Pale Moon blocks Adblock Plus
Users of the Pale Moon web browser who try to install the popular adblocking extension Adblock Plus won't be able to do so anymore as it was added to the blocklist by the Pale Moon team.
Pale Moon users who have it installed may have noticed that it is no longer enabled either.
Up until now, Pale Moon copied the blocklist from Firefox. It contains extensions, plugins and other content with known severe security or stability issues.
When you try to install Adblock Plus in Pale Moon you receive the message that the extension could not be installed because of a high risk of causing stability or security problems.
Further investigation -- the Pale Moon forum is usually a good place to start -- reveals that the team decided to add Adblock Plus to the blocklist because of incompatibilities with Pale Moon.
I've put it in the blocklist because it has started giving severe usability issues (see the threads with "large bar with red text at the bottom of the browser" etc.). ABP should not be used on any v25+ version of Pale Moon because it's not compatible.
The compatibility issues seem to be mostly interface related when Adblock Plus is running in Pale Moon.
Moonchild, the lead developer of Pale Moon suggests to use an alternative such as uBlock, uBlock Origin or Adblock Latitude instead. The latter is a fork of Adblock Plus that is developed and maintained specifically for Pale Moon.
Wladimir Palant's response suggests a personal conflict between both teams and sheds some light on the technical incompatibility:
Technical background (at least I assume that it’s what this is about): Adblock Plus 2.6.10 stopped using the deprecated JavaScript generators syntax that only Firefox supports. Instead the proper standard-compliant syntax is being used – Firefox 29 and higher supports it, Pale Moon most likely doesn’t (they forked a version of Firefox which is very old by now).
The most recent Adblock Plus update is also incompatible with Firefox versions prior to 29 due to the extension's support of "standard-conformant JavaScript generators syntax". This means that pre-Firefox 29 users won't be able to use Adblock Plus as well.
Pale Moon users may need to switch to a different ad blocker instead. While there are other solutions -- disabling the blocklist for instance -- it is not suggested to make use of those as it puts the browser at serious risk.
ABL seems to be working for me in PM 25.6.0. But I never noticed any problem with ABP either.
“But I never noticed any problem with ABP either.”
That is exactly the problem. ABP works to a large extent but has caused a bunch of smaller and larger issues over the last couple of weeks or even month (in fact it was never compatible with Pale Moon 25). Many people didn’t notice that it was related to ABP until they came to the forum and were told to switch of ABP.
I’ve used it with no problems, I think using it is better than not not only blocking unwanted ads but increasing security not decreasing. I think ad based webpages hate it and might be influencing the attitude against it or worse
Changes in ABP 2.6.10 are not the cause of the problems. People who visit Pale Moon forums on a regular basis might have noticed that issues started back in the days of the Pale Moon 25 launch about almost a year ago. Starting with a missing icon but having a wider range of strange effects, that could all be resolved by switching off ABP. Who’s fault is it? In this context it doesn’t really matter, fact is that these two products do not work together for about a year and cause trouble.
Greetings, Your Pale Moon Add-ons Site Administrator and Add-ons Team Leader here:
We tried to work with ABP in order to get a truly compatible version for our users before v25 launched. Please refer to ticket #1331 of the Adblock Plus trac: https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/1331
Tobin, “waaaah, we tried…” is bullshit. You’ve made quite a bonehead decision. ABP is _THE_ most popular extension. Your attitude, “our way, or the highway”, is par for the course. Dust off your ego and fix the compatibility problem, or go home.
@ams – have you tried Ublock Origin? It’s far superior to ABP. You should remove all traces of ABP from your computer and never use it again.
Increasingly I tend to agree with ams regarding the attitude situation with the PM development ‘team’. I am an XP user and have no intention to upgrade as I already have a windows 7 box with a plastic cover over it and less than 100 hours of usage. Then, der Fuhrer decided no more support for XP. For a while there was a third party option and those builds worked better than the ‘official’ ones, but now the other developer has ceased support and these Atom builds, which now are the only PM option for XP users, do not perform well at all.
I have gone back to Seamonkey now that the SSL problems are fixed with the 2.35 development builds and quite honestly could not care less if the whole PM project implodes. Egos destroy many good things in life. Just my .02
@Visitor:
“[D]er F[ü]hrer decided no more support for XP”? That seems a bit harsh. XP is a dying platform, no longer patched against new security threats (for non-paying, non-corporate, non-government users, at least). Given that browsers are a prime mediator of security exploits, ending support for XP and encouraging users to move on to a more secure platform seems like a wise move, not an imperious diktat. Besides, this is the way of the world in computing. Nothing, even things that were good at the time, lasts forever.
Author George R.R. Martin writes his books using WordStar on a DOS box that’s not connected to the Internet. (And I understand why: WordStar for DOS is by far the fastest, most ergonomically efficient word processing program I’ve ever used for production typing.) But when he surfs the Net, he does it from a modern, presumably reasonably well-secured computer. Perhaps that’s what you should do, especially seeing as you already have a Windows 7 machine. I made the transition from XP to 7 reasonably painlessly, and it turns out I think 7 is better. (Just don’t start out by visiting the new Events Viewer, which will make you regret you’re not a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert.)
“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1” (Sorry, Mike for citing the law….)
Visitor, nobody hinders you to build Windows XP compatible binaries.
Absolutely correct Sven. ABP has been “broken” and disabled in my PM since 25 (the missing icon was the first sign). I suggest people just use uBlock Origin, which IMO is superior – less resources, per domain settings – it’s like ABP & request policy combined with extras.
Tx Pants, installed uBlock Origin. Hoping to get it to block the yahoo mail ad at the top of the message list.
Who are you to tell which is superior? Perhaps the developer of the forked fork Origin?
I will use Adblock Plus until it exists since for me it is the best for Firefox/Pale Moon (in terms of quality and reliability all of the uBlock forks don’t come even close to Adblock Plus).
The blocking of Adblock Plus by Pale Moon proves that Pale Moon cannot (unfortunately) be an alternative for Firefox because of the arrogance and selfishness of the developers.
Without Adblock Plus Pale Moon is dead for me- I have an older portable version which I thought of updating but more likely I will just delete it.
Shame on you, moonchild.
@smaragdus:
I use Adblock Plus in Firefox and Adblock Latitude i Pale Moon. Adblock Latitude has been working fine for me in Pale Moon, with the same interface and same blocklists as Adblock Plus. Does post-Australis Adblock Plus now offer some extra functionality that Adblock Latitude doesn’t? I’m asking seriously; I just don’t use Firefox often enough anymore to have noticed a difference.
@smaragdus – ignorance thy name.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared
http://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/2shtr5/adblock_plus_vs_ublock_is_one_objectively_better/
Please let me clarify that this blocking has been a purely technical decision – there is no personal conflict between the teams with the exception of the refusal to support Pale Moon properly by the ABP team, which actually pre-dates their decision to move to Firefox-specific technical implementations.
The bottom line is that people using ABP on Pale Moon can and will run into a range of issues. Maybe not all of them and maybe not all the time, but it’s a growing percentage of Pale Moon users. Putting it on the blocklist has been required on the same grounds as other extensions on the blocklist that are there for stability reasons: to prevent a non-functional or poorly functioning browser caused by an incompatible extension.
We’ve done as much as we can to prevent inconvenience, including giving both the end-users and the ABP team plenty of time to find solutions and/or alternatives, and providing a direct fork and drop-in replacement of Wladimir’s work that is specifically maintained for Pale Moon (something the ABP team has strictly refused to do). All of this has been available for over a year. What more are we expected to do in light of blunt refusal of support?
Moonchild, whats the status with HTTPS Everywhere? I don’t mind using the fork Encrypted Web, am just asking.
Funny, but completely fitting and not at all surprising, that the “Moonchild” never even bothered answering the question about HTTPS Everywhere.
But if he is still so antagonistic toward encryption as he used to be, and if he still regards those who care about it as “paranoids,” then you’re asking the wrong person…
This is the person who just over six months ago, and one-and-a-half YEARS after the Snowden revelations, stated publicly on his forum: “encrypting the web is stupid and a bad goal.”
