Pale Moon 27 changes announced
The Pale Moon team is working on Pale Moon 27 currently, the next version of the popular web browser that shares code with Firefox.
As you may know, the Pale Moon team uses a different versioning scheme than Mozilla as it ups the integer part (characteristic) of the version only when major versions are released, and otherwise only the fractional-part (mantissa).
So, an upgrade from Pale Moon 26.x to 27.0 is a major update in many regards, while the same cannot be said for Firefox version upgrades as the integer-part increases on a regular basis regardless of what the update brings along with it.
Pale Moon 27
Pale Moon 27 is currently available as a beta release. Anyone interested can download it from the WIP page for 32-bit or 64-bit versions of windows or Linux.
The team plans to release Pale Moon 27 in November if development progresses along nicely.
A new forum post on the official Pale Moon forum by Moonchild, the head of the Pale Moon team, lists some of the upcoming changes of the new browser version.
Most changes are positive, and there are only a few changes that can be seen as negative but only for a limited number of users.
Pale Moon 27 will drop support for Windows XP and Server 2003.
The new engine and platform simply isn't geared to handle the ancient NT5 kernel and APIs any longer. What was previously still possible with a special compatibility build, can't be done anymore.
The Atom hardware version, one option for XP users to continue using Pale Moon, won't be made available as well anymore. This means that Pale Moon 27 won't run on Windows XP or Server 2003 systems.
Another change that is affecting some users is that Pale Moon 27 will only be available in English initially. The team notes that previous translations and language packs won't work, but that localization will be made available at a later point in time.
Also, some complete themes of Firefox that worked in the past may not be compatible with the new version of Pale Moon 27.
Probably the biggest change of them all is that Pale Moon won't support Jetpack or add-on SDK extensions any longer.
Pale Moon 26.x supported these extensions.
Pale Moon 27.0 positive changes
As far as positive changes are concerned, there are quite a few:
- Pale Moon 27 will offer better JavaScript support in regards to ECMAScript 6 standard compatibility.
- The rendering engine Goanna is upgraded to version 3.0 introducing support for DirectX 11, Direct2D 1.1 and layout and rendering improvements that go along with that.
- Pale Moon 27 will ship with improved font features such as support for WOFF2 and better handling of complex font delivery systems.
- The new version of Pale Moon will support media source extensions (MSE) which improves compatibility with sites using HTML5 video and audio sites. It won't support encrypted media extensions (EME) on the other hand which means that sites that rely on it cannot stream content to Pale Moon using HTML5 video or audio.
Now You: What's your take on the upcoming Pale Moon 27.0?
What version of Firefox is Palemoon 27 based on?
None, Pale Moon has not been directly based on a Firefox version since 24.x
None: http://www.palemoon.org/info.shtml#
Also check Information/The project/Rumor Control, Project History etc.
Engine based on something like Gecko 38+ with the UI code of Firefox 24.
So it is a hybrid browser, not really based on one single version. Anyway, using not the latest Gecko engine makes Pale Moon 27 already rather outdated as since the release of that version tons of improvements have been made by Mozilla to ensure support of latest web standards. Use it not without a good backup browser. Because site incompatibilities already exist right now with it. Especially when pages use latest ES6 script features or newer, which Pale Moon 27 either only partly or not at all supports.
This will also not change much in the near future. The same problem with Pale Moon 26 and before since they decided to fork older Mozilla backend engine versions.
Anyway, without a backup browser i would not recommend using Pale Moon. But with something like Otter-Browser together you will have a cool setup!
About the security aspect, security patches are applied and backported on/towards Pale Moon, so even if the engine and the supported standards are not up to date, you are still more or less secured against web threats.
Palemoon was dead for me at the Version they made normal Firefox addons incompatible.
I can’t recall the reason for it and it was a good reason for itself, but it was not usuable for me when i had to modify every addon and it was still not working. Before that i loved the browser. Might give it a shot again with V27 and see how it works and what addons give me Troubles.
It won’t work if you read the article.
“Also, some complete themes of Firefox that worked in the past may not be compatible with the new version of Pale Moon 27.
Probably the biggest change of them all is that Pale Moon won’t support Jetpack or add-on SDK extensions any longer.”
Actually, you can install a Pale Moon add-on that makes Firefox extensions compatible and it works really well.
I’ve dumped PM for Vivaldi after running into multiple problems with PM for Linux. It got to the point where I would open PM and every other link I had to use Vivaldi because for whatever reason, PM wouldn’t load it or hang up on it.
