Future development of Pentadactyl

[willsALMANJ]

The commit logs have been fairly quiet recently (1 commit over the last 3+ months) and the developers have not responded to several mailing list posts and GitHub issues posted over the last seven months or so regarding upcoming Firefox changes that will render Pentadactyl unusable. So the question is where does Pentadactyl go from here. Here are some major roadblocks for Pentadactyl that need to be addressed:

1. Distribution / promotion

   The version of Pentadactyl hosted on AMO has been incompatible with Firefox Release for most of the last two years. The Pentadactyl website has been out of date for years as well. Now, even the nightly builds are often unreliable or out of date. An updated version of Pentadactyl needs to be the first version users find when they search AMO or the web. Issue #26 has more details about this issue.

2. Extension signing

   On January 26, 2016, Firefox Release will require that extensions be signed, rendering Pentadactyl unusable unless it is signed. To be signed, it must be uploaded to Mozilla's site by the developers. Alternatively, it could be forked and given a new add-on id and that version could be uploaded by a third party. However, Pentadactyl is very complex and will not pass the automated tests part of the extension signing process. Getting something as complex as Pentadactyl through a manual review will be difficult and require a lot of effort (developers who understand the Pentadactyl code base will have to advocate for why certain sections of the code are secure and should be allowed through Mozilla's approval process despite tripping automated test failures). Issue #79 has more on this subject.

3. Electrolysis

   Electrolysis (multi-threaded version of Firefox) will at some point become the default and then later on the shims that allow add-ons written to work with single-threaded Firefox to work in Electrolysis will be removed. More testing is needed but as is Pentadactyl will be unusable with Electrolysis and without the compatibility shims. This issue was first raised in issue #50 (edit: originally this said #84), though there is not much content there right now.

4. Deprecation of XUL and XPCOM

   Further into the future (~18-24 months), Firefox plans to transition away from XUL-based add-ons. At that point, only add-ons using the Add-ons SDK or the WebExtensions API will work with Firefox. All signs point to the Add-ons SDK also being phased out slightly further into the future. The WebExtensions API does not allow for all of the functionality of Pentadactyl (this is why there is full-featured equivalent of Pentadactyl for Google Chrome and why the closest thing, Vimium, has to use some convoluted code to get as much functionality as it can). Developers who understand Pentadactyl and the WebExtensions API well need to start advocating now for new API's that will allow Pentadactyl's features to be created with WebExtensions.

Some avenues that could be explored:

• Merging with Vimperator. Vimperator is still under active development. I don't know enough about it to know what Pentadactyl features it lacks or if the developers would be willing to add them. Also, I don't know how well the Vimperator developers are prepared to deal with all of these issues, but the more resources put behind one effort the better most likely (this seems like the most relevant issue: vimperator/vimperator-labs#264).
• Creating a maintenance fork of Pentadactyl. We could fork Pentadactyl and try to get it signed as suggested above, but this could prove difficult for the reasons given above. Alternatively, we could use the Developer build of Firefox that does not require signing, but this build has not yet been released and it is yet to be seen how it will work in practice. This would allow Pentadactyl to continue to be used near term until issues 3 and 4 above hit.
• Rewrite Pentadactyl using WebExtensions. This would be a lot of work but provides the most stable future for Pentadactyl. As noted above, new API's would be required, so developers would have to work with Mozilla to have them implemented.
• Continue Pentadactyl with developer support. One of Pentadactyl's developers works on the Mozilla Add-ons team, so he is probably the most qualified person in the world to guide Pentadactyl through all of the issues outlined above. I can understand how all of these changes might require too much time for the developers to deal with, but I know there are several members of the Pentadactyl community who would love to help if there were any way that we could.

[polyzen]

Vimperator will also have to be rewritten. It would be something if these two could merge in that process..

[vyp]

I'm not actually sure the vimperator developers would be interested in pentadactyl-like features. As I understand it, there was a little 'bad blood' between both parties at the time of the fork. On the other hand, that was quite some time ago, so maybe I am not recalling correctly, or maybe the circumstances have changed.

[j127]

I'd be interested in helping to save Pentadactyl.

[polyzen]

@vyp, perhaps Vimperator will have to be forked again after the rewrite :p

[vyp]

https://superuser.com/a/261731 may also provide a little more context regarding vimperator vs pentadactyl (note that that's the main developer of vimperator at the time).

[j127]

I've tried it and switched back to Pentadactyl.

[anantpaatra]

Why give no answer to the community? "Hey guys, we are not going to keep working on this. Thanks for everything." or "Hey, we are alive and trying to sort things out."? It's not like they don't see the Github notifications. It's not like @kmaglione is unaware that the community expects an answer from him. Step up guys. I know this is "free" stuff, so just give us a "get out" or "we got this". People like me came to depend on Pentadactyl to do our everyday computer stuff.

[oddRaven]

I started using Pentadactyl because Vimperator wasn't able to do something, switched back recently due to incompatibility with Firefox 42. It works, but it doesn't feel as advanced as Pentadactyl, it doesn't try to do everything in the commandline. I'd like to help keeping Pentadactyl stay alive but I don't have any experience working on Firefox extensions (yet).

[amosbird]

Going back to Vimperator is not an option for me.

[congma]

I wonder how this will affect Pentadactyl: Firefox Bug 1222546 - Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes.

Does Pentadactyl use themes?

[polyzen]

@congma, I doubt that will affect us. You can change the colorscheme of penta itself, but that doesn't affect ff's theme

[willsALMANJ]

@congma The previous announcements already called out major changes to Firefox that require major refactoring of Pentadactyl, so this announcement doesn't have too much direct impact (Pentadactyl is an extension, not a theme). However, the changes to themes do indicate a restructuring of how Firefox allows its UI to be modified, so that might impact how the statusbar and command line would have to be implemented.

The discussion in that bug is very relevant to the issues facing Pentadactyl though because themes are undergoing similar changes to extensions to align with the changes to Firefox/XUL/XBL and because @kmaglione (Pentadactyl developer) is one of the main participants. He even references Pentadactyl at the end of this comment (the only time I have seen him acknowledge the impact of the upcoming changes on Pentadactyl:

I do think that it sucks that there's going to be such a sharp transition for add-on developers, and I say this as the developer of one of the largest, most complex extensions for Firefox power users. But I also think that it's necessary, and in the end will make things better for just about everyone.

• Kris Maglione

[polyzen]

@willsALMANJ, and just two days ago. Good to hear

[xificurC]

I'd love to hear some update from the devs too. I use pentadactyl everyday and would like to see it getting a bit more active, while there is still time. vimfx and vimperator are not even close to what pentadactyl provides.

[glumanda99]

@willsALMANJ I just stick with @ffledging's dactyl releases repo https://github.com/ffledgling/dactyl-build/releases

Another option would be to use firefox ESR version in the meanwhile.

If penta really dies I would just give qutebrowser a try.

[vyp]

@k0377 qutebrowser is pretty great, I've been using it for a short while now as I look to find alternatives to pentadactyl. However there's still a lot of things where qutebrowser doesn't even come close to pentadactyl. But hopefully that will be rectified in the not so distant future. Another project people here might want to keep an eye on is https://github.com/meh/miserve.

[j127]

If penta really dies...

That is a frightening thought, since the default FF interface has been going downhill rapidly and Pentadactyl is what makes Firefox bearable. The alternatives are not suitable, and who wants to use overly simplified and restricted tools that exclusively cater to the lowest common denominator. (I'm talking about the trend towards over-simplification of UIs and enforcing one way to do things, with no overrides for power users. That way of thinking leads to massive hype over inefficient crap like touch screens and tablets/phones that have no root access.)

