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Firefox-Forking Browser 'Pale Moon' Releases Major Update 28.0 (palemoon.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader tdailey spotted a new version of Pale Moon, a customised version of Firefox optimized for speed and efficiency. Beta News reports it's the first major update since November of 2016:
There are virtually no visual or obvious changes in this new major build, but the under-the-hood changes are both extensive and necessary.... Despite all the updates, Moonchild is keen to stress certain things haven't changed -- unlike Firefox, for example, Pale Moon continues to support NPAPI plugins, complete themes and a fully customizable user interface. There is also no DRM built into the browser, although third-party plugins such as Silverlight are supported. It will also continue to work with certain "legacy" plugins of the type abandoned by Firefox.
Pale Moon strips out what one reviewer calls "little-used components" of Firefox, including parental controls and accessbility features, as well as crash reports and support for Internet Explorer's ActiveX and ActiveX scripting technology.
"Proving that open source leads to great development, Pale Moon takes the already decent Firefox web browser and makes it even better and a faster."
There are virtually no visual or obvious changes in this new major build, but the under-the-hood changes are both extensive and necessary.... Despite all the updates, Moonchild is keen to stress certain things haven't changed -- unlike Firefox, for example, Pale Moon continues to support NPAPI plugins, complete themes and a fully customizable user interface. There is also no DRM built into the browser, although third-party plugins such as Silverlight are supported. It will also continue to work with certain "legacy" plugins of the type abandoned by Firefox.
Pale Moon strips out what one reviewer calls "little-used components" of Firefox, including parental controls and accessbility features, as well as crash reports and support for Internet Explorer's ActiveX and ActiveX scripting technology.
"Proving that open source leads to great development, Pale Moon takes the already decent Firefox web browser and makes it even better and a faster."
... a faster?
A faster what?
I stopped using Firefox as it only uses 1 core unlike IE 8 and Chrome 1.0 10 years ago which are multithreaded for added security and performance. Firefox in the last 6 months finally caught up but I was under the impression PaleMoon still didn't support this?
http://saveie6.com/
Any benchmarks?
support for Internet Explorer's ActiveX and ActiveX scripting technology.
That support has been always available in Firefox by opening the offending site in IE. Dropping the support is like removing cut and paste support from the browser. Horrible!
Palemoon still supports NPAPI plugins and themes.
I had literally spent years getting FF just the way I liked when they started screwing up everything.
Chrome never did much for me other than being able to run Netflix on my laptop (linux) And the settings menu in Chrome has always looked like it was designed by a 10 year old as an extra credit project in remedial programming.
I've pretty much completely ditched Firefox for Palemoon and don't really care about FF or what the Mozilla foundation is breaking anymore.
How much spyware and privacy violating shit?
Some new plugin slurping up browser history or tabs under the guise of security or safety?
Bought and paid for management means the Firefox product will shit out whatever advertisers dictate this quarter. Fucking wonderful.
Don't forget to add whataboutism about competitors to justify one's own actions.
> accessbility features
Because fuck handicapped people, right?
Pale Moon is a great idea but I have this unshakeable feeling that it is some kind of furry-related thing. A je ne sais quois. There's something weird about the whole "moon" and IM A WOLF INSIDE theme. I do support this project. Any web browser unaffiliated with garbage corporations is automatically a "good browser", even if it's not functional.
Perhaps it's just a man and his undying love of werewolves, but it does have that "was this built by a person who wears a sweaty fursuit?" sort of concern. Like that pick-up truck at the Winn-Dixie with a giant 3 WOLFS + LIGHTNING decal on the rear window of the cab, and when the driver gets out he's wearing a nearly identical shirt, and the license plate also says MOONCHLD.
the Balkans, where FF spins can enjoy the company of incompatible Linux distros
Palemoon still supports NPAPI plugins
Looks like it's time for a fork of the fork... to get rid of the NPAPI security nightmare.
Maybe Google will eventually block it.
Then use Firefox. Or Edge. Or Chrome. Not every feature needs to be in every browser.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Bench marks can be similar to "fake news" if not done on low powered equipment as well as silicon rockets
Does a 6 watt 4 Airmont core 1.6 GHz Pentium N3710 CPU in a fanless 11.6" Dell laptop count as "low-powered equipment" or "silicon rockets"? Or are you talking CPUs designed to fit in a 5-6" phablet?
I love using Firefox, but I have noticed that when using a bad connection, it doesn't manage as well as Chrome. Sometimes, if a page is half loaded, and you want it to try again, you press refresh and it doesn't fix it (even though you know the connection had come back up).