I did see today that after previously refusing to encrypt the PM forum pages, that he seems to have done just that now. (There you can check out his tagline–in his signature in every post he makes–about “paranoia”…)
Anyone (or should I say, “all those paranoids”) wanting to secure a browser as fully as can be done currently needs to uninstall Pale Moon and send it to the Recycle Bin, and install Firefox, Cyberfox, or Waterfox, and the appropriate add-ons (which, unlike in Pale Moon, will actually work…).
Oh, if freezing Adblock Plus 2.5.1 (released February 2014) was your idea of “support” – sure, we probably could have done that as well :-) The “stability problems” you blame on us are caused by your decision to ignore compatibility information of the extensions by the way, thank you very much for explaining that to your users.
The thing is: we touch the Adblock Plus codebase more than twice a year, not only when something breaks. The idea is to improve it gradually, in every respect. And official support means providing the very latest version with a complete set of functionality. We actually do that for a range of Gecko-based applications, at least the ones that ship with a consistent and reasonably current Gecko version. Yet supporting both current Gecko versions and very outdated ones becomes impossible at some point.
You got it wrong by the way, there was no “decision to move to Firefox-specific technical implementations,” quite the opposite actually. The old Adblock Plus versions used Firefox-specific JavaScript extensions. We are currently moving away from those, in order to use standard-compliant ECMAScript 2015 features. Some of that functionality wasn’t implemented before Firefox 29 and we adjusted compatibility info of the extension accordingly. If that causes problems for you, I take it that Pale Moon claims to support extensions for Firefox 29 without actually being compatible.
please somebody pass the popcorn…
The thing is the original request was for ABP to support the Pale Moon GUID, so that the icon would show up on the add-on bar. The issues of the functionality were non-existent at the time. Even if there were functionality issues related to using ES6 JS features the Pale Moon team planned on fixing them. See were Moonchild wrote in the ticket, “JS updates are planned for Pale Moon as well and definitely on our roadmap.” [1]
I think poor communication is part fault on both ends, looking at the ticket the Pale Moon team was advised to create their own fork of ABP. As for the, “If that causes problems for you, I take it that Pale Moon claims to support extensions for Firefox 29 without actually being compatible.” Pale Moon does not support Firefox 29 add-ons, it displays itself to the AMO as Firefox 24 in which it is fully compatible extension-wise with the exception of the GUID issue mentioned in the first paragraph.
[1] https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/1331
I apologize in advance if I say something upsetting as I will speak the truth and say what’s exactly on my mind, really I do. :)
@Wladimir Palant, I want to start out that I’m a user of the ABP for IE, as well as a former ABP for Pale Moon (current user myself) and Firefox (yes I separate the two because they really are to different browsers/products) user and that I know how it can get difficult to provide support for us when you guys have already changed much of ABP to work with the current standards and technology’s of Firefox, as well as have to back track and branch off a working version based off Firefox v24.0 code and keep up with maintenance. So in this prospective I do understand where your coming from.
Now here’s what I don’t understand and will not let stand is that you guys could have taken up Matt A. Tobin/Moonchild proposal, you could have made an effort to workout the bugs of our solution and done some editing with some friendly communication on a permanent workaround then, but instead you took their proposal and through it out with some unfriendly backtalk all because of your stinking ego and lack of partnership towards us as a community and product, so please feel free to shed some light these rightfully accusations on your team down below!??
EX: “….no good reason to support an older version of a forked Firefox, it will be a security issue once Mozilla stops updating ESR24 builds……” and this, “…..Pale Moon isn’t a platform we can realistically support right now. It isn’t Firefox any more, rather an outdated Firefox version with a random set of changes on top….”
EX: “No, it isn’t. Publishing a modified version of Adblock Plus under the same name and without asking us (meaning: without giving us a chance to review the changes) is not something we can allow. If this modified version has issues (and it certainly will), people will blame us for that, not the Pale Moon developers – that’s our reputation at stake here.”
So really, how do we have it wrong!?? I mean come on, there’s plenty of proof here of your direct refusal of support and any solution for a modified ABP with our help of maintaining it; partnership. Plus you replied to many commits in the tickets containing the phrases of, “forked Firefox or “forked off and Pale Moon is a forked version of Firefox” with, “old Firefox and outdated Firefox with a random set of changes on top,” and “Pale Moon 25 is based on Firefox 24 ESR,” which this clearly shows that you have no clue what the meaning of “FORKED OFF” and the word in general “FORKED” means; How supposable security issues are a problem here!???
@LimboSlam: I think that I understand what “forked” means :-)
Yes, Pale Moon is a fork. But it is currently way too close to Firefox (deliberately) to consider it a product on its own. In particular, pretty much all security issues discovered in Firefox affect Pale Moon as well. It’s a massive code base that they set out to maintain on their own, and I have strong doubts that they are really up to it. But in the end that’s something for the users to decide and not really the point here.
There was the possibility to fork the user interface only while using the Gecko platform as it is (the SeaMonkey project did that), we would support Pale Moon without asking twice then. But the platform was forked as well – which means that Pale Moon is currently running on something sort of like an outdated Gecko, with a number of undocumented differences. If we want to know what their platform is capable of then we cannot look it up on MDN or somewhere else, we have to study the commit history or just try it.
This means that supporting Pale Moon requires investing an effort that is comparable to supporting Safari. We would have to explicitly consider Pale Moon for all changes we make, very likely produce special builds for it (yes, we can “dumb down” constructs like ECMAScript generators automatically for platforms that don’t support them, but we never had to do it for Gecko-based applications) and test it like an independent product.
The latter is particularly critical: for SeaMonkey and Thunderbird we rely mostly on community testing, we simply don’t have the resources to test these platforms explicitly. So we assume that a change that works in Firefox will work there as well – and we only check if somebody tells us about issues. That’s a viable approach because issues are very rare (same Gecko as for Firefox) and the community has a non-negligible size.
That wouldn’t work for Pale Moon however. We are bound to introduce new issues all the time – ECMAScript generators was merely the one I could already see coming when people came asking us to support Pale Moon. And the Pale Moon community is tiny, filter list download numbers indicate around 10000 installs of Adblock Plus and Adblock Lattitude together. That means that issues will usually not be discovered before release, and the community won’t report minor issues even for releases. That’s confirmed by Adblock Lattitude which is essentially Adblock Plus 2.5.1 – it’s very outdated and it has known bugs (yes, bugs affecting Pale Moon as well), I guess that nobody reported these bugs yet. Having permanently broken releases isn’t really something that can be aligned with our quality standards…
And – no, not even creating a branch for Pale Moon based on Adblock Plus 2.5.1 is a permanent solution. There are several filter syntax changes coming up, meant especially to counter anti-adblock scripts. Applying these changes to an outdated codebase will be complicated and error-prone, and without them Adblock Plus for Pale Moon would become increasingly less effective than the Firefox version over time.
That’s what I was trying to explain in https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/1331, yet people still seem to think that we merely needed to add support for the Pale Moon GUID and be done with it.
Moonchild, unfortunately, if you keep forking an old Firefox version, this problem will come up more and more in the future. This will lead to more incompatible add-ons, and to losing more and more users… :(
You seem not to understand what a fork is.
If you fork something you are not following the original release train of the original product anymore. There is no old or outdated. Forking means you are on your own and have to maintain all security concerns and feature additions of your product on your own, without the “safety shield” of using “recent codebases” of the original product (if you use that recent codebases it may be more easier and convenient but also creates problems like for example unwanted features are getting added which the maker of the fork or his/her user base wants to avoid)
It is only natural that a fork has minor compatibility with the original product. If you constantly take the code from the original product this is a re-brand only, but no fork.
I apologize in advance if I say something upsetting as I will speak the truth and say what’s exactly on my mind, really I do. :)
@Nebulus, have you even tried to work out any bugs with Pale Moon and report back to us so we can work with you; contributed!? Have you witness our giving hand been slapped by add-on devs that refused to hear us out and work with us on a solution to their incompatibles with us, or vice versa?!! In my opinion, if your going to reply with that week and half thought out remark, then you seriously don’t know what your talking about! In fact your post shows it all because your speaking of Pale Moon as if it were still being “based off” (even though you don’t directly say it) Firefox and instead of the the correct terms of Pale Moon being “forked off” from the Firefox/Mozilla code!
I don’t blame them for not supporting Pale Moon. It’s not a smart business move to support niche browsers like that.