What if there were a movement to build a pro-Firefox developer community around Pentadactyl? Many developers would rally around an amazing tool like this. Mozilla should not only ensure that Pentadactyl doesn't disappear via limited APIs, but they should actively fund and promote its development. It's the add-on that makes Vim-using programmers say: "My mind just got expanded, and I'm never leaving Firefox."

Developers are a major force behind browser adoption. Non-tech users get their opinions from tech-savvy users. Chrome actively caters to programmers. Virtually every JavaScript tutorial on the Web uses Chrome dev tools. Mozilla is critically lacking in effective developer outreach. Pentadactyl could be a killer marketing tool for Mozilla. If Mozilla wants programmers to build stuff for Firefox and Firefox OS, then this is the kind of stuff that will draw them in. Limiting the API and restricting which extensions can be installed is going to have the opposite effect.

[j4hangir]

@j127

I suppose the only reason many of us here keep using Firefox is Pentadactyl, and not much else.

Considering these rather insurmountable issues that Mozilla is imposing, given that I know very little about the add-on submission process however from the sound of it seems extremely tedious and difficult, especially when it comes down to such complex add-on like Pentadactyl, I as well agree that in order to ensure its continuance, the best course of action is most probably to rally around Pentadactyl and make it an indispensable, rule-break worthy extension.

Let Mozilla spend some of their resources on something that is truly worth it.

[vyp]

@j127 @j4hangir it's probably relevant to link this thread which gathered a lot of attention (relatively).

[willsALMANJ]

It may be necessary to port/rebuild Pentadactyl piece by piece to work with future version of Firefox. For help with prioritization, I'd be curious to hear which features keep people using Pentadactyl over Vimperator (assuming it is easier to port features common to both since Vimperator devs will also be working on those).

[noctuid]

@willsALMANJ
I have a list here with the main thing being pentadactyl's group feature. I may be incorrect about some points (or missing some) since I haven't really used vimperator extensively.

[xrchz]

switched to vimperator while {#105, #95, #93, #104} etc. are still open for pentadactyl. very interested in pushing for one or both of these extensions to have a well-supported future.

[j127]

The lack of response here makes me worried that the plan is to let Pentadactyl die off when the APIs are changed. If no update is posted here soon, maybe it could be assumed that the project is in the process of being abandoned?

A simple: "yes, we're going to make sure that Pentadactyl still exists in 2017" or "sorry guys, we aren't going to maintain it after 2016" would settle the worries of hundreds of people. :)

I think that, one way or another, a group of power-users should organize to make sure that these add-ons still exist in a couple of years, while also promoting them as one of the main attractions of Firefox as a browser. If programmers like Firefox, its market share will increase. If programmers switch to Chrome (because nothing better than Vimium might exist on Firefox if the APIs become too limited), then it could have a huge negative effect on Firefox's adoption be deflating the enthusiasm of Firefox's core supporters.

I like Firefox, because it is customizable in ways that other browsers aren't. If that changes, it will become just another restricted, appified piece of crap that is aimed at the lowest common denominator.

[vyp]

If no update is posted here soon, maybe it could be assumed that the project is in the process of being abandoned?

Yes I agree, it's what I have been thinking myself. The developers are definitely seeing these dialogs, just not responding, so in a practical sense it is already abandoned. Of course, I don't know any of the developers myself, maybe there are legimitate real-world issues that prevent them from tending to pentadactyl at the moment. Maybe they have plans to respond here, or maybe even have plans to continue future development of pentadactyl. But without any hint or sign of the current status, I think we have to assume the worst. (The only thing we have of recent is that @dkearns merged #103 just under a week ago. edit: also the quote by @kmaglione that @willsALMANJ posted above)

[elmindreda]

Please give them the benefit of the doubt. A thread like this can be pretty intimidating to respond to even without people assuming things.

[willsALMANJ]

It is a frustrating situation (especially since a two sentence message posted any time in the last six to nine months would save lots of people from hand-wringing over how to handle the upcoming Firefox changes), but I do try to give the developers the benefit of the doubt since I am so grateful for the work they have done.

My interpretation of the developers' actions is that some time over the last two years they stopped treating Pentadactyl as a public software project and started treating it as a personal project that they happen to share with the public (maybe that's all they have time for right now). That's how I interpret the fact that even now there are occasional new commits, though the web site is very much out of date, as is the addons.mozilla.org listing, the nightly builds have not worked consistently for many months, and the developers rarely appear on the mailing list or issue tracker. I think the current trajectory for Pentadactyl is that it will likely become unusable some time during the Electrolysis transition (could possibly be default in Release Firefox by spring 2016 though I don't know the plan for allowing it to be turned off) with the developers possiblity posting a few compatibility commits before then for other issues. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

My hope with this issue was to provide a place where people with the skills and resources (time) to keep Pentadactyl alive could come forward to coordinate. It is one of the most complicated Firefox addons ever written though, so I would not be surprised if those people do not exist (I have been trying to dig into #95 in my free time but haven't gotten close to figuring out what is going on). I would like to think any fork/rewrite would allow the developers to have whatever involvement level they would want to have.

[prikhi]

I love pentadactyl and am interested in helping keep it alive. I don't have the time to coordinate this, but I can help write code, provide a build server, etc.

[mr337]

Same here with @prikhi, use pentadactyl everyday and be a shame to see it die off.

[facaiy]

Pentadactyl is one of the reasons why I stay at Firefox. I can't image how life goes on without it.

[PLumowina]

Pentadactyl is first plug-in I install on every damn computer which I use, Lets do something that it will not disappear, unfortunately my knowledge about programming is very poor (I write some simple bash scripts - thats all)

[josch]

Since the future of pentadactyl looks bleak and there seem to be other people looking for alternatives, I wanted to put the result of my search into this bug:

• vimium is a chrome extension for keyboard navigation
• conkeror is a keyboard based web-browser based on Mozilla XUL Runner (it supports many extensions like addblockplus or noscript) but can also use Pale Moon as a base instead of Firefox
• pale moon is a fork of firefox 24 and has as its goal the maintenance of the XUL framework and also forked gecko. Theoretically (at least older versions of) pentadactyl should run on pale moon and should continue to work there as they will not drop XUL
• vimprobable is a webkit based browser with a user interface inspired by vimperator
• dwb is another webkit based browser inspired by vimperator
• vimb is yet another vim inspired webkit based browser
• qutebrowser keyboard driven webkit browser written in Python
• uzbl is a browser "toolkit" adhering to the unix philosophy (updates happen in the "next" branch)
• luakit is a keyboard based webkit browser extensible with lua but has seen no update since 2011

There seems to be an abundance of projects that try to do a browser from scratch but I think the major downside of that approach is that existing extensions will not work with them. So maybe a good bet would be to decide for a browser supporting XUL extensions like conkeror or pale moon.

On the other hand with firefox deprecating XUL, it might happen that important addons like addblockplus or noscript will soon not offer their extensions as XUL anymore...

It is not clear to me which of the above projects managed to collect enough support behind them to actually be a more long-term viable option for me to also invest my own time in.

[The-Compiler]

I want to add my own project, qutebrowser - I started it as a dwb replacement 2 years ago as dwb was getting less and less love (and is now officially unmaintained, and unusable due to an instant segfault on Archlinux).

In the somewhat-near future, I plan to port it to QtWebEngine (so it's essentially Chromium as a backend), add a Python plugin API, and hopefully at some point add some degree of support for WebExtensions.

