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Gilbert Guldlock

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 10, 2020
12
4
Northern Europe
Now that Mozilla is ditching 10.13, the last of the giants to do so, it is time to look for a replacement. I thought this thread could act as a meeting point and collaborative effort.

This Apple discussion document is a great start, but a bit outdated: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250003586


Pale Moon wasn't mentioned there, but it still supports High Sierra. Pale Moon started as a fork of Firefox in autumn 2009 for those who were displeased by the direction Mozilla took with version 4, and has evolved to become its own thing with its own set of add-ons. It has a small but loyal userbase, and the same could be said about the developers. Considering how many web browsers of this size has decayed and been abandoned (Camino is the first that comes to mind) I think the longevity and solidness of Pale Moon through all of its lifehood gives it a great appeal.

My experience with Pale Moon on Windows XP ca 2018 to 2022 was excellent. My experience with PM on Mac OS 10.13 last autumn to this spring was less excellent, using version 32.5.0. It did work on web pages that neither Safari 13.1.2 nor Firefox 104.0.1 could fully handle, but did so with heavy processor usage and decent memory leaking, which eventually lead to it crashing. The overall experience felt less solid, with some minor memory leaking and and occasional hickups and sluggishness. I barely used it for anything but that problematic web page, but I do want to remember I experienced some issues even on other pages. It felt outdated, like being back to the early 00s. But I kinda like that! And it ran websites the other ones did not, so that's an improvement after all.

PM still supports XUL and NPAPI. However, they will soon require AVX CPUs, so not too old Macs can run it in the future. AVX is available on Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture and onwards, meaning Mac models from 2011. As of today, Pale Moon requires Mac OS 10.7 Lion (Snow Leopard just left out, sniff sniff). There are versions for Linux and FreeBSD as well. https://www.palemoon.org/


Waterfox have I heard from various places is a good browser in pretty much every way. Keeping compatibility with old add-ons, good privacy, lightweight, and more. However, everything I have come across seems outdated. It seemed to me Waterfox has been split in two, one that has moved forward with all the latest that is run by some company, and one that keeps compatibility with older OSs and add-ons but is quite dated that is community run with open source code, called Waterfox Classic. Turns out I was right: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/04/w...l-continue-but-as-a-separate-project-from-g4/

Waterfox modern requires Mac OS 11, but Waterfox Classic version 2022.11 works on High Sierra, although I couldn't find the requirement. Developers of Classic kindly ask users to leave the default search engine Bing enabled without any adblocker to financially support the project. If this is what it takes to keep this thing afloat, then I definitely think we should do it. Get it here: https://classic.waterfox.net


Personally I shy away from anything that Google touches, so I don't know anything about that.


I use a Firefox plugin that I really need: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-UK/firefox/addon/privatkopiera/ Unfortunately recent versions (0.4.x) doesn't install on Waterfox Classic. Is there possibly a workaround? Or another browser for 10.13 that can handle this plugin?

What other browsers are available for 10.13?

Considering High Sierra is the last bastion for most Macs between 2008 to 2011, arguably the peak of Macintosh computers, there ought to be a decent force to keep these beauties alive for some more time, similar to how many, me included, clung on to Snow Leopard with ArcticFox, SpiderWeb and InterWeb by wicknix.
 
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MBAir2010

macrumors 604
May 30, 2018
6,975
6,354
there
THANKS!
I love Waterfox, i even installed and use that on my M1 macs.

now i can use this classic version instead of firefox on 3 macs running Mt Lion.
and this web browser lets me sign in to sync while firefox classics does not.
i nned to tweek somethings and add extension, but all worth the work!

Most webpages still have large icons for pintrest, mail and other junk
but the browser is cleaner and condensed compared to Fireofox.

added;
Now i must learn a new language, GITHUBese
so i can navigate and read the words they so wisely chosen to present themselves with,
or use "Translate this page to English" feature on another browser.
 
