Pale Moon 27.0 is out

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 23, 2016
Updated • Jul 14, 2017
Internet, Pale Moon
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67

Pale Moon 27.0 is the latest version of the popular web browser that introduces several important changes, as well as new and updated features.

We reviewed some of the changes previously here on Ghacks, and suggest you check out the article as we won't cover some of them in detail in this release review.

Pale Moon 27.0 is available for download on the official Pale Moon website already. If you have Pale Moon installed already on your device, you may select Pale Moon > Help > About Pale Moon > Check for Updates, to run a manual check for the update. This should get picked up by the browser's automatic updating module, and downloaded and installed then.

Pale Moon 27.0

pale moon 27

Please note that Pale Moon 27.0 is no longer compatible with Windows XP. If you use the operating system, your only option to keep on using the browser is to stay on version 26 of it.

It is also important to note that Pale Moon 27.0 is only available in English currently. Localized versions will be released when the localization work is done.

One of the major new changes of the new browser version is better media support. Pale Moon 27.0 supports Media Source Extensions (not the DRM part Encrypted Media Extensions) and mp4 media files that are delivered in fragments.

pale moon 27 mse

There is also a new option for MSE for WebM videos, but it is not enabled by default as the implementation has a couple of issues right now that need to be resolved first.

Both options should improve the browser's compatibility with many HMTL5 based web streams significantly.

Since EME is not supported, it is still not possible to watch media on commercial streaming services using HTML5. Pale Moon users may however use Adobe Flash for that if they install the plugin on their device.

Other changes and feature additions of interest are support for DirectX 11 and Direct2d 1.1, full support for HTTP/2, and support for SSL / TLS connections to proxy servers.

Many changes and improvements are for "under the hood" systems of the browser. The rendering engine Goanna was updated to version 3.0 and the JavaScript engine was updated as well to support new features.

Both should reduce the number of compatibility issues that users of previous Pale Moon versions experienced in the past on certain sites.

pale moon cache

Pale Moon's caching system has improved as well. You may want to clear the cache right after the upgrade to Pale Moon 27.0 to take full advantage of it.

  1. Select Pale Moon > History > Clear Recent History from the menu.
  2. Click on details, check all items you want cleared (make sure cache is selected).
  3. Select Everything as the time range.
  4. Hit the clear now button.

The team has implemented all relevant security fixes for issues in Firefox 50 or earlier versions. This improves Pale Moon security. Several libraries have been updated to their latest version.

A new download option is available that lets you control whether to save zone information when downloading files.

internet zone information

Zone information mark the file as "downloaded from the Internet" when enabled (which it is by default. You can switch the setting in the options to never if you don't want that to happen anymore (Pale Moon > Options > General).

Removed features

Several features were removed from the latest Pale Moon version:

  1. The internal PDF reader is gone. You need to use a third-party tool or browser plugin to read PDF documents.
  2. Developer Tools are no longer included in Pale Moon. The team notes that they are available as a browser extension.
  3. Removed support for add-on SDK extensions (JetPack extensions). JetPack add-ons downloaded from Mozilla's addon site are not compatible anymore with Pale Moon.

Continued support

Pale Moon will continue to support several features that Firefox may not support for much longer or is not supporting anymore at all.

This includes NPAPI plugins, extensions that use binary/XPCOM components, full browser themes, unsigned and signed extensions, and sync 1.1.

Pale Moon 27.0.1

An update to Pale Moon 27, Pale Moon 27.0.1 was released on November 28, 2016. It is a bug fix release that fixes several issues of the new major release of the web browser:

  1. Fixed MSE playback on sites like Twitch.tv.
  2. Disabled pop-up network status in full screen by default.
  3. Netflix uses a more compatible Web UI in this version.
  4. Workaround for Amazon Prime videos which should play fine now in Pale Moon without enforcing Firefox Compatibility user agent mode.
  5. Fixed a bug that prevented the "reset profile" button to appear on about:support.

Plus several other issues.

Pale Moon 27.0.2

Pale Moon 27.0.2 was released on December 2, 2016. The release fixes on security issue, brings back the Developer Tools (which were not part of the original Pale Moon 27.0 release, and only available as an add-on download), and enables Firefox Compatibility mode by default for the useragent string.

Check out the release notes for Pale Moon 27.0.2 for additional information.

Pale Moon 27.0.3

Pale Moon 27.0.3, released December 16, 2016, is a bugfix and security release. The update fixes a variety of bugs that address issues in the program's network and remote font handling, extension compatibility, and fixed the prompt that shows when sites want to save offline data.

The full list of changes of Pale Moon 27.0.3 is available on this page.

Pale Moon 27.1.0

pale moon 27.1

Pale Moon 27.1.0 was released on February 9, 2017. It is a major update that introduces changes, improvements, fixes and security updates.

Apart from that, it is also the first version of Pale Moon that supports PMKit modules. It is an experimental library designed to offer a basic compatibility layer with Mozilla's Add-on SDK.