I also listed some other projects I know of at the bottom of that page. From my point of view, it looks like qutebrowser, vimb and uzbl are the only non-addon projects which are still really active.

Also note uzbl has had its last commit 6 days ago (in the next branch), it just hasn't seen a release since 2012.

[Superpat]

Well pentadactyl has been officially disabled by my firefox, It really is a shame. I'll keep an eye on the repo, but I'll try out uzbl and surf, see if they work out.

[iegorka]

Like temporary solution for FF43 you can set xpinstall.signatures.required => false (in about:config) and pentadactyl continue to work well.

[Superpat]

Oh really? I'll try it out promptly.

Edit: Doesnt seem to be doing anything, I deactivated everything xpinstall related and the message that dactyl is incompatible does not change.

[j127]

Like temporary solution for FF43 you can set xpinstall.signatures.required => false (in about:config) and pentadactyl continue to work well.

How long is that going to work? I think it's at the emergency stage now.

It's really tragic to see Mozilla destroy what could be one of of their biggest developer rallying points around Firefox. Instead of building community around it (whether Pentadactyl or Vimperator), they're doing things that will cause it to die off.

[prikhi]

I wrote a script to pull the git repo, modify the name, id, version, maxVersion in install.rdf, make the XPI and upload it to the AMO for hosting & signing.

You can install it from here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl-nightly-unofficial/

I'll have it run as a daily cronjob.

[prikhi]

URL changed to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl-nightly-unofficial/

If you don't trust my builds, here's the script so you can run it yourself:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# This script clones the latest pentadactyl from github, modifies the max
# version and uploads it to the AMO for signing.
#
# Requires: git, make, pyjwt, python3, sed, zip
# By Pavan Rikhi<pavan.rikhi@gmail.com> on 2015-12-17
BUILD_DIR="${HOME}/dactyl-nightly"
GH_USER=""
GH_PASS=""
DACTYL_REPO="https://${GH_USER}:${GH_PASS}@github.com/5digits/dactyl.git"

AMO_API_KEY=""
AMO_API_SECRET=""
ADDON_ID=""
ADDON_NAME="Pentadactyl Nightly - Unofficial"
ADDON_VERSION="$(date +%Y.%m.%d.%H.%M.%S)"
ADDON_MAX_VERSION='45.*'

main() {
    git clone "${DACTYL_REPO}" "${BUILD_DIR}"
    cd "${BUILD_DIR}/pentadactyl/"

    # Modify Add-on Details
    sed -i "s|em:name=.*|em:name=\"${ADDON_NAME}\"|" install.rdf
    sed -i "s|em:version=.*|em:version=\"${ADDON_VERSION}\"|" install.rdf
    sed -i "s|em:id=\"penta.*|em:id=\"${ADDON_ID}\"|" install.rdf
    sed -i "s|em:maxVersion=.*|em:maxVersion=\"${ADDON_MAX_VERSION}\"/>|" install.rdf

    # Make the Add-on
    make xpi
    XPI_FILE="pentadactyl-${ADDON_VERSION}.xpi"
    XPI_PATH="../downloads/${XPI_FILE}"

    # Generate a JWT Token
    TOKEN_TIMESTAMP=$(date -u +%s)
    JWT_TOKEN=$(python <<PYTHON
import jwt, json, random
data = {
    'iss': "${AMO_API_KEY}",
    'jti': str(random.random()),
    'iat': ${TOKEN_TIMESTAMP},
    'exp': ${TOKEN_TIMESTAMP} + 59,
}
print(jwt.encode(data, "${AMO_API_SECRET}", algorithm='HS256').decode())
PYTHON
    )

    # Upload it to the AMO
    curl "https://addons.mozilla.org/api/v3/addons/${ADDON_ID}/versions/${ADDON_VERSION}/"  \
        -g -XPUT --form "upload=@${XPI_PATH}"   \
        -H "Authorization: JWT ${JWT_TOKEN}"

    cd "${HOME}"
    rm -rf "${BUILD_DIR}"
}


main

[vyp]

How long is that going to work?

I suppose it will work for firefox 43. But firefox 44 will be released january 26 2016, with which you cannot change xpinstall.signatures.required (unless they decide to postpone it again). I think you can still use an 'unbranded' build though. Of course, that by itself is not sustainable, pentadactyl still has to be maintained, otherwise the deprecation of XUL will the end of pentadactyl as decribed in the OP.

[prikhi]

At some point either someone else will take over this, the original developers will return, or I will fork the project in order to save it. I've already forked and saved one abandoned FF add-on(pencil) and that one will require a huge port from XUL to WebExt as well... So my time will be limited but at the very least I'd be able to bump the maxVersion, merge PRs and release it on AMO...

Ideally, I would be contacted by the authors or I would contact the authors(@dkearns, @kmaglione) about taking over or becoming a collaborator on GitHub & AMO. But if I can't reach them I guess I'd have to fork the project instead(decidactyl anyone?)...

[mr337]

@prikhi If you end up becoming a maintainer let me know if you need any help. Not an expert of FF plugins directly, but anything else I can prob help with.

[willsALMANJ]

@prikhi Thanks for setting that up. Someone needed to do it.... I don't know if @dkearns plans on pushing a fix for #108 like he has done for previous issues but that one looks pretty serious, so we should probably look into it soon and be prepared to rebase your script on a fork of the dactyl repo if @dkearns doesn't merge the fix since Firefox 44 is only about a month away.

I'd still like to see #95 tracked down as well....

[prikhi]

@willsALMANJ Thanks for pointing me to those issues, they should be a good test to see if I'll be able to comprehend the code. I don't see any developer docs so it might be a bit of a struggle...

Also Mozilla is taking their time with the add-on reviews. The unofficial nightly is still in the same spot after 2 days and my other plugin has only moved forward one spot after 3 days. The nightly build is number 153 in the queue... So it might get a full review & be signed in like.... a year and a half...

So now I'm thinking I'll keep that in the queue and also release nightly builds that are unlisted on addons.mozilla.org so that they will be signed immediately. Maybe within the week, but definitely before FFv44.

[willsALMANJ]

Well, @kmaglione seems to have fixed those two issues with bc9eb79 or 65725c9. You can still look at those commits to see the kind of work involved in maintaining Pentadactyl. It's one of the biggest Firefox addons and Firefox is a constantly shifting base underneath it....

Because of its size, I would not expect a quick review of Pentadactyl from Mozilla -- multiple months would not surprise me. @kmaglione is one of the reviewers so maybe you will get an interesting response from him.

Since the devs do seem to be posting patches still, it is probably best to focus on keeping a compiled and signed version of Pentadactyl available for download, since I haven't seen any signs from the devs that they are interested in doing that part (last nightly is still from August). Getting it reviewed on AMO would be best because AMO takes care of signing, hosting, and automatic updates, but it might be necessary to have it signed as an unlisted addon and do the hosting elsewhere possibly on GitHub like @ffledgling does at https://github.com/ffledgling/dactyl-build/releases.

One promising sign is that with 65725c9 @kmaglione hinted at possibly getting Pentadactyl to work with e10s which would be awesome. That would ensure that Pentadactyl could survive at least as long as XUL does.

[j4hangir]

Nightlies hosted at http://5digits.org/nightlies seem to be recent and do work in FF 43.0.2, granted the setting signatures.required => false was set.

There aren't many bugs as far as I can tell, besides a few mapping issues and broken tags (for the Nth time).

[ohjames]

Does this remind anyone of a friend who goes out on a date with someone, then texts them several times over the next two weeks trying to arrange another date without hearing anything back.