I started to realise occassionally onsite that when I thought a website was having issues, it was simply firefox (because Chrome worked fine). If FF fixed that, I would be more than happy to use them more often, but it seems FF doesn't handle stuff like that well.. Pity.
Also, kind of happy FF removed NPAPI honestly. By them doing so, its forced companies to develop stand alone apps which operate correctly.
This is great when you need to access old Java-based HP iLO and Dell DRAC remote console interfaces. It also helps with the occasional elderly IPMI interface that only works with a similarly old Java-based remote console interface. It is worth keeping around so you can save a trip to the data center to maintain your legacy hardware.
Palemoon is why we have open source.
I used to keep an old CentOS 7 VM with a very elderly Java-enabled Firefox ESR browser to access near-end-of-life servers with obsolete iLO and DRAC. With Palemoon, I don't have to do that anymore.
Kriston
a customised version of Firefox optimized for speed and efficiency.
That's what it started of as - based on a Firefox fork from many years ago and has since became a life of its own.
Proving that open source leads to great development, Pale Moon takes the already decent Firefox web browser and makes it even better and a faster.
This is an understatement. It's excluding a bunch of crap Firefox crap, such as Google-SafeBrowsing, Pocket, Australis, canvas poisoning.
Now if they can disable geo by default and enable canvas poisong by default...
You need an enema.
UNFORTUNATELY, much as I've enjoyed using it, a while back (v.26 or 27?) Pale Moon decided to unilaterally disable NoScript, then make updated versions unavailable for installation. I don't quite understand their beef (many accusations, didn't find any evidence), but I know what mine is: I don't need browser-makers deciding what extensions I should use, although I appreciate a heads-up.
Here's their two cents worth: https://forum.palemoon.org/vie...
I've disabled my PM installer app and won't be updating. I recently DL'd the most recent IceCat; it's still good enough for them.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Pale Moon browser version 27.9.4 actually sometimes un-installs NoScript without notifying the user. Other times it complains. When Pale Moon un-installs NoScript, I re-install it.
A Pale Moon Add-ons page provides a link to NoScript. Confusion?
Pale Moon seems to be developed by extremely capable people. Is there a hidden reason for un-installing NoScript?
Unless you really have some desire for some old extensions Pale Moon looks old, isn't updated nearly enough to call it secure and definitely Pale's in comparison to any other modern browser. The browser looks like some relic dug up from a old software CD with a bunch of old crappy outdated software on it. Yeah its just barely kept alive by a few developers who don't have time to properly update it, and their few users who enjoy being stuck in the 90's.
All Apple, Microsoft, Google, Gnome, KDE and Mozilla software nowadays seems to be *exclusively* designed for handicapped/disabled people.
It is horrifyingly cumbersome and limited to a point of crippling you if you aren't. (Which you can tell, as soon as you get to use something that isn't.)
We obviously mean no disrespect, and are happy, there are so many options for you guys.
But can we non-handicapped people have at least ONE thing that isn't nearly useless to us?
(In that wake, I hope that there will never ever be a "Linux on the desktop". ... And looking at how Ubuntu basically stopped being Linux because it wanted so hard to be on everyone's desktop, I'm pretty certain that it will never happen.)
I assume the NPAPI support means flash will keep working? That's awesome news for someone like me who enjoys flash every day online. Believe it or not but flash is alive and well for a certain percentage of the population and we want a browser that still supports flash.
Get uMatrix instead of NoScript. NoScript is proprietary. uMatrix is GPLv3. uMatrix is more flexible and works better.
There is a Patreon page where you can throw a dollar or more their way to support development. Please consider supporting them:
https://www.patreon.com/MoonchildProductions
I have no relation to Pale Moon other than as a supporter. Thank you!
multi thread = spectre/meltdown
Do you work for Google or Mozilla?
PM looks just like any other non-abusive browser, and is updated constantly.
And considering this is a major update, your assertion that developers "don't have time to properly update it" is obvious bollocks. Troll.
long ago. And has been forking users continuously.
Frankly, The Management of Mozilla can go fork themselves!
Tried PM a while back....took me back decades. FF sucks big time ever since they got bloated and put shit in you couldn't remove. I tried Vivaldi and haven't gone back.
This can't be stressed enough. The original article actually failed to make the biggest selling point of Pale Moon, which is that it works, and it keeps working release after release without breaking things.