Yeah, they should stick to Firefox, which is plummeting in marketshare due to increasingly idiotic leadership
Yeah, “Moonchild,” I can really see “there is no personal conflict” when I read your post…
I use AdBlock Latitude on Pale Moon and have done for almost a year. As it’s simply a forked version of AdBlock Plus which is specifically designed to be compatible with Pale Moon, I don’t really see what the issue is.
Simple fact is that Pale Moon has moved further and further away from its Firefox roots over the last year or so and therefore some extensions which are Firefox only don’t work properly if the developers of these addons refuse to support Pale Moon.
The solutions are either for Pale Moon to just become a basic clone of the newer Firefox builds (which would mean having to adopt Australis and other such undesirable features – not a good move IMO), or alternatively to block these incompatible addons and guide users to similar addons which do the same job and are either fully compatible and supported on Pale Moon, or which are forked versions which are designed to be Pale Moon compatible.
That’s just the way it is when you have two increasingly divergent code paths.
Ditto! I too have been using AdBlock Latitudes for quite a while. Don’t miss ABP at all.
I installed ABL yesterday & I agree 100%. And PM seems even quicker.
check the mozillazine.org ThirdPartyBuilds subforum. “Light, a ff derivative” and several other builds are available. They are built from recent versions of the ff codebase and meet the goal of “strip out the bloat features introduced in recent ff releases” …achieving this without the “drama” perpetuated by the palemoon dev. Idealism without egotism — what a concept!
It’s not things like austrailis that the problem. Like platant said it is under the hood stuff that the palemoon team is late in porting over standards that they need to eventually implement anyways
here, here!
Australis is mostly a UI change, and there is already an addon for real Firefox that undoes that change. Yes, it implements it differently, but, to the end user, it’s the same.
You can’t really fork a browser and not keep up with the standards changes. It won’t just break extensions, but eventually web pages as well. If Moonchild wasn’t going to keep up with standards, he should have continued to do what he was doing pre-Australis, patching the latest (ESR) version of Firefox.
Pale Moon is a completely different browser than it was in 2010, when it was actually about making Firefox faster.
Oh well. I had to quit using Pale Moon. They did something with a new Start Page that rendered my Win 7 machine useless every time I opened Pale Moon. And I couldn’t get rid of the #[email protected]! thing.
I say this with no provocation : why use Pale Moon therefor?
I’ve been a Pale Moon user (as default browser) for several months, left it when version 25 arrived and expressed increasing divergence with Firefox. It was so obvious, it was even expressed as a deliberate will by the developer, that a Pale Moon add-on library was then started.
I started Pale Moon because it corresponded as a viable alternative to some of Firefox’s privacy issues and latest extravagances (Australis was the final straw), together with a “philosophy” as I felt it on the forums made of ethics and talent (you don’t dare a browser such as Firefox without exceptional skills in coding : Pale Moon was less and less a Firefox fork).
I left Pale Moon (returned to Firefox via Cyberfox) when I noticed that too many add-ons were simply incompatible and missing in Pale Moon’s add-ons’ library), but also because I felt that, if one can accuse Firefox of many things I had to recognize that at the same time their code, the core code not that of here and there gadgets) was on the cutting-edge of latest research. Pale Moon then appeared to me as a faithful friend but somewhat decided to remain faithful to its philosophy should it be at the cost of staying behind. If I may this comparison : like an elder lady who decides to avoid exercise, make-up and all that very bourgeois approach in order to stick on her basics, those of nature… I appreciate people taking care of themselves, but that’s me, and a few others I guess.
>> I say this with no provocation : why use Pale Moon therefor?
You sort of answered that question yourself there. Pale Moon is an actively developed browser which is secure and up-to-date. It also does not contain/use some of Mozilla’s more recent “questionable” additions to Firefox, such as Australis. This is the precise reason why I use it myself as I cannot stand Australis.
However, a side effect of not implementing all of Mozilla’s recent dodgy Firefox features is a limited level of incompatibility with some newer Firefox extensions which rely upon Australis code (and other recent changes as well).
Personally, the only one of my addons that I had a problem with from PM 25+ was AdBlock Plus, and that was easily solved by using AdBlock Latitude. All my other addons continue to work fine. Add on the fact that the UI of Pale Moon is far better than the awful current UI of Firefox, and this is precisely why I use Pale Moon.
No, he didn’t, because it isn’t kept secure and up-to-date. If it were kept up to date, Adblock Plus would still work, since it’s using the latest standards in JavaScript, and not Mozilla-only code.
And reverting Australis is absolutely trivial in regular Firefox. You just install an addon.
Why use Pale Moon? Because I just don’t care about the latest FireFox feature o’the week which I will never use – but I do care about the complete disregard for a familiar UI and bloat which Firefox brings to the table.
Honestly I’d be happy with Netscape 3.0 with security updates and the ability to watch Youtube
The cynic in me suggests that the huff and puff from the ABP developers and fanbois comes mainly from the fact that Adblock Latitude strips out the ABP-default “Show some ads” option and never shows any ads.
Follow the money. :)
How many users of Adblock Latitude? How many users of Adblock Plus? You don’t get nervous for a dime of lost income.
> huff and puff from the ABP developers
I don’t see any “huff and puff”. The stated technically reasons are sound and legitimate, you can consult the Firefox documentation on generators[1]. The incompatibility with Pale Moon is incidental to ABP becoming incompatible with Firefox 28 and earlier. Here is what Firefox doc says about legacy generators[2]:
> The legacy generator function is a SpiderMonkey-specific feature, and will be removed at some point. For future-facing usages, consider using function*.
The important part: “will be removed at some point”. So ABP devs replaced legacy generators in their code with ES6-compliant generators (i.e. standard), to future-proof their code for when support for legacy generators are removed in Firefox.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/function*
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/Legacy_generator_function
I apologize in advance if I say something upsetting as I will speak the truth and say what’s exactly on my mind, really I do. :)
@gorhill, I understand your point as well and so does the Pale Moon community, but please try to understand where we’re coming from too. Meaning we have sent out many email asking nicely and are willing to work with them to add support/compatibility with Pale Moon, but when add-on devs reply back with sometimes rude remarks and complete refusal of support and then later they supposably say, “we did get contact with you but got no help at all,” and that they did try to add support for us but was unable because, “Pale Moon is based off an older version of Firefox which we do not support,” when this finally gets out and then we have to clarify a couple of these wrongfully statements.
So how are we supposed to take it!??? How are we in the wrong for asking the add-on devs to keep compatibility for us or write an compatibility layer? How are we in the wrong for suggesting a partnership so we can easily help out with any issues and take responsibility for them.
Gorhill, my main point is that I and others don’t like being wrongly accused of something we never said nor done. Not to leave out, but our homepage clearly says what exactly the browser Pale Moon is, “an Open Source web browser forked off from Firefox/Mozilla code and offering a rich collection of extensions and themes (including compatibility with many Firefox extensions and will fork the ones that choose to be incompatible with us).”
@LimboSlam: See my reply above. Supporting Pale Moon (properly that is) means a lot more effort than what you seem to be expecting. And the amount of effort will only increase with the time as Pale Moon and the current Firefox versions diverge. I tried to explain that a year ago, and above I made another attempt.
@LimboSlam The big picture is that all projects have to deal with finite resources. This is true for Pale Moon, ABP, and whatever other projects out there. Outsiders may very well disagree with how one specific project chooses to allocate its finite resources, but whatever the choices are should not be presumed to be ill-intended.
When a project manages its finite resources, it does so according to their own goals/concerns, and for mature projects, a major concern is stability — here again this is no doubt the case for Pale Moon and ABP. Minimizing code rewrite is usually a good way to prevent destabilizing the code, to prevent regression bugs from finding their way into the product, and from reading the comments here, I understand this is the rationale behind ABP devs’ choices with regard to legacy Firefox (28 and less).
To me the most unnerving time is when I publish a new release of my own projects, because there is always a risk the release will break things for a whole lot of users in unforeseen ways. So I kind of relate to other projects having the same concerns — and as a fellow dev, I actually empathize with other devs having to deal with the unpleasantness of unforeseen code breakage, regardless of what project they are working on.
My thoughts also are in sync with MoonChild
Recently I switched to Ublock and enjoyed performance improvement. So — nothing personal — I’d recommend others to try some competitor of ABP as well.
