Firefox Users Seeking Replacement Due to Forthcoming Ads

Corrine

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In case you missed it, Mozilla is planning on introducing ads in the "new tab", referred to as the new Directory Tile program. See Content, Ads, Caution by Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation as well as the following ZDNet articles:

Mozilla to deliver ads in its Firefox browser | ZDNet
Mozilla clarifies, defends Firefox ad position | ZDNet

Some options for consideration that are based on the Gecko engine include the following:

In a discussion elsewhere, the first alternate tried was Sea Monkey. For those who don't know, Sea Monkey is a complete suite, incorporating an e-mail client, newsgroup reader, HTML editor and IRC client. Since it did not seem as flexible as the person wanted, the next tried was Pale Moon. It was reported that the installation smooth. Rather than importing bookmarks from IE, the Pale Moon - Profile Migration Tool was used and worked well for that person.

Since I had used Pale Moon some years ago, I decided to give it a test. Contrary to the excellent results reported, when I used it, the Migration Tool failed, timing out and resulting in about 1/3 of the file being copied. So, I ended up manually copying the Firefox profile and changing the profiles.ini text file to open with that profile rather than the newly created Pale Moon profile. With that completed, setup is identical to what I have in Firefox.

After using Pale Moon for several hours, one thing I have observed is that it appears to be using considerably less memory than Firefox.

Are you considering switching from Firefox over the ads and, if so, which alternative are you considering?

As I recall, satrow uses Pale Moon and may have input about the differences between Pale Moon and Firefox.
 
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I'll likely be moving to Pale Moon.

To my understanding, and according to articles, the ads will be implemented on the new tab page. I'm still interested to see if blocking scripts for about:newtab stops the ads.
 
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I've used both Pale Moon and Sea Monkey. I have Pale Moon on this laptop on the Win 8 install mainly because I was attempting to use only 64 bit programs on it.
Sea Monkey I have on the Win 7 install but haven't used it much since moving the BBCode Extra data is not possible without manually copy/pasting all the canned speeches..................
 
Although I use BBCode Extra, I never really got into adding custom tags. I've used Gravity Gripp's "Athena Canned Speech Manager" since the add-on was beta. Unfortunately, he discontinued development and his site is no longer online. Even though it is no longer supported, it still works. I'd be lost without it and am glad I saved the last .xpi for it.
 
I didn't think about this, but looking at the features of Pale Moon, I will likely be moving to Pale Moon.

Corrine - are you using the x86 or x64 build of Pale Moon?
 
I stopped using Firefox a long time ago. Chrome anyone? :grin1:
 
Since I don't use Mozilla's Start Page I guess I won't see those ads?

I always amend the start page (and subsequent new tabs to open directly to Google).
 
Ah-ha! I never thought about that, Iain.

This does the trick:

  • Type about:config in the address bar (confirm any warning)
  • Search newtab
  • Right-click browser.newtab.url and select Modify
  • Change about:blank to the URL of choice (I used Bing)
  • Close about:config
 
I learned from satrow that it isn't necessary to make any changes with Pale Moon because the choice is available in Options > General > Tabs.

PM_NewTabPage.jpg
 

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