As far as changes are concerned, there are plenty. You can check them all out on the official release notes page on the Pale Moon website. Below is a short list of important or noteworthy changes:

  • Media back-end reworked completely. FFmpeg and Pale Moon native MP4 parser are used on Linux instead of gstreamer.
  • Fixed performance regression when many tabs were open.
  • Improved permissions manager (about:permissions).
  • Several crash fixes.
  • Ability to turn off HSTS re-instated.
  • Fixed several security issues in the web browser.

Pale Moon 27.1.1

Pale Moon 27.1.1, released on February 21, 2017 is a stability and bugfix release. The new version fixes stability issues on Windows that could result in hangs, how the Adobe Flash Plugin is detected, a media handling fix to prevent crashes.

Release notes are available on the official Pale Moon website.

Pale Moon 27.1.2

Pale Moon 27.1.2 was released on March 3, 2017. It fixes a single issue: This is a small update adding a workaround for potential deadlocks happening in media elements

Pale Moon 27.2

Pale Moon 27.2.0 was released on March 18, 2017. The new version is a major update in regards to security, compatibility, and back-end functionality.

The release notes list many changes, many of them not visible to users of the browser. This is for instance the case for library updates. Users benefit from those obviously in one way or another.

As far as features and changes are concerned that users may notice:

  • DOM storage honors third-party cookie settings now (if disallowed, third-party data is not stored in DOM storage.
  • Fixed an issue where desktop notifications appeared off-screen.
  • Support for JPEG-XR images added.
  • GStreamer use on Linux removed.
  • Custom toolbars will remember their state now.

Pale Moon 27.2.0 ships with lots of security and privacy changes. This includes support for new algorithms, fixes for potential issues, and other proactive security adjustments to improve the browser's security.

Pale Moon 27.2.1

Pale Moon 27.2.1 was released on March 24th, 2017. The update brings stability and usability improvements to the browser. It includes several crash fixes, and other improvements. Check out the release notes for a full run down on what is new and changed.

Pale Moon 27.3

Pale Moon 27.3 was released on April, 28th, 2017. It is a "major development update" according to the release notes.

Apart from under-the-hood changes, Pale Moon 27.3 brings along with it performance improvements, a number of fixes and security updates.

The browser ships with a number of new preferences:

  • browser.sessionstore.cache_behavior defines the source that the browser's tab restoration feature uses
    • 0 = loaded from cache (default)
    • 1 = refresh from network
    • 2 = refresh from network, and bypass cache
  • accessibility.typeaheadfind.highlightallbydefault -- a Boolean value of true highlights all found words of an on-page search, false does not.
  • accessibility.typeaheadfind.highlightallremember - a Boolean value of true remembers the last state of the highlight all feature, one of false does not.
  • browser.identity.display_punycode defines if and how punycode domains are represented in the browser's address bar
    • 0 = displays IDN name (previous default, no longer)
    • 1 = displays punycode name for domain validated HTTPS sites (default)
    • 2 = displays punycode also for HTTP sites.

All changes are listed on the Pale Moon release notes page.

Pale Moon 27.4

Pale Moon 27.4 has been released. You can check out our review of the latest version here.

Now You: What's your take on the changes in Pale Moon 27?

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Comments

  1. TelV said on July 17, 2017 at 8:12 pm
    Reply

    No NoSquint Plus extension to be seen anywhere in the Extensions options which makes PM a big No-No for me. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nosquint-plus/?src=api

    1. A different Martin said on July 17, 2017 at 10:33 pm
      Reply

      I’m running plain old No Squint 2.1.9.1-signed.1-signed in both Pale Moon x64 26.5 and Pale Moon x64 Portable 27.4, and it seems to work fine. Is No Squint Plus significantly more awesome? I’ve got No Squint Plus installed in Firefox x86 54.0.1, but I rarely use Firefox and don’t remember whether I’ve ever had a chance to compare.

      1. A different Martin said on July 19, 2017 at 12:32 am
        Reply

        @TelV:

        I’ve been using NoSquint in Pale Moon for a long time, so I must have downloaded it from the Firefox extensions site (AMO). I see that it’s still there:

        https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nosquint/

        As I wrote, it still seems to work just fine in Pale Moon. Additionally, both Site and Global settings pop up in dialog boxes/windows that you can move anywhere you want (i.e., out of the way).

        I’m not sure why NoSquint wouldn’t be on the Pale Moon extensions site. To be honest, I rarely go there — usually only if one of the extensions I originally got from AMO stops working. (And since I stopped upgrading my installed copy of Pale Moon at 26.5, that doesn’t happen any more. Before I’m willing to upgrade to 27.x, I’d like to find a working substitute for “open tab count widget,” so I can see at a glance if I’m accumulating too many open tabs. You wouldn’t be able to help me out with that, by any chance, would you? I’m also running 27.4 as a portable install, but I just haven’t used it enough to say whether other specially important extensions are still not working. I noticed some warnings about security fixes in 27.4, so I should probably get serious about upgrading my installed copy soon … alas.)