Agreed. Vivaldi is really nice. Other than slow loading times (compared to vanilla Chrome), I have no complaints. It’s the browser I recommend people try when they’re having trouble with the one they use.
Pale Moon is run by a developer who seem to think that websites should make changes to work with his browser, instead of the other way around.
Right and PM is more than a Cult than a browser experience…
When said websites do *not* comply with Web standards (not “Pale Moon standards”) then that’s the right thing to do, but I guess most people prefer complaining and settling for arbitrary solutions (hardly ever user privacy-oriented) as applied by Google, Microsoft etc.
Having a firm and clear stance on this is not “Cult” but again… a small sign of today’s resigned world.
“Pale Moon is run by a developer who seem to think that websites should make changes to work with his browser, instead of the other way around.”
This!
I had this exact problem. I used Palemoon exclusively when I still had Windows. After I moved to Linux (Manjaro), I repeatedly found sites that I needed simply would not work properly. I am a big fan of the ideals and goals of Pale Moon, but sadly Vivaldi just works for me.
@Lars:
Palemoon didn’t stop them working **mostly** it was the developers of the add-ons that drew the line in the sand and **prevented** (as in – too lazy to maintain some backwards compatibility) them from working. However it was mostly a version-issue and can be stepped around with…
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkcompatibility/
Having said that, I have been a long time fan of Palemoon but 26xxx became PaleMoan for me. The rendering engine was tweaked to improve stuff, but it broke other stuff along the way. I suspect the announcement is more to reassure the current users that help is on the way – and – to stop people jumping ship.
I never thought I would see the day when I would install Firefox again, but a few months back I did just that with FFx49. It sits as a desktop icon and when PM balks at a web page, I reluctantly jump to FFx with the copied URL and paste it in. Once finished with that site I return to PM. A pain in the arse? You bet, but still more preferable to using FFx all the time. :)
Do your homework and go to moonchild site for palemoon compatible addons.
In last March, I dumped Pale Moon for Cyberfox as 2nd browser, why? Most extensions for Firefox (1st browser) are compatibles with Cyberfox unlike Pale Moon.
I did too, but Cyberfox is driving me crazy with constant freezes when stressed just a tad, & I don’t use all that many add-on’s. I am getting to prefer Waterfox.
@Mike J.
Waterfox is a fine browser and so is Cyberfox; I ultimately dropped Waterfox in favor of Cyberfox, as Cyberfox was being updated much more regularly than Waterfox, which was important to me because I wanted security holes to be patched as soon as they were announced by Mozilla.
If Cyberfox is freezing for you, I’m inclined to think it may not be Cyberfox itself but something else instead—RAM, for instance? I’ve used Cyberfox for years, at times with 50+ add-ons installed though currently down to 32 add-ons, always with at least 20 or more tabs open, and with the browser kept open for hours, and sometimes even a few days. I’ve never experienced freezes in Cyberfox. I’m running 16 GBs of RAM, and my ISP’s download speed is 240 Mbps. Perhaps if you are able you could try running Cyberfox on a faster machine to see how it performs for you.
@ Hy I am unsure why your post is the only one with no ”reply” option. Anyway, 8 GB RAM & Task Manager says it hardly ever gets to 4 in use. Cyberfox freezes w/ 4-5 tabs open. I use several privacy add-ons. NP w/ Waterfox or Iron. I am not attacking anything, just relating my experience. I am on the cusp of uninstalling the browser; it is a nuisance.
After all this time and all the information available, I see people keep complaining about Firefox extensions… if you want them all, just use Firefox or a browser that is very close to it like Waterfox/Cyberfox etc. Pale Moon is not any more, it’s an independent product and this will not change – quite the contrary.
As mentioned, there are reliable alternative extensions for almost everything. If you are not interested in searching, use Firefox or stop complaining about this already.
Using it since years, since weeks i try to make a decent v27 browser searching equivalent add-ons to mine which don’t work anymore, jetpack for the majority… some are not working properly like Tab Mix Plus, some now require the new GUID. I also installed a lightweight theme instead of FT DeepDark to avoid eventual problematic surprises. And finally i called the old UserChrome to the rescue. But adieu the classic download… and even Status4evar however integrated is not working properly, impossible to custom colors. With Mozilla Corp & Firefox in a wrong way, well “les temps sont durs”.
…and the problem with the icon of UBlock Origin which have a bad look and can’t stop to disapear is returned. Considering NOT using ABL which slow down the browser as hell… bah.
Dropping Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 support comes across as a very negative thing to do.