The maintainers can't even be bothered to reply to a single one of your concerns, this relationship... is already over. I don't like vimperator so much, but vimperator is like, the not so hot date, the one that actually responds to you. And you're lonely... so you keep dating that person.

[ohjames]

@vyp The bad blood you speak of is actually quite hilarious. The vimperator developer was soliciting donations for vimperator despite not having committed a line of code in months. At this stage a bunch of the developers who were actively worked on it called him out on this, and he basically ignored them. So then they forked off pentadactyl. Then at some point a few months later, the vimperator lead starts writing sarcastic/rude/passive-aggressive stuff about pentadactyl in various places (including the vimperator website itself).

Last I saw about this was an e-mail from some pentadactyl dev to the vimperator dude saying something like "Hey man, don't be a hater."

And the story is over.

[polyzen]

Mr Friend, there's been at least one developer still committing code here.

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 1:30 PM, Mr Friend notifications@github.com wrote:

@vyp https://github.com/vyp The bad blood you speak of is actually
quite hilarious. The vimperator developer was soliciting donations for
vimperator despite not having committed a line of code in months. At this
stage a bunch of the developers who were actively worked on it called him
out on this, and he basically ignored them. So then they forked off
pentadactyl. Then at some point a few months later, the vimperator lead
starts writing sarcastic/rude/passive-aggressive stuff about pentadactyl in
various places (including the vimperator website itself).

Last I saw about this was an e-mail from some pentadactyl dev to the
vimperator dude saying something like "Hey man, don't be a hater."

And the story is over.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#99 (comment).

[j4hangir]

Yet it is worrisome that none had bothered to write a single comment here. I am not that worried though, I've used Palemoon before and it was a decent fork of Firefox, pretty performant as well. I suppose that will keep the plugin alive for hopefully a few more years.

[willsALMANJ]

I think the best description of Pentadactyl's current state is that is a private Firefox add-on that @kmaglione and @dkearns write for themselves (they both are still contributing commits) and happen to post the code publicly. I'm very grateful to them for doing so because the latest commit still works well with the latest version of Firefox.

I'm not sure where that leaves the questions raised in this issue. As long as they continue to post their commits publicly, it is most efficient to just use their code since they know it best and can best update the code to handle breaking changes to Firefox. On the other hand, we have no communication from either of them and they don't make much effort to make Pentadactyl discoverable/usable by others, so they could just cut off updates at any time for all we know.

[phanimahesh]

It is encouraging to see commits in the last month. If @kmaglione and @dkearns are willing, a lot of us are interested in devoting time to help revive the project, myself included. I can not imagine not having pentadactyl, it is probably the most important FF addon I use.

[vyp]

@ohjames I'm not sure if I said something wrong, but I wasn't trying to blame the pentadactyl developers about the fork. In fact, I support them very much about that issue.

[NicolasWebDev]

Hi guys, chiming in just now, after following the thread for a few weeks.

I have already switched to VimFx on my other computer, and the features are not comparable. But the force of pentadactyl is also its weakness: too complicated to maintain it seems.

Just to propose my help if you would need it.

[j127]

IMHO, VimFX is not a good replacement:

• I'm pretty sure that it uses the default Firefox interface, which is going downhill. Example: TAB auto-completes the URL box but not the search box, increasing cognitive load for people who do things by muscle memory. Pentadactyl is the main thing that makes Firefox bearable.
• Based on the recent "do you want to include search results in the URL bar" prompt, I'm worried that Mozilla is going to merge the two boxes, which would be an extremely bad idea, since that separation is what makes Firefox much faster than Chrome. (Chrome is optimized to send people to Google Search to click on ads, which Firefox is tuned just right to show what you want depending on which box you choose. Ctrl-l or ctrl-k to have an option for one or the other in non-modified Firefox.) If all we had were VimFx, and the boxes were merged, power users would be screwed. If o does nothing more than put me in that single box that includes both history and search results, it would be terrible.
• Users don't need arbitrary new keyboard shortcuts just to navigate around the default Firefox interface, because they already exist: ctrl-l, ctrl-k, alt-d, ctrl-f, ctrl-tab, ctrl-shift-tab, pagedown, pageup, ctrl-t, ctrl-shift-t, etc. Things like using d (delete in vim) rather than ctrl-d for half-page-down don't make sense for a tool that is supposed to bring vim to the browser.

[jaseg]

Has anybody tried to actually contact @kmaglione and @dkearns by direct email yet?

@prikhi I'm not experienced in javascript, but should you (or someone else) decide to do a friendly fork, considering how much I use pentadactyl, I will be able to contribute some time to its maintenance.

[holtzermann17]

TBH, https://github.com/5digits/dactyl/network looks plenty active to me at present. Commits are happening, and pull requests are being made and merged in. I think this issue should be closed. If people want or need more assurance, they should look into setting up a Pentadactyl Foundation and building a budget to support dev work -- but that would be a discussion to have on the wiki or possibly the mailing list rather than in the issue tracker.

[willsALMANJ]

It looks like I overlooked the recent jump tags commit in my feed reader. I will update the xpi for that commit when I have time. I think the other activity after Aug 7 was just merging in pull requests that I had previously merged in by hand (they were needed to get Pentadactyl working with Firefox 48).

[Hi-Angel]

Yay, just tested, still works on FF49.

[Hi-Angel]

Though it was working fine back in the office running binaries from the official tar.gz archive, but here upon installing from Archlinux [testing], instead of completions I see Type error message.

Will see, perhaps it's just because of testing… Idk, it's strange.

[ilintault]

@willsALMANJ Thank you for the update!

[congma]

Error on tab-completion due to changes to unified complete in FF49; see #176.

[osleg]

@willsALMANJ Thank you for your hard work keeping pentadactyl working for us!
Maybe you could fork penta and maintain it as main maintainer until we can use it and we (well, at least I will) will help you on this?

[willsALMANJ]

@osieg @dkearns still pushes commits to this repo (as recently as two weeks ago), so I'd rather stick to signing this repo's version if possible. However, keeping the xpi compatible with the Release version of Firefox is more important, so I don't mind temporarily forking the dactyl repo and applying Firefox compatibility pull requests that haven't been merged into the 5digits repo yet. So open issues and pull requests in this repo, but you can open pull requests at https://github.com/willsALMANJ/pentadactyl-signed/issues if there are unmerged compatibility fixes that you think should be included in the xpi.

[cprn]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to report this but Manjaro.i3 just updated Firefox to 50.0 and pentadactyl still works as new (I had to bump maxVersion and reinstall both, plugin and browser, but no problem so far).

[alphapapa]

@cprn Yep, same here. Doug just merged a commit that bumps the maxVersion, so we should be good now. :)

[willsALMANJ]

Mozilla has put out a more firm timeline for the deprecation of XUL: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/2017 Firefox 57 (November 2017) is going to remove all support for XUL, so that's when Pentadactyl will definitely stop working (unless someone is secretly porting it). Firefox 52 will be the last ESR to support XUL. Also, install.rdf probably needs <em:multiprocessCompatible>false</em:multiprocessCompatible> to avoid having multiprocess mode enabled with Pentadactyl starting in Firefox 51 (which doesn't work well).

In the signed xpi that I post, I automatically bump the maxVersion.

[Hi-Angel]

Idk about development of FF extensions much, but @gkatsev in 2015 listed some limitations of WebExtensions API — I don't know if they outdated yet.

We've to come up with a list of limitations, disallowing the addon from being ported. Then to α) post it to firefox-dev mailing list, and β) create a bug "WebExtensions limitations to be solved before droppign XUL".

