Other Firefox Dynasty - Firefox for OS X 10.8+ (Also, Web App Templates!)

[MacBiter]

I think the approved way is to buy a never-ending subscription to the current 1Password - which I'm never going to do. I agree with you, it is very frustrating.

Looks like I'll be stuck on Firefox 115 ESR until the end of days. Or until I switch password managers.

Is it really "never-ending"? Cocoatech brought that in for PathFinder but have since bowed to user pressure - you can either subscribe, or pay a little more for 12 months of updates, after which time you get no more updates but can carry on using the app. ForkLift have a similar model, and I can see more developers doing the same thing (except the egregious Adobe of course..).

The other thing is to exempt Firefox Dynasty from 1Password - you can still have all your usernames and passwords saved within Firefox.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

The other thing is to exempt Firefox Dynasty from 1Password - you can still have all your usernames and passwords saved within Firefox.

Except then they'll only be in Firefox!!!

Can I please put in a friendly plug for Bitwarden? It is by no means perfect—I have many quibbles with the UI in particular, especially following a recent update—however:

1. It's free. You can pay a very reasonable yearly fee ($10) for some additional features.
2. It's open source. I care about this in something as sensitive as a password manager.
3. It's cross-platform. You can use it in any of the major browsers (or their forks) on any operating system.
4. You can sync your passwords across multiple devices and browsers.
5. Passwords can be accessed from their website vault if you ever need to log in from a public computer.
6. Passwords can be easily exported if you want to move to a different service later on.

Honestly, I'm not sure how I would manage without Bitwarden. When I was choosing a password manager some years ago, it was the only one that checked all the boxes.

My passwords are my life. I need them to be kept safe but I also need them to be available everywhere. I don't ever want to be tied to one device or browser because my passwords aren't available elsewhere.

The only thing it's missing is a desktop app. (There is an electron app but (A) that doesn't count and (B) it of course won't run on my preferred version of OS X). However, this might be for the best... my password manager is the rare thing that is so security sensitive, I don't want to let some out-of-date version run standalone on my also-out-of-date operating system. Using their browser extension inside a modern port of Firefox, which brings its own additional sandboxing protections, feels like the right approach.

Highly recommended. Again, it's not perfect or even amazing, but I really think it's the best of all the options out there.

 

[aUsern@me]

Is it really "never-ending"?

Yes. You stop paying, you can no longer use the app.

Can I please put in a friendly plug for Bitwarden?

I've heard good things about Bitwarden, but I don't want to use a service, nor the cloud, for my passwords. The great thing about pre-predatory 1Password was it was local and easy to sync. I just need my passwords on my Mac and my iPhone.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread and make it yet another 1Password-is-evil complaint. It looks like there's really no practical way of spoofing an official Firefox signature for Firefox Dynasty. Still a great project for those of us running an older OS.

 

[Jonathan50]

cmp3,1 with 8800gt and el capitan runs four or five latest firefox dynasty releases with no problem, even at the same time.

mbp6,2 also with el capitan only runs release 128.0.4, all of the newer releases hang and i have to find and kill their processes, why is that?

 

[nospamboz]

Any possibility of a Thunderbird Dynasty as well?

 

[Useful]

I have a sugestion, rename the Firefox icon name to Firefox Dynasty, because I currently have both FF and FF ESR installed and they look exactly the same. Also would help if you designed a new icon for FF dynasty. what do you all think, this is a pretty new browser so i think there can be more done to improve it. i look forward to using this browser on my old macs!

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I have a sugestion, rename the Firefox icon name to Firefox Dynasty, because I currently have both FF and FF ESR installed and they look exactly the same. Also would help if you designed a new icon for FF dynasty. what do you all think, this is a pretty new browser so i think there can be more done to improve it. i look forward to using this browser on my old macs!

If you use https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Firefox-Dynasty-Downloader-PrefPane/releases/ then Firefox Dynasty will have a unique icon, although the app will still be called Firefox.

 

[MacBiter]

I much prefer the new icon!.