I particularly would be affected. I still use plenty of computers running Windows XP.
The pros in this case do not seem to outweigh the great con of loss of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 support.
Well considering that Windows XP is 14 years old and no longer officially supported by Microsoft I don’t see anything wrong with Pale Moon dropping support with such an ancient obsolete OS.
Indeed. You can complain about companies going faster than users, but cannot when you are yourself going slower than everyone. You can feel bad about it, but not complain. XP was a very good OS, as Windows 7 still is, but XP is really too old now, as Windows 7 one day will be.
Concerning Pale Moon, it is indeed a browser of its own now. Do we complain about Firefox add-ons not running on Chrome or Vivaldi? Same with Pale Moon which has its own library of add-ons which should fulfill the needs of most users. Of course if there is one specific add-on a user really considers essential, available for Firefox but not for Pale Moon and with no alternative, then that scenario can be dissuasive. And still, not sure.
I believe a browser is not, or is more than a skin, than an interface for browsing, it has its specifics which correspond to the developer’s philosophy of what he considers a browser should be, what it shouldn’t be, and what it aims to achieve in its road map. We may like or dislike the Pale Moon browser but we’ll have to agree on one thing : Moonchild is truly committed to bringing a browser which combines privacy (true privacy, that is : more than reasonable), innovation and power. Moonchild and several friends. I have the greatest consideration for those who have an aim and stick to it.
I don’t use PM bur people using PM have more chance to use XP since they seem stuck in the past where everything for them was better than today… ;-)
You are about to get blasted because of your preference for an older OS. :) Pay no heed.
I still prefer my XP machine to my Win7 and have no wish to move on to less control and an ugly UI. I accept the fact that I’m going to lose both FF and Pale Moon eventually because of that. I guess that leaves Sea Monkey? Anyway, the day will come that I will need an extra device that will get me online. But for serious computing – that isn’t cloud based – I’ve got Win7 and XP.
Same here : still XP because it IS far superior to that windows 7, at least for my needs (no games, no social junk). 7 is a complete katastrophe if you need Unicode…. Firefox still at 29 with a bunch of addons. My system is as perfect as one could want it to be. And despite all the nonsense one reads about security issues, it remains completely clean of any dirt since years. I only got w7 on a new computer by lack of xp drivers and for newer software that would not run on xp anymore.
After reading this article (thanks again, Martin !) , i decided to install the latest compatible version of that Pale Moon. Perfect fiasco all around. Let it install its specifically recommended atom/xp version without any interference from my side though. Not one image gets displayed (imagine Ghacks and newspapers without any images, let alone image depository sites) , my Ixquick settings page completely broken, I can not even open my email nor my bank account. Quickly removed before it would harm my system. Byebye Pale Moon.
And no, I’m not old-fashioned nor conservative, you won’t easily find a more progressive fellow than me. But progress needs to give better things, or it is just plain worthless, and as such to be actively avoided.
@stilofilos, since the “perfect fiasco” you are describing is only known to happen on your particular setup, you might want to reconsider on exactly where the source of your problems is located, before throwing accusations around. Clearly, your system is problematic (not to mention far too outdated).
It might work for you, which is fine, but that hardly makes it optimal or something that any software of this side of the century should adapt to. As for “my system is as perfect as one could want it to be”, it’s best left uncommented and the results you are reporting are a good indication of this perfection anyway.
@George
Since you appear to know my system better than I do myself, tell me how come that Firefox , SlimBoat and even IE, plus all other software on board do run without any issues.
I can not help it that PaleMoon gave me a bad experience that I just wanted to communicate as more people signal issues with it, but your aggressive negativism is without any base and really out of any proportion.
@Q: K-meleon browser is right for you.
Excellent browser.been using it for months.A browser is not a multi-media app it is just a browser.Ive never had a problem with pale moon,it runs all the major sites just fine and rarely does a site not render correctly.
Good luck moonchild with the next release.
Just saw the new Moonchild’s avatar… to say sweet things like this to a developer this requires courage ! :D
@Kubrick
” A browser is not a multi-media app it is just a browser. ”
So what exactly is it meant to browse, if not multiple types of media ? Since I’m lazy I’ll have Wikipedia hint at the answer instead.
“The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age[*] and is the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet. Web pages […] are rendered in the user’s web browser as coherent pages of multimedia content.”
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
* “Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age)”
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Age
Laggy and raw as usual. good idea but realization isn’t possible.
Nonsense.
it has never lagged for me and is on a par with chrome in terms of speed here on my linux system.
