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Pale Moon, the browser forked from Firefox that is popular with some Soylentils, was recently contacted by Mozilla, according to one of the developers:
I was contacted by Mozilla with the request to "police" our forum, since we (Pale Moon devs) are in direct control of the things discussed and posted here.
I'd like to clarify our position on this kind of thing to keep things from becoming unpleasant in both our relationship with you, the community, and our relationship with Mozilla:
Click here to read the rest of Moonchild's response, and some comments from the community as well.
[Continues...]
Those who are aware of the existence and goals of Pale Moon may have realized that there was a big nosedive in positive opinions of Firefox from both the Pale Moon maker and community when Mozilla changed their UX to Australis. To date, there has been bad blood from Pale Moon community members in comments and forum posts that are dismissive of Mozilla, sometimes provocatively so. But still, Mozilla seems to have had a real problem with the Pale Moon guys lately, and now appear to have demanded stricter moderation of the Pale Moon forums so that only favorable posts about Mozilla are published, or none at all.
This was not the only attack from Mozilla's side lately. For example, this [edit: former] Mozilla employee mocking attempts to re-base Pale Moon and remove Australis, or as seen here where Mozilla guy Robert Kaiser accused the Pale Moon project of "destroying code and extorting money".
The point is: Whether there are some rude comments by community members on a certain board or not, it seems like Mozilla employees are getting incredibly nervous because of their current peculiar state and are now unleashing their frustrations at the Pale Moon project. It also looks like Mozilla has a growing animosity towards people taking and modifying the Mozilla source code for their own unique products, and they are also trying to get rid of projects which have been hosted and supported by Mozilla itself. If you are a big developer, one can argue that you should stand above incidents like that, but Mozilla's dwindling market share is putting them under heavier stress.
In conclusion, users hope that Mozilla stops their current quest to copy Google Chrome and move back in the direction of serving a tech-savvy user group which could allow them to regain a larger market share. Mozilla should also maintain healthier relationships with projects like Seamonkey and Thunderbird, which may lose users when Mozilla changes the user experience to be more Chrome-inspired. Time is ticking and projects like Tofino add to the uncertainty about the future of Firefox (Servo or Blink engine?), including the upcoming removal of XUL and the deprecation of the old add-on and theme model. These moves are not helpful in restoring user faith in Mozilla and Firefox.
Hopefully Mozilla gets out of their downwards spiral soon. The web does still need Mozilla, but not as weak, uncertain and unnerved as they are right now.
Update: The Pale Moon developer named Al Billings as the Mozilla employee who contacted him (submission).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Saturday April 16 2016, @06:34AM
The PM dev team has *specificly* removed the Accessibility features "for streamlining", which means there's no way a blind person can use a Screen Reader with it.
When asked if they would ever put it back so folks like me could use the PM browser, I was essentially told to STFU, GTFO, & FOAD.
They didn't want the "headache" nor "hassle" of dealing with the Accessibility functions, so there was "no way in hell" they'd even consider it.
So, from the ~10Million Disabled folks in the United States & the ~300Million of us around the world, I'll give the PM devs a giant, double handed, both feet, tentacles, testicles, & prehensil bits RUDE GESTURE.
You've given us a giant Fuck You & told us to go away, so we'll return the favor.
You don't want the Disabled using the PM browser? Fine, but we'll be telling all the people that take our advice on computer issues with us when we leave.
You've just told ~300Million potential customers that our money isn't good enough for you, so we'll take it to your competition.
Maybe THEY won't be such a bunch of fucking wastes of oxygen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @07:33AM
That and the hostility to linux many years are are reasons I had been dismissive of Palemoon in the past. But on the other hand Mozilla and Firefox have become increasingly hostile to the wants and needs of the community, from UI to configuration interfaces, about:config options, security features, etc. Their plans to 'deprecate' the xul interface while we've been relying on for over 10 years hasn't helped either. Nor their plans (experimental or primary) to migrate to a chrome derivative engined browser.
Relatedly: Firefox wastes almost as much memory idling now as Seamonkey (essentially the old mozilla browser/email/composer/irc bundle ported to the firefox focused versions of gecko.) If it wasn't for security updates being rolled into huge updates, rather than seperately available and easily documented for patching, I would still be on the last 3.6 release rather than the 4+ clusterfuck. The UI was right, the browser wasn't perfect, but was quite a bit more svelt (not as much as some of the pre 3 releases, but sacrifices must be made for web compatibility, right?) Instead however I'm stuck following Mozilla's poor decision making, migrating to Chrome/a derivative, or waiting on other browser projects to catch up (which thanks to mainstream sites enforcement of drm and questionable coding practices will leave any alternative broswers crippled without a sudden influx of developers.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @07:40AM
So, from the ~10Million Disabled folks in the United States
How many of those 10 million make use of these accessibility features?