      2. TelV said on July 18, 2017 at 3:58 pm
        Reply

        The “Plus” flavour has the option to move the panel out of the way if the user wants to see the effect changing the font colour will make if it’s obscuring the text before committing to making the change.

        That and the fact that the previous version is incompatible with FF54.0x: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nosquint/?src=ss

        But unless my eyes are deceiving me No Squint 2.1.9.1 which you referred to doesn’t appear on the Pale Moon extensions page so where did you download it from? https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/

  2. pAUL said on June 25, 2017 at 3:43 am
    Reply

    satrow

    Thanks for your advice, i will look into it. But, if i have to tweak (temporarily ?) PM to allow internet banking (and even some PayPal payments it seems of late), it seems such a bother that i just use another browser for on-line banking when PM does not cooperate.
    cheers
    pAUL

  3. pAUL said on June 23, 2017 at 10:01 am
    Reply

    I have posted earlier that Pale Moon is dying and it is not giving or doing what i want anymore so we will one day part company unfortunately (i originally went to PM as it did things i wanted, the way i wanted to do things).
    Now this so called security issue. OK, maybe PM is ‘secure’, seemingly more so than other browsers but in effect is is useless because to do internet banking one has to then use another browser, which are seemingly not secure according to recent oxymoron mentality posters.

    1. satrow said on June 23, 2017 at 7:59 pm
      Reply

      @pAUL, no need to use another browser, once alerted to the weak site security, you can reduce the security in Pale Moon temporarily to connect (or use traditional methods if it’s a real brick and mortar business), it’s easy with Pale Moon Commander. Use Qualys (I linked it above) to check what the problems are first so you know what you need to modify – don’t forget to drop site’s Admin/contact an email to explain the shortcomings in their system and link to the Qualys page for their site.

  4. satrow said on June 22, 2017 at 8:00 pm
    Reply

    @Jody Thornton:

    Generalising based on your own personal quibbles about inconsequential sites is one thing, @AT’s problem is with his bank’s site – it’s not secure. See #comment-4212865

    Spot the difference?

    Being “cute and creative” won’t help @AT keep his connection safe.

    1. Jody Thornton said on June 23, 2017 at 1:20 am
      Reply

      We’ve both experienced nonsense responses from their team for different things. That is in common. So nope, no difference as far as I see. Even if his bank site is insecure (which I read and acknowledge your explanation), it still doesn’t deal with the fact that other browsers work with it, and Pale Moon doesn’t.

      Being Cute and Creative might cheer up @AT’s day though …lol.

      1. Jody Thornton said on June 23, 2017 at 1:46 pm
        Reply

        I wasn’t speaking for you satrow. I was saying me and @AT@T.

        And where is it cited that Firefox is insecure when it comes to banking sites? Or worse yet is hiding security issues? That’s a major charge you’re stating there. I could complain about a lot of things regarding Firefox, but I don’t recall security issues were a major issue in my going to Pale Moon three years ago. It was all interface related.

        Read paUL’s comment below, and it will further illuminate how silly what you’re stating is.

        And don’t you worry Satrow, I would never, EVER try to speak for you.

      2. satrow said on June 23, 2017 at 5:25 am
        Reply

        Don’t try to speak for me.

        Interesting opinion, I hope your banking site, if you use one, really is secure.

        I’d not knowingly choose a browser that hid security issues from me when it came to the safety of my money and I’d certainly not encourage others to do so.

        As I see it, the Pale Moon devs priority is to keep themselves and their users safe rather than have their browser ‘work’ by cloning the lax security models of more mainstream products.

  5. satrow said on June 21, 2017 at 1:23 am
    Reply

    Sure it’s Pale Moon’s fault that your bank has a relaxed attitude towards internet server security and that those other browsers allow them to. Did you not see or check out a Qualys report on your bank’s site?

    http://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html

    Look, there’s currently a bank heading the recent worst list: http://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.primebank.mobi, is that Pale Moon’s fault as well?

    Or Goanna’s?

    You want to stick with your insecure bank and lax browsers, you’re welcome to, it’s your money.

  6. anton said on March 19, 2017 at 9:03 pm
    Reply

    Cyberfox was always the better alternative to Palemoon… a classic Firefox with improved UI, all extensions and x64 optimized.

    1. Eureka said on May 3, 2017 at 10:20 pm
      Reply

      Cyberfox is also going to be dead in not too long where as Pale moon will keep on going so….

      1. Jody Thornton said on June 21, 2017 at 7:01 pm
        Reply

        @ @AT@AT:

        That’s the sort of response you will get from Moonchild. I posted on another thread a list of Pale Moon Forum threads where Moonchild would offset the blame of his problematic Gecko fork on website developers. Too bad that set of posts was deleted, because it clearly displays the arrogance of that development team and community.

