Trash'
modification, if you will). I'll happily rebuild the browser for this change,
for all eternity.

(Note that I never understood the 'Share' option in that menu in the first
place. Everyone I see around me uses 'Share' from the page menu, i.e. the top-
right … thing. To share the page you're _actually_ looking at. Instead of
sharing a link to a page (via a popup menu) that you cannot see right now. So
the version I envision still allows you to share stuff, just not from the
context menu of a link)

1:
[https://github.com/miraks/ShareToBottom/](https://github.com/miraks/ShareToBottom/)

~~~
cesarb
I've used the "share" option on that long-press menu recently, to share a link
through zxing's Barcode Scanner to another person's phone. Unfortunately,
doing that seems to somehow have moved that rarely-used option to the top of
the menu, above even the frequently used "open in new tab" option.

~~~
darklajid
Hmm. If that happened only because you clicked it once, then it should be
reversible to "never wanted it in the first place" somehow, I hope..

Might be worth investigating..

------
croisillon
from time to time i lose firefox extensions because they are not updated
anymore; with firefox 57 i am losing my beloved fireftp, which is still
available on waterfox... but there's no way i would get rid of firefox, even
for fireftp

~~~
myspoonistoobig
I don’t know exactly what your situation is, but I had hundreds of sites saved
in FireFTP. It won’t get you FireFTP in Firefox 57 but I wrote a utility to
help move them over to FileZilla. Maybe it can help you too.

[https://github.com/myspoonistoobig/AtomicFire](https://github.com/myspoonistoobig/AtomicFire)

~~~
croisillon
Oh thank you, that's great! No, I used to use at most 2 or 3 different logins,
mainly one. And I indeed switched to FileZilla

------
majewsky
Well, if this allows people to bridge the gap until the WebExtensions API in
Firefox is comprehensive enough for their needs, then I'm all for it.

~~~
Sylos
Firefox 52 ESR would probably be the safer alternative. It will receive
security updates until June 26, 2018. And I honestly just can't imagine
Waterfox or other forks trying to keep XUL compatibility to stay secure long
after that, as XUL extensions used to be a major maintenance burden for
Mozilla and these forks have only a fraction of the size of Mozilla.

------
Aardwolf
There is also SeaMonkey, how do waterfox and seamonkey compare?

~~~
digi_owl
Seamonkey is much older, and not really a fork as it follows current day
Firefox development quite closely.

Hell, one may well call Firefox a fork of the browser part of Seamonkey.

A more interesting comparison to Waterfox would be Pale Moon. And there is
also Basilisk, a more recent project by the Pale Moon people.

~~~
twobyfour
Sadly, Pale Moon is still not available on Mac. I wasn't aware of Basilisk,
though! It appears that that one too is Windows/Linux only.

------
ak39
Has anyone here done any line of business/crud type of app with XUL that they
feel has been successful? I'd be interested in hearing any short description
of the ups/downs of your efforts.

~~~
johannes1234321
About 15 years ago German car rental company Sixt migrated some mainframe
based console UIs to XUL, while keeping the backend in COBOL. They focused a
lot on reaction time and keyboard shortcuts as the tool was used in the call
center to capture damage reports. I have no idea how much of this is still
used. Slides from an old talk about this:
[https://blog.mayflower.de/uploads/XUL_xtech2.pdf](https://blog.mayflower.de/uploads/XUL_xtech2.pdf)

~~~
ak39
Thanks for this. I played around with XUL in 2004 for the first time - and
last time. Being totally blown away by its native controls then, I suggested
it for an in-house insurance app my client was developing. My recommendation
did not receive much respect! They ended up developing an ASP app.

------
Shywim
If only people would put their efforts toward making WebExtensions support
better, with features they liked from XUL, like they do with their XUL
forks...

~~~
contravariant
That's kind of hard when this requires changing the WebExtension API, which
Mozilla seems to be very hesitant in doing.

------
yuhong
For a while I was thinking of the idea of Gecko for legacy XUL support and
Servo being WebExtensions only.

~~~
digi_owl
I become more and more convinced that Mozilla could have saved themselves a
lot of pain by giving FF57 a completely new name and version number, rather
than suggest it is a continuation of the venerable Firefox lineage.

~~~
tomc1985
Idunno, that'd be an uphill battle in terms of branding, and you'd split the
userbase even more than with a simple update

------
piotrkubisa
> "Addition of Duplicate Tab option"

As a user of both Chromium and Firefox browser, I miss this option in tab's
context menu in "stock" Firefox browser.

~~~
kibwen
When did you last test? For me, using Firefox 59, there's a "Duplicate Tab"
entry when I right-click on a tab.

Also, I know for a fact that you've been able to Ctrl+drag to duplicate a tab
in Firefox for years and years now, because I do it every week. :)

~~~
mastax
It's in 57 for me.

------
tomc1985
Why not Pale Moon?

~~~
slphil
Pale Moon is a 3.5 fork, it's ancient, although it's gotten a lot of
independent development.

~~~
unethical_ban
Do you not wonder that this fork will suffer the same fate?

~~~
slphil
Waterfox has been around for a while. What fate are you talking about? Pale
Moon is still in active development and use as well. I use it on some older
machines for performance reasons.

------
Multicomp
I use Waterfox every day. Mozilla may want Firefox to be a Chrome clone, but I
still use my 'old fashioned' extensions and don't need new (pardon the pun)
chrome all over the place.

~~~
digi_owl
I find it hilarious that while they took the time to give FF57 a new "touch"
UI, the zoom gesture is still only enlarge the font size.

~~~
maciekmm
go to about:config and set browser.zoom.full to true this will cause the whole
page to get zoomed.