But even 300 million people worldwide (not all of which would benefit from the accessibility features, probably) isn't that much.
You've just told ~300Million potential customers that our money isn't good enough for you, so we'll take it to your competition.
Money? Unless you're talking about donations, it's a free (as in price) browser.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @10:19PM
OP couldn't see the price tag was zero because he's blind.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday April 16 2016, @07:46AM
FOAD
Fart on a donkey?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 16 2016, @10:44AM
Kid Rock explaining FOAD [youtube.com]
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @09:08AM
What good is all your anger? This will probably just make you even angrier...but it seems like there are many choices for screen readers so why bother wasting your energy on PaleMoon. Better to put your effort toward some other product that does what you need.
You've just told ~300Million potential customers that our money isn't good enough for you, so we'll take it to your competition.
I don't see where money enters into this, PaleMoon is free to the user (as is Firefox, etc)?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday April 16 2016, @10:05AM
I understand that you are personally affected, and need a screen reader. However, I don't see why this is Pale Moon's problem. A free, volunteer project can put it's priorities wherever they want. Dealing with accessibility is a headache. They have a limited amount of time, they are working for free, so they want to put their efforts somewhere else.
If you don't like their priorities, use a different browser. Why the outrage?
The number of people who need full accessibility features on the web is proportionally very small. The effort required to provide accessibility is huge. I can't talk about creating a browser, but I can talk about websites. Doing basic stuff, like ALT-tags, is easy. However, implementing full accessibility for a modern website can easily double the implementation effort. It just isn't worth it, unless you are specifically catering to this audience with your products.
There is occasionally talk about making accessibility mandatory. If this ever happens, many products and websites will simply be removed from the Internet. This would be a huge loss for everyone else.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NCommander on Saturday April 16 2016, @11:48AM
I'm going to expand on this comment. Accessibility in general is a major headache from the programming side of things. SN itself is fairly accessibility friendly, due to the fact that JS is optional for non-admins. However, to build a "functional" website that can both be relatively modern, and render/be usable without JS is a massive headache since you essentially need to code the site twice; once as pure HTML/CSS implementation, then have JS modify the DOM on the fly to add dynamicability since that is "expected" of websites today. That's exactly how the expand comments buttons works today, and as such, the site is usable without JS, and works decently in Lynx and other line mode browsers.
We get away being somewhat old fashion because that was the basis on which SN was formed on, but if I was building a site from scratch, there would be more JS than what we use on SN today. As someone who is friends with a fair number of people with disabilities, as well as my own issues, I appreciate the effort that goes into an accessible web, but for the most part, those sites are a minority. Reddit to my knowledge also works fairly well for the disabled, but no matter how you slice it, the number of users who require screen readers and such are a small enough minority that it hard to justify that effort.
Is it fair, or right? No. But we all have finite time, and as a volunteer effort, I can't really blame Pale Moon for not supporting it.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @05:57PM
I have solved this issue with all of my solftware. The answer is command line interface / interactive text mode.
I did not give a flying fuck about blind people being able to access and use the software. However, I did want to enable voice activation, and text to speech - so that the software could be used hands free and sight free, while concentrating on the tools in one's hands and materials they're interacting with (though this could be extended to use while driving).
Every bit of functionality of the application is abstracted into an action. This is the case for almost all desktop software today anyhow (anything with a menubar has abstracted the commands into actions). These named actions become [voice] commands, fed into a console. I "streamlined" the display of dialogs and such, and "separated content from presentation, separated form from function" (modern software and website design mantra). This allowed me to pipe the labeled display of information to the console. The labels then become contextual "handles", new modal actions that select various input elements for further input.
Once having done this I initially was able to generate a GUI from the standardized application interface. The UI generation engine uses a different algorithm depending on what sort of inputs and outputs are available. Have a VT100? You get the same experience as the graphical analogue by emulating windows and buttons in curses. Only have audio in/out, then we've got a hands free system. Have a display but no keyboard, hands free GUI.
