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Firefox The Internet Communications Mozilla Software

Developer Proclaims Death of Cyberfox Web Browser (ghacks.net) 52

In a forum entitled "Cyberfox and its future direction," the lead developer of Cyberfox proclaimed the death of their web browser. The lead developer, Toady, writes: "Over the years the Cyberfox project has grown immensely and its thanks to all the amazing support of our users and has been an amazing couple of years this however has demanded far more of my time causing me to drop allot of projects and passions id like to pursue, the time factor this project has demanded has also take a toll lifestyle wise as have the changes made by Mozilla requiring more and more time to maintain so its come to a point where i recently had to assess the direction of this project and the direction i wish to head for the future. This has being no easy choice and the last few months allot of thinking about the direction of this project has taken place." He continues, "This project has been amazing no one could ask for a better project or community sadly as much as i love this project my heart is no longer fully in it, dreams of pursuing game development were pushed aside and lifestyle steadily declined ultimately slowly coming to this point where changes and choices have to be made ones that will affect this project and the future of what i have spent all these years building." Ghacks Technology News reports: The death of Cyberfox, or more precisely, the announcement of end of life for the web browser may come as a shock to users who run it. It should not be too much of a surprise though for users who keep an eye on the browser world and especially Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla announced major changes to Firefox, some of which landed already, some are in process, and others are announced for 2017. [Some of the critical changes:] Multi-process Firefox is almost done, plugins are out except for Flash and Firefox ESR, Windows XP and Vista users are switched to Firefox ESR so that the operating systems are supported for eight additional releases, and WebExtensions will replace all other add-on systems of the browser. That's a lot of change, especially for projects that are maintained by a small but dedicated group of developers such as Cyberfox. The author of Cyberfox made the decision to switch the browser's release channel to Firefox 52.0 ESR. This means that Cyberfox will be supported with security updates for the next eight release cycles, but new features that Mozilla introduces in Firefox Stable won't find their way into the browser anymore. UPDATE 3/07/17: We have updated the headline to clarify that Cyberfox, specifically, is the browser that will be coming to an end. We have also added an excerpt from the developer's post. Toady clarified at the end of his post: "The largest factor was lifestyle a nicer way of saying health issues without making it to personalized."
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Developer Proclaims Death of Cyberfox Web Browser

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  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2017 @09:27PM (#53996707)

    They're half-right, anyway - Cyberfox IS based on a dead web browser. /ducks

    • Re:Well, sort of (Score:5, Informative)

      by msauve ( 701917 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2017 @09:35PM (#53996753)
      Illiterate /. editor strikes again. "Cyberfox Developer Proclaims Death of Web Browser" should read "Developer Proclaims Death of Cyberfox Web Browser."
      • by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        Illiterate /. editor strikes again. "Cyberfox Developer Proclaims Death of Web Browser" should read "Developer Proclaims Death of Cyberfox Web Browser." Reply to This

        Oh, you think this was accidental?
        What if said "Your browser trying to kill you, here's one weird trick to stay alive"?

        • Illiterate /. editor strikes again. "Cyberfox Developer Proclaims Death of Web Browser" should read "Developer Proclaims Death of Cyberfox Web Browser." Reply to This

          Oh, you think this was accidental? What if said "Your browser trying to kill you, here's one weird trick to stay alive"?

          If it said that, it would already have 2 million shares on facebook.

      • Not a failure.
        Using your accurate headline would severely reduce the number of clicks as it narrows the subject. If you didn't use Cyberfox, you would likely skim past it. But THE HEAT DEATH OF WEB BROWSERS IS UPON US! gets a helluva lot more clicks!
      • by msauve ( 701917 )
        Editor fail X2 (/. editor changed the headline after the fact). Why do the senators get to modify their work, when all of us proles can't? At least enable Unicode support for proper quotes and apostrophes as a consolation prize.
        • Well, while the edit did turn my attempted joke into a "WTF?" non-sequitur... the editors here can't win, either way. When they don't update the stories after the fact, people complain. When they do update the stories after the fact, people complain (and early comments become bizarre tangents).