        For the longest time, Moonchild blamed Facebook for that issue where pictures in theatre mode kept refreshing and refreshing. How was it fixed? He changed something in the broswer. To me, that says it’s the browser – DONE!

        But oh no, Moonchild and the Pale Moon fanboys defended that it was Facebook. I wrote back then on the Pale Moon Forum that it was like me going to Dr Moonchild for a checkup, and I went on to describe a scenario where he was stubborn and wouldn’t listen to his patient. I don’t know if it’s still on that forum, but I thought it was cute and creative ….lol (I should post it here one day)

        But yes, Moonchild thinks every Tom, Dick and Harry organization should include Pale Moon on their compatibility list. He seems to forget he’s a small player.

      2. @AT@AT said on June 20, 2017 at 7:53 pm
        Reply

        Pale Moon will be probably be dead also. It relies quite a bit on Firefox code. FACT.
        Contacted the developer when I was having an issue with my bank not recognizing Pale Moon.
        He told me “my bank was the issue and not Pale Moon” ??? Nonsense response.
        Haven’t any issues from using Firefox, SeaMonkey, Waterfox, K-Meleon and even Cyberfox when logging into my bank account.

    2. Blue Knight said on March 20, 2017 at 3:30 pm
      Reply

      Use Firefox x64 with CTR (Classic Theme Restorer) and you can have the same thing than Cyberfox, almost. ;)

      Cyberfox is Firefox with CTR included (if you choose this at the install)

      There is also Waterfox. It’s quite good too, at least as good than Cyberfox. And with CTR you can have the same thing…

    3. A different Martin said on March 19, 2017 at 9:58 pm
      Reply

      I’ve never used Cyberfox, so I don’t have a clue how it compares with Pale Moon. I can tell you that in my experience, and the experience of everyone I have installed Pale Moon for, Pale Moon is dramatically more stable than Firefox (with the same set of identical or workalike extensions in both browsers). Just yesterday, a friend of mine remarked that while Firefox crashes on him at least once a day, he can leave Pale Moon up for weeks at a time with two hundred tabs loaded and it continues to work just fine. (My Pale Moon configuration, with over 50 extensions, has a slow memory leak, and with only 8GB of RAM I have to restart Pale Moon every couple/few days or I will eventually get hit with massive slowdowns as RAM is swapped to the hard drive. My friend has most of the same extensions as I do, but with 16GB of RAM on one computer and 32GB on the other, his Pale Moon has apparently never run out of RAM.)

      Regardless, according to a gHacks post a couple of weeks back, development of Cyberfox will end with the Firefox 52 ESR branch. To the best of my knowledge, Pale Moon plans to soldier on.

      1. A different Martin said on April 14, 2017 at 8:37 pm
        Reply

        @IJLUV:

        I’m not disputing your experience, but your account is literally the first time I’ve ever heard of Pale Moon crashing more often than Firefox. Maybe it’s a question of what extensions are installed and what websites are visited. I do know that one of the handful of times Pale Moon has crashed on me over the years I’ve used it was when I attempted to visit the Microsoft Download Center on it. (I think it was the Microsoft Download Center– it was whatever Microsoft site hosts or used to host individual updates on if you didn’t want to use Windows Update.)

        As for more and more sites not working in Pale Moon, I agree. It’s a gradually worsening problem. Nowadays, a lot of sites seem to be designed to work with Google Chrome, with Firefox as an afterthought and Pale Moon not even in the rear view mirror. I’m not an IT guy and know even less about Web stuff than OSes and browsers, but I’ve read that part of the problem is that Google, Microsoft, and maybe someone else I am forgetting have gotten together and started deploying standards and protocols that are not approved by the W3C. I’m not saying that this is a shared “embrace, extend, and extinguish” strategy, but Pale Moon will have to keep up with the extended standards and protocols if it wants to avoid being extinguished.

      2. IJLUV said on April 14, 2017 at 8:07 pm
        Reply

        “Pale Moon is dramatically more stable than Firefox.”
        Respectfully disagree. Pale Moon crashes far more on my personal computer and on 10 test computers at work.
        Am in IT.
        Also many site do not recognize Pale Moon and haven’t seen issues like that whilst using Cyberfox, Waterfox,
        K-Meleon, Ice Dragon, SeaMonkey.

  7. A$$N$$A said on February 12, 2017 at 10:37 pm
    Reply

    @Kubrick
    Pale Moon does indeed contain some code from some versions of Firefox …FACT…so therefore it does not entirely use it’s own code.
    Quote from this site”The Pale Moon team is working on Pale Moon 27 currently, the next version of the popular web browser that shares code with Firefox.”
    It’s GUID has changed and the Goanna engine is a FORK of Gecko.

  8. Kubrick said on February 9, 2017 at 5:41 pm
    Reply

    well cyberfox is just firefox with a different coat on so it is not worth the hassle.

