NFN Smith wrote, on 05 Feb 21 22:28:
(Snip)
There's still plenty of people that are using both XP and Windows 7,
because they have reasons not to upgrade. But in the same way,
there's holdouts that won't upgrade Firefox past 52.9, or Thunderbird
past 68.12, often because they don't want to lose the ability to run
XUL extensions.
That describes me very well: I'm using a dual-boot system with XP SP3
and Win 7 SP"2" (constantly updated with Simplix's updates); in both
partitions there are the exact same versions of SM (2.49.5) and FF
(52.9.0 ESR), which AFAIK are at the 'limit of compatibility' (between
each other and with the OS's), so that I can use basically the same 50
or so XUL Extensions (of which I'd say 20-30 are important to me) in SM
and FF, in both OS's.
FRG has warned me of the mounting trade-offs this entails, specially
with these older versions' growing incompatibility with newer site
functions, and I admit that the day may come when I have to 'grow up'
(hopefully, by then FF will also have grown up so much that it may have
Web Extensions which I can use to fulfill most of the functions of my
current XUL ones).
I do have a WinXP-only HW which I haven't been able to get an adequate
substitute for in Win7, but that's only part of the reason: I find XP
easier to use and customize, and some old programs don't work well in
Win7 -- So, for me, XP is still very much alive, and being used every
day as my main OS quite satisfactorily. It may not be representative,
but most of the sites I go to work quite well with XP -- and, for those
which don't, a User-Agent switch with PrefBar is usually enough; and
there's always the option to access the site using W7.
This setup with two OS's (WXP & W7) on separate partitions on one
dual-boot disk, with copies of SM and FF on both, is the main reason to
keep SM 2.49.5 as the last one: I want to keep the most compatibility
possible between WXP and W7 versions of SM/FF, and SM 2.53 only works in
W7 (plus, it breaks several Extensions important to me).
On this last point, this may be a stronger reason than you'd expect:
What brought me to the Mozilla Suite, and then SeaMonkey, was its being
an integrated suite and, mainly, for the existence of ready-made addons
for a great lot of functions and ways to work that I prefer very much:
In some cases, I had thought for years that "I would like to do
this-and-this", and then discovered there actually was a working
extension to do that. After you get used to this, it's VERY hard to go
back to a browser/mail program which is designed with the MCD (minimum
common denominator) in mind, and with no way to change it to be more
like you want (another reason to not want more recent versions of FF,
which usually seem less enticing to me).
This pair (SM 2.49 and FF ESR 52.9.0) seem to be the last possibility to
use the same extensions and basic profiles on SM and FF, which is also
something I want to keep; this way, I can use an FF 57 U.A. without
being much off the mark, since FF ESR 52.9 should have security updates
up to about FF 60. However, I do expect/hope that most sites I want to
go to will support FF 56 (and SM 2.49, indirectly) for several years
more, with judicious use of User Agents, so at least parts of their main
functionality may still be available for longer.
The main 'unexpected bonus' came when I decided to have just one profile
(on a non-standard location) for each 'set' (one for both SM's, one for
both FF's, to achieve a seamless browser/email experience on the two
OS's (because I use each one for different purposes, but want to have
that possibility): When I first implemented this, I knew that some
files in the Profile used 'physical' addresses but, since the Profile
would be accessed by any OS in any order, I hoped that SM/FF would
automatically handle this (a behavior I noticed during previous tries
towards this setup), and it seems to work well so far.
I can also copy the 'relevant' corresponding files ('places', cookies,
logins, etc.) from SM to FF, and they work fine -- and the same is true
for one profile for WXP and W7 versions of SM/FF: I can save a session
in XP, reboot to W7, open SM, and 'reopen last session', and it works
flawlessly!
FRG said that "SeaMonkey was never designed to work that way", and I
also imagined that this was true, but I see that nevertheless it DOES
"work that way" for me. I imagine that, on starting, SM/FF 'take a look
around' to see in what 'environment' exactly they're running, and then
make adjustments to their 'system files' to reflect that environment, so
that, eg, "C:\Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data" becomes
C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming", "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users"
becomes "C:\ProgramData", etc. -- and vice versa. I've noticed that
even the Extensions which use 'physical addresses' seem to work fine,
too, so it feels like it's safe -- but maybe I'm missing something...
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