 

[technologicdata]

Hi there, I made an account to reply to this thread (and a whole lot of more reasons ^_^). I thought that sharing this would help someone trying to make their Firefox look awesome.. so here's my recommendation.

Geckium. It's a Firefox theme that gives it the appearance of older Chrome versions.. I think it looks cool.

It works on any Firefox version on modern Windows and macOS, however I tested it to make sure it works on macOS 10.8 and it works perfectly. I don't blame you if you don't want to use this and use a modern design but I like my programs having a design more similar to my OS.

Make sure you follow the instructions perfectly on the GitHub page, once you're done a setup prompt will launch and you can choose what design/version of Chrome you want.

Hope this helps somebody! (nice to meet you all too!)

 

[Wowfunhappy]

^ Yeah, Hiker159 also brought up Geckium on the first page of this thread! It's such a cool project, and I'm glad it's finding a home on Mavericks where it rightly belongs!

I will say that for me personally, Geckium isn't quite polished enough. A bunch of UI elements don't quite look or work correctly, particularly hover states. It's still in beta so maybe it will get there over time, but it's also really difficult to fake this stuff faithfully! That's why I use actual Mavericks and not some newer OS with a theme installed, the themes are never quite right.

Luckily, I actually think stock Firefox looks pretty good on Mavericks if you (1) enable Customize Menu → Title Bar, (2) set UI Density to Compact (requires an about:config change), and (3) install the MacFox Theme.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I've spent most of the long weekend working on my Web App Templates. Links to external websites (defined according to a pattern in info.plist) now open in your default browser instead of as a window within the app. You can also use Info.plist to configure the minimum window size. And, you can add custom Javascript to the website.

I'm not sure if anyone else is using these but I'm really extremely happy with them. They really feel like proper apps!

 

[MacBiter]

I've spent most of the long weekend working on my Web App Templates. Links to external websites (defined according to a pattern in info.plist) now open in your default browser instead of as a window within the app. You can also use Info.plist to configure the minimum window size. And, you can add custom Javascript to the website.

I'm not sure if anyone else is using these but I'm really extremely happy with them. They really feel like proper apps!

Your link doesn't work...

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Your link doesn't work...

Oops, fixed now, it's also the same as was in the first post.

 

[MacBiter]

Oops, fixed now, it's also the same as was in the first post.

Ok, I'm now sent to the GitHub page for these, but I still don't really understand what they are! Can you give an overview of these apps?.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Ok, I'm now sent to the GitHub page for these, but I still don't really understand what they are! Can you give an overview of these apps?.

I talked about it in the first post, it's a way to turn any website into its own separate application.

You might ask "well why not just use the the website in Firefox", and that's completely fair, but for webapps you use all the time, IMO keeping it as a tab inside Firefox is super awkward. You really want the app to have its own icon and a separate window and so on, it makes for a much better UX!

 

[MacBiter]

I talked about it in the first post, it's a way to turn any website into its own separate application.

You might ask "well why not just use the the website in Firefox", and that's completely fair, but for webapps you use all the time, IMO keeping it as a tab inside Firefox is super awkward. You really want the app to have its own icon and a separate window and so on, it makes for a much better UX!

Ok, fair enough. But could you answer one question for me - do you mean a true app such as Google Docs (I don't generally use these), or any of many forums I use such as Facebook , MacRumors, etc?.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Ok, fair enough. But could you answer one question for me - do you mean a true app such as Google Docs (I don't generally use these), or any of many forums I use such as Facebook , MacRumors, etc?.

I mean, you could put whatever website you want in there. But the idea is, something you want to exist as a separate app outside of your web browser.

Personally, so far I have made apps for Slack, Google Maps, and Librechat (ChatGPT except it lets you use the API which is generally cheaper). If I used Discord or Whatsapp I would definitely make apps for those, but I'm not using either service at the moment. If the official Zoom client ever stops working natively on Mavericks, I will probably use my wrapper to create an "app" for Zoom. Figma also seems like an excellent candidate, but since I no longer work in this space professionally, I just use an old, Mavericks-compatible version of Sketch.

