Mozilla sends me to naughty corner…

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‘Fun Stuff’ or ‘Rants’… ooh, so many choices… 🙂

So, I’m a Firefox user who uses my ISP’s webmail… and they’ve made a recent change which has allowed a virtual tsunami of spam, mostly about BitCoin. No worries, I just ignore all the spam.

Today I wanted to send an email… and now I find spammers’ email addresses populating my webmail address book… with no obvious method to delete from my ISP’s online webmail ‘Contacts’ list.

What to do? It seemed to be a Firefox caching issue so I thought I would look first in Mozilla’s Firefox support forum. I couldn’t find a matching query so went to create a new one.

Hmmm… apparently you have to create an account with Mozilla just to ask a question about its browser. OK… fake name and fake email to the ready.

Oh… Mozilla needs to know my age? I don’t think so. I tried 200, 300, 400 then just 1. No joy with any of them.

Now I get this…

Really, Mozilla? How tedious can you get?

Y’all can say ‘serve you right’ and, to a point, I would agree with you. But…

It’s just a web browser…. one of so many.

Bye bye, Firefox, the last umpteen years were really good… but you finally shot yourself in the foot.

Hello, Brave… I’ve only used you occasionally before, like when Firefox couldn’t/wouldn’t parse web-based news pages correctly, but it looks like you may now become my new browser of choice.

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DriftyDonN, Elly, OscarCP, Cybertooth, Kirsty

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I use Waterfox “Classic” as my default browser in my Windows (7) PC & Linux Mint and my Mac (Mojave).

Waterfox is affiliated with Mozilla and can run many of FireFox addons. So far, after three years, no issues using it worth remarking about, except that it is a bit of a hog of RAM. But with what these days is a reasonable size HD or SSD for a workstation (750 Gb and 1 Tb in PC and Mac, respectively), not an issue. And no one is sending me to any naughty corners, which is good — I think.

I also have installed Chrome, Safari (Mac), IE 11 (Windows PC) and FireFox, but use very rarely any of these. In fact, I no longer use any browsers when running Windows 7. Only Waterfox, as well as FireFox, Chrome and on the Linux side of the same PC.

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I used to be a big fan of Waterfox Classic but have moved away from it in recent weeks as I’m finding that more and more websites are breaking on it, Reddit being a big one recently. It’s a shame because it was my go-to browser for years.

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steeviebops wrote:

I used to be a big fan of Waterfox Classic but have moved away from it in recent weeks as I’m finding that more and more websites are breaking on it, Reddit being a big one recently. It’s a shame because it was my go-to browser for years.

It is true that new Reddit did not work with my Waterfox classic when I tried it.  When I saw how it actually was in Firefox, I didn’t much want to use it anyway.  What a horrible “upgrade” that was.

It used to be that web sites were all designed for desktops, since that’s what people used to see them.  Then mobiles caught on, and there was “responsive design” that was supposed to perfectly tailor the site to the needs of the device in question, whatever characteristics it may have.  In practice, though, what happened is that mobiles got a scaled-down version of the desktop site, and it wasn’t well optimized for touch.  In time, as mobiles gained more market share, the reverse began to be true… the sites were mobile sites scaled up for desktops, and they were again not optimized for that platform.  Responsive design, in all the attempts I’ve seen, didn’t work.

Now we’re at an even worse state where they don’t even bother trying to adapt to the device.  You get the mobile site no matter what, and that’s that.  Not only is that that, but that’s garbage.  New Reddit is just one of many sites to do that.

For now, at least, there’s a solution.  Go back to the old Reddit and it will work again!  Just substitute old in place of www, as in old.reddit.com.  There are addons that will do that for you automatically.  I hope Reddit keeps this, but the trend has been to remove the old, good things and force people to use the new, terrible ones.

If you like the new Reddit… well, your prerogative, and for that, it seems you will need to look elsewhere than Waterfox Classic, unless Reddit changed something (I would not know if they had, as I seldom use it, and when I do, it’s old Reddit).

That’s Reddit’s fault… a site should not require a certain browser, or one of a list of approved browsers, to work.  It should work with everything, including the text-only Lynx.  It should work with all scripts disabled (most sites fail that one).  It should work with PCs, phones, and screen readers for the visually impaired (a category of user that is habitually ignored by site designers).

If a site owner wants the site to work with the latest snazzy features from the newest browser, by all means they should do that, but they should not require that feature.  Sites should degrade gracefully when some pieces don’t work.  Whatever it is that Reddit is trying to do with a feature that Waterfox apparently lacks, it should recognize that it does not work and do what it needs to do anyway.

That was the original vision of the web, and it’s still valid now. The web was not supposed to be “you must be this tall to ride this ride.”  It was supposed to be “come one, come all!” I know, it’s cheaper and easier just to develop for the popular browsers, but that’s not in the spirit of the web, where everyone is welcome.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon

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Elly, wavy

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You really think Firefox was creating webmail contacts? That sounds so unlikely.

Virtually all forums (including this one) require age for registration; and you just have to enter something sensible, not impossible:

The process of registration involves verification of one’s age (typically over 12 is required so as to meet COPPA requirements of American forum software)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum#Registration_or_anonymity

Windows 11 Pro version 22H2 build 22621.1778 + Microsoft 365 + Edge

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AlexEiffel, NetDef, Ascaris

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I do not participate in social networks, so I do not have problems using Reddit because…

And, as already implied in my previous reply, I have no issues with Waterfox Classic breaking things at Web sites I connect to regularly. (And now it looks like Waterfox did not break anything, it was Reddit that caused the problem discussed here.) Once upon a time, there was a problem using Waterfox to stream video from Netflix and Amazon Prime, but that got fixed months ago.

