Which Firefox-based browser looks closest to FF 3.19

[Revolution 11]

Firefox's UI has been letting me down over and over again with each release in some small irritating way. To date, my favorite Firefox layout was 3.0 - 3.19.

I am considering Waterfox, PaleMoon, and Cyberfox. Which browser will be the best at:

1. Highest compatibility with Firefox .json and HTML bookmark files

2. Looks like Firefox 3.0 - 3.19. Even Firefox 3.5 / 3.6 will be acceptable, but not post Firefox 4.0.

3. Using the Firefox profile itself, including the addons, plugins, etc as the browser profile.

4. Browsing side-by-side with a Firefox browser (without profile corruption, etc)


If there are other considerations or quirks I need to be aware of, please list them.

 

[Berryracer]

Pale Moon is the best and fastest, and there is a FF profile import tool

Technical Differences between Pale Moon and Firefox

 

[Revolution 11]

"Best" doesn't tell me anything and speed was not one of the criteria I would be judging the browser on. How is the UI compared to Firefox 3? Closer than Waterfox? How about Cyberfox?

Tell me about UI and compatability (Pale Moon looks good in this), not speed. They are all fast enough.

 

[lxskllr]

Most Firefox forks follow Firefox pretty closely. Pale Moon is probably the closest to what you're looking for. Perhaps a theming addon can get it closer to the historic Firefox. If you want to go back to 1.x, Seamonkey will be close, but the addon support isn't nearly as good, and it's a little clunkier all around.

 

[bruceb]

Use this theme: Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+ Reloaded 3.04.1

Get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-theme-for-firefox-1/

Firefox may complain about it not working (but it will) .. you may also need to add the Disable Add On Compatibility Checks 1.3 .. get it here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkcompatibility/

 

[Revolution 11]

bruceb, thanks for those links. I think it will go a long way towards solving my problems with Firefox.

Do these themes work with Pale Moon or Waterfox? The former seems to be going on a better UX track and the latter may be better as a 64-bit browser so I may still abandon Firefox anyway.

And which browsers can be run at the same time on the same system as Firefox? Can you open up Firefox and also one of the other browsers and assign different bookmarks to each browser? Would that result in profile corruption?

 

[bruceb]

On my system, I have IE8 (hardly ever use it), Firefox 25.0.1 and Opera 12.16 .. you can open any or all of them (it is easier if your system has plenty of RAM) .. and you can easily put certain bookmarks in certain browsers. But on my system, I have all the same bookmarks on all of them.

 

[Revolution 11]

I meant which Firefox-based browser will run with Firefox. Although Pale Moon seems to be working fine concurrently with Firefox 25. I do like the interface changes a lot.

 

[Virgorising]

Pale Moon is the best and fastest, and there is a FF profile import tool

Technical Differences between Pale Moon and Firefox

I ditto into infinity.

 

[Virgorising]

I meant which Firefox-based browser will run with Firefox. Although Pale Moon seems to be working fine concurrently with Firefox 25. I do like the interface changes a lot.

After getting, configuring and seeing the reality of PM, I got rid of FX. I saw no reason at all to keep it.

 

[Virgorising]

"Best" doesn't tell me anything and speed was not one of the criteria I would be judging the browser on. How is the UI compared to Firefox 3? Closer than Waterfox? How about Cyberfox?

Tell me about UI and compatability (Pale Moon looks good in this), not speed. They are all fast enough.

I know nuthin about either Waterfox or Cyberfox. But my precious Lavafox red with the new enhancement works perfectly with PM, and the interface is almost identical to FX and just as configurable.

 

[Revolution 11]

I used to think, why are all these loonies (no offense meant) using Pale Moon and all these other flavors of the real deal.

Now I am getting it, Firefox is the old Netscape, Pale Moon is the new Firefox. I welcome our new overlords.

There are some quibbles with Pale Moon I have but I am sure I can customize out of the problem.

One final question: Does Pale Moon use current Firefox source code? For security patches and new features, I mean. Or are the codepaths diverging completely?

 

[lxskllr]

One final question: Does Pale Moon use current Firefox source code? For security patches and new features, I mean. Or are the codepaths diverging completely?

It's mostly the same. Reading their site will detail it best, but it mostly comes down to compiler options, and a couple niche features removed. Easy stuff so far, but it remains to be seen how well they keep up when Firefox goes to Australis. Right now I'd say it's as secure as Firefox, but I don't follow their development. You could keep an eye on the Firefox bug tracker, and see if Pale Moon keeps up when security fixes are posted by Firefox.