Pale Moon became popular because Mozilla just couldn't stop breaking things and trying to tell the users what sort of UI they should want. In fact, Mozilla has been quite content to shed any technical merit they had for almost any reason at all. It all started when they saw Chrome beginning to become successful, and immediately decided to emulate Google's development environment. They adopted Google's rapid release and versioning methodology on a project that was neither technically nor culturally suited for it. They broke extensions by the truck load with that little gem, and instead of slowing down and letting the extension system catch up, their solution was to write a script that automatically scanned their extensions and just disabled the ones which hadn't caught up yet. Then they went all hell bent on adopting major UI changes that were demonstrably unpopular by the majority of its user base. And if alienating the extensions authors wasn't enough, many of the UI changes then went on to destroyed themes on back-to-back-to-back releases. It reminds me of one of my country's more famous (and intensely divisive) prime ministers who, when he realized he'd alienated half my country, proceeded to give them the finger from his seat on a train as he was passing through their area. That's Mozilla. They have repeatedly gone out of their way to alienate users, and then the ones who have stayed loyal they proceeded to give the finger to with.
All of this was in an attempt at emulating Chrome's burgeoning success. The problem is, they never figured out... you simply cannot surpass someone else by playing copycat on their methods. This is important so I'm going to say it again. Mozilla cannot copy Google and be better than Google. All they did with Firefox was alienate their existing user base in favour of a product that could never be quite as good at being Chrome as Chrome was. And now they are running headlong into inevitability again. See here for details.
The Pale Moon project has done for the browser what Mozilla should have done. It was originally a patch on an earlier FF ESR, they have since essentially departed from Firefox, though they still borrow some bits when it makes sense to do so. It's what Firefox should have been if they hadn't taken the detour into crazy six years ago.
The biggest selling point of Pale Moon is they don't break prod. By that, of course, I mean they go out of their way to maintain a stable user presentation. I have had to make one browser tweak in the several years I have been using Pale Moon to let it keep using my decade old theme. Extensions just work, and keep working. Under the hood there have been major changes, but they do it in a way that keeps things working. UI changes are ones that make sense, not simply done in a desperate attempt to make their browser different set it apart in an attention-seeking way.
What, because there are handicapped kids there shouldn't be slides and swings?
WaterFox is not as slim as Pale Moon, but it still accepts all the old FireFox plugins. This is why I use WF.
I'm glad you provided a link but it's not what the link actually says. To quote my clarifications in box brackets:
'We're sorry that you will be considered to be "on your own" when you use NoScript,'
and
' If you install NoScript, you're on your own with any breakage [of the site, not the browser]'
because
'The problem is users who install NoScript, without knowing the inherent risks, and expecting it to "keep them safe" but otherwise not expecting (major) breakage [of the site], and as a result come knocking with "Pale Moon doesn't work on site X!"'
I've never had a problem with NoScript and I'm ok with stupidly written sites breaking. If you don't understand it's the site's fault, not noscript's, you will be confused.
Closed-source, proprietary browser.
If you aren't paying for it, you are the product. Who are they selling you to?
So it supports old XUL extensions and that's all well and good, but what about going forward? Most extension developers have migrated to the new WebExtension model. Sure, some extensions are basically feature complete and don't need regular updating, but what about security related extensions like NoScript? Unless the developer wants to devote the time and resources necessary to maintain parallel branches, odds are they're going to go with Firefox where most of the users are. So the versions Pale Moon supports will become increasingly outdated and stale and not everyone's favorite extension is going to be popular enough for someone to take up the mantle of maintaining it like a few others might.
Both are installed and working fine on both my Win10 (work) and Xubuntu 18.04 installations. I had no difficulty finding or installing them. You might try again with your eyes open?
I don't have problems with NoScript installed on Pale Moon.
Of course, anyone who doesn't pay attention to what NoScript says it is blocking is likely to have web site page display problems.
Another issue: Pale Moon doesn't allow the Ghostery add-on. It allows Disconnect instead. The user interface of Ghostery is much more sophisticated. I didn't find any explanation about why Ghostery is not allowed.
Which would be fascinating to any cop, as California State license plates allow only seven characters, not eight.
AC
PS - Yes, the DeLorean in 'Back To The Future' had the plate 'OUTATIME'. Yes. Eight. That's Hollywood for you.
That's a name for a beer, not a browser.
Installer releases and latest betas
These are called New Moon builds. They are unsupported but I've tested them and work fine on Windows XP. Biggest advantage over outdated Firefox ESR versions: you can watch Youtube with the latest video codecs.
Saying that they can just use FF is fine if PaleMoon offers nothing other than FF without accessibility
PaleMoon's main selling points are that it loads faster because it drops a bunch of functionality. It keeps old fashioned extension and plugin support, which includes support for (now) deprecated accessibility plugins. And it allows for more UI customization, which is useless for the people using accessibility support it drops - namely screen readers.
The reverse your argument is also true. Does PaleMoon do something that people needing accessibility need that you can't get with Firefox?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.