Future Of Session Buddy V3

[John C.]

Hello there dear Developer,

I hope this message finds you well. I want to express my heartfelt appreciation for your ongoing dedication to Session Buddy and for your willingness to engage with user feedback during its development. You seem like a very kind developer and despite all the hate and rudeness you been getting it is so unfair. Especially to spend so much time developing something instead of abandoning it like other developers would, you chose to adapt to googles new rules and continued to work hard on this. Thank you deeply for your hard work. 

Now as someone who has relied on Session Buddy v3 for the past 9 years, it has become an indispensable part of my browsing routine and workflow. Its familiar functionality and design have been crucial to my productivity, and I've grown accustomed to its features over the years.

While I understand the challenges posed by the impending deprecation of WebSQL and the need to prioritize v4's development, I must admit that the transition to v4 has been challenging for me. The changes in UI/UX have disrupted my workflow, and I find myself longing for the familiarity of v3. This doesn't mean I am opposed to the idea of using v4, in fact I will continue to use it and try to help improve it through open dialogue and by submitting crucial feedback and bug reports. My concern is the v3 alone as I feel you are missing a big opportunity to here, I understand you might not have the time now but maybe sometime in the near future after v4 has stabilized, you could perhaps think about bringing v3 back in some form? Maybe creating a session buddy v3 classic or lite as many others here have mentioned? It's clear that people are willing to pay you money, some are even open to paying you a monthly fee to use the service so this where I get confused as to why you would want to abandon a project with so much potential. I want to express my willingness to support any efforts aimed at preserving v3's functionality. I am more than willing to contribute financially to ensure its continued availability, as well as to assist in testing and providing feedback to improve v4.  Even if it means making the source code available or exploring alternative solutions, I believe many users, including myself, would greatly benefit from such efforts. Of course it is your project though and you can do as you wish, I am just a user here, I don't even have any experience with developing. I am just someone who had made v3 a very integral part of their internet routine and lifestyle hence why I don't even see myself using Google Chrome without your extension, that is how crucial it was to my workflow and life. 

As of right now I have downgraded using an older version of chrome but if there's a way to keep using v3 after the WebSQL deprecation, I would be immensely grateful for your advice and input on how to make it happen, If there is any other work around, I am all here for it. 

Please know that I'm committed to supporting Session Buddy in any way I can, and I'm hopeful that we can find a solution that satisfies the needs of users like myself while advancing the development of v4.

Thank you once again for your dedication and consideration.

Warm regards,
Johnny C. 

[David Lang]

it would probably be FAR less work to re-skin v4 with a UI that looks like v3
than to change the v3 internals to keep working and fix the problems that were
fixed in v4

There are some power users not liking the new UI and missing some of the
features not yet implemented, but most of the mising features are going to
reappear fairly quickly, and I sure don't miss havng my browser lock up for
hours/days when too many tabs were opened at once like would happen with v3 :-)

so how many people will just get used to the new UI, what tweaks to the UI will
happen to make things clearer to people reducing the complaints about it vs how
many people will just refuse to accept the new UI?

I expect that by the time he has the manpower to think about working on v3, it
will have completely stopped working for anyone still trying to use it and so
people will all have moved off of it to either v4 or something else. That would
not seem to make putting any effort into resuccicating v3 have much payback.

David Lang

[John C.]

You made a good point David but as mentioned before the major deprecations to worry about are webSQL and manifest v3. Manifest v2 will cease to operate on legacy systems in June 2025 so there's already more than a year there for that which just leaves webSQL deprecation to worry about until then. If it is man power or time Hans is lacking then maybe open sourcing is the only solution here for the community. 

I am not opposed to the idea of a v3 reskin option either, in fact I think that is a great idea, thank you for suggesting this! It would be super nice for all the legacy users if we could just toggle back the functionality, layout and UI/UX of v3 as an optional feature within v4. Fully agree here and I am hoping Hans is open to this. 

Johnny C.

[Annie Bibi]

I can't help but chime in here as someone who has been around since 2012 (During those days when we would be begging Hans to give us sync options). Well 12 years later and here we are now with a brand new version of session buddy which seems and feels like a completely different extension, which makes sense since this was a full rewrite.

Anyways I'll cut right to the chase here, Hans, you seem like a kind person so I am praying that you will consider at least open sourcing v3 if you have no plans on releasing it again as a separate extension. The future for us legacy users remains in your hands and I am seriously about to get on my knees for you as pathetic as that may sound.