    Anyway palemoon has been updated.
    https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&p=105790&sid=9b073fd29d20979bc5b65925745b1b65#p105790

    1. A@@T said on February 10, 2017 at 3:35 pm
      Reply

      So was Pale Moon in the beginning. Cyberfox is also a genuine fork of Firefox and performs much better than Pale Moon. The newest update of Pale Moon is not as good as the earlier version of the browser. I am using Cyberfox now for all my browsing needs.

      1. A different Martin said on February 12, 2017 at 12:20 am
        Reply

        @ Kubrick:

        For now, I’m using Pale Moon 26.5 x64 for continued compatibility with a couple of essential extensions. It seems to be working just as well in Linux Mint 18.1 (Cinnamon) and Chapeau Linux 24 (Gnome 3.2), in VirtualBox, as it does in Windows 7. Importing my profile from Windows was pretty easy — I just copied and pasted it. The only “complication” was that I had to re-enter my Session Manager folder. (I use the same sessions folder that I use in Windows, so in a Linux guest it had to be re-entered as a shared folder.) And of course I had to edit an *.ini file so that Pale Moon would use the imported profile instead of the default one. Anyway, it was pretty easy.

        I just “installed” Pale Moon Portable 27.1 x64 (in Windows), but I haven’t played around with it yet. I gather that one of the changes they made will make it a lot easier for Jetpack/SDK extension developers (or forkers, I suppose) to adapt their extensions to Pale Moon but that the Firefox version still won’t work “out of the box.” In the meantime, I’m not updating until Download Status Bar and Tab Mix Plus work as well as they do in 26.5.

      2. Kubrick said on February 11, 2017 at 10:03 pm
        Reply

        nonsense.
        i find pale moon runs extremely well on linux and uses its own code etc.Cyberfox is just firefox with a different name…FACT.

  9. B*rb*r* said on February 9, 2017 at 4:46 pm
    Reply

    Had been using Pale Moon for quite some time. Pale Moon 27 does not work with a lot of sites I use on a regular basis.
    Have no issues visiting those sites using Cyberfox, Firefox, SeaMonkey and K-Meleon.
    Am using Cyberfox now for all of my browsing needs.
    Hopefully the developer at Pale Moon will revert some of the changes made when Pale Moon updated to version 27.
    The earlier versions of Pale Moon were quite good, but, sadly this is no longer applicable to the browser at the moment.
    I wish the developer at Pale Moon good luck.

  10. Kubrick said on January 24, 2017 at 2:36 pm
    Reply

    I have been using palemoon for several months and its an excellent browser.Has a sensible update cycle and my chosen extensions work just fine.
    It really depends what you want from a browser.

  11. Anonymous said on December 6, 2016 at 2:05 am
    Reply

    Pale Moon 27 does not work with some basic web pages. It seems to have way to many bugs. I went back to 26.5 and everything works again.

  12. Birmingham said on November 25, 2016 at 1:27 pm
    Reply

    I don’t know about videos on Twitch and I read some people have issues with Netflix page, but in Pale Moon 27 youtube videos (not Flashplayer mode) load remarkably faster for me, without loading delay at the start.

  13. Browsy said on November 24, 2016 at 8:38 pm
    Reply

    I had to smile when I read about “better media support”, because youtube videos stopped showing after I updated =D Maybe something to do with addons, we’ll see. I hope they don’t start to “fine tune” things so much that they end up just messing the whole thing up. Well, I guess we’ll always have K-meleon portable…

    Update: I confirm that YT vids work after deactivating the “better media support”…

    1. Lestat said on November 24, 2016 at 9:24 pm
      Reply

      Pale Moon 27 has still some issues in some video related cases. It works nice with Youtube. No big issue in my case. The only thing which makes some trouble is if you activate MSE in combination with WebM – Deactivate that piece and all should run quite nice.

      This is one of the known problems with 27 and the devs hope this can be fixed. Another issue was that Twitch is broken, but this is already fixed internally and will be most likely available with some other fixes in 27.0.1

  14. Lestat said on November 24, 2016 at 2:00 pm
    Reply

    Using Pale Moon 27 and i am rather happy, even if i seem to “complain” about the fact that the decision to use something like Gecko version 38 and not the latest Gecko engine versions is crippling the ability to enjoy pages which are in need for latest drafts and new implemented “script-standards”.

    But i understand that Moonchild had the choice between a Pale Moon which is the same like Firefox new (a Chromium caricature like browser) or a Pale Moon which supports the traditions of old Mozilla Firefox which was about user choice, customization, being different and using not Chrome based or Chrome inspired technologies – what of course is not without troubles sadly.

    Still, i would not want to replace Pale Moon with the latest Firefox, which is just about becoming even more of a Google Chrome look and work-a-like soon, or Chrome/Chromium and it’s various disappointing rebrand offsprings like Brave or Vivaldi (which i examined for a certain time but discarded them because of the countless issues Chromium engine is having).