Aside, I'm wondering: the FF 57 besides WebExtensions going to have "Singed bootstrapped add-ons", "OpenSearch plugins", I don't know what are they. Could they be used as a replacement for XUL?

[gliptak]

Bootstrapped ~ restartable

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Bootstrapped_extensions

[Hi-Angel]

Okay, OpenSearch — an API for search engines, and "Bootsrtapped" seems to just be a small API to not restart a browser for loading an extension. Nothing interesting.

Then let's make up a list of limitations of WebExtensions API (if there still is). It's possibly (i'd wait a comment from more acknowledged peoples) the first thing to the list is this point, it's about theming, which is needed to hide URL, and such. So, until this API is implemented, XUL shouldn't be dropeed.

Anything else?

[alphapapa]

@Hi-Angel I hate to be the downer, but it's hopeless. Mozilla is dropping XUL, and Pentadactyl can't be Pentadactyl without it. It could be a Vim-like command interface, like Vimium for Chrome, but Pentadactyl does a lot more than that, and Mozilla is not going to implement an API in WebExtensions for everything that XUL can do. If they did, it would just be XUL.

The long-term solution is to move to Pale Moon. We should start supporting them (including financially, if possible) now, and start migrating our own profiles before Mozilla rips the rug out from under us.

Mozilla has signed their own death warrant. They are going to kill Firefox, and then they will die off, because Firefox is what keeps the money flowing. It's a shame, because it's needless, but they have made their minds up to commit organizational suicide, and they are so stubborn that no one is going to change their mind. We've been trying for years, and they just won't listen.

Not to worry, developers are fungible when the software is Free. The phoenix will rise again.

[PLumowina]

PaleMoon with latest release 27 got some plugin changes too - and pentadactyl for this browser stopped to work too :(, so I dont know what can we do right now ...

…

-- Rafał "PLum" Michalski 2016-11-24 20:24 GMT+01:00 alphapapa <notifications@github.com>:

@Hi-Angel <https://github.com/Hi-Angel> I hate to be the downer, but it's hopeless. Mozilla is dropping XUL, and Pentadactyl can't be Pentadactyl without it. It could be a Vim-like command interface, like Vimium for Chrome, but Pentadactyl does a lot more than that. The long-term solution is to move to Pale Moon. We should start supporting them (including financially, if possible) now, and start migrating our own profiles before Mozilla rips the rug out from under us. Mozilla has signed their own death warrant. They are going to kill Firefox, and then they will die off, because Firefox is what keeps the money flowing. It's a shame, because it's needless, but they have made their minds up to commit organizational suicide, and they are so stubborn that no one is going to change their mind. We've been trying for years, and they just won't listen. Not to worry, developers are fungible when the software is Free. The phoenix will rise again. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#99 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AMt1UcaU5SDhDlzir00vn21Tfg6csmYQks5rBeR-gaJpZM4GevKj> .

[Hi-Angel]

Mozilla is dropping XUL, and Pentadactyl can't be Pentadactyl without it. It could be a Vim-like command interface, like Vimium for Chrome, but Pentadactyl does a lot more than that.

Yes, and I'm suggesting to point that out to them. Mozilla wants to kill XUL not because they don't care of a userbase, but because it's a deprecated layer of API that doesn't work well even with concurrency. We have to point them out that there's some part of API that doesn't have yet an analogue, so that they would implement it before dropping XUL, and then we could migrate the addon to that API.

[bulldozer2003]

Palemoon++ I switched and it's great. Some might say Palemoon is member berries but it's only a rejection of Firefox's move to be flashier in attempt to compete with Chrome. Older add-ons don't stop working "just because."

[prikhi]

Pale Moon's roadmap & v27 release notes both say they will continue to support XUL.

@PLumowina I'm compiling v27 now & will try poking around with pm-pentadactyl, if you're having issues running the plugin maybe open an issue on the GH repo with more information:
https://github.com/Pale-Moon-Addons-Team/pentadactyl-pm

[j127]

they have made their minds up to commit organizational suicide, and they are so stubborn that no one is going to change their mind. We've been trying for years, and they just won't listen.

A problem with Mozilla is that they are not seriously interested in their core supporters. I wrote comments about that above, here and here. One example is the time I tried to create a Firefox developer meetup in the SF Bay Area to try to get more programmers interested in Firefox, and I never got any response from Mozilla, even though some of their employees joined, including people with community management titles. They didn't reply to my inquiries. (My other, related programming groups have over 3,000 members now, so it could have been a significant pro-Firefox voice in the browser-extension community.)

Mozilla needs to overhaul their community management and bring back grassroots-driven movements like spreadfirefox.com. They can't achieve that on a large scale unless the core supporters are behind them, and a large part of their core supporters are developer-types who don't like the current direction and aren't being heard by the company. Pentadactyl-like features could be a rallying point for Firefox and Mozilla, but instead there is only silence.

I get the impression that they are telling themselves things like, "forget those complainers -- they will get used to the changes eventually." Actually, they will leave Firefox and market share will continue to drop. Many of those tech-savvy Chrome users are former Firefox users.

Focusing on programmers is what makes products like these popular. Tech-savvy people are thought leaders when it comes to software choices. If the tech-savvy people are fanatical about a product, it will trickle to the mainstream. Some examples:

• Macbooks became popular around the time that Rails came out with their popular "build a blog video", and the Rails community was strongly pro-Mac. Textmate's homepage even bragged that they were proud to be "Mac-only". Mac use is now probably about 70% among my programming club with about 20% using Linux and 10% using Windows.
• Microsoft finally figured out that they need to focus on developers and "open-source", even to the point of selling Linux servers and integrating Ubuntu into Windows 10 as an add-on. Nadella's strategy revolves around reaching out to programmers, because he understands this.
• Chrome is popular because they focus on developers. Web development tutorials use Chrome, so everyone learns how to debug in Chrome. It's very rare to see any JavaScript tutorials that use Firefox's tools rather than Chrome's.
• Mozilla doesn't really listen to developer feedback. The community used to be grassroots-driven, but they changed to top-down community management.

I don't think that Pale Moon is a good solution, because it doesn't have the resources of Mozilla, and it's going to be difficult to keep up with Chrome. I'm okay with Firefox changing in order to keep up with modern technology, but Mozilla needs to pay much more attention to what their real core users are looking for. I switched to vimfx (with changed keybindings) just so I could tolerate the interface, but I dislike using the browser now, and am not a genuinely enthusiastic supporter of Firefox any more. (I still would like to be one though.)

Suggestion for Mozilla: pay attention to how Microsoft is reaching out to developers. Find the extensions that programmers are fanatical about and that aren't available on other browser, such as Pentadactyl and Tree Style Tab, and back them with funding -- use them as a rallying point to bring thought leaders in programming over to Firefox. Make Firefox about developer-friendliness, privacy, and productivity. I have a lot of ideas on how to do that, but I don't know how to contact anyone at Mozilla who seems genuinely interested in building the Firefox community.

[alphapapa]

@Hi-Angel

Yes, and I'm suggesting to point that out to them. Mozilla wants to kill XUL not because they don't care of a userbase, but because it's a deprecated layer of API that doesn't work well even with concurrency.

This is a nice idea, but again, it's hopeless. Mozilla wants to kill XUL because they do not care to maintain it anymore; and the reason they do not care to maintain it anymore is that they care more about themselves than they do about their users. It doesn't matter how many people protest the removal of XUL, just like it didn't matter how many people protested mandatory extension signing. Their developers don't want to spend time maintaining old code; it's not hip or cool or whatever. It doesn't matter that that code has brought in billions of dollars in revenue and made Firefox what it is today; they simply do not care.