The problem with today's software is not that you have to jump through hoops to support screen readers. The problem is that there is no standard for interfacing neither at the command line nor GUI. This is why every terminal command has a different set of flags and options even when they are similar, and some use /prefix while others use -prefix. If the programming language / OS API had provided for a standardized "configuration" facility (meta data) then you'd be able to programmatically query any executable for its options and actions: Introspection. Then there would be no need for shit loads of "language bindings" since there would be a standard invocation and introspection facility. I'm embarrassed to admit that while I love POSIX, it is obsolete and hindering progress in both OS and application design -- not to mention making things needlessly difficult for inter-operation between applications and the blind alike.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @10:16PM
...and that's because current case law says that, under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, virtual spaces aren't covered. [wikipedia.org]
So, where other violations of unequal accessibility can be sued successfully, on the Internet, you have no recourse to prejudicial treatment.
Even a Jump to Content link as the very first thing on the page is not mandated.
As such, if you're blind, you might need to endure your screenreader babbling about tons of stupid shit (e.g. menus, promotions, "related" items) about which you care not one bit before it get to the stuff you came for.
When I include a link, I try to index the page to the point where the relevant stuff starts.
Some sites do an excellent job of making that easy--or at least possible.
The number who have absolutely no idea what a steaming pile their pages are WRT accessibility is significant.
In those cases, I append something like #ExtremelyPoorUseOfAccessibilityFeatures to the URL.
It is unfortunate that some S/N editors remove that, such that the webmaster|admin of the target site has zero chance of seeing that in his logs, becoming aware, and perhaps acting on that.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @10:36PM
In those cases, I append something like #ExtremelyPoorUseOfAccessibilityFeatures to the URL.
It is unfortunate that some S/N editors remove that, such that the webmaster|admin of the target site has zero chance of seeing that in his logs, becoming aware, and perhaps acting on that.
That doesn't work the way you think it works.
Nothing after the hash is ever transmitted to the server, it is parsed out by the browser and only used on the client side.
If you want to send something into the server log, you can use the question-mark, e.g. "?ExtremelyPoorUseOfAccessibilityFeatures" and unless the webserver is configured to look for arguments like that it will go in the log but otherwise be a no-op.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @06:16AM
Hmmm. There I was thinking I was a force for good.
Nothing after the hash is ever transmitted to the server
[...]
If you want to send something into the server log, you can use the question-mark, e.g. "?ExtremelyPoorUseOfAccessibilityFeatures"
Anybody got a link that gives a quick overview of that stuff?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @02:04PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string?farts [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @06:44PM
That clarifies the contents of those second-hand links that contain extra stuff which I've seen posted by other folks.
Much as I suspected on that.
Learning the name of the notion is helpful too.
Thanks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday April 17 2016, @04:43AM
Or you know, the web sites could not have all that crap there in the first place, seeing as it's not just blind people who don't care one bit about it. Maybe I'm a bit harsh, but I find most sites these days are cramming far too much garbage onto their pages, and/or misusing available screen space like you wouldn't believe it. And I say that as someone who browses without JS and with adblocking. Heaven help us all what a tarped up mess of a boondoggle shows up if I leave those defenses down!
Actually, for the navigation stuff, I wish there was (or I knew of) a standard way of declaring a div as only containing navigation elements. That is stuff that does sit nicely up the top, given we're using a ltr+topdown reading script. It's more meta-information than content though in my mind, and should thus be marked appropriately.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @06:14AM
Or you know, the web sites could not have all that crap there in the first place
Amen, brother.
In a submission I made a while back, I squawked about a site that had a 404 page that was 245kB.
Page bloat also results in false hits from search engines. >8-(
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @02:12PM
to be fair, 404 pages are literally exceptions, so making them excessive isn't even one hundredth of the problem of making the common case excessive
I have cutesy 404 pages on my sites, no javascript but they do have funny embedded images as an easter egg.
and, fwiw, any automated processing of 404 pages doesn't even need to look at the contents of the page since the http status code is 404 and that's all an automated system, like a UI for sight impaired needs
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @06:55PM
isn't even one hundredth of the problem
When I got the URL correct and finally got to the BradBlog page, that was over half a megabyte for a page of *text*.
So, -extreme bloat- described the actual page, with about half of that being boilerplate nonsense.
I have cutesy 404 pages on my sites
8-(
they do have funny embedded images
By default, I block all (linked) images for exactly those kinds of cases.
(Images done with code irritate me no end.)
In case you weren't aware, there are folks with data caps, slow connections, and/or limited patience and they hate you and your kind.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Sunday April 17 2016, @10:15AM
That reminds me of what a friend said towards the end of the dotcom-era "Since I got to know $blind_person and reading up on accessability I can never work as a webdesigner again"
Personally I use the very simple method of appreciating enhancements implemented with JS but I leave when it becomes a requirement.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @02:23PM
TIL I learned a blind is not mute at all.