    Looking forward for a bug fix release which will hopefully will fix or improve playback on pages like Twitch or Youtube in combination with MSE (a new “standard” which is disgusting and shameful if you compare it with it’s open present and previous alternatives, but can’t be ignored or avoided these days sadly).

    And another reason why i am able to appreciate Pale Moon is that i never used more add-ons than an advertisement or script blocker. All of you who love to have tons of add-ons, be aware you will NOT be happy with Pale Moon 27 as the switch from Mozilla to Google based extension technology will more or less kill the chance that new Firefox add-on developers ever would support Pale Moon, as both browsers are using 100% different add-on systems in the near future which are not compatible with the other browser’s used system.

    If you are unable to find someone who rewrites future add-ons, if you are unable to do it on your own, if you are unable to convince the add-on developer of choice to create a special working add-on for Pale Moon, you are out of luck soon.

    Pale Moon is no longer an add-on toybox like Opera, Chrome, Firefox. Pretty sure this is also not the goal of the Pale Moon developer team. If you see Pale Moon for what it is – a simple browser for browsing webpages – and not demand something fancy like it is featured in new Firefox or Chrome or whatever, you will be happy.

    Otherwise, i suggest you switch browsers.

  15. I said on November 24, 2016 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    Hmmm RES is not compatible with v27 . Now I’m conflicted. I have come to depend on RES but want to support PM by taking up v27 :/

  16. jojo said on November 24, 2016 at 10:16 am
    Reply

    If past PM releases are any guide, they will very soon release 27.01 and then 0.2 or 27.1. Best to wait till they get the bugs out of the bug fix release.

    1. Jojo said on November 25, 2016 at 7:45 am
      Reply

      I took a chance and updated to 27.0.0 and of course, nothing worked. My multi-line tabbar was hosed and none of the webpages would display (everyone was blank).

      I had to revert to 26.5.0 and now all is back to normal.

  17. A different Martin said on November 24, 2016 at 9:22 am
    Reply

    I run Firefox x86 and Pale Moon x64, with the same set of extensions, whether identical or workalike. Ever since Firefox went Google-Chrome-wannabe with Aurora, Pale Moon x64 has been my primary, default browser. But for several days, recently, I was unable to save anything from Pale Moon (weirdly enough, an issue apparently caused by Privacy Badger v. 1.01, which was supposed to be compatible), so I made Firefox my primary, default browser for a brief time. It was torture. I had to buy a bunch of stuff from Amazon for a job I’m doing, and the pages took ten times as long to load and refresh in Firefox as they did in Pale Moon. Plus, while the only time Pale Moon has ever crashed on me was when Mozilla botched its introduction of signed extensions, Firefox crashed on several times in the course of three or four days. I did a little thinking, uninstalled Privacy Badger from Pale Moon, and made Pale Moon my default browser once again, with a great sense of relief.

    And then version 27 came along. Searchonymous doesn’t work anymore, because it’s a JetPack extension. All-in-One Sidebar doesn’t work anymore, because it’s just “incompatible” (not because it’s a JetPack extension). Download Status Bar is listed as installed and working, but the thing is, it doesn’t actually display or work. And a number of features of Tab Mix Plus aren’t working, or at least not correctly. (Full-page tab previews aren’t being displayed when you do control-tab, and the Tab Bar scrolling buttons don’t show up until you turn them off and back on again .. every time you start or restart Pale Moon.)

    I’m hoping the problems with Download Status Bar (super important), All-in-One Sidebar (pretty important), and Tab Mix Plus (pretty annoying) will be fixed, and it would be nice if a compatible port of Searchonymous were to appear, but even if none of that happens … I just can’t go back to Firefox. I just don’t have that much time left on this Earth. ;-) And hey, if Pale Moon now supports more “modern” protocols and standards and fewer sites will be broken on it, that takes some of the sting out of (temporarily?) losing some of my favorite extensions.

    1. A different Martin said on November 29, 2016 at 2:16 am
      Reply

      I gave it the old college try but ended up downgrading from 27.0.1 to 26.5.0 — mostly because it was too hard living without Download Status Bar, but a few other extensions tipped the scales as well.

      Actually, as a result of the downgrade I discovered that in the course of the previous Pale Moon upgrade, an incompatible updated version of All-in-One Sidebar apparently managed to slip through and get installed. I re-installed the last compatible older version and now everything is back to normal.

      Anyway, I don’t know how long I’ll stick with 26.5. It will depend on how many more sites use “modern” (non-W3C?) web standards and protocols and won’t run in Pale Moon 26.5, and whether my favorite extensions get forked or made compatible. If developers are happy making less powerful extensions using WebExtensions and being able to port them to Chrome and Opera, that’s fine, but I really hope that XUL/XPCOM extension developers start looking primarily to Pale Moon, where their UI and functionality contributions are wanted and appreciated.

  18. Jack Alexander said on November 24, 2016 at 5:22 am
    Reply

    Until the add on issue is updated I’ll be sticking with the former version. I like my extensions….