We have to point them out that there's some part of API that doesn't have yet an analogue, so that they would implement it before dropping XUL, and then we could migrate the addon to that API.

I really hate to criticize your enthusiasm, but to be completely honest with you, this is naive. We have been pointing out these things to Mozilla for years now. They completely ignore us. They already know that there are many extensions that depend on XUL, but they are not going to implement equivalent APIs for niche extensions like ours. They're not even doing their own homework: they won't implement APIs that existing extensions use unless the extension developers beg them to, and even then there's no guarantee. It's all based upon the whims of Mozilla.

The bottom line is that they only care about one thing: money. And they think that the best way to keep the money coming is to chase two demographics: former Firefox users who now use Chrome, and people who have never used a computer before. And they think that the best way to chase those demographics is to turn Firefox into Chrome, inside and out. They are hell-bent on doing so, and they will ride that train all the way down, right through the "BRIDGE OUT" sign.

For you and me, they have one message: "This is not the browser you're looking for. Now quit bothering us and go play with your window manager."

The path forward for us is to part ways with Mozilla. They do not want us anymore. We've already wasted enough energy trying to convince them to stay. They have found a new lover and it's not us. We need to let them go and move on.

@j127

A problem with Mozilla is that they are not seriously interested in their core supporters.

Bingo. The days of grassroots Firefox are long over. It's all top-down now. The people in charge are going to strangle the goose while squeezing out every last drop of blood from it, and then when Mozilla goes bankrupt, they'll sell the assets and float to another corporate job on their golden parachutes. It wasn't mismanagement, it was all the market's fault, and Google's, and Yahoo's...maybe Marissa Meyer's. If only Firefox OS had panned out, then they could have diversified and pivoted to a mobile strategy, and Firefox could have become their loss-leader...blah blah blah.

I get the impression that they are telling themselves things like, "forget those complainers -- they will get used to the changes eventually."

They have been saying this for years, and not only to themselves--this is how they handle bug reports too. Bug after bug where loyal users and evangelists beg them to keep features intact, and the comments get hidden, marked as "advocacy," and then the bug reports are locked so that only Mozillians can respond, and mere users are told to take it to the mailing lists, where they can talk at each other and Mozilla can conveniently ignore them.

I don't think that Pale Moon is a good solution, because it doesn't have the resources of Mozilla, and it's going to be difficult to keep up with Chrome.

You're right that it doesn't have Mozilla's resources, but I don't think that necessarily means that it's not a good solution for us. The biggest concern is security fixes, which simply take manpower to keep up with. But if we support them, we can improve their resources and perhaps mitigate that.

I'm not sure what you mean by keeping up with Chrome. If you mean JavaScript performance, that is indeed another manpower issue. However, a long-term solution for Pale Moon might be to move off their Gecko fork and base it on Blink or Servo, which might allow it to ride on their JavaScript engines. Of course, it's easy for me to say this; porting the XUL-based platform to another renderer is certainly a huge task. On the other hand, maybe its JavaScript performance is good enough; I use web browsers to browse the web, not play WebGL games with my phone as a lightsaber. ;)

...I don't know how to contact anyone at Mozilla who seems genuinely interested in building the Firefox community.

I think there isn't anyone left that is; or, at least, not at any level where they have any say in the direction Mozilla goes. I think we need to face the hard truth: Mozilla's going down in flames. The good news is that, just as before, the phoenix can rise again from their ashes. Better for us to get a head start than wait for impact.

[Hi-Angel]

Anyways, I reported.

[alphapapa]

@Hi-Angel Well, thanks for taking the initiative. I hope you and Mozilla prove me wrong. :)

[j127]

The path forward for us is to part ways with Mozilla.

I don't think that people should abandon Firefox. The stakes are the future of the Web and privacy. There is no real alternative to Firefox for what it does. It's the only browser that allows add-ons in the mobile version. Chrome makes money from data, and I haven't found a way to block as many tracking methods in Chrome as in Firefox.

Pale Moon is a highly risky bet, and they probably don't have the resources to keep up with Chrome alone.

They have been saying this for years, and not only to themselves--this is how they handle bug reports too. Bug after bug where loyal users and evangelists beg them to keep features intact, and the comments get hidden, marked as "advocacy," and then the bug reports are locked so that only Mozillians can respond, and mere users are told to take it to the mailing lists, where they can talk at each other and Mozilla can conveniently ignore them.

Yes, I have been ignored in the bug reports too. There was one blog post about the changing API that had a lot of negative comments on it, and Mozilla deleted it (before restoring it later).

I'm sure that the situation there with keeping Mozilla afloat is much more complex than the end users realize, but they still need more community input if they are going to survive. They won't get the exponential growth that they need if there isn't a grassroots movement.

The biggest concern is security fixes, which simply take manpower to keep up with.

The Web is changing too quickly. The browsers of today will not be up to the task of running future Web pages at high speed.

I use web browsers to browse the web, not play WebGL games with my phone as a lightsaber. ;)

The issue isn't about just a few developers who want a solution for themselves. It's about the future of the Web, electronic privacy, etc.

I don't think that people should give up that easily. There is still time to fix things.

If anyone from Mozilla reads this, send me a message. I would be happy to help organize monthly Firefox developer meetups in SF if they would provide the space. We have 3,000 members, and Mozilla could freely recruit from the group as well. JavaScript, Python are well represented, and there are a few enthusiastic Rust users as well. If there is something so exciting about the future of Mozilla, invite programmers there and convince them. Listen to what the programmer have to say about what they want in a browser, and maybe some compromises could be made by both sides.

I was a huge supporter of Mozilla since Mozilla Application Suite, and it would be great to see some of that old "Spread Firefox" enthusiasm happen again.

[Hi-Angel]

Chrome makes money from data, and I haven't found a way to block as many tracking methods in Chrome as in Firefox.

There's a Chromium.

[j127]

There's a Chromium.

It still doesn't block many things. I install the privacy extensions I want, and then when I go to check what info is still in the browser, website data is still being stored.

All of this should be auto-deleted by extensions, but it doesn't happen:

On Firefox, there are much better extensions for things like:

• blocking referrers
• clearing LSOs with a timer
• managing cookie and localStorage deletion when tabs are closed
• etc.

Google is seriously dependent on data collection. It is in their best interest to make sure that not all tracking can be blocked. Mozilla doesn't have as many of those pressures during feature design.

Huge problem: Chromium doesn't allow browser extensions (for privacy) on mobile devices, while Firefox does.

One other reason why I dislike Chrome browsers is that the interface uses dark patterns to get people to visit Google Search and click on ads before sending them to the desired destination. It's a waste of time.

For example, visit this link in both Chromium and Firefox. Close the tab. Then start to type "marriott" and watch the auto-completion. Firefox knows exactly where you want to go, and suggests the destination URL. Chromium will usually pretend not to know about the URL and will send you to a page full of Google Ads (search page) instead.

[vyp]

(Just for reference there is also ungoogled chromium and inox.)

[Hi-Angel]

All of this should be auto-deleted by extensions, but it doesn't happen:

I just made an experiment: I opened an "incognito window", opened cnn.com, allowed them to store cookies, browsed the site a little bit, closed Chromium, opened cookies page — and no, nothing matching the word cnn.

What that means is that the problem with cookies leftovers is a bug in extensions, which have to be reported to them. It have nothing to do with the browser or its company.