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Witcher619

macrumors newbie
Jul 25, 2024
1
1
Hi all,
So, I'd like to chip in with a little bit of my research and discoveries that I've done in this sphere.
First off, a bit of context: I haven't worked with Macs before at all, I've had a chance to try out Macs a couple of times, but I've never owned one, so I'm basically a newbie when it comes to the system and the way it works. I found a late 2008 aluminum Macbook (model 5.1 I believe) in a dumpster of my residential complex. By the looks of it, the laptop wasn't damaged, so just out of sheer interest, I decided to take it in and see whether it worked and whether it was possible to breathe some life in it. I bought an Apple-replica charger, plugged it in, the laptop turned on, all the vital signs were present. It didn't have any hard drive installed, and as I had a spare Kingston SSD, I installed it into the machine (had to connect it as an external device, as apparently the SATA cable is damaged). I made a bootable MacOS X Lion installer via Windows, installed it on the Macbook, then found out that the system had already been totally dead (impossible to open almost any web page, no App store connection), so I then upgraded to MacOS X El Capitan. After having done some more research in the web, I found out that it was possible to install MacOS High Sierra on this laptop through some special installer designed by the local legend Dosdude1. So I did this, it worked brilliantly, and now I have this laptop running on High Sierra, which is an immense quality of life improvement in comparison with Lion.
The internet now works fine, I can access any web page, and even the pages themselves look almost normal (practically no visual issues on the modern pages with lots of graphics etc.). However, when I tried accessing Youtube, I was greeted with a block page saying that my browser version was outdated and that if I wanted to use Youtube again, I had to upgrade the former. Shortly afterwards, I discovered that it was quite a challenge to find an adequate working browser for High Sierra that would not only load the pages correctly, but also open up Youtube.
Thanks to some Mac forums and threads, I heard about Waterfox Classic. I downloaded it, the browser does look quite old, but seems to work fine, although Youtube doesn't open there as well. So I was sitting and thinking what to do, which browser to try, and then all of a sudden I remembered about a browser called Tor. I happen to know about this browser from the past where some of my people had to use it to access the provider-blocked pages, as it comes with an integrated VPN. I haven't seen this browser in suggestions in any of the relevant discussions or threads, but I still decided to give it a try, unaware whether it had a Mac version at all. And it turns out that Tor works like a charm! The official up-to-date browser version can easily be downloaded and run on High Sierra, you don't have to look for any previous releases and whatnot. And the biggest finding is that it does open up Youtube :) As a side note, though, upon launching the browser, there's a pop up saying something among the lines of "starting from October 2024, it will no longer be possible to receive updates for this browser on the current OS". So I assume that you could really enjoy the full scale of this browser up until October 2024, but I'm uncertain whether immediately afterwards Youtube will start shoving up the block screen with the browser update notice or not. I hope not...
So yeah, this is my experience with the late Macbook 2008 and the browser search. Hope it helps.
 
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Gilbert Guldlock

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 10, 2020
12
4
Northern Europe
So it seems that Basilisk is actually a thing, after seeing it mentioned in numerous places, most notably the neighbouring thread https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ac-stuck-on-high-sierra.2399839/post-33275768

When I checked it out in 2018, it seemed to be more of a technology demonstration rather than a product, made by Moonchild Productions, the same guy(s) who made Pale Moon, and it seemed to stay that way for a few years, so I dismissed it.

Judging purely by the © sign, it seems ownership changed in 2022. As far as I undertand it, it is based on Firefox 52. it is supposedly lightweight, even more so than Pale Moon and Waterfox, but it's is also more dated.



Then I looked into this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/web-browsers-for-early-intel-macs.2280783/ and now my thread here feels really minuscule and superfluous. But it might be more appropriate in the future, when 10.6 becomes (even more) abandoned (which I thought it already was, because ArcticFox didn't work for me in 2022, and InterWeb didn't cut it, which forced me to migrate to OS 10.13).

There it is mentioned that Waterfox Classic is "no longer maintained". I'm curious about that and will look into it.

I will update the threadstart when I know more.

