Thought it should have its own thread.
64-bit only.
Perhaps as an alternative to palemoon –which has recently been experiencing management and productivity problems-- or Seamonkey –which mozilla publishes as an afterthought*-- you might consider using Waterfox-Classic.
Waterfox-Classic is so named to distinguish it from Waterfox-current AKA Waterfox- (now at) G4. Waterfox-G4 is rebuilt (often) from the current build of firefox-quantum. Waterfox-classic, on the other hand, continues to employ the ‘old’ firefox technology: XPCOM and XUL extensions. That means that you may be able to install some version from the almost 20,000 addons which were developed before firefox moved on to ‘quantum’.
The following screenshot is of those addons I consider useful. Some provide increased security/privacy, Others facilitate the downloading of music and videos.
[Just noticed that the latest version objects to the 'classic Ublock-origin'. I'll see if I can find a replacement. Easy: see next post].
Waterfox, including Classic, is now published by the advertising agency System1. It publicly and candidly acknowledges that it receives compensation when its built-in Search Engine is used. I appreciate its honesty. The Search Engine is comparable with others. System1 also tells you that you are not obligated to use its Search Engine and can employ others. See the following screenshot. Although I will not use Waterfox-Classic for online banking and other financial transactions, I –for one-- will show my support for its efforts [hopefully to keep it alive] when nothing important is at stake.
It’s GUI is the FVD Speed-Dial. You can easily delete/add Launchers. I have not tried to change its not unpleasant picture: don’t know if it can be. Some theming [of the borders] is built-in.
Edit: Clicking the 'gear' at the top-right brings up the 'global' options including what appears to be a way to select you own background picture. I'm going to 'leave well-enough alone'. Running as a portable from several Puppys I'm not sure if I chose a picture in Waterfox's folder I might not create havoc if it is run without a SaveFile/Folder which establishes a fixed location.
Like all Web-browsers based on mozilla products, it’s easy to portabilize it, then run it from /opt, /mnt/home/ or a USB-Key; create an SFS or –not so easy-- locate it in a Chroot-SFS. But there are some things you’ll have to do after you download the tar.gz. I’ve tried to make those things easy.
Recognizing the benefit of distinguishing its development and feed-back from that of ‘Waterfox-Current’, System1, now has the download link for version 22.06 is at https://classic.waterfox.net/. If you want to find the latest version, you have to include ‘classic’ as an argument in your web-search. Before downloading, read the thoughtful warning by System1 that Classic has many unpatched security advisories.
[You can take that ‘with a grain of salt’ if, like me, you run Puppies without a SaveFile/Folder or, at least, under PupMode13 and shutdown/reboot without ‘Saving’. That the previous version was 22.04 [= April 2022] suggests that System1 tries to continue to improve it].
Just click the “Linux” box and download. It is packaged as a tar.bz2. Extract it. If you use UExtract to do so, it will produce an ‘extracted’ folder within which will be found a folder named ‘waterfox-classic’. You can move the waterfox-classic folder anywhere. You could run it by clicking the waterfox binary found in that folder. But don’t. To generate sound it needs some libs. And to ‘fully’ portablize --so that it doesn’t store cache, bookmarks, and addons in /root (using RAM)-- it’s better to start it via the script which fredx181 developed.
I’ve packaged the libraries and script in a tar.gz you can download from this thread. viewtopic.php?t=6310
Download, UExtract and copy its contents into your waterfox-classic folder. Start the app by clicking the script named ‘wf’. As written the script creates a folder named ‘profile’ in the waterfox-classic folder. Like all ‘mozilla’ browsers similarly started, you can open the browser with different profiles. Just copy the ‘wf’ script under a different name --e.g. wfs-- and edit the script to create/use a folder named for example ‘secured’ instead of ‘profile’.
In the above mentioned tar.gz you’ll also find a pet for creating a menu entry. It installs three files: (1) a bash-script at /root/my-applications/bin, (2) an icon also at /root/my-applications/bin and a desktop file (used in generating the Menu-entry) at /usr/share/applications.
Depending on where you locate the waterfox folder, you may have to edit the bash script. Currently it’s operative argument reads:
exec /mnt/home/waterfox-classic/wf "$@"
Change that to
exec /FULL PATH TO/YOUR-NAME-FOR-WATERFOX-FOLDER/wf "$@"
In order to use the ‘old’ firefox addons, you’ll have to first install the “Classic Addons Archive” now at version 2.03. You can download it from here: https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive. When the download finishes you’ll be asked if you want to install it. Just click “OK”. The archive will be installed and an ‘Orange Ball” will appear on Waterfox’s taskbar. Left-Click the ball to obtain access to the on-line repository via a GUI categorizing and providing links to the addons. There’s also a Search box.
By the way, Waterfor-Classic seems to be ‘chuck-full’ of built-in developer tools.
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* Specific to replacing seamonkey, among the 210 add-ons relating to email you can install via the Classic Addon Archive is “simple mail 2.91”. Just type ‘mail’ into the archive’s Search box. Currently, it shows up as the 21st entry. Don’t ask me if or how it works. I can only tell you that it will install and open.
This html, css and javascript creator/editor https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... l5-editor/ originally found by williwaw can also be installed. Don’t ask me if or how it works, either . I can only tell you that it will install and open.
Both of the above add launchers to Waterfox’s taskbar. For other replacement’s to seamonkey’s builtin Kompozer, see https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=4544