  19. Goanna said on November 24, 2016 at 5:02 am
    Reply

    Mozilla is gonna abandon Gecko Engine soon completely and dump XUL Add-ons, plugins, etc. for Limited Functionality WebExtension to make it like Chrome…..

    Palemoon is a TRUE FORK GECKO ENGINE(GOANA) keeping XUL Add-ons, Plugins, etc. like how the original Firefox was with improvements in both security and functionality so as to be web-standard compatible….

    It runs lighter and faster on my Windows 8.1 Tablet with 1GB Ram, compared to Firefox 50 that puts the tablet to a crawl and worse on Chrome….

    1. wonton said on November 24, 2016 at 11:06 am
      Reply

      other than rename gecko to goanna pale moon really has done nothing to make the gecko engine different. They should call it chameleon gecko engine in disguise. Renaming an engine then claiming its new is well sure you can work it out.

      1. wonton said on November 25, 2016 at 1:53 pm
        Reply

        @Not You

        Can you backup you’re claims these claims are (false)?

      2. Not You said on November 24, 2016 at 6:57 pm
        Reply

        Can you backup your (false) claims?

  20. Max said on November 24, 2016 at 1:23 am
    Reply

    Been using the beta since it was released a few weeks back and am very happy with the changes so far.
    Have 14 Pale Moon extensions and over 70 Firefox extensions working without problem (not always the latest version of Firefox extensions, because recent versions of some include tweaks that don’t apply to Pale Moon). I did have to ditch half a dozen SDK extensions, but found replacements for a couple and can live without the others.

    As a heavy user of extensions, Pale Moon continues to look a much better long-term prospect than Firefox.

  21. wonton said on November 23, 2016 at 6:51 pm
    Reply

    last straw with Pale Moon uninstalling it switching to cyberfox full time because it works with all my addons

  22. 5 said on November 23, 2016 at 4:24 pm
    Reply

    Tried Palemoon several times. But most of the addons I use in Firefox did and still don’t work. Also there was no improvement in browsing speed with Palemoon. In my opion Palemoon is an awkward browser and I rather stay with the originial Firefox. Yes, Firefox developers make strange decisions but with a little tweaking and addons it is still the best browser for my needs.

    1. DaveyK said on November 24, 2016 at 12:02 pm
      Reply

      For me, I use Pale Moon not because of full addon compatibility with Firefox – it’s a different browser after all. I also use it not because of any speed reasons. For me, I use it because Pale Moon is what Firefox used to be – flexible & customisable. Mozilla have been increasingly removing functionality with Firefox and locking various bits of it down. I found it regularly annoying when I’d install a new Firefox version and find that they’d removed yet more functionality, and locked more bits of the browser down so that I couldn’t tweak them any more (Australis being the main catalyst for this).

      Pale Moon isn’t the best browser at a lot of things, but it is much more customisable and tweakable than Firefox and Chrome currently are. That’s why it’s my primary browser, and PM27 is a nice update overall.

      1. Jody Thornton said on June 2, 2017 at 5:29 pm
        Reply

        @Dan:

        Actually there is a fellow by the user name of Dibya on MSFN who has implemented system calls on XP (he has a fairly reliably working package to install called Extended Kernel for XP). Basically, it allows many unsupported applications to run on Windows XP – including Pale Moon v27.x. It was acknowledged on the Pale Moon forum today here, with a screenshot:

        https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=12478&start=60

        Here’s more about it from MSFN:
        http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/176741-browsers-requiring-dibyas-extendedxp-to-sort-of-work-with-winxp/#comment-1139343

        And you can fetch it from here:
        https://ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=10631

        Hope it helps
        :)

      2. dan said on December 19, 2016 at 11:05 am
        Reply

        Actually new firefox is still highly customisable, though you do have to add about 8 extensions to restore all the functionally. I was one of the many complaining about the Australis changes, which were mainly default settings. I have reset the appearance of my firefox to be almost identical to FF24, but I am running FF50 which (unlike Palemoon) still works on XP. Also you get a several extra features that didn’t exist in old FF.
        You’ll need:

        Classic theme restorer
        Classic toolbar buttons
        Downloads window
        Old location bar
        Right to click
        Status-4-evar
        Theme font and size changer
        Showcase

        It was a PITA to set up, but once you have the settings saved you can easily carry them over to new versions. Thus you can keep the old appearance and functionality plus stay up to date with new web features and not worry about websites breaking.

      3. RoestVrijStaal said on November 24, 2016 at 5:20 pm
        Reply

        I’m with you. Mozilla became evil.

        PR shouts on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ like “Browse Freely”, “Freedom is personal”, “Enjoy the most built-in privacy tools of any browser.”, “Freedom is yours”, “Use the only browser built for people, not profit.” make me cringe. Because those are lies.