Hi all,
So, I'd like to chip in with a little bit of my research and discoveries that I've done in this sphere.
First off, a bit of context: I haven't worked with Macs before at all, I've had a chance to try out Macs a couple of times, but I've never owned one, so I'm basically a newbie when it comes to the system and the way it works. I found a late 2008 aluminum Macbook (model 5.1 I believe) in a dumpster of my residential complex. By the looks of it, the laptop wasn't damaged, so just out of sheer interest, I decided to take it in and see whether it worked and whether it was possible to breathe some life in it. I bought an Apple-replica charger, plugged it in, the laptop turned on, all the vital signs were present. It didn't have any hard drive installed, and as I had a spare Kingston SSD, I installed it into the machine (had to connect it as an external device, as apparently the SATA cable is damaged). I made a bootable MacOS X Lion installer via Windows, installed it on the Macbook, then found out that the system had already been totally dead (impossible to open almost any web page, no App store connection), so I then upgraded to MacOS X El Capitan. After having done some more research in the web, I found out that it was possible to install MacOS High Sierra on this laptop through some special installer designed by the local legend Dosdude1. So I did this, it worked brilliantly, and now I have this laptop running on High Sierra, which is an immense quality of life improvement in comparison with Lion.
The internet now works fine, I can access any web page, and even the pages themselves look almost normal (practically no visual issues on the modern pages with lots of graphics etc.). However, when I tried accessing Youtube, I was greeted with a block page saying that my browser version was outdated and that if I wanted to use Youtube again, I had to upgrade the former. Shortly afterwards, I discovered that it was quite a challenge to find an adequate working browser for High Sierra that would not only load the pages correctly, but also open up Youtube.
Thanks to some Mac forums and threads, I heard about Waterfox Classic. I downloaded it, the browser does look quite old, but seems to work fine, although Youtube doesn't open there as well. So I was sitting and thinking what to do, which browser to try, and then all of a sudden I remembered about a browser called Tor. I happen to know about this browser from the past where some of my people had to use it to access the provider-blocked pages, as it comes with an integrated VPN. I haven't seen this browser in suggestions in any of the relevant discussions or threads, but I still decided to give it a try, unaware whether it had a Mac version at all. And it turns out that Tor works like a charm! The official up-to-date browser version can easily be downloaded and run on High Sierra, you don't have to look for any previous releases and whatnot. And the biggest finding is that it does open up Youtube :) As a side note, though, upon launching the browser, there's a pop up saying something among the lines of "starting from October 2024, it will no longer be possible to receive updates for this browser on the current OS". So I assume that you could really enjoy the full scale of this browser up until October 2024, but I'm uncertain whether immediately afterwards Youtube will start shoving up the block screen with the browser update notice or not. I hope not...
So yeah, this is my experience with the late Macbook 2008 and the browser search. Hope it helps.
I am most delighted to see that someone took the trouble of registering to write this story. Thank you and welcome!

It’s funny what gems one can find in dumpsters. A friend of mine found a fully functioning computer a few years ago that was just 5 years old at the time. A budget one, but still. Another time he found a converter from DIN to mini-DIN (PS/2), just when had gotten an old keyboard with a DIN connector from me, what a marvelous coincidence!

Also funny that you got a 2008 Macbook, that was when I got into Macs (again) after having longing for them since 1995. Those machines are quite repairable, the last generation to be that. You can replace the SATA cable if you want to and can fiddle with laptops. There are great guides on Ifixit. https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac_Laptop If you do, would you mind letting me know if a SATA 600 drive works? I'm thinking about upgrading one of mine.

Really weird that Youtube blocks you. It works fine for me on both Safari 13 and Firefox 104. YT even worked on Firefox 48 in Febrauary on Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. They occasionally tell me to upgrade, but if I re-enter the URL it lets me access it.

I never expected Tor to work. That's great news, albeit a short-lived one.
 

Fedsbackhand

macrumors member
Apr 24, 2020
48
26
Thanks for this thread. I have a late 2009 iMac running Firefox at the moment, so am looking into options as support will end next month. Of course the computer itself doesn't get security updates either...
 
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Gilbert Guldlock

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 10, 2020
12
4
Northern Europe
So far, out of all the web browsers I have tested, Basilisk is the most beautiful, while Pale Moon is the most practical, Firefox is in between, and Safari is the nimblest and most polished. I haven't tried Waterfox Classic enough to make a statement on that.


