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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."
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.
> 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.
I stopped using Firefox as it only uses 1 core unlike IE 8 and Chrome 1.0 10 years ago
Rubbish. Top immediately shows Firefox on multiple cores with multiple tabs. Couldn't be bothered to check before spouting?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Is this true?
No, he's an idiot.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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.
I have more than 500 Firefox tabs open at this moment without freezing or performance issues. Looks like sound engineering to me, please do everybody a favor and take your wanking elsewhere.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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
No, you have this exactly backwards. Spidermonkey -- Firefox's JS engine -- can only use one thread per process. Firefox (and Gecko itself for that matter) use multiple threads and always have. Part of the reason for moving to a multi-process architecture (electrolysis) was to allow for multiple instances of Spidermonkey so that (among other things) browser chrome that relies on JS can not be blocked by content JS.
(In case you're going to do the tedious 'citation needed' thing here, my citation is that I'm a former Firefox engineer.)
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?
Reading further tells you that they actually blacklisted the addon in browser. You must disable addon blocklist in about:config to make it work.
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.
Get uMatrix instead of NoScript. NoScript is proprietary. uMatrix is GPLv3. uMatrix is more flexible and works better.
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.