I’m on LinuxMint 17, and had to find an alternative to Firefox because it was crashing continually. (It crashed with a new profile as I was customizing the search bar and address bar locations, no addons, no about:config tweaks, not even with bookmarks added in.) I tried Pale Moon, set it up how I wanted, started putting on my addons and found out I couldn’t add ABP. Did a bit of research, found ABL and haven’t looked back. It works better than ABP for me, and it doesn’t slow my browser down.
I have been using “Bluhell Firewall” for quite some time now. I think it is even better then APB. It is not a firewall in the ordinary sense, it just blocks adds. In addition it lets you know when you encounter malware.
I started using Firefox as my default browser at version 1.0. It took a lot to shake my loyalty but Mozilla was headed in a direction I didn’t want to go, so long before Australis hit I had already switched to Pale Moon. For the same reasons, I switched to Linux Mint from Ubuntu long before Unity landed.
There are other browser options just as there are certainly other flavors of Linux, and while I wouldn’t know good code if it jumped up and bit me on the butt, I do know what works for me. Pale Moon works for me on everything from XP to Linux Mint 17.2 so I’ll keep my ‘niche’ browser.
Pale Moon isn’t perfect but so long as those who make it possible continue to see the users as people and not just product, I will use it and promote it at every opportunity. Thanks for what you do.
I’m not sure this is really an issue. It was clear that Adblock Plus had problems in Pale Moon as soon as Pale Moon 25 was released, quite some time ago. The Pale Moon team quickly released a “static” version of Adblock Plus that worked just fine. Within a couple/few months (?), users were notified that Adblock Latitude had been released, and that works just fine, with no learning curve coming from Adblock Plus. I run around 50 extensions in both Firefox and Pale Moon, and Adblock Plus is one of very few extensions that I’ve had to find Pale Moon-specific replacements for.
Further Pale Moon-related disclosure: I had to quit using tab groups in Pale Moon (via a Pale Moon-specific extension) because it completely screwed up the Session Manager extension’s functionality, which I consider more important. However, using Firefox’s built-in tab groups (fka “Panorama”) also screws up Session Manager (albeit slightly less severely), so I quit using tab groups in Firefox as well.
Off topic: SSleuth is another Firefox extension that isn’t compatible with Pale Moon, so I had to install Calomel SSL Validation instead. The curious thing is, SSleuth on Firefox says that Gmail is ultra-secure and Calomel on Pale Moon says Gmail’s security is abysmal. I suppose I should install Calomel in Firefox and see what it says about Gmail on Firefox…
SSleuth & Calomel : It seems both the add-ons are not compatible with Pale Moon.
Pale Moon doesn’t expose the full cipher-suite name (TLS_.. ).
I appreciate this feedback; thanks. I’d already blocked known-insecure SSL protocols in both browsers, so the extensions are really only there as canaries anyway, but it’s good to know the Calomel canary in Pale Moon is probably an alarmist, for now.
Not sure about how exactly it interacts with these extensions ; but it has been added recently, in 25.5 I believe.
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7843&start=20
@Jan, Usually in Firefox you can view the full cipher-suite name used by clicking on the lock icon and ‘More Information’ (unless you use extensions like SSleuth/Calomel SSL). It’s not there in the latest Pale Moon release.
Besides, taking a closer look at the interface where that is introduced (from the above thread), Firefox doesn’t expose it with the same name ( http://doxygen.db48x.net/mozilla/html/interfacensISSLStatus.html – cipherName ). How would the extensions be compatible if Pale Moon itself breaks interface compatibility with Firefox ?
@A_different_Martin, Calomel canary is probably not an alarmist. It’s just some sort of Pale Moon version conflict. Calomel revises their Firefox supported versions with each release (good for security reasons, bad for old releases). Pale Moon, however bypasses all these version checks and install an old version of Calomel (0.62). Which doesn’t identify AES-GCM symmetric cipher. And the add-on grades it as weak.
I’m a long term Firefox user. Personally I think that Pale Moon is years behind Firefox on many areas – security is just one of those.
I started using ublock origin 1.0.0.1 and it seems to be working with no problems, removes the yahoo webmail ad at the top of the message list very nicely.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/?src=search
@MIke S
Because they do support Pale Moon! Thanks Gorhill!
I must applaud the uBlock family of blockers for being kind enough to provide a pretty darn good alternative to the Adblock Family of ad blockers for Pale Moon. Many of our users enjoy uBlock while others prefer the familiar Adblock type extension.
Diversity in blockers as well as browsers on the whole allows for users to pick and chose the best combination of tools and components that works best for them. It is kind of sad that the ABP community did not embrace the opportunity to support us. But we had to think of our users and we took their suggestion to utilize the freedom of open source software to create a solution for our users that does work and (besides a few changes and some branding) gives them what they desired.
I personally am the one responsible for development of Adblock Latitude and I have worked hard to make sure those wanting the Adblock experience they expect will get it. While I hoped last year it would not be necessary perhaps it was for the best. This way compatibility and functions are assured and Pale Moon users are foremost on my mind.
-Your Pale Moon Add-ons Site Administrator and Add-ons Team Leader
“Diversity in blockers as well as browsers on the whole allows for users to pick and chose the best combination of tools and components that works best for them.”
Quoted for truth.
I have been a PM user for years, I didn’t like where FF was going, I wanted a 64 bit browser, and Australis was the final slap in the face to many of us who had been loyal FF users. Pale Moon is certainly not just “an old, outdated Firefox,” it clearly has legs to stand on and is becoming increasingly divergent as time passes. And that is what forks do, they diverge.
Oh, I kicked ABP to the curb when I still used FF, Bluehell Firewall is a LOT less resource intensive. Free market at work. Love it.
The discussion about who’s fault it is, is entirely irrelevant with respect to the block because it is not the users fault but the users problem when they use a combination of extension and browser that was not designed to work together but pretends to be a usable combination. The discussion whether or not this has something to do with the relation between Moonchild and the Pale Moon team on the one and Wladimir Palant and the ABP team on the other side is irrelevant because also that is not the users problem. The sole question that people should think about is what is best for the user.
BTW, due to whining and drama the block was removed
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9038#p60589
No, the block wasn’t removed, merely turned into a soft block which users can override. Informing users about compatibility issues is one thing – this could be done by respecting the compatibility info of the extensions for example (but then Pale Moon would be unable to claim support for most Firefox extensions). But the blocklist is the wrong tool, it is meant to be used only as the last resort when an extension or plugin is outright dangerous to use – and the message displayed tells you exactly that. We’ve seen a bunch of very confused users reaching out to us via various channels, and I’m certain that the same was happening on Pale Moon forums as well. Too bad that Pale Moon developers insist on acting irresponsibly.
Yes, the usage of the blocklist was a bit harsh and the wording used in the block is far from ideal (a standard message, though), personally, I would have preferred another solution. And I am sorry for the inconvenience it caused on your side.
The problem with ABP is, that it is the only extension used by a large number of users that behaves in such a way. I am not blaming it for that, it’s various things that play a role here.
For a very large amount of extensions the rule that if it works on Firefox 24 it works also on Pale Moon is true. Many extensions that had the GUID glitches in the early days of Pale Moon 25 were fixed within the last year. So assuming Firefox 24 as the compatibility version for Pale Moon is valid. Anyway, that is not true for all extensions. That is why a Pale Moon compatible version of for example ABP was created, maybe not an ideal solution but working. Anyway, there is absolutely no reason to remove the Firefox 24 compatibility, which would pi$$ off a really large number of users just because it does not work out for all extensions.
Then there are users. We are telling people on Pale Moon forums not to use ABP for about a year now. Against all advice people still use it. If people have ABP installed and complain about problems, removing ABP usually solves them. It’s not just missing controls or the “strange bar” thing, it is a much broader range of effects and I guess nobody has an idea what it could cause in the end, I don’t think that it might cause data loss, at least I hope so. Still the problem is sorta severe cause it is unknown what it can cause and why it causes whatever problem for some but not for others. And it is not recent events that could be assigned to the release of a certain ABP version, problems are steadily growing since Pale Moon 25 was released. Versions higher than 2.6.6.1 should not even install unless people forced it to install which is also not a smart idea and which is neither ABPs nor Pale Moons problem. Anyway, that is the situation and there is not much to be done about it in the end people are people..
