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Let us not forget Tor, the Firefox-based anonymity-focused browser.Īlex Kontos is a developer who attempted to provide continuity with dropped Firefox capabilities in his multi-platform Waterfox browser, proudly declaring that Firefox's user data sharing and telemetry collection was not included. Mozilla continues independently with Firefox for almost every platform, while variants such as Pale Moon and Sea Monkey have attempted to provide products that avoid drastic and/or controversial changes made by Mozilla but sometimes do not match the multi-platform support of Firefox. Apple forges on with its Safari browser while other, smaller projects tend to be quite limited for multi-platform users, such as Dolphin and Bromite. Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed contextualized the news with this brief history of the alternate browser ecosystem: As the usage share of web browsers continues to show a lopsideded dominance by Google Chrome, many previously-independent browsers have fallen by the wayside or have been reinvented as Chrome variants (i.e. "Now I can finally focus on making Waterfox into a viable alternative to the big browsers," Kontos concludes.
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People also don't seem to understand what System1 does. It's probably the one easy way a browser can make money without doing anything dodgy, and it's a way I've been happy to do it without having to compromise Waterfox (and will be the same way System1 makes money from Waterfox - nothing else). Essentially a way to have a search engine partnership (such as Bing) is through them, because companies such as Microsoft are too big and too busy to talk to small players such as Waterfox. System1 has been to Waterfox a search syndication partner. Why I kept going throughout the years, I'll never know. I wasn't doing anything with Waterfox except developing it and making some money via search. Waterfox was here for customisations and speed, with a good level of privacy. Throughout the years people have always asked about Waterfox and privacy, and if they've ever wanted more than it can afford, I've always pushed them to use Tor. It would just feel like standards that would be impossible to uphold, especially for something such as a web browser on the internet. I never wanted Waterfox to be a part of the hyper-privacy community. I've touted Waterfox as an ethical and privacy friendly browser.
#Waterfox 30 software#
It was a way for me to understand how large software projects worked and the Mozilla documentation was a great introduction.
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(Its tabs also still have angled sides with rounded corners.)įriday Waterfox's original creator, 24-year-old Alexandros Kontos, announced that the browser "now has funding and a development team, so Waterfox can finally start to grow!" after its acquisition by a company called System1.
#Waterfox 30 install#
The developer tells us there are several reasons for this, not least “the fact that Pale Moon has always been in favor of giving users the choice when and where to download and install an update to what is for most people the heart of their on-line experience”.įurther, the Pale Moon 12 Release Notes also explain that “instead of following the rapid release schedule of Mozilla, the browser will use version 12, a properly matured build with essential functionality, as a base to make incremental updates upon.” Which, the document states, means there will be less need to “go off on the “Web OS”/”Metro”/”Desktop integration” tangent that goes against Pale Moon’s goals of being and remaining a web browser”, while giving the developer more time to implement things that he thinks are actually worth doing.Waterfox is an open-source web browser for 圆4, ARM64, and PPC64LE systems, "intended to be speedy and ethical, and maintain support for legacy extensions dropped by Firefox, from which it is forked," according to Wikipedia. Pale Moon 12 notably has not moved to a silent install method, for instance, which means it won’t provide the maintenance service.
#Waterfox 30 code#
If you were unimpressed by the fairly unexciting appearance of Firefox 12 last week, then today does at least bring some browsing alternatives by way of the performance-optimized spinoff projects, Pale Moon 12 and Waterfox 12. And although the lack of additions to the broader code base means they’re both essentially maintenance releases, there is still some interesting news here.
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