———


One thing I really like about Safari is the ability to scroll web pages with the alt/option key in conjunction with the arrow keys, like page up/down keys. Another is the ability to jump to and switch between text boxes with alt+tab. I think these are crucial features that significantly improves my web browsing life and they are not available on Firefox or any such browser, at least not that I know of. Using the tab button in general is a mess on Firefox and its derivates, where not only links and buttons are selected, but seemingly random things that are not visible. This is regardless of setting in System settings>Keyboard>Shortcuts. Therefore I use Safari for most browsing, casual browsing, and Firefox becomes reserved for more serious tasks, where speed is not important. Is there a solution for this?
Say what you want about Safari's minimalistic presentation, but it's a darn efficient browser.


———


Pale Moon version 33.3 is out now, released on 13 August 2024, making the starting point for the requirement of Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX). The first CPU microarchitecture to implement this is the Sandy Bridge, released as the Core ix 2000 family in 2011. Specifically these Mac models are the new system requirements for Pale Moon:
  • Mac mini 2011 (5,x)
  • Mac studio (any)
  • Mac Pro 2013 (6,1)
  • iMac 2011 (12,x)
  • iMac Pro (any)
  • MacBook 12-inch 2015 (8,1)
  • MacBook Air 2011 (4,x)
  • MacBook Pro 2011 (8,x)
The last version that does not require AVX is v33.2.1 (2024-07-15). More info at https://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml


———


I have downloaded and tried Basilisk, version 52.9.0, and I will give a little review. The Mac edition is considered an alternative release. The developers main focus is Windows and Linux, but even those are considered persistent betas, so it is not to be considered a finished product.

Basilisk looks and feels like Firefox circa version 50. I think this is the most aesthetically pleasing browser I have tried on High Sierra. Browsing the settings is a charm, with smooth highlighting on the leftside menu. Opening a new window renders a nice animation akin to the Classic Mac OS app opening (which I just discovered also is present on Pale Moon). However, this pleasant experience is quickly thrown over, unfortunately, when browsing web pages. Scrolling while a page is loading results in stuttering, and scrolling in general is not as ice cream smooth on web pages that are not plain and simple.

I wasn't given the option to import bookmarks etc from Firefox, which was weird considering it is based on Firefox, and a real bummer. If I had that opportunity, I could have ditched Firefox.

The context menu looks good for normal text, but the bold typeface looks a bit garbled on my standard HD monitor.

The find text (command+F) toolbar is rather small.

There are some bugs. The window buttons (close/minimise/maximise) occasionally disappear, but they still, like, exist, meaning that if you click on where they are supposed to be you get the same result. At one time when I switched to the welcome page that I had left open (https://www.basilisk-browser.org/firstrun/) it started to consume lots of CPU power in conjunction with Mac OS's WindowServer process, making the fan spin up on my Mac mini 2011. The same thing happened a little later when I viewed the add-on page.

Speaking of processing power, Basilisk consumes a lot. Having a tab with MacRumors forums open eats about 26% of my Mac mini 2011/5,2's 2.7 GHz Core i7 2620M. The percentage is calculated on each thread, not the entire processor, and it has room for 4 threads, but 2 of them are leftovers of the two cores, so that's 13% of the entire CPU. Another time it consumed around 34% of a thread, 17% of the CPU. Other pages show similar numbers, with one even evoking the beach ball upon entering. Playing a YouTube video in SD quality takes 60% of a CPU thread, 30% by Basilisk and 30% by WindowServer. Evoking the comment section makes Basilisk devour 115% of a CPU thread. This is a pretty big issue in the current heat wave going on in Northern Europe, where homes generally do not have air conditioning. Temperatures reaching 30° celsius in September is unheard of. 50 years ago that never happened ever, any day of the year.

About YouTube, it tells you the browser is no longer supported, and if you click on "Remind me later" it just reloads the same page. However, you can circumvent this by using the app-integrated search engine, available among the add-ons. Which leads me to…

Basilisk has its own set of add-ons, more or less. Most of them, if not all, are ported from Firefox or Pale Moon.
A few that grabbed my attention where:
"Cite4Wiki — Citation generating tool for the English Wikipedia.
Classic Add-ons Archive [External] — Catalog of classic Firefox add-ons created before WebExtensions apocalypse
Classic Password Editor — Adds the ability to create and edit entries in the password manager.
Classic Reload-Stop-Go Button — CRSG-extension for default Firefox theme styles the Reload-Stop-Go-button on urlbar like it was on Firefox 4-8.
Classic Toolbar Buttons (Palemoon) — Classic toolbar button style for Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey toolbars and other tweaks and settings.
Exif Viewer — Extracts and displays the Exif (Exchangeable Image File), IPTC-NAA/IIM (International Press Telecommunications Council / Newspaper Association of America / Information Interchange…"
Just when I was about to wrap this part up I came across this: "CPU & Memory Usage Statusbar – View Pale Moon memory usage and CPU usage in the statusbar." Note how it says Pale Moon in the description.

