General Discussion • Re: Pale Moon's PR Problem

Someone opens up Pale Moon for the first time, they see an ancient UI;

I beg to differ. This is a really poor characterization. Unless of course, you characterize an integrated-with-the-OS UI as "ancient", and therefore any native desktop UI the same.

This is not me who is characterizing it. I'm fine with the default UI, and with a bit of tweaking I actually really like it. In either case, certainly better than Chrome/FF. Though I would like the icons to be a bit simpler and more modern (at least in Micro Moon).

This is from the POV of a user who is used to Chromium/FF and likes FOSS.

The ancient (and it is ancient; again, from their POV they may dislike or be unfamiliar with it, so it being really old becomes the standout trait) UI -- when COMBINED with Pale Moon's shortcomings in web compatibility -- gives the impression that Pale Moon is 'old', 'legacy', 'stuck in the past'.

It does not matter whether Pale Moon's UI is objectively superior to that of Chrome/FF and derivatives or not, because even if it is, people unfamiliar with it will find it relatively unfriendly -- the same thing applies to the terminal, for instance, or the text editor VIM.

On another note, I appreciate the discussion brewing in this thread, and all the different perspectives that you've all presented. It's been productive. Maybe I could show this discussion board to users who have a sour image of PM or the PM community in mind. (Discussion about PR unironically results in the creation of a resource that can be used to improve PR, lmao.)