For example, visit this link in both Chromium and Firefox. Close the tab. Then start to type "marriott" and watch the auto-completion.

(beforewords I should say that this kind of completion is one of the main reasons that I like pentadactyl — default completion in Firefox'n'Chromium sucks)

Yes, I made this experiment, and one of completions Chromium advised was the marriott site. In some sense, I even made the experiment twice: for I was doing the prev. one, I didn't know how to peek at cookies, and found a random topic on superuser.com about it before opening a private mode. Then, to exclude everything, I completely closed Chromium, opened it again, started typing "superuser", and Chromium advised me the page I left a minute ago.

I was a huge supporter of Mozilla since Mozilla Application Suite, and it would be great to see some of that old "Spread Firefox" enthusiasm happen again.

Let me be crystal clear — I am enthusiastic about Firefox, you can see it because I reported bugs, and before that I even stepped into #developers channel on Mozilla IRC, and posted a link to one of your prev. comments; I also asked in #firefox and #webextensions channels some relevant questions, mostly to no avail.

I am enthusiastic enough that I even use Firefox for everyday browsing, even though Firefox noticebly slower, and didn't even have video acceleration (seriously, which year we're at??), so to watch videos I still opening chromium-vaapi^AUR.

But pentadactyl is the most important reason that I'm still here. There're other ones too, like that Mozilla is the developer of Rust, etc — but this one is The Boss. And if at some point they drop XUL despite the absence of some API for pentadactyl to work properly — ofc, given that they knew about it, like the bug I reported, they aren't telepathists after all! — that very moment I gonna join the non-existing motion Stop the Firefox, I am dead serious.

Because if they want to mess with me, I gonna mess with them. After all, I have to be enthusiast at something, right? :Ь

[j127]

I just made an experiment: I opened an "incognito window", opened cnn.com, allowed them to store cookies, browsed the site a little bit, closed Chromium, opened cookies page — and no, nothing matching the word cnn.

Incognito windows are different. I don't want incognito mode, because I want the history, along with select cookies, to be saved between sessions.

I made this experiment, and one of completions Chromium advised was the marriott site.

I'm not sure exactly how the completion logic works. Another example from my own computer: I have 11 URLs with the word "webmaster" in my history, and this is how it auto-completes when I try to go back to webmasterworld.com:

It's clearly a dark pattern by Google. They are not unaware about how much money they are making from that.

even though Firefox noticebly slower, and didn't even have video acceleration (seriously, which year we're at??), so to watch videos I still opening chromium-vaapiAUR.

Chrome's speed has pulled ahead of Firefox lately. I hope that Firefox can catch up again.

[Hi-Angel]

Incognito windows different. I don't want incognito mode, because I want the history, along with select cookies, to be saved between sessions.

Of course not, that's not what I mean. I made the comparison to show that the problem with cookies have nothing to do with the browser, but rather with the privacy extensions you use, which ought to remove them, but doesn't.

I'm not sure exactly how the completion logic works. I have 11 URLs with the word "webmaster" in my history, and this is how it auto-completes when I try to go back to webmasterworld.com:

Hmm, I have to admit, this is odd. This is what it looks to me:

I tried to search for addons for better completion, but surprisingly can't find them. I really don't know, somebody have to make one, say, like "fuzzy url completion".

Chrome's speed has pulled ahead of Firefox lately. I hope that Firefox can catch up again.

Unfortunately it was always like this, I'd say that it's Firefox speed pulled forward a bit in the FF50 version. As a user of Firefox and pentadactyl for ≈2 years, I can say for example, that scroll with mouse was always laggy — but as I didn't use mouse in preference of pentadactyl's keys, I usually didn't notice it.

E.g. right now for I scroll the current github page with mouse wheel, even though lags very small now, but Chromium on the same page manages to… I don't know, it seems to update the page twice more often for scrolling, I think. And it varies from site to site — e.g. I just opened some Facebook page with many posts, and I definitely see lags for scrolling the content in Firefox, but I don't see them on the same page in Chromium.

[j127]

Unfortunately it was always like this, I'd say that it's Firefox speed pulled forward a bit in the FF50 version. As a user of Firefox and pentadactyl for ≈2 years

It wasn't until recently that Firefox started appearing noticeably slower to me. Actually, I just tested a new Firefox profile, and it seems to be working about as fast as Chrome. It must be my extensions that are causing the slowdown. I wonder if a lot of it is related to the OS and the installed extensions.

Here are page load speeds for a couple thousand visitors on a live website -- Chrome appears to be loading pages slightly faster than Firefox. But if speed were the only measurement of quality, then we should all be using IE over FF and Chrome. :)

[willsALMANJ]

Since VimFx was mentioned, I feel I should point out that it is also a XUL addon and will also stop working in Firefox 57 unless it is ported to a WebExtension (it has active developers so maybe it will happen but it will still take a lot of work). You might want to watch projects like Vimium and cVim and see if any of them gets ported to a WebExtension once the necessary API's are implemented. I tried Vimium recently but I couldn't get it to work in Firefox.

[bulldozer2003]

🤑
I put this up as a bounty on bountysource for anyone who ports pentadactyl to the new add-on format. Please contribute if you can:
https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/4405414-5digits-dactyl

I also put a bounty on getting pentadactyl to work in palemoon 27:
https://www.bountysource.com/trackers/19509551-pale-moon-addons-team-pentadactyl-pm

[alphapapa]

@bulldozer2003 That's cool, but I think the bounty needs to be more specific than "future development." That's just too vague of a goal. We need a goal that's specific and concrete.

There are basically two options here:

1. Convince Mozilla to add WebExtension APIs to enable Pentadactyl to be ported to it completely, then port Pentadactyl to WebExtension. This is the only path forward for Pentadactyl on Mozilla Firefox.

2. Move all development efforts to Pale Moon, and get Pentadactyl working correctly with the current version.

I don't think option 1 is realistic, because I cannot imagine that Mozilla will put forth the effort to make new APIs to enable Pentadactyl to continue with its current functionality as a WebExtension. Remember, Pentadactyl does stuff in Firefox at a very low level; reimplementing WebExtension APIs for it would be nearly the same as making XUL itself, and that's the whole problem: they don't want to maintain it anymore. So if they don't want to maintain XUL, why would they want to maintain the special APIs Pentadactyl would require to work as a WebExtension? It ain't gonna happen.

Option 2 is realistic and achievable. It's really the only path forward for Pentadactyl. I hate to say it, but I don't see any other way around it.

[Massimo-B]

I'm still following this discussion with lot of interest and have changed my opinion about Mozilla and Firefox a bit.
Looking at Palemoon and reading the pros and cons here, I would be willing to test the Palemoon project and use it as main browser. As I don't need fancy web technologies like Facebook etc. I could live with a slow but stable development if they can keep up with the main web technologies and have the resources to do so...

Anyway, back to Pentadactyl, what is the status of the PM branch of PD? I cloned from https://github.com/Pale-Moon-Addons-Team/pentadactyl-pm.git but this didn't get updates sicne 2015? Isn't the XUL part of Firefox and Palemoon still compatible and could at least the current main Pentadactyl repo from https://github.com/5digits/dactyl.git keep compatible to be used in both browsers?

[rasideging]

The PM branch of Pentadactyl works till version 26.5. Version 27 essentially broke this branch and work on fixing it was started by WoyMzy, but progress seems to have stalled on his end. His fork can be found here:
https://github.com/WorMzy/pentadactyl-pm

Details of his fixes here:
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=13755

The changes done on version 27 are numerous, and are defined in the palemoon changelog. The biggest was a code base change to a more recent version of Firefox. I forget the exact version, though.