I barely use extensions these days, so I cannot tell if the catalogue is decent or not from a more savvy user's perspective, but it looked really appealing and varied to me. There are lots of extensions that alter the looks, several download managers and password managers, a couple of YouTube alterers, loads of nifty gadgets of all kinds, and of course content blockers. No NoScript, but there is eMatrix!
"ηMatrix – Point & click to forbid/allow any class of requests made by your browser. Use it to block scripts, iframes, ads, facebook, etc."

There are dictionaries for most languages you would expect. The only thing I miss is choosing language of the application itself.

I think Basilisk is a good browser, after all, despite its flaws, building on a good foundation but missing some screws. It could turn into something really good. I hope it will live on and even thrive on High Sierra for years to come. Pale Moon is a better browser, but perhaps not to everybody's liking, and given its recent AVX requirement, and that there may not be more versions of the already somewhat dated Waterfox Classic, Basilisk certainly has a place.


———


Chromium Legacy is also kicking, but since it's from the Google sphere I will not try it unless it's the very last browser alive. it is supposedly a good and feature rich browser, including the add-on flora.
 
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Fedsbackhand

macrumors member
Apr 24, 2020
48
26
Screen Shot 2024-09-06 at 10.05.21.png


So this is the last version? I just updated to 115.15.0
 

MacBiter

macrumors regular
Jun 2, 2021
248
33
The crucial thing for me is - which browsers will upgrade Widevine when one is due? I watch *ALL* my TV plus Amazon Prime on my Mac. A recent upgrade to Widevine which hasn't been incorporated into (the abandoned?) Chromium Legacy means the only way I can stream DRM video in High Sierra is using Firefox 115 ESR. (I have raised an issue in GitHub asking if Firefox-dynasty - FF 131 - will be upgraded but no reply yet).

However, Mozilla won't be upgrading 115 ESR anymore which means the next Widevine upgrade will end the ability to stream DRM video in High Sierra. UNLESS... one of the browsers listed above keeps Widevine up to date? .
 

sdfox7

macrumors demi-god
Jan 30, 2022
291
181
USA
The crucial thing for me is - which browsers will upgrade Widevine when one is due? I watch *ALL* my TV plus Amazon Prime on my Mac. A recent upgrade to Widevine which hasn't been incorporated into (the abandoned?) Chromium Legacy means the only way I can stream DRM video in High Sierra is using Firefox 115 ESR. (I have raised an issue in GitHub asking if Firefox-dynasty - FF 131 - will be upgraded but no reply yet).

However, Mozilla won't be upgrading 115 ESR anymore which means the next Widevine upgrade will end the ability to stream DRM video in High Sierra. UNLESS... one of the browsers listed above keeps Widevine up to date? .

Firefox 115 ESR support has been extended through the first quarter of 2025, and Mozilla updated the support page 3 days ago.

This is due to the continued high usage of these operating systems. This affects Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, as well as MacOS 10.12, MacOS 10.13, MacOS 10.14.

CARRY ON!

Firefox users on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 moving to Extended Support Release


Firefox Release Calendar Upcoming releases


1726852390596.png
 

MacBiter

macrumors regular
Jun 2, 2021
248
33
Firefox 115 ESR support has been extended through the first quarter of 2025, and Mozilla updated the support page 3 days ago.

This is due to the continued high usage of these operating systems. This affects Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, as well as MacOS 10.12, MacOS 10.13, MacOS 10.14.

CARRY ON!

Firefox users on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 moving to Extended Support Release


Firefox Release Calendar Upcoming releases


View attachment 2423363
Good news! Well, until March 2025...
 

sdfox7

macrumors demi-god
Jan 30, 2022
291
181
USA
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