Will You be releasing future ESR Versions (v31.0+) with, or hopefully without, the Australis GUI?
Basically, will you be going forward in a similar fashion as Pale Moon bravely has, or will you just be making your FireFox Portable ESR a clone of Mozilla's FireFox ESR in a portable format?
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We don't recompile Firefox, we package the real, official Firefox, which is why we have permission to use the name. Firefox ESR 31 has the new UI, as it was introduced prior to version 31. Firefox ESR 24 has the old UI but is being dropped shortly.
As for Pale Moon, they currently base off the old Firefox ESR 24.x branch, which is why it's slower than an up-to-date Firefox build. Once Mozilla et al abandon that 24.x ESR branch of code in a few weeks, I'm not quite sure what will become of Pale Moon.
As to whether Pale Moon could be included here, the author has shown no interest. He's stated a few times he didn't want to because he believes apps in PA.c Format only work with our platform, which has never been true. Still, he's incorrectly stated it as fact over the years on his own forum.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Well, IMHO that's just a crying shame.
Why don't you take the bull by the horns & just rebrand, ripping out that cursed Australis abomination for your loyal users......Hell, seriously I'd even be willing to pay (donate). I bet others would too!!!
Anything for a quality Portable package without that nauseating Australis.
As far as the 'Slow' Pale Moon, hell a few milliseconds here & there is worth the wait rather than an Australis GUI.
But then again, I guess that's just my personal opinion, & not the opinion of the powers that be.
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
I am also a gruftie, finding that if some workflow was fine for generations of people, some people should very much think before they change this as they will mostly not achieve anything but angry users.
But on the other hand, we can not stop the time running. So either we will become compatible with the rest of the world or leave it.
For the time being I have installed the addon Classic Theme Restore ( https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ ), I know this will not help me for ever, only it will make my transition time easier.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Yes Otto, those major extension fixes will bandage the GUI, but what we need, & what will best serve the users, is someone with the know-how to scrape off the new Australis GUI, retain all the 'beneficial' internal bits of the new version underneath, & reuse the old GUI to replace Australis's new GUI.
If the name needs changing/modification to do this, so be it.
Call it whatever you wish, but Australis will never-ever be acceptable, & the new interface must be totally rejected.
It's not a fear of change that motivates our desire, it's way more than a change.
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
All but a vocal minority of Firefox users have already accepted the new UI and moved on. The exact same thing happened with Firefox 4 which caused a similar uproar among many of the same users and look how that turned out. Remember, the vast majority of Firefox users don't even use extensions, so they don't care at all about an add-on bar being removed or the GUI bits moving around a little bit.
This isn't meant to minimize your personal preferences, but to frame them in the overall scheme of things. I personally don't care one way or another and have no stake in how things go. The new UI works fine for me as did the old UI and I only use a half dozen extensions and a handful of custom settings.
There will likely be a few smaller browsers to serve the niche userbase that prefers higher levels of customizability, of course. We won't be creating one. It's a huge time-suck and well outside of our core mission. But I'm sure you'll find one that suits your needs. If one of them has enough of a userbase and is stable and well-maintained enough, we'll even include it in our directory of apps.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!