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A New Chapter for Waterfox

Alex Kontos
Alex Kontos
Founder

Dear Waterfox Community,

Today marks a new change for Waterfox.

Over the years, Waterfox has grown and flourished, thanks to the unwavering support and enthusiasm of its incredible community. Your passion for a privacy-focused and customisable browsing experience has been the driving force behind the success of this project.

I am happy to say that Waterfox is independent again. This change allows the community and myself to shape the browser’s future direction.

As we embark on this new chapter, Waterfox’s dedication to privacy, customisation, and performance remains. I am committed to delivering a browser that prioritises your online security and respects your digital autonomy. With this change, I have the opportunity to accelerate development, introduce new features, and focus on the user experience.

One of the most valuable aspects of Waterfox is its vibrant and passionate community of users. I am grateful for your support, feedback, and contributions over the years. Your input will continue to guide the evolution of Waterfox as we meet your expectations.

In the coming months, I will be working diligently to advance the browser, focusing on improvements that enhance privacy, boost performance, and expand customisation options.

Stay tuned for future updates, as I will be sharing more details about my plans for Waterfox, including new features and opportunities to get involved.

Thank you for your continued support!

Alex Kontos Founder, Waterfox

Reblog: How the Open-Source Browser Continues to Balance Performance, UX, and Customizability with a Focus on Privacy

Alex Kontos
Alex Kontos
Founder

TL;DR: Waterfox delivers a balanced browsing experience for users to navigate the web with peace of mind. Leveraging privacy and usability, Waterfox enables users to add customizations and optimize their time on browser-based applications while protecting their online activity. Waterfox schedules timely releases to improve user experience and has more accessibility in-store, with an Android platform in the works.

Read the full article at HostingAdvice.

An Update on Waterfox Classic

Alex Kontos
Alex Kontos
Founder

Since Waterfox Classic and Waterfox Current (now G4) diverged, they have both have separate goals.

G4 has its eyes set to the future - a modern browser, focusing on modern web compatibility without sacrificing speed, or the balance of privacy and usability.

Classic has focused on keeping the tried but tested available. Unfortunately, due to the rapid nature that the web is now expanding at, keeping Classic up to date with that is difficult.

To make sure the projects aren’t falling over each other, Waterfox Classic will now be moved out of the main Waterfox development repository and into its own separate repository - updating the previously archived “Waterfox Old”, now named Waterfox-Classic.

This has the following benefits by not having two versions of Waterfox sharing resources:

  • Contributors can clearly see what Classic development is ongoing
  • GitHub Actions will be clearly segregated, allowing easy viewing of ongoing builds
  • Waterfox Classic will have its own simple landing page
  • Issues can be opened in a separate tracker, not getting closed for not focusing on G4
  • An organised, clear list of what security patches haven’t been fixed

A fair warning will be presented to all those who want to use Classic, that it may be vulnerable to multiple security issues - but the choice is given to the user to proceed at their own discretion.

This will keep Classic ongoing for as long as possible - but the success of this project will still rely on contribution.

Over the next week, infrastructure will be put in place for Classic to keep it running properly. We will let you know when this is complete.

Waterfox 4th Generation Release

Alex Kontos
Alex Kontos
Founder

View Release Notes for G4.0.0

Today marks the soft release of the 4th Generation of Waterfox. After enough time has elapsed, the automatic update will be seeded out to all users.

New Website

You may have noticed a new website - much more information, with a more practical structure. This website also allows us to add documentation, support documents and better ways to convey information.

We will be optimising the website over the next few weeks as well as setting up redirects for any old pages that have been missed.

New Browser

Waterfox has returned to its roots with performance at the forefront. We have aggressively optimised Waterfox for as much performance as possible. Unfortunately this means we have to leave older systems behind - but any computer from the last decade should work.

ARM builds are now available for macOS and these are also optimised, taking advantage of the new hardware Apple has to offer. Windows and Linux ARM builds will also follow in due course.

We have also changed the way we make changes to the underlying Gecko platform, meaning we can now track releases faster and in a more automated way. Over the next few months we will track the central branch of Gecko. If our features apply cleanly each release, we will then stop tracking the Extended Support Releases and instead start a rolling release for Waterfox. The idea behind this change is that not only will Waterfox be incredibly performant, but also be at the forefront of supporting the latest HTML standards.

Mobile browsers are also in the pipeline, but are dependent on us having our own Sync service primed. Once that has been achieved, mobile browsers will follow. We will keep you updated on progress.

Waterfox Decennial Release

Alex Kontos
Alex Kontos
Founder

27th of March marks ten years of surfing the web with Waterfox 🌊

I am proud to announce the decennial release of Waterfox. It has been an incredible journey, with peaks and troughs at every stage. What started out as a side project has become something more than I could have ever dreamed of.

Waterfox now has an office, we are based just off Brick Lane, London. We also have a new employee - please meet Adam! He has been helping out the project over the last few months and is the one who implemented support for Chrome extensions.

I will be posting on my personal site about the adventure over the last decade (so keep your eyes peeled!) - we are only set to grow from here. I really hope everyone has enjoyed being a part of this journey - here is to another ten years 🍾