Someone recently (Ascaris, if I remember correctly) posted comments explaining how to fool sites that demand the use certain “approved” browsers by sending a bunch of different browser identifying strings to the site on handshake or thereabouts (memory a bit murky on the details) so one can connect with them using unapproved ones. Maybe something like that would work with Reddit?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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[Ascaris]

OscarCP wrote:

Someone recently (Ascaris, if I remember correctly) posted comments explaining how to fool sites that demand the use certain “approved” browsers by sending a bunch of different browser identifying strings to the site on handshake or thereabouts (memory a bit murky on the details) so one can connect with them using unapproved ones. Maybe something like that would work with Reddit?

Unfortunately, that didn’t work with Reddit. Reddit apparently changed their site so that it required something that was added to Firefox after Waterfox Classic was forked (at v 56), which is not the same as a site simply doing useragent sniffing and blocking access when it would otherwise work.

It was Reddit that changed their site so that it no longer worked with Waterfox Classic, not the other way round, but to people who just want to use a browser to visit sites and to have it work without drama, it doesn’t much matter.  To them, Waterfox Classic can’t use the site and other browsers can, and even if Reddit is at fault for not having their site degrade gracefully when a feature does not work, the end result is still the same: Waterfox classic does not work with the site.

I was afraid this would happen.  It’s one of the two main reasons I expressed skepticism over the future of Waterfox Classic (the other one being that it will get to be too much work and would burn out the developer).  If sites degraded gracefully, as was the original intent behind the web, it would be a different story, but no one can force site owners to have their sites be compliant with that ideal.  That only serves to put more power into the hands of Google, as they pretty much dictate web standards these days, since they control both major browsers on the market (excluding Macs, where there is Safari).  They control Chrome/Chromium directly, of course, but Mozilla obediently does everything Google says when it comes to such matters.  If sites are going to lock us into one or the other browser that is designed to Google’s specifications, they’re handing the web to Google.

Microsoft made a play for owning the web with their closed-source IE back near the turn of the millennium, and it ultimately failed.  Part of it was that there was a defiant Mozilla that brought the fight to the Redmond behemoth, daring to take a stand and to unabashedly offer a browser with better features. Until then, proprietary browsers had been the norm, but Mozilla was open-source.

Now it looks as if Google will accomplish what Microsoft failed, and they’re doing it with open-source software.  That defiant Mozilla that dared to show the world that they could build a better browser is gone, and what they’ve become is a sad-sack organization that has been systematically eradicating all of the bits that made Firefox better than Chrome, as if it is their belief that people use Chrome because they hate great features and prefer a browser that has a bad, unconfigurable UI, and that somehow, if Firefox were lousy enough, people who already use the browser Firefox is attempting to copy will migrate, for some reason.

If I was CEO of Mozilla, and I wanted to destroy Firefox, I can’t think of what I would do differently.  I don’t know who would want that, though… not Google!  They need a “competitor” to keep the antitrust people from getting too restless.  A “competitor” that obeys your every word and refuses to make his product better than yours in any way, and who takes it upon himself to actually sabotage his own product to keep it from being better than yours is an asset, not a liability.  They get to maintain the appearance of competition without there actually being any.

Google has shown what Microsoft didn’t grasp for many years, but it’s starting to dawn on them.  Open-source does not mean that “the community,” whatever that is, has a vote on how things are being developed.  An open-source project can be completely controlled by one company and still be open-source.  Microsoft seemed to think that if any of their secret source code became available outside of the company, someone would immediately use it to build a product whose presence would break their monopoly and ruin the revenue stream.

Google has shown otherwise.  So what if Microsoft, Vivaldi, Brave, and Opera take Google’s code and use it to build their own browsers, with the googly bits removed?  Google still dictates the standards that the core of the browser is built to.  If they put in a new feature that the next Reddit is going to require, what are any of the derivative browser devs going to do… remove the feature?  Then their browser won’t work with the sites that others will, and what would have been accomplished?  Their market share is too small for anyone to even notice if they took a stand on something like that.

Each browser that is built to Google standards reinforces the notion that Google is the standard setter, even if some third-party developers strip out the spying stuff on alternative browsers that make up a very small percentage of the total of Chromium-based browsers.  For most people, Google Chrome is the “real thing,” while the rest are “knock offs.”  Google consistently polls as being well-regarded by a high number of people, even with the company’s limitless thirst for people’s private information, and as long as that is the case, people will take the spying to get the “real” thing in lieu of something that works as well or better but has no Google logo. And the rest of us are stuck with the weight of their collective decision on that matter!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Ascaris.

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Elly

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Ascaris: Thanks for explaining what’s the mater with Reddit. Not good news, this unhelpful development if Reddit’s example helps spread it to more sites. I use Chrome for the very few sites I really need to connect now and then to and that do not approve of Waterfox, but, in all cases, so far, do not object to Chrome. Neither ideal nor hard to do. But whatever works, I am all for it. Most people have installed several different browsers, so I am not sure why someone might have a problem like the one discussed here. So I am interested to know why.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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BAD NEWS! I’ve been using and am now being used by mozilla since I first installed Netscape because I did not do not like internet explorer. Startpage is now starting to put not so obvious ads at the top of search results. Duck duck go is way too comfy with Amazon so I think I’ll check out Brave myself!

Thanks for the nfo.

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dont make an account but ask ?’s on any of a thousand boards except mozilla? or are you really mad at them? I get it. Seems like mozilla chrome and gooogle have the web world pretty tied up.

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