 

[rampancy]

I mean, you could put whatever website you want in there. But the idea is, something you want to exist as a separate app outside of your web browser.

Personally, so far I have made apps for Slack, Google Maps, and Librechat (ChatGPT except it lets you use the API which is generally cheaper). If I used Discord or Whatsapp I would definitely make apps for those, but I'm not using either service at the moment. If the official Zoom client ever stops working natively on Mavericks, I will probably use my wrapper to create an "app" for Zoom. Figma also seems like an excellent candidate.

Wait, so you're basically talking about a Site Specific Browser!? My God, I've been waiting for someone to make something like this for older OS X versions.

I used to use Hana, before I settled on Fluid, which I used for many years. Then I eventually moved to WebCatalog, which worked perfectly until it broke itself via auto-updating on my Macs running 10.11, 10.14 and later 10.15 when Chromium/Electron dropped support for older OS X versions.

I really love having my Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, WhatsApp Web, and social media accounts as separate apps. If this can fulfill the same function on my iMac running 10.15 that will be a God send.

 

[MacBiter]

I mean, you could put whatever website you want in there. But the idea is, something you want to exist as a separate app outside of your web browser.

Personally, so far I have made apps for Slack, Google Maps, and Librechat (ChatGPT except it lets you use the API which is generally cheaper). If I used Discord or Whatsapp I would definitely make apps for those, but I'm not using either service at the moment. If the official Zoom client ever stops working natively on Mavericks, I will probably use my wrapper to create an "app" for Zoom. Figma also seems like an excellent candidate.

I always use my iPad for Zoom (you don't get gallery view on a Mac), but having Google Maps and Gmail as separate apps sounds very good!.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Wait, so you're basically talking about a Site Specific Browser!?

Yes, exactly!!! However, a small warning that I'm probably not going to fix any issues which are specific to OS X 10.10+ unless someone can tell me exactly what's wrong and they have a perfect fix. I don't enjoy using modern macOS, so I don't want to spend time debugging issues on those versions.

But you could try it, it might work! I've used Fluid before, and I think my solution makes apps that feel more like real apps than Fluid.

 

[PowerHarryG4]

I think it's about time we had a dedicated thread for this browser!

For anyone daily driving an old version of OS X, it is essential to be able to use a modern web browser! As of this writing, none of the major web browsers are compatible with Mac operating systems older than macOS 10.15 Catalina.

One popular option for the past couple of years has been Chromium Legacy. Chromium Legacy remains an amazing project, and the only option for accessing the few unfortunate websites which are only compatible with Chrome. However, Chromium Legacy has always been somewhat buggy and crash-prone, and as of this writing it hasn't been updated in more than six months.

To all of our immense luck, there is now a second option: Firefox Dynasty, a port of the latest version of Firefox to OS X 10.8 and above. It was created by i3roly and I'm so thankful for his work!

Official builds can be downloaded directly from Github: https://github.com/i3roly/firefox-dynasty/releases

Alternately, I have created a Preference Pane which can download new releases of Firefox Dynasty and will apply some of my own customization and default settings on top. These are mostly attempts to make Firefox better follow Apple's Design Guidelines. I also spent a lot of time getting Firefox to respect system-wide settings in System Preferences, particularly around custom keyboard shortcuts. Download from: https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Firefox-Dynasty-Downloader-PrefPane/releases

If you use my PrefPane, please don't report bugs to i3roly (you can report them to me first, and I may tell you to report them to him). Note that if you've used my Chromium Legacy PrefPane, the Firefox one is currently much simpler; in particular, at the moment it will not update Firefox automatically.

I also encourage installing (or at least trying) this theme, it really helps the window chrome blend with the rest of OS X.

----------

Nowadays, most desktop apps are actually just websites. Whether or not this is a good thing can be debated, but it's great if you're using an old operating system! Once you have a web browser, you can use whatever webapps you want!