This might explain at least a bit why Moonchild chose that action, not justifying, just explaining. And you can be pretty sure that it was not his intention to cause any harm to anybody, he just tried to protect his users (which in this case were also your users) from a potential risk. The exact measure might have been overprotective.
Until “Too bad that Pale Moon developers insist on acting irresponsibly.” I can accept your statement, I can even agree to some parts. But, please, stop making digs at each other. I can understand Moonchilds position as well as yours, you both have to care about a product and its users. But there is no need for BOTH sides to harshen the discussion and pointing with fingers at each other, that’s kindergarten. In the end nobody cares about who broke what and where and when anyway, and even if we knew it is still broken. I hope, we can all agree that these two products were not made to work with each other and should not be used together.
I apologize in advance if I say something upsetting as I will speak the truth and say what’s exactly on my mind, really I do. :)
@Wladimir Palant, I have read your commits up above and I somewhat agree with you on, “yet people still seem to think that we merely needed to add support for the Pale Moon GUID and be done with it.”This I understand, just wish you could have accepted our offer to work with you guys on this issue. Ok, to be honest I wish all this a year ago could have been handled better, explained better for you and us.
Now for this one, don’t you think our users have the right to know the risk of installing your incompatible add-on with us, that there’s a fifty-fifty chance of it working without with any bugs? You know if this issue was resolved, maybe we wouldn’t had to resort to the blocklist. But yes I do agree that it’s a soft block, a precaution/safety measure in other wards.
@Sven: I’m not pointing fingers, the way the blocklist was used here is plainly wrong. It’s misuse of a security mechanism, and it will make people with a real security issues think “oh, that’s merely Pale Moon devs acting up again.”
Side-note: While I haven’t used Pale Moon myself, I’m pretty sure that installing Adblock Plus 2.6.6 on Pale Moon was possible without much trouble. Pale Moon identifies itself as Firefox 31 which makes AMO think that it is compatible with the recent Adblock Plus releases. Also, Adblock Plus 2.6.6 is indeed compatible with Firefox 24. So it seems that most Pale Moon users were running this Adblock Plus version (or 2.6.6.1-signed as AMO called it).
@LimboSlam: I completely agree, users should be informed. But that’s a general issue with Pale Moon: it isn’t quite Firefox 24, yet it allows installing extensions that require Firefox 24. By doing so it accepts that some extensions will break in unexpected ways. This can be solved of course, e.g. one could show a warning whenever an extension is installed via GUID override: “This extension wasn’t adapted for Pale Moon and might not work correctly.” One could also add a special mechanism to inform users about known compatibility issues (Firefox doesn’t have that mechanism, it doesn’t need one). I’m not objecting to letting users know, merely to the way how this was implemented.
@Wladimir Palant : It identifies as FF31 for most internet websites ; but as FF24 on AMO (specific override).
I apologize in advance if I say something upsetting as I will speak the truth and say what’s exactly on my mind, really I do. :)
@Wladimir Palant and @Jan to clarify/add to what @Sven stated, Pale Moon does not identify itself as Firefox 31.0 on AMO, however it does for other websites with our Firefox compatible UAS enabled by default or the users choice. Now for AMO, we put in a specific override in the about:config containing firefox/24.9 in the UAS to allow Pale Moon users to install extensions from AMO, otherwise AMO wouldn’t recognize our browser at all and will have a banner up on top saying, “you need Firefox installed to use our add-ons.” Plus, like you said, Pale Moon is still a little to close to the Firefox v24.0 code. So with this being said, the most compatible add-ons that can be installed in Pale Moon are the ones based off Firefox v24.0 code and sometimes in the range of any Firefox pre-Australis (old Firefox) versions. Though this will not be the issue anymore in the future as we have forked off from that version of Firefox and will diverge more and more in code every time a new version of Pale Moon is released; a new layout and rendering engine called Goanna will be introduced in Pale Moon v26.0!! However, it’s still the current issue in the present that is pulling us back.
Hello,
I have just installed Adblock Latitude with no problems, though uBlock seems interesting too.
What I really want to say is slightly off topic, but…
I would really like one of these add-ons, Download Statusbar Fixed or Download Status Bar, and also Extended Statusbar to have in Pale Moon, but, even after all this time, they are not working. It is the only thing that I don’t like about this otherwise great browser.
Does anyone know a solution?
I’ve used the Firefox “Download Status Bar” extension (as distinct from the old “Download Statusbar” extension) in both Pale Moon x86 and Pale Moon x64 with full functionality and no real problems. In fact, I’m in Pale Moon x64 looking at my recent downloads in the Download Status Bar right now. (And I just cleared them.) Is it possible that Download Status Bar has a conflict with one of your other extensions?
The only problem I’ve noticed — a problem that might also occur in Firefox, though I no longer use Firefox often enough to have run into it — is that sometimes a download that terminates because of an error can’t be cleared from the Download Status Bar. When that happens, sometimes disabling and re-enabling the extension does the trick, and if that doesn’t work, uninstalling and reinstalling the extension does. I don’t run into it very often.
Thank you for your reply. I have noticed that those extensions work under windows xp, but not on windows 7.
I have Pale Moon 64 bit with the following extensions: Ant Video Downloader, DownThemAll!, Flash and Video Download, NoScript, and more recently, Adblock Latitude, Flagfox and Screengrab (fix version).
Also, I use LavaFox V2-Blue as the current theme.
I have also noticed that Pale Moon doesn’t really have a status bar, there are even some settings for it, but they do nothing, and nothing is displayed down there.
I’ll try to disable all extensions and see if it works that way.
Ok, I have found the problem.
The status bar wouldn’t show because of the theme, although it wasn’t a problem on xp or firefox. I changed it and now it shows.
However, the download status bar still doesn’t work properly. I have read that it is an issue because I use never remember browsing history (although in firefox it works even with this setting).
So, problem somewhat solved.
For what it’s worth, despite having run into a small number of incompatible Firefox extensions and “unsupported” sites (like the loathsome New Google Maps, which insists on running in “Lite” mode), I still prefer Pale Moon to Firefox. Historically, it’s been much more stable for me, with dramatically fewer crashes, freezes, and slowdowns (even comparing 32-bit to 32-bit versions). And even with the Classic Theme Restorer extension on Firefox, I still find Pale Moon’s interface easier to customize to my liking. (Sole exception: the NoSquint button, which stubbornly insists on remaining anchored to Pale Moon’s Status Bar, a few pixels away from my autohidden Windows Taskbar’s triggerpoint. I’ve emailed the developer about making the button movable to no avail. By the way, it wasn’t movable in pre-Australis Firefox, either.) Plus, Pale Moon has had perfectly stable and well-functioning 64-bit final releases out for a long time, and I regularly use more than 2GB of RAM in my browsing sessions. (Just remember to disable hardware acceleration in Pale Moon x64 if your 64-bit graphics drivers are on the buggy side, as mine apparently are. I’m guessing that this advice will also apply to Firefox x64, when it finally comes out.) Pale Moon x64 is my default browser and I’m maintaining Firefox with an equivalent set of extensions only as a secondary fallback.
Anyway, to my mind, Pale Moon is a well-justified and very well-executed fork, and I wish there were a little less sniping going on between the two camps. Can’t we switch the subject to something less contentious, like the classic init system versus systemd? ;-)
> Can’t we switch the subject to something less contentious, like the classic init system versus systemd? ;-)
Or maybe vi versus emacs ? :-)
I haven’t used Pale Moon extensively enough to criticize it.
However, to speak in general and IMHO, instead of forking off at an old version of Firefox, Pale Moon should have taken latest FF release versions and patch whatever on top of it (I guess Cyberfox folks do this – FF released v39.0 on Jun 30th, on Jul 3rd there was a Cyberfox 39.0 release). Perhaps there were Pale Moon’s own reasons to fork FF. I dunno.
Australis – Indeed, this broke many loyal user’s heart. But personally I think Australis looks a lot cleaner and it doesn’t bother me whether the tab borders are curved or straight. Then it’s not the end of the world, there are themes to restore the classic look.
One more thing, with Electrolysis, a lot more add-ons are going to stop working with Firefox itself. But eventually, I believe, it’s gonna be stable/performing well than single-process Firefox. Does Pale Moon plan to go through this phase too ?
