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Questions about New Moon/Serpent/FF52.9.1 ESR


Tomcat76

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I was wondering if there's a webpage explaining the differences between those FF incarnations.  I have a couple of questions I was hoping to answer myself, but it seems I will need to turn to the community for extra information.  I have tried Serpent for the past couple of days so my observations are based on that.
 
1. Does New Moon support the same addons FF52/Serpent does?
 
2. I wanted to compare the Primetime plugin to the LAV filters, but it seems Serpent already has built-in support for h.264.  Using the built-in filter, I noticed some artifacts with YouTube videos when paused and accidentally hovering the video controls bar.  But if someone tells me these built-in filters are the least taxing on memory, I will learn to live with it.
 
3. The biggest problem I've come across so far with Serpent is that text appears fuzzy in certain places, as if anti-aliasing is not in effect.
a) Embedded YouTube videos
When the video is playing and I hover the mouse over the video, the video's title as well as the time indicator in the controls bar appear fuzzy and are barely readable.  When the video is paused, the video title and time indicator text is clear and crisp again.  Everything is fine when watched on youtube.com.  This problem doesn't appear to be there in FF 52.9.1 ESR and FF 47.0.2.
b) Google Maps
Caption text and tooltips ("Satellite", "XX photo's", etc.) are fuzzy.
c) On a product page on coolblue.be, some text appears fuzzy during scrolling and it remains fuzzy for about a second after I stop scrolling.  Some text in the fixed header is always fuzzy.
 
4. In terms of "long-term" memory footprint, Serpent seems to fair quite a bit better than FF 52.9.1 ESR; it takes quite a bit longer before it reaches 1.3GB and completely stalls.  It's still nowhere near FF 47.0.2, though, which allows me to browse heavily for several hours.  The main reason I wanted to move away from FF 47.0.2 is that it won't allow me to login to Flickr anymore ("Grass is always greener" error), even after spoofing a more recent version of Firefox and Windows.
 
5. One of the biggest problems with FF 52.9.1 ESR is that it won't allow me to scroll a very large Facebook Photo Album all the way to the bottom; at some point, it will freeze and eventually crash, even if it's the sole window/page that's open.  I have yet to try this with Serpent.

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Replacing FF52 ESR with Serpent or New Moon is necessary above all for security.

For example the recent bug that led to the bypassing of Firefox to Pwn2Own 2019 contest in New Moon and Serpent was patched instead FF52 remains exposed.

Edited by Sampei.Nihira
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3 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

Does New Moon support the same addons FF52/Serpent does?

No, although some (many?) add-ons will work on both.

New Moon, and (official) Pale Moon and Basilisk only support legacy add-ons. FF52 and Serpent support some WebExtension add-ons as well.

Also, New Moon and Pale Moon have a different UI than FF52/Basilisk/Serpent, so add-ons that modify the UI may be specific to one set or the other.

3 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

I wanted to compare the Primetime plugin to the LAV filters, but it seems Serpent already has built-in support for h.264.

You can disable Serpent's built-in support under about:config. Search for media.ffvpx.enabled and set it to false. Then you can install and use the Primetime plugin using the instructions at that thread.

3 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

The biggest problem I've come across so far with Serpent is that text appears fuzzy in certain places, as if anti-aliasing is not in effect.

Try this. Go to about:config, search for .azure and two prefs will show up: gfx.canvas.azure.backends and gfx.content.azure.backends. The default for both is direct2d1.1,skia,cairo. Try changing both to direct2d1.1,cairo,skia and see if that helps.

3 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

In terms of "long-term" memory footprint, Serpent seems to fair quite a bit better than FF 52.9.1 ESR; it takes quite a bit longer before it reaches 1.3GB and completely stalls.  It's still nowhere near FF 47.0.2, though, which allows me to browse heavily for several hours.

There's probably no perfect solution, but one more about:config tweak may help: Try setting browser.tabs.remote.force-enable to true and restart Serpent. That enables multiprocess mode (you will see two basilisk.exe processes in Task Manager), so it will be a while longer before either process grows too big. This is incompatible with some legacy add-ons, such as Classic Add-Ons Archive, so use at your own risk. (BTW, @VistaLover discovered a way to patch CAA so that it will work in multiprocess mode, sort of.)

Edited by Mathwiz
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7 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

New Moon, and (official) Pale Moon and Basilisk only support legacy add-ons.

As far as I know, I only have legacy addons.  But some of them don't work with older versions of Firefox.  Should I consider New Moon to be at the level of FF28 in this regard?
 

7 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Go to about:config, search for .azure and two prefs will show up: gfx.canvas.azure.backends and gfx.content.azure.backends. The default for both is direct2d1.1,skia,cairo. Try changing both to direct2d1.1,cairo,skia and see if that helps.

For me, the default value for gfx.content.azure.backends was "direct2d1.1,cairo" so I left it alone.  I swapped "skia" with "cairo" for the other pref.  No difference, though.
Meanwhile, I found out that Dailymotion videos are affected by this as well.
 
I just checked my Firefox 47.0.2 install and those prefs are still set to their defaults -- "direct2d1.1,skia,cairo" and "direct2d1.1,cairo" respectively -- and I don't have the problem there.  So it's probably something else.
 

8 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Try setting browser.tabs.remote.force-enable to true and restart Serpent. That enables multiprocess mode (you will see two basilisk.exe processes in Task Manager), so it will be a while longer before either process grows too big. This is incompatible with some legacy add-ons,

According to extensions.ini, these addons are incompatible:
Open in Browser 1.18
UAControl 0.1.3.1.1-signed.1-signed
RightToClick 2.9.6
 
I need those, unfortunately.
 
Thanks for the tip on media.ffvpx.enabled.  I'll try that.

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22 hours ago, Tomcat76 said:

Should I consider New Moon to be at the level of FF28 in this regard?

Depends on the version:

On 3/18/2019 at 9:51 PM, roytam1 said:

PM/NM 27 was forked from Fx38 ESR

PM/NM 26.5 was forked from Fx24 ESR

PM/NM 28 was forked from Fx52 ESR.

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Thanks.  I did some further testing now.
 
Updating Serpent to the latest build (20190330) didn't change anything.
 
I them compared certain prefs in about:config with my Firefox 47.0.2 install that I thought could be related (font settings, etc.) and made some changes, but nothing helped.
 
Next, I installed New Moon 28 build 20190330.  Same issues.
 
Lastly, I installed New Moon 27 build 20190330.  Now I'm finally getting clear font rendering on coolblue.be.  This New Moon version doesn't support HTML5 video, so I installed the LAV filters: problem with embedded YouTube videos appeared.  Then I tried the Primetime plugin... the fuzzy text on embedded YT videos is a little less fuzzy, but it is still.
 
Is this info somewhat helpful to a developer?
 
If of interest, here's an example page:
https://www.coolblue.be/en/product/795031/philips-fc9745-09-powerpro-expert.html
There's a big green button "Add to my shopping cart" on the right hand side.  On initial page load, Firefox 47.0.2, Firefox 52.9.1 ESR, Serpent 52, New Moon 28 and New Moon 27 display its text correctly.  But as you scroll down the page, that button becomes part of a new, fixed header at the top of the page.  Here, FF47, FF52 and NM27 display the text normally, but Serpent and NM28 make it fuzzy.  Interestingly, if I hover the button with my mouse, the text suddenly becomes clear.
Also, in Serpent and NM28, black text is not really black but a very dark shade of gray.

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