The only problem is that you'll have to do everything inside of a browser window. Figma and Slack and Whatsapp become little browser tabs amongst the sea of all the websites I have open. I really prefer having different icons in my Dock for apps vs web pages. Chromium has "app shortcuts" which help with this, but they don't quite act like individual Mac apps, and Firefox has no equivalent feature.

So, I used Firefox Dynasty to create a "Web App Template". By changing the icon and editing info.plist, you can transform this application into an app for any web-based software you'd like! Download from: https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Firefox-Dynasty-Web-App-Template/releases

Let me know what you think, and/or if you find a way to "break out" into a normal Firefox window or setting screen (there is one way I'm aware of).

I took a hiatus from Mavericks because of the browser situation with Chromium Legacy, I was running into too many errors to use it consistently. When I saw this I booted up my Macbook Pro 2013 and gave it a whirl - This is great. And my biggest annoyance with Chromium Legacy, that YouTube videos would drop frames in full-screen doesn’t happen in this!

 

[rampancy]

Yes, exactly!!! However, a small warning that I'm probably not going to fix any issues which are specific to OS X 10.10+ unless someone can tell me exactly what's wrong and they have a perfect fix. I don't enjoy using modern macOS, so I don't want to spend time debugging issues on those versions.

But you could try it, it might work! I've used Fluid before, and I think my solution makes apps that feel more like real apps than Fluid.

I think the only thing missing is some kind of automated installer where it'll automatically change the info.plist values and attach a custom icon for your app -- erm, not meaning to be demanding or bossy but is there a chance you could make something like that? 🤞

On a more serious note, I'm not afraid to wade into the guts of a .app file and mess around witn files and the like, but I'd see myself using this a lot for apps no longer "natively supported" (which is a joke, since the apps were just Electron instances of their web interface anyway) on 10.15 and below, like WhatsApp, Discord and Slack, alongside web apps I'd much rather have contained as a desktop app like Gmail, Google Calendar, Bluesky and Instagram.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I think the only thing missing is some kind of automated installer where it'll automatically change the info.plist values and attach a custom icon for your app -- erm, not meaning to be demanding or bossy but is there a chance you could make something like that? 🤞

I'm not planning to do this at the moment, in part because I really think the current process is quite accessible.

There are basically just two files you really need to edit, Info.plist and App.icns. The latter is merely your app icon; all of your settings are right inside Info.plist. Change those values, and everything else will automagically update the next time you run the app.

You can also optionally edit userContent.css and userContent.js to add your own custom CSS or Javascript to the page, but you certainly don't have to. All four of these "user-editable" files are right in the top-level of the Contents folder. I don't think a UI would make this substantially easier!

The one thing that's legitmately annoying is that when I update the template, either to make improvements or to update the underlying copy of Firefox Dynasty, the apps you've created won't be updated. I do include a script to help with this, although at the moment you have to re-run it for each app you create. I may update the script to allow you to batch-select apps.

 

[RK78]

I'm running the same extensions in Dynasty (out of High Sierra) as in regular Firefox esr, currently 115.19, with basically the same profile: the most important of which are uBO, NoScript, Malwarebytes Browser Guard, and TrafficLight.

Can I expect Dynasty to be as secure?

FWIW, and maybe not much, especially without including details, too numerous to post here, these are the results from BrowserAudit for Dynasty

and for FF 115.19:

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Can I expect Dynasty to be as secure?

...I mean, it's hard to give a definitive answer to that question. Obviously, Firefox Dynasty contains source code changes from mainline Firefox. Whereas mainline Firefox has a large team of developers reviewing code changes, Firefox Dynasty does not. It's possible there is a security vulnerability lurking in Firefox Dynasty which does not exist upstream.

But, using Firefox Dynasty should be more secure than using an outdated version of Firefox, if those are your two options. If you need to be as secure as possible, you should use an up-to-date operating system.

My philosophy is that most people are not targets and do not need to be as secure as possible, and that something as small as using a password manager puts you ahead of 99% of computer users. Other people disagree with me.