Much of the Firefox userbase is thanks to the large number of add-ons it offers. I think Pale Moon should consider this aspect seriously too.
My 2 cents.
Again… a fork means you take a snapshot of a code base and go on forward with that on your own.
So, there is no outdated or insecure, as security fixes and else are being refactored for usage in the Pale Moon code base. And the Australis topic… Browsers like Cyberfox only got around it with bundling their browser with the Classic Theme Restorer add-on.
Which means you only have an additional layer on an already existing UI layer. Pale Moon devs see that as 100% unacceptable exactly as the feature loss which arrived with Australis.
The browser is stable enough, so there is no reason for E10s which most likely will not be brought over to Pale Moon as it requires full Australis code base to work which Pale Moon does not have of course.
In my opinion they should go the way like K-Meleon – give up to offer add-on compatibility which will anyway sooner or later come the more Pale Moon is drifting away from the Firefox code base) and focus instead on the user group which wants only to customize the browsing experience and who does not care about add-ons.
This will be the only logical way forward, or people will constantly complain and mock Pale Moon because “it is unable to use the latest add-on shiny stuff”!
Btw. K-Meleon survived also almost without add-ons and it is still not dead. Sure, Pale Moon would have also an even smaller user base with such a decision, but the other way round it will not work at all anymore in the upcoming future.
Anyway i am happy that the Pale Moon dev goes his way of not switching to a recent code base which only brings bloat, the Chrome UI clone Australis and all that unwanted features.
But granted… Of course there is an alternative way which the Pale Moon dev could go!
Using Seamonkey code base (which also does not have Australis BUT does have a recent code base) to rebuild Pale Moon – which also would give them the benefit of having again a future add-on compatibility.
But in the end, it is the Pale Moon devs decision which way to go.
@Lestat, Without addons, there’s no reason to use a Firefox fork at all. When addons break, pretty much every fork winds up dying.
You can’t really customize the browsing experience without addons. And customization is the reason to use Firefox.
I am on my way to the Concession Stand, anyone need anything?
I’m very glad ABP Latitude exists and that these forks of ABP for Palemoon go further in blocking ads. If you’ interested in Google’s way of doing things, this blog gives hints: http://jackyan.com/blog/2011/03/google-advertising-doesnt-understand-that-opting-out-means-opting-out/
Palemoon is an outdated Firefox? No, it’s more conservative and does not implement automatically Firefox novelties (of which I’m not fan since the removal of the status bar), unless they’re about security, which is what matters to me. This is why I use Palemoon. My only regret is the drop of XP support.
Anyway, the recurring problems with Mozilla based browsers are memory hog and CPU usage. Palemoon may be better regarding memory management, but still, on my laptop with 4 GB & Vista, I cannot run simultaneously a browser and a VirtualBox VM.
If security truly matters to you (and you said it does), then it’s best to re-think the decision to use Pale Moon because you’re not fond of FF novelties. Like you, I and many of us on here are not fond of FF novelties, and like you, for myself and many others, security is also what matters to us as well. But the good news is you can have it all in this case: you can have the very latest security features and security add-ons by using FF, Cyberfox, or Waterfox, and merely disable those novelties which you and many of us don’t like and don’t use.
I cannot fathom why you regret any lack of support for XP, especially when it comes to a web browser, and when you say specifically that security is what matters to you. No one—and especially anyone concerned about security—should even be thinking about taking an XP machine online, unless you know damn well exactly what you are doing, and even then I cannot see why you would want to do such a thing.
I haven’t heard the old “memory hog†line for quite a while… Anyway, if you are having problems with RAM and CPU then it is time to upgrade your hardware. 4 GB RAM is really an absolute bare minimum for doing only the most basic tasks, and if you want to run a VM as you say you do, then you need at least 8 GB of RAM, especially if you are encountering the type of problems you say you are.
I hate when a developer forces me to use (Firefox- Pocket) or not to use (Pale Moon- Adblock Plus) a certain add-on- I consider this an act of aggression against me. I am curious have moomchild & co. gotten money from uBlock developers to disable Adblock Plus.
For browsing Adblock Plus is as essential as AdFender, Ad Muncher and PeerBlock and everyone who tries to prevent me from using Adblock Plus is attacking my privacy and my freedom of choice. Thus I choose to dump Pale Moon and keep Adblock Plus.
Pale Moon does force one to not use ABP, but I don’t see how FF forces one to use Pocket.
In FF (and Cyberfox) just go into about:config and type “pocket” in the filter and disable it. In Waterfox, Pocket is already disabled by default.
> I am curious have moomchild & co. gotten money from uBlock developers to disable Adblock Plus.
I have never paid anyone, never offered anything to anyone, never been paid by anyone, never accepted any offer from anyone in relation to uBlock, uMatrix, or any of my other projects on GitHub.
For what is worth gorhill, I believe most people on this site have enough reading comprehension to understand that those accusations are absurd. Your previous comments and Palant’s clearly details what is going on.
Pale Moon is outdated and insecure in the sense that it is forked from an ancient FF version, and as such, cannot run add-ons such as security add-ons like SSLeuth, Enforce Encryption, etc..
It seems strange to say Cyberfox “only got around†Australis by using the CTR add-on. That seems to be the intelligent way to handle something as unpopular as Australis, while still being able to provide the very latest in security and protection. It certainly seems far preferable to the much-different way Pale Moon handled it. But since some are so happy with the Pale Moon way, they are free to keep using that. We’re fortunate to have more than one choice in this regard.
Calling CTR add-on only an additional layer on an already existing UI layer and therefore 100% unacceptable also seems strange to say; what is really 100% unacceptable is a less up-to-date and less-secure browser that cannot take advantage of the latest security add-ons.
Speaking of mocking, if the “latest add-on shiny stuff†includes things which enable me to browse more safely and securely, such as the afrorementioned SSLeuth and Enforce Encryption add-ons, for example, then, yes, I am all for using instead a fully-secured and up-to-date browser which allows me to do so.
When Firefox released Australis and subsequent releases, for those who wished to continue using a Mozilla-based browser there were a couple of choices: continue with FF or use another up-to-date browser such as Cyberfox or Waterfox, using add-ons to regain what was lost or changed and turn off unwanted additions (or doing so manually in about:config), or go Pale Moon’s way of forking off an old, pre-Australis version, with all that follows from that, including losing add-on capabilities.
Most people who deliberately seek out a Mozilla-based browser to use do so because they wish to customize it and secure it with the vast number of add-ons available for it; choosing to use a browser such as PM which due to its very nature will be guaranteed to be able to run fewer and fewer add-ons as time goes by seems counterintuitive and foolish, but that option exists for those who wish to do so. But saying, “I don’t like that Pocket thing (for example) Mozilla added to FF so instead of simply disabling it, I’m going to use a browser forked off an ancient version of FF,†and then not being able to use the add-ons which led me to Mozilla browsers in the first place seem ridiculous at best, and insecure at worst, when I can no longer run security add-ons.
However, to each his (or her) own…vive la différence!
That IS the nature of a fork.
Again, a fork means to take a code base snapshot of the original product one single time and go with that code base snipped forward without using further code base versions.
This has been done also by lot of other sofware developers from various kind of Software, and these spin-off’s also can not be just flagged as outdated and insecure because it is simply NOT true!
As long as security fixes are added to the browser Pale Moon is secure enough. Your opinion is rather hateful and arrogant to say it in kind words.
No, the only really good way would be to patch Australis out of a recent code base. But as this is simply not possible and instead of just creating another “Firefox oldskool version 20-22 wanna-be thanks to Classic Theme restorer” like Cyberfox this is the next best way how to handle things if you have enough time to constantly research and port forward relevant security fixes which ARE relevant for the forked project.
And as codes divide even further – some security fixes just can not be applied downwards because that new vulnerabilities just do not exist with Pale Moon’s codebase.
So you better get your facts straight boy!