[Massimo-B]

I'm on 26.5, PD works, but is different from the FF branch of PD.
As PD is the only reason that makes me convert to PM currently, the main requirement would be to have at least the same PD state on PM. Using the same .pendadactylrc and set guioptions=Cmrs makes a different status line (see screenshot).

I don't know the exact differences but the pentadactyl-pm.git didn't get updates since 2015. Not sure if the main PD did some progress beside the maxVersion updates in the meanwhile.

[prikhi]

@Massimo-B Open the PM customization menu & remove the "status text" from the status bar & the pentadactyl status bar will take the full length.

[willsALMANJ]

For those who prefer to stay with Firefox, you might want to follow this ticket on the Mozilla bug tracker about adding API's for keyboard support to WebExtensions. Recently, a VimFx developer has said he is interested in working on designing and implementing these API's.

[veeven]

One other option is to (port Pentadactyl or) create a new embedded web browser. See “Hybrid Desktop Web Browser” in Embedding Use Cases. I do not know if it will be simpler than relying on WebExtensions.

[Massimo-B]

Just wanted to say I completely converted to Palemoon and I'm happy to have a full-featured but fast web browser, and it's a lot faster than Firefox.
I migrated passwords using "Password Exporter". I was able to migrate the whole list of my addons:
DirUp, DownThemAll, EncryptedWeb (replacing HTTPs everyhwere), NoScript, PaleMoon Commander (new), Password Exporter, Pentadactyl (built from https://github.com/Pale-Moon-Addons-Team/pentadactyl-pm.git), S3.Google Translator, TabMixPlus, ThinTabs (new as tab height was higher on PM), uBlock Origin, Cliget (1.2.1)
The only missing Addon is "Certificate Patrol".

Work and feel with PM and PD is exactly the same as on FF, just faster. Haven't seen sites not working on PM yet...

I'm looking forward to see some development in the pentadactyl-pm repo, filed the first issue: Pale-Moon-Addons-Team/pentadactyl-pm#4

Back to discussion. PM could be the alternative, when moving efforts to that clone of PD. Though I could imagine that there will be issues with the Addons in future: Today I was able to use the addons hosted on https://addons.palemoon.org/ which mainly are old snapshots. Like for cliget I needed to find some older XPI working. Those are versions when Firefox and Palemoon were still having some common base. When Palemoon will develop further which appearently will not be keeping up with Firefox but having their own roadmap, most of the authors of the addons won't care about Palemoon. Right now these Addons are static copies of some old working revision but won't get update anymore from upstream.... so far.

[ohjames]

Palemoon has poor HTML5 support that will only get poorer with time, it isn't worth investing in something that will become less and less useable overtime. We need to get past this Palemoon nonsense and work on pragmatic solutions.

[dumblob]

Work and feel with PM and PD is exactly the same as on FF, just faster. Haven't seen sites not working on PM yet...

@Massimo-B HTML5 support is already a necessity for many. For example https://appear.in (uses crypto and WebSockets) is very common (I use it at least once in a week for serious stuff). Palemoon is therefore unfortunately a no go 😢.

[rehael]

FYI All: @lydell started work on keyboard shortcuts WebExtension API – https://github.com/lydell/webextension-keyboard

[madand]

Hi all,
I have some nice gift for all Pentadactyl addicts, including myself

Here is a Pentadactyl for Pale Moon. Grab it, test it, ENJOY!

Moreover, it's based on the latest master and the difference from upstream is unbelievably tiny: 6fb9699, c8bacf3, 16a449a. Well, the biggest patch so far is the added README 😃

So maybe we have found a new home for Pentadactyl, once Mozilla kills Firefox' killer-feature. Considering the current pace of 'dactyl development, this looks much more realistic that rewriting everything on top of not-yet-existing APIs.

[rehael]

I still have hope that @kmaglione is working behind the curtains. ;)

[alphapapa]

Mozilla has now announced that Firefox 57, due in November, will no longer support XUL extensions.

I'm seeing mention of "WebExtensions Experiments," which Mozilla folks seem to be implying will effectively be XUL extensions shuttled off to being "bootstrapped extensions", intended for prototyping WebExtensions APIs, but allowing "old-style" extensions to continue to exist. See, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13678610

Can Pentadactyl continue to exist in Firefox past v56 as an "Experiment"/"bootstrapped extension"?

[willsALMANJ]

It probably will be possible to run Pentadactyl as a WebExtension Experiment in Firefox 57. I have even seen one of the Mozilla developers say that XUL extensions will still work in Developer Edition. However, neither of these paths seems work pursuing in my opinion.

Historically, Pentadactyl has always had compatibility issues with Firefox updates due to its large size. The reason Mozilla is forcing all addons to be WebExtensions in Firefox 57 is that they want to start making large backend changes to Firefox including ripping out the XUL components. WebExtensions define a finite set of API's which can be tested against and supported through this change whereas supporting all of the XUL API would be impossible.

So Pentadactyl might work in Firefox 57 and maybe it could work in 58 or 59 with only minor fixes, but it will only be a matter of time before the compatibility issues grow too difficult to deal with (and documentation and other tooling dimishes as maintaining an addon in this way is not officially supported). I think a more viable approach (sticking with Firefox) is find other addons that provide some of Pentadactyl's features and extend them as needed (and advocate for missing API's when necessary).

[alphapapa]

find other addons that provide some of Pentadactyl's features and extend them as needed

One of the primary features of Pentadactyl is providing a unified interface. How would using multiple addons provide that?

[bulldozer2003]

Has anyone considered forking Firefox? Not quite as extreme as palemoon, but in a way where upstream code from Mozilla is continuously integrated into the fork? Modifying the user interface in the browser code is probably a lot easier than using plugin APIs that change.

[alphapapa]

Has anyone considered forking Firefox? Not quite as extreme as palemoon, but in a way where upstream code from Mozilla is continuously integrated into the fork?

It sounds so easy when you put it that way. ;)

[willsALMANJ]

One of the primary features of Pentadactyl is providing a unified interface. How would using multiple addons provide that?

It would depend on which parts of the interface you consider necessary to be unified. If it's just within the features of Pentadactyl, you could take whatever addons are necessary and merge them into one addon (which would then require more maintenance overhead than using the work of others). Personally, I like how Pentadactyl is a unified interface to all of Firefox, but that is going to be hard to replicate going forward because Firefox is trying to silo off addons from each other and from most of Firefox's internals.

I was suggesting what I thought would be the easiest way to keep using Firefox. You could try to do a straight port of Pentadactyl, but I think it's better to start with something similar that is already a WebExtension in order to avoid some of the pain of figuring out all of the API translations.

[alphapapa]

I see. However, you're suggesting ways to keep using Firefox, while what I want is to keep using Pentadactyl. ;)

[Massimo-B]

That's the point, I keep using Pentadactyl on Palemoon, I appreaciate the work of madand, I left Firefox. Of course there may be fancy sites not ready for Palemoon yet(or the other way round?), I haven't used any of those. HTML5 support has improved recently.

[ohjames]

Well done people for coming up with even more ridiculous solutions than using Palemoon. I really hope we've gone into the satire territory now, because the alternative is just too stupid to consider.

[nachoparker]

Hello all,

In my humble opinion our best bet is to cooperate all projects/users that have the same problem and one we have a common ground then everybody can fork again if they have different visions.

I would like to refer everyone to my comment here and publicly ask for help

vimperator/vimperator-labs#705 (comment)