        Mozilla doesn’t care about privacy because ads on the new tab page.
        You don’t have personal freedom because you can’t customize the GUI according to your workflow.
        Mozilla is a company behind a foundation façade. http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=10460890

    2. Sinon said on November 23, 2016 at 7:56 pm
      Reply

      Considering Pale Moon and Firefox are completely different browsers now it makes since that there would be issues getting extensions from one to work in the other.

  23. Mike J. said on November 23, 2016 at 2:11 pm
    Reply

    The recent new edition of Cyberfox (50) fixed most of the freeze-up problems, so I will probably stick with it.

    1. Nele said on November 23, 2016 at 9:54 pm
      Reply

      Me too. There are not compatibility issues. I mean not yet :)
      We will see when e10 will be enabled by default. I like Pale Moon, but this browser quickly becomes obsolete with such a small user base. Sadly.

  24. b said on November 23, 2016 at 1:49 pm
    Reply

    Hi Martin Brinkmann
    your website works great, when I use palemoon, but ever since the new firefox version, I’m not able to see your screeshots/ implemented pictures in your blogposts. the wheel in my tab keeps turning but is not capable to connect with the picture parts.
    any suggestions to how to fix it ?
    anybody else with the same experience?

    1. Mike O said on November 23, 2016 at 2:47 pm
      Reply

      @b
      I had the exact same issue on this site after updating to Firefox 50. I couldn’t dope it out. After backing up bookmarks, user.js files, etc. I uninstalled the FF50 and deleted left over folders. After a clean re-install of FF50 all is well now and screenshots appear.

    2. Gunner said on November 23, 2016 at 2:41 pm
      Reply

      I think you should check your browser’s Javascript state, is it enabled or disabled ?
      And if you install NoScript you should try to turn it off.

      The new Ghacks.net use a technology called “Lazy Load” to save bandwidth (which need CSS or Javascript), so I think your problem is that.

      1. b said on November 23, 2016 at 4:12 pm
        Reply

        @Gunner
        could you please tell me where to check? I suppose it’s in my user settings; but I’m no hardcore tech savvy. I haven’t installed NoScript.

      2. Alex said on November 23, 2016 at 3:28 pm
        Reply

        JavaScript state in my both browsers is OK. It is enabled.

    3. Alex said on November 23, 2016 at 2:39 pm
      Reply

      I have the same issue with both, Pale Moon and Firefox this morning. It looks to me like Internet (DNS) issues. Both browsers can’t reach cdn.ghacks.net server.

      1. b said on November 24, 2016 at 2:32 pm
        Reply

        @Alex
        maybe you got everything fixed by now. if not, take a look at this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-problems-images-not-show
        just like you, I checked my settings and javascript is enabled. I therefore searched for solutions via mozillas supportsite. I tried out all steps mentioned; but alas in vain. it mentions 2 usersettings to check, but they dont figure in version 50, so it might be troubleshooting for an older version. anyways, I run ubuntu, so I won’t refresh nor reset FF yet, as it might lead to a preinstallation of my ubuntu OS.
        please, let me know if you get it figured out. good luck

  25. Dan said on November 23, 2016 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    I’ve been using PM27Beta for a week now, and so I’ve seen the changes in the browser. It is sad that the more PM diverges from Fx, the more extensions are becoming incompatible with PM. Moonchild’s opinion is that the extension developers should start supporting PM, but with such a small userbase, it is doubtful if more than a few developers would bother doing so.

    1. ShintoPlasm said on November 23, 2016 at 2:43 pm
      Reply

      That is indeed the biggest problem with the entire Pale Moon concept. Even though many are annoyed at Mozilla’s recent changes to the add-on ecosystem, Firefox’s big user base will prompt most devs to adapt. PM’s user base is tiny by all measures, and very few devs would bother with it despite Moonchild’s boisterous confidence.

      1. pAUL said on November 25, 2016 at 2:18 pm
        Reply

        ShintoPlasm i think you have heralded the demise of Pale Moon. PM is, or should i say was, the best browser i have used. Version 27 has killed too many extensions i use regularly and after much trying to fix or find alternatives, it’s back to v26.5 for me. As you point out, PM extensions were piggy-backing off of Firefox. Firefox extensions will still be developed & updated due to user base and PM will likely stagnate extension wise. One thing life has taught me is nothing that is good/useful/functional/adequate etc etc stays that way as it always has to be updated/upgraded/improved to the point that is ends up NOT being what people originally started using it for.
        It evolves up it’s own asshole.

  26. David said on November 23, 2016 at 12:18 pm
    Reply

    The XSS Filter has also been removed with stability cited as the reason. I do hope the feature do make it back in the browser later on.

  27. moonpower said on November 23, 2016 at 12:13 pm
    Reply

    finally i can totally remove Firefox and make Palemoon as default.

  28. Someone said on November 23, 2016 at 8:41 am
    Reply

    Heard that Self Destructing Cookies is a Jetpack extension and therefore won’t work in PM 27. Is there any replacement yet?

    1. some goy said on November 23, 2016 at 9:55 am
      Reply

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