And again, Pale Moon is no longer being recognized for having 1:1 Firefox add-on compatibility. Same goes for K-Meleon.
cyberfox without cyberctr does have features and changes that firefox does not. cyberctr adds the same as ctr but cyberctr has much more options many cyberfox specific.
personally the way cyberfox has done it is rather great they are fast to update same day or even before mozilla.
palemoons choice to fork from 24.0 esr is commendable but feasible no as firefox australis was more then a gui change it was almost a complete rewire of its core engine removing many synchronous and outdated modules one example is the old download api. the javascript engine with many others have jumped forward leaving site in palemoon using the newer javascript functions broken. addons are breaking left n right soon to be more so with more planned changes. ablocks decisions is the correct one its not viable to support older legacy code when it affects the products development.
security wise palemoon is heading for a crash course in this they do try to pass back some patches there are many they have not there is no security researchers checking for new hole as mozilla on the new base has leaving undiscovered hole in palemoon take for example the 39.0.3 release by mozilla for the zero day with pdfs palemoon is vulnerable to this are they going to update or say its not applicable to them.
palemoon is a great project i hope it does well.
And yet, Cyberfox is nothing more than one of the various Australis UI Chrome clones with add-ons bundled to bandage the fact you can not fully customize it anymore without add-ons.
Before i ever would use anything Australis based, i would be using Seamonkey – which i actually do .- as main browser – but as i also take a close look to Pale Moon as secondary one and have worked for ages in the information technology branch – even small projects can survive and are secure, which something like Otter-Browser, Midori or Qupzilla do show perfectly.
The pdf module is deactivated in Pale Moon – so this security bug is not immediately a problem for Pale Moon. It is very entertaining to see the haters of small projects like Pale Moon arrive like doves and constantly preach the same.. Outdated, insecure and so on… In the meantime, as you are no fortune teller – why not stop that bad talk and wait and see what actually happens. Sure they could fail, but sure, they could survive also. Time will tell.
And guess what, the biggest problem of running into malware is most of the time the user itself. Surfing on shady websites and not trustworthy sources. I recommend Seamonkey and Pale Moon also to companies as Firefox replacement and so far not one single complaint about security breaches and more has so far been incoming.
Instead of preaching this bird talk, go on and show that the code base really can be exploited. You seem to be so clever, so try to prove it.
You know, you guys really should grow up. This is tedious to read, even for someone who is not using Pale Moon as actually main browser. It is tedious and childish!
And on the same low level like guys which did, after Australis arrive curse Mozilla, threaten them and attacking them in personal ways, which was also not correct to do.
You don’t fork something by taking a snap shot of the particular code base and stay there. If you doubt this, take a look a any distro of Linux. None of them simply stayed with the code base that caused the whatever they disagreed with.
Nor does it take CTR return Firefox to its pre Australis glory. For me it took three extensions, one of which I was using anyway, and two community supplied userchrome suggestions.
I can honestly see where the addon developers are coming from as its clear as day to me and in summary to put it simply.
ABP no longer uses an older and soon to be completely outdated Javascript and rather uses standard-compliant ECMAScript 2015 which I believe Mozilla themselves are moving towards soon. Sadly at this stage and present moment Pale Moon does not use the standard-compliant ECMAScript 2015 which in turn means it cannot work efficiently with Adblock Plus (and possibly cause other issues down the road).
As mentioned the need to use standard-compliant ECMAScript 2015 was put in place long ago and is prudent to the future of ABP as it will allow the developers to further their anti-adblock scheme.
Moonchild shall be running under their own forked engine soon (goanna – which I imagine will cause more controversy and possibly issues if not done correctly) and has the opportunity to make these amendments to allow greater compatibility with addons such as abp however I suspect it will only create more issues for existing addons.
The path Moonchild plans to take is admirable as it seems to have a long term future goal to achieve however it is a huge undertaking and can be almost akin to reinventing the wheel, is such a thing necessary? perhaps, but will it appease and unit all userbases… I doubt it.
As time goes on I can see that eventually PaleMoon will become its own beast and may need a larger development group to deal with all the issues as it will essentially become its own browser which is not a bad thing but that will mean it will require its own addon portal and development kit of sorts.
Basically it will become a Windows vs Linux (I’ll let either of you decide which is which)
Whilst I understand Moonchild’s stance and reasoning behind his browser development path I do feel that there needs to be some sort of responsibility towards its users
Once again Gorhill you are stand up guy and have always gone to great lengths to work within a logical manner, that is not to say we have not agreed on a one or two things in the past however you are a great developer and I am glad to have you and your work available to us all.
Any suggestion by anyone that there is some sort of conspiracy at hand to belittle abp in favour of uBlock is merely fictional and cannot be confirmed as fact as its just a conspiracy theory. ABL would not exist if such a theory was true as its clear that ABP is still a valuable tool and anybody can see that, even Gorhill himself has no qualms with ABP, yes he has his own ideas on how things can be done but he is entitled to that just as users are entitled to choose the right addon for their wants and needs.
I hate Australis and dislike the direction Mozilla is taking, I fiddle with Pale Moon whilst I use CyberFox as it seems to be safe medium between the two extremes.
I apologies if I have caused anyone offense with my breakdown and limited knowledge but felt I needed to add something to this articles comments as I have spent several hours reading this all.
Its 5am here and I must leave but this was quite a read and an excellent distraction.
Thank you all. :)
Do not get your hope too much up.
The time where Pale Moon was 1:1 compatible with Firefox add-ons is gone since Australis was introduced and Pale Moon branched off from Firefox’s code base.
So, every add-on which demands Australis or is based on future Australis only included features will work Zero time in Pale Moon until it is refactored and rewritten to be compatible with the Pale Moon add-on SDK. And as soon as E10s – multiprocess – is 100% activated another drop out of still comatible Firefox add-ons is most likely to be expected.
While Pale Moon is a nice browser in my opinion i can it only recommend to people who are using either only version 24 code base compatible add-ons or simple add-ons which will also work once E10s is fully in usage.
ABP is a clear no-go as they will go the Australis only and E10s way. So far ABP is working partly, but in the future, it will no longer work.
Therefor Adblock Latitude exists, a fork of ABP.
It has just been reported that Pale Moon can also no longer run the latest version of EFF’s excellent Privacy Badger add-on, according to another article comment made on this site.
George, the primary purpose of ‘EFF’s excellent Privacy Badger add-on’ is to grant trackers and advertisers a fair use backdoor, please read around and even their own release statement. Privacy Badger will TURN OFF Ad blocking for sites detected using its new DNT promise. EFF was already compromised before this though, did you not see where they said Apple has your back on privacy and security??
@George and @A: There’s hope yet, PB may be compatible with Pale Moon in the next release of it. They added the tags “enhancement” and “2.0 milestone” version to our issue, but no reply back yet.
@A:
I read your post and then did a search on Privacy Badger granting trackers and advertisers a fair use backdoor, but found nothing. I re-read the EFF release statement you mentioned and saw this:
“Installing Privacy Badger also enables the DNT flag as a clear signal to sites that the user wants to opt-out of online tracking. Privacy Badger inspects third party sites for a commitment to honor that request under the DNT Policy; if it finds one, it will unblock that third party by default. That way, web services that do the right thing by users can continue to collect anonymous data or show anonymous ads, while those that don’t will be foiled by the Badger’s protections.”
Is the above what you are referring to as Privacy Badger’s “primary purpose”? Would you please say specifically what you think is so horrendous about the above if the user is not being tracked, and especially since the user can still adjust the PB settings to block whatever they want?
And if in your opinion the EFF is “compromised,” please say which group is not compromised and whom you trust instead. Thanks!
George, ” Would you please say specifically what you think is so horrendous about the above if the user is not being tracked, and especially since the user can still adjust the PB settings to block whatever they want?”
Yes, that it is so by default. When a user installs something to block tracking and intrusive ads, that’s their opt-out. When that thing then secretly hands the switch over to the things its supposed to be blocking… well its a false sense of security isn’t it. Also who would know what things will temporarily grant themselves entrance. I know, there’s the small print and the promises and the words, but the capability is whats important imo.
FWIW–the response I received today from EFF about these claims:
“Thanks for writing to us!
Our goal is to get advertisers to actually respect Do Not Track; not getting ad blockers to stop blocking ads. If an advertiser decides to implement the DNT policy, Privacy Badger would no longer block those advertisers from serving ads; but you would still be safe from tracking because that domain has posted a policy promising not to track anyone sending the DNT header. We cannot dictate how the other ad blockers would behave.
For more, please see this:
https://www.eff.org/privacybadger#faq–I-am-an-online-advertising-/-tracking-company.–How-do-I-stop-Privacy-Badger-from-blocking-me?