          Back to the story - in all seriousness, I do hope the cyberfox developer is able to look after his health and recover from whatever his affliction is.

      • I realize this is pedantic, but how can the lead developer not know the difference between "a lot" and "allot". I don't see him divvying up the software to give chunks out, I see him disbanding the project..

        /end_pendantic

  • Now You: What's your take on the death of Cyberfox?

    Who cares? I have used Firefox a very long time (Netscape Gold anyone?) and never heard of this.

    Firefox has the plug-ins and configuration options I want (like turning off the malware that is Web RTC and bullshit like pocket).

    I'm not going anywhere and (even IT) people are consistently amazed when I show them a website they're used to being spammed mercilessly on without the ads.

  • tl;dr (Score:2, Informative)

    by Hylandr ( 813770 )

    Cyberfox is a Firefox-based browser

    Stopped reading.

  • I've been impressed with the pioneering work done by Cyberfox and Pale Moon in terms of helping to get Firefox (and probably other browsers) moving forwards by showing that what people are asking for are valuable for the user community at large.

    I'm sure the workload for supporting a modern browser (even if it based on a code base like WebKit and/or Firefox) must be incredible and thanx must go out to Toady and the team.

    Hopefully additional non-corporate browsers will continue to proliferate to help show the

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Maybe they meant, "Cyberfox Developer Proclaims Death of Their Web Browser"? Still... it's a bit melodramatic, don't you think?

      Yea, but it makes for a great "Who on /. only reads the title and doesn't even bother with the summary" test, so at least we get something amusing out of it.

  • The browser will only run in the cloud but you will need Internet Explorer installed to access it.
  • The web browsers are under attack. Whether or not they will survive is a valid discussion. As the Internet moves more and more towards mobile, the web browser seems to be replaced by apps for one's favorite sites. The encapsulation of the experience.

    .
    This concept has been noted and written about for a few years that I know about. It is good to see a more mainstream site like /. piling on th eissue of the closing of the Internet.

    • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

      You haven't been paying attention. People have complained loudly that aps are mostly just watered down version of websites. When on a mobile I *hate* being forced into some damn app rather than go through a browser. I want to find what I am looking for, not be forced through a ui 'funnel'.

      • Which is what I miss from Firefox OS. Traditional web pages blend seamlessly and there's no 'native' toolkit layer to get in the way.

  • "Cyberfox is a Firefox-based browser..."

    Guy who builds browsers says "browsers are dead!"

    Okaaaaaaaaaay.....

  • Original:
    "Cyberfox Developer Proclaims Death of Web Browser "

    After editing:
    "Developer Proclaims Death of Cyberfox Web Browser "

    Change the position of one word to achieve truthiness.
  • by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2017 @12:02AM (#53997451)
    What is Cyberfox? How is it different than Firefox? The summary mentions Mozilla, and I know that Mozilla makes Firefox, but I have used Mozilla products for about 15 years, and I have never even heard of Cyberfox. Did someone just have a stroke and replace all occurrences of "fire" with "cyber"?

    Your submission should answer more questions than it raises!
    • What is Cyberfox? How is it different than Firefox? The summary mentions Mozilla, and I know that Mozilla makes Firefox, but I have used Mozilla products for about 15 years, and I have never even heard of Cyberfox. Did someone just have a stroke and replace all occurrences of "fire" with "cyber"? Your submission should answer more questions than it raises!

      Same. First thing I did was go to Wikipedia to read the page on Cyberfox, guess what? There IS NO PAGE on Cyberfox! Can't be a very well known browser.

    • I ran it briefly (also Waterfox), back before I found that Firefox had native x64 builds for both Firefox Aurora (Developer) and Nightly. Why use slower-updated forks?

    • by WallyL ( 4154209 )

      s/fire/cyber/g

      Is that what you're looking for?

  • How is this news? It's very clear from that data [wikipedia.org] what's going on. And it's just one Google search away from your finger tips. Game over, thanks for playing. Chrome FTW.
  • Cyberfox usage has now doubled from 6 users to 12. Plans for more releases in the works!
  • Cyberfox? Never heard of it.

    Also... "allot".

  • To the old forks home?

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