I’m using Pale Moon v. 26.5
(latest version, at present),
on my Ubuntu Linux 12.04 – 32 bits.
What a wonderful, fast experience.
All my FF addons working great!
my Question:
=========
Is there a way to safely (temporarily)
“install” PM27 just to try it out –
while keeping my great, present PM26 ?.
I don’t wan’t to affect my good PM 26 installation…
Anyone? Thanks!
I believe they have a portable version available.
In one of the official announcements concerning PM 27 it is stated that regular users can participate in the PM 27 public beta but warns that if you do upgrade to the beta changes will be made to your old settings that can’t be undone. If you know how to create an Ubuntu Live USB then you could boot from that and use it to test PM 27.
Just dropped in to give my support to PM. Looking forward to the new version.
I’ve been using Pale Moon v27 beta under Windows for the last week without any major problems so far.
As expected Pale Moon’s own extensions are working flawlessly, and all my non SDK Firefox extensions are running well – though some are labelled as incompatible but aren’t. I did discover that I’m running a couple of Firefox SDK extensions, but found a Pale Moon extension to replace one and can live without the other. So looking promising.
I’m new in Pale Moon browser, I used Iceweasel on Debian for three year. I have heard a lot positive words for Pale Moon since 2011
– I was also a regular Mozilla Firefox since 2006
The day I tried Pale Moon I believed those words that I heard early were accurate. I’m using Pale Moon since 3 month. I’m look forward on the next release. Until now, personally I am very satisfied with this browser. To me is a very minimal, fast and responsive.
Thanks to Pale Moon Staff and everyone who is behind it.
Nili
I have been using Palemoon since Firefox introduced Australis. I have just installed Palemoon v27 beta3 on a PC running Mint 18 and run it up (after making a back-up of my profile).
3 out of my 18 extensions are Jetpack/SDK extensions and have been disabled. They are “DuckDuckGo Plus”, “I don’t care about cookies” and “IP Address and Domain Information”.
At first the bookmarks and history lists would not appear in the left hand panel. However, since restarting the browser they re-appeared and appear to be working OK.
So far I have not found any other problems, even logging into online banking worked OK.
I do NOT care about Palemoon, but my “experience” with Firefox has gone really really bad, so I appreciate any project that keeps a distance from MOZILLA CORPORATION latest, ‘greatest’ changes.
Also, WHY there’s always someone posting non-existent issues about Palemoon?
LAGGY? It is faster than firefox. MOZILLA FIREFOX IS LAGGY AND AN HEAVY MEMORY HOG.
Icecat, k-meleon are other projects that come to mind…
Can anyone say if Palemoon can run these add-ons:
SSleuth
Enforce Encryption
Privacy Badger
HTTPS Everywhere
Thanks!
Privacy Badger
HTTPS Everywhere
Can’t be run because EFF decided not to make them compatible with PM …
No idea. Be it reminded to those who discover Pale Moon that there is a dedicated Pale Moon Add-ons site proposing Pale Moon-specific extensions : https://addons.palemoon.org/
Sometimes one given Firefox add-on may not be compatible with Pale Moon and have no equivalent on the above mentioned page, and that is of course the bad scenario. This is why I returned to Firefox after several months with Pale Moon : I simply felt a missing add-on was too important for me.
But we think in our context and often consider impossible what is only perceived as such because of habits tied to our context. I mean, forgetting extensions, starting a browser from scratch and from there on thinking on what is available given a new context rather than what is not may get a user to think differently. Pale Moon is another browser, it is not Firefox. A new love is hard to live when comparisons are systematically established with past ones.
What to say about the new Pale Moon:
Engine based on something like Gecko 38+ with the UI code of Firefox 24. Why Pale Moon has no later engine revision? Because they are missing important customization components Moonchild wants to keep. That makes it impossible to just take another recent engine and do the same what has now be done with the engine code 38+
What does that mean? Even if Pale Moon 27 is new, the underlying technology which is used is already way outdated again. Compare the amount of supported ES6 features of Pale Moon 27 with recent Chrome/Firefox versions and you see what i mean.
Skip 1-3 years into the future and you will have the same problems like you have with Pale Moon 26.x – many sites will either not work at all or work only partly.
IF you install Pale Moon 27, make sure you have at least a real up to date power horse like Chrome or Firefox… or better screw both and install Otter-Browser … as secondary browser installed.
In case if a page does not work, you view it with the other browser. Anyway, even if Pale Moon 27 is again very outdated i will use it. Because i dislike Mozilla for their Chrome clone attempts and Google Chrome for it’s significance which forces other browsers to be like Google Chrome.