Feel free to post this reply to the forum.”
Then there are reasons like this for using Pale Moon:
http://www.itworld.com/article/2967193/security/firefox-zero-day-hole-found-exploited-update-now.html
Really? Read Vlad Palant’s comments above:
“In particular, pretty much all security issues discovered in Firefox affect Pale Moon as well. It’s a massive code base that they set out to maintain on their own, and I have strong doubts that they are really up to it. But in the end that’s something for the users to decide and not really the point here.
There was the possibility to fork the user interface only while using the Gecko platform as it is (the SeaMonkey project did that), we would support Pale Moon without asking twice then. But the platform was forked as well – which means that Pale Moon is currently running on something sort of like an outdated Gecko, with a number of undocumented differences.â€
Whether or not this particular zero-day affects Pale Moon as well, I do not know and don’t care, but the fact is that it was detected and within 24 hours was patched by Mozilla in Firefox (and patched immediately in Cyberfox) is how things should work.
How likely is Pale Moon, with its tiny user base, and even tinier support team, to discover all of the exploits hidden in that radically forked custom piece of software they are putting out there: “an outdated Gecko, with a number of undocumented differences.â€
If a zero-day is found in Win 7, will you then say that’s a reason for using Win XP?
Firefox is one big exploit to be cautious of, given the amount of default tracking and phone home features in the browser, and the fact they employ an ex NSA goon to work on, oops i mean introduce flaws and refuse to fix problems a lot of people are aware of and angry over.
@A:
If “Firefox is one big exploit to be cautious of,” would you kindly tell us which browser you think is better? Please don’t say Chrome, controlled by the Spy-Monster Google, or IE/Edge from Microsoft, or Safari owned by Apple, or any of the other Mozilla-based browsers or browsers derived from Firefox, such as Cyberfox, Waterfox, Pale Moon, etc.. And in the browser you recommend, can the user install all of the add-ons necessary to block flash cookies/super cookies, canvas tracking/fingerprinting, javascript,and cross-site requests, as one can do in FF, etc.? I am sincerely interested in hearing your suggestion. Thanks for letting us know!
As far as default-anything and “phoning home,” the very first thing I do when I install such a browser is to temporarily disconnect from the internet and adjust every single default setting to my liking, and then go into about:config and remove every single “phoning home” reference to Google, Mozilla, etc..
As someone said before, paraphrasing Churchill, “Firefox (or Cyberfox or Waterfox) is the worst damn browser out there, except for every other one.” NOTHING is perfect, and it is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Dismissive criticism without offering any specifics and especially without offering any suggested alternatives is not helpful at all.
Looking forward to your response…
Looking forward to the fixes, and the privacy busting defaults being changed to opt-in, thats all.
@George and everyone else, we’re a fork and being fork means we will not follow every step Firefox/Waterfox/Cyberfox/SeaMonkey (“based-off” Firefox/Mozilla code browsers) makes or implement every bug patch that may or may not effect us until the bug access is available to us so we can know more about it. So please stop referring to us as something outdated because we chose to go independent by forking off from Firefox v24.0 code that we feel was right for us and our users. Also please note what your basically asking MC to do with Pale Moon by just randomly implementing any security/bug patched that may not apply to our current code base (a fork of a whole new beast), which is:
“……If our code isn’t vulnerable, then there is also no reason to add (unnecessary) extra checking code to work around a non-existing problem (current vulnerabilities in Firefox)…… So we neither can nor are obligated to apply all patches that exist for a different product. In fact, blindly doing so may break our product with a relatively high degree of certainty in quite a few cases…….”
NOTE: this bug or two was discussed earlier today in our forums and was declared that we weren’t “never vulnerable to this, as it relies on something that Mozilla introduced that we don’t use (or need). Feel free to continue using the internal PDF viewer.” Here’s the link: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9070
It’s not that you forked off of Firefox 24. It’s that you haven’t kept up with the changes since then. I don’t mean you have to implement everything Firefox does, but you definitely should be keeping up with standard and have full EMCAScript 2015 support, rather than claiming that it’s some Mozilla-only feature.
And you shouldn’t lie and say that extension developers are choosing to not support you. They never supported you. You were riding off of extension developers support for Firefox. They’ve chosen to not support older Firefox versions, and, since you choose not to implement the changes in newer versions, support breaks.
In other words, Pale Moon is the one choosing breakage. You are the ones who are less EMCAScript compliant. You are the ones who are trying to make extension developers maintain outdated code rather than updating your browser to support new, standards compliant code.
You’re behind. It’s to be expected with such a small team and such a complicated codebase. And I am fine with that as long as you don’t keep blaming it on others.
@trlkly
Nobody said we were forcing the developers to support us, what we did was inform them of Pale Moon and asked them nicely if they could support us, if they could work with us on these issues. So if they said no, then we respected that, if they said yes, then we in return are working together with them to resolve these issues. Now, what you are hearing is certain users/devs opinions and personnel experience with Pale Moon while using ABP or just the products by itself and how they have dealt or should’ve dealt with the problem; we all have a different cup of tea, but how do we know which we like best, simple, we try it out first and then come to a conclusion as to why we like it or not.
And again, as we have clearly stated, “we’re a fork and being fork means we have taken a snapshot of the original products code base and will go on forward with that on our own; we will not follow every step Firefox/Waterfox/Cyberfox/SeaMonkey (“based-off” Firefox/Mozilla code browsers) makes to implement certain code and functionality that is not in our plans ahead of us.
i was one of the Firefox early adopters and enjoyed every bit. but australis made me switch complete to chrome but i always like to have 2-3 browsers in case of issues with different sites. pale moon was the best switch for firefox ( yeah i remember the 1st big issue that made me switch – toolbar new design that blocked one of the best extension – delicious toolbar) . all good on pale moon for a very long time with fast browsing + no script + ad block till one day when i noticed ads and found that abp is down. 2-3 hours later after reading abp forum / pale moon forum my conclusion was simple pale moon people wanted to help their users but abp moderators/developers did not care at all and refused any help with some very nasty answers. next step was their abp latitude which works decent and now replaced my old abp
ps. firefox for me is never again in the install list, current browsers ( based on use ) : chrome – pale moon – edge – opera – ie ( for nasty old corporate sites that need activeX )
Goodbye Moonman …
last time I used Palemoon, this is just another Backdoor Program.
I am sick of all those Ads I still have popping up, stopping me from closing tabs and shit like this,
which never happens anymore using a modern webbrowser.
Fuck you. Please die faster, thx.
Well maybe you should use an adblocking software.
I have never seen an ad anywhere in the pale moon forum or elsewhere.
Backdoor program…?
Really.?
Any substantiated proof by any chance.?
I have been using pale moon browser for a very long time and its the best browser i have ever used on my linux computer.
I could not care less about silly global usage statistics or ridiculous benchmarks.
If any browser should or could be termed a “backdoor Program” then google chrome would fit that billing very nicely.
Thanks.
abl is amazing, very poor updates or one every year & with the latest palemoon 26.5.0, an ad appears in the videoframe of youtube at the start of some videos. this crap doesnt happen with abp.
Pale moon is falling apart getting slower with every up date went back to a faster browser and safer one.
I find the arrogance and revolting attitude of the ABP developer enough to deter me from ever using his extension.
There are other adbockers out there and ABP is even allowing some ads through,When you as an extension developer create an extension then you should be grateful for ANY installs,However i see from some of mr palants comments that the height of success has gone to your head which is an unfortunate sickness which affects most businesses.
This is about money nothing else.The ABP team couldnt give 2 hoots as long as money is rolling in and what is amazing is that their extension isnt that great as the ABP team would like to believe.
Ublock origin is far superior.
I hope ABP dies quickly as its a resource eating monster.
Good day to all.
“it is not suggested to make use of those [disabling the blocklist] as it puts the browser at serious risk.”
‘serious risk’ of WHAT???
Whenever someone is rattling the panic bell saying the end is near, I always wonder why people don’t ask themselves whether the so-called ‘serious risk’ is not just another form of “computerese proposition 19” that some ‘deadly’ problem MAY happen if one does not agree to surrender one’s personal freedom – and do not realize that if they agree, loss of freedom ALWAYS happens!