Pale Moon 27 and Otter-Browser work very well together. Nothing more to add here.
Just be aware that Pale Moon 27 has the same issues like the versions before and nothing has changed at all in that matter.
@ Hy:
Pale Moon does not run HTTPS Everywhere, but they have made a fork available, by the name of Encrypted Web; see their page for Known Incompatible Add-Ons.
@ Blueboxx:
Otter Browser 0.9.11 is still in Beta; it is slow, it has grave problems with HTML5 videos and lots of Javascript, and it is available for Vista on up, but NOT for Windows XP.
I say, if people want to complain from their ivory tower about how “outdated the not-yet-published version of Pale Moon is” then they can also get involved and make sure that those “standards” — or what passes for them these days with people thinking drafts are standards — are implemented.
But I guess they’d rather stay in their tower and sit on their behind because it’s easier than actually getting involved.
If Pale Moon doesn’t suit your particular workflow or sites you visit, then you are also free to use something else. At the very least the Pale Moon devs are open and honest in that they want you to use what suits you best, instead of this frantic mad scramble to keep every single user tied to it one way or another. Free choice 100% supported, there!
Because of the different walled gardens that all want to use the embrace-extend-extinguish tactic by doing proprietary things, everyone is already forced to have 2 or 3 browsers anyway. Google web apps only work fully in Chrome (Google client for Google services), for example. Skype web? better use IE/Edge. Etc. Etc.
There is a difference between real drafts and what is considered today already as standard.
And the entries of ECMA-Script variant 6 are already considered as standard. The reason why the major browser developers do support them already. I have to admit that without the option to easily adopt a new engine the task to add not yet implemented drafts is more than complex.
But as Moonchild has no interest in adopting a later version of the Gecko engine and for example Promises has been a total blocker for Pale Moon 26 and it was only possible to get a working implementation with adopting a new engine, the question is, what will happen in the future.
If it is that hard to implement new stuff and can only be done with integrating a new engine, Pale Moon has a serious problem in less than a handful of years.
This is a real problem, and if turns out to be the same situation like it was with Pale Moon 26 – how to move forward? And we all have seen how slow the progress was with only adding a handful of that new drafts up to version 26. Sure, the user-base could have made patches, but it clearly was visible that that kind of knowledge was not available.
So far the benefit was that you have been able to rewrite existing Mozilla code so it fits the own code-base. But seen from the “progress” that Mozilla is making – this will soon be impossible, as it is already damn hard to refactor existing code.
Anyway, i too use Pale Moon 27, as Firefox has become a totally no-go option browser-wise. But still, this problem is looming around in the shadow and it is not becoming smaller, and is steadily increasing.
The thing is, if you just add month for month a new engine, developing is not a problem for one guy like the Cyberfox or Waterfox developer.
If you are forking an older code-base, one guy is not enough. You need someone who has also a deep knowledge of the existing code. Because one guy alone does not have all the necessary knowledge to make all things happen. And if the user-base is not able to fill that void, well, in that case you indeed have a problem. And if that problem is about making the browser compatible with the web of tomorrow… well…
“If Pale Moon doesn’t suit your particular workflow or sites you visit, then you are also free to use something else.”
That’s very kind of you. Good think you remind us. Many thanks.
I’ll remind as well that criticizing, together with arguments and not just to spit like others breath, is welcomed in any democratic, open-minded, tolerant society. It is not corollary of hatred except when hatred is the basis in which case the critic is obsolete.
This said, Pale Moon is as great as using a notepad rather than a word processor : if it’s ok for you then it’s fine.
That’s not an argument, nor is it a critic, not any more than hatred : only a big laugh :)
thanks for the heads up, what a disaster.
Australis finally made it back into the fold I see
pinning an INSECURE browser–too much stuff to be breaking!
Of course this crap has to happen right now with all the other problems. ON a platform (s) that can’t be updated since July 2013
UNACCEPTABLE 1000%
gonna pin it.
Gonna CLONE
gonna get hacked
Spread mayhem
F u a FIREBORN Product of the Environment you FOISTED ME INTO
The arrogant coder language won’t make friendsbut will end in tears. Be sure to clarify exactly your problem or the word nazi’s will reject since we all work for FREE and volunteer our time
Is that another hobson’s Choice FORK() In the road. it isn’t a fork at all, it’s the crossroads demon taking souls.
LOL you destroyed plaemoon with this updated congrats idiots
have to uninstal it now it’s unusbly laggy etc …