Pale Moon 28.6.0 major update released
The Pale Moon development team released Pale Moon 28.6.0 to the public on July 2, 2019. The new version of the web browser is a major development update that focuses on "under-the-hood improvements and bugfixes, code cleanup, and performance" according to the release notes.
The new Pale Moon version is available via the browser's integrated updating system already. Pale Moon users can run a manual check for updates with a click on Pale Moon > Help > Check for Updates. The browser should pick up the new version during the check so that it can be installed.
Pale Moon 28.6.0 is also available on the official project website.
Tip: Check out our Pale Moon Tweaks guide here.
Pale Moon 28.6.0
Most changes in Pale Moon 28.6.0 are under-the-hood changes; users should not expect a huge number of new features but the changes made in the release improve the experience in several ways.
Pale Moon 28.6.0 features support for new ECMAScript features that are part of ES2019, the next version of JavaScript and support for gzip compressed SVG in Opentype fonts.
One change improves the encryption strength of the browser's master password if set. The team changed NSS to "a custom version" to improve the encryption strength.
Users who have set a master password already need to change the master password so that the stronger encryption is used. It is possible to set the same master password in the process.
The development team notes that the encryption may take some time to complete when set up depending on the number of stored passwords and the performance of the computer, and that it is not backwards compatible. In other words: the password store cannot be accessed anymore using older Pale Moon versions once the switch has been made.
Several tweaks and fixes were made to improve the performance of the browser or certain operations. Improvements were made to the DOM and the parser, and fixes were implemented to address performance issues, e.g. on sites with complex event regions or display lists.
Several components, some Telemetry related, were removed in the new Pale Moon version. The web browser includes several fixes for issues, e.g. an issue that prevented the printing of certain web pages or tab previews on the taskbar.
Closing Words
Pale Moon is a popular web browser, especially among former Firefox users who wanted to keep on using browser extensions that Firefox dropped support for when version 57 of the browser was released.
Pale Moon v28.7.0 is out. Meanwhile, Moonchild seems to have this to say:
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22809
Not sure that each point couldn’t be argued, or that this manifesto actually equates success. Sounds more like, “If I say it enough, I’ll believe it!”
The first couple of lines were the best. It’s like if I said, “Everyone told me I couldn’t do it, so I asked other people to do it for me and they wouldn’t.” I don’t know what motivated him to post that and then immediately lock it, but it would have been better had he not done it at all.
Pale Moon announced yesterday, July 9, 2019, that their servers were breached on December 27, 2017 and hackers infected all archived installers of Pale Moon 27.6.2 and below with a malware dropper.
At least it was detected after only 1 1/2 years! :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/cbm2c9/hackers_infect_pale_moon_archive_server_with_a/
Wow! I just looked through the reddit article you pointed to, and followed the palemoon IRC channel link it contained (https://freenode.logbot.info/palemoon/20190604#c2229527), showing a spectacular paranoic hissyfit attack by one of the developers upon a user who wanted to make a customized Spanish-language version of the installer for use by his brother.
After accusing the user of criminal intent and enumerating all of the different sections of the user agreement that such an action would violate, the developer forcefully asserted that:
“Pale Moon is and always will be an en-US product”
** No wonder ** the developers took major umbrage at my use of the word “trumpish” to refer to the labeling as “malware” a popular extension (“NoScript”) that Pale Moon can no longer install (because recent versions of it it now use “web extensions” which they don’t support)
They considered my criticism offensive and sent an email telling me “this will be your only warning”. Any further such use of the forum result in my being removed from the forum.
This had actually been preceded by a message in which I’d been trying to be helpful to them. I wrote that I had discovered that a browser hang situation (which had been reported by a number of users, but which the developers would not acknowledge as real), could be much more easily reproduced by limiting memory resources. The response I got was criticism that the browser was not intended to be used in such circumstances. So I responded with a message saying that I was merely suggesting the use of the well respected debugging technique to take advantage of edge conditions. Things deteriorated from there.
Speaking of being offensive, check out how Matty Tobin communicates in this thread. Then refuses to change it:
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=22819#p173546
@Alexel:
Actually I wonder if Pale Moon v28.x would not render sites a tad better overall than SeaMonkey at this point. The latter and its council sound like they both have a sorted future, no?
@Jody Thornton
As Seamonkey uses newer Firefox engine code, it has of course a higher compatibility rate with modern web-standards.
So no, Seamonkey is ahead of them – which – seen from how they handle this (adopting over and over again new Firefox engine code – with the inevitable chance to end like Waterfox – losing at a soon coming point all their customization features because of how they handle it) it is not going to change – the opposite actually. As long as Seamonkey is doing their thing and adopting new engines, their standard/draft support is increasing, while Pale Moon’s ability to render pages is decreasing, as they are unable to adopt newer/more complex web-standards and pages are of course sooner or later switching towards that newer/more complex standards.
Pretty much disappointing that the Pale Moon developers are ignoring and not answering what they could do to find real working alternative options to solve issues like implementing
1) rest spread parameters for object literals
2) Add window.event
3) ES6 modules support
and other missing complex web-standards.
I know they have not the skills to implement features like that. I do NOT blame them for this. But expecting that the user is able to solve this…. Not even adding bounty options for successful implementations is changing that.
How can anyone with common sense expect that the user-base is able to successfully implement features when even the makers fail in doing so? If the Pale Moon project should be criticized for something, then it is this and the lack of answers/problem solving attempts.
Why are they not asking the community for donations to hire a programmer who can solve that pressing issues? This is my personal big problem with UXP/Pale Moon! It is either simple/medium-complex tasks which are solved by the makers themselves – the rest is put into user-hands and ignored. That way you can not argue that UXP/Pale Moon will succeed.
@Lord-Lestat
Is that really you? It can‘t be! That‘s what I was saying the entire time. Pale Moon has only a small team behind it, they are unable to handle the entire Gecko rendering engine by themselves. Historically, they fixed their problems by switching to a newer Gecko engine. As far as I understand, that is not possible anymore. Therefore, their future looks pretty grim. And realistically, nobody in the community will help them due to a lack of knowledge in the community.
This is why I doubt the feasibility and long-term quality of Pale Moon, and that‘s why I don‘t consider it a browser which can match Chrome or Firefox.
You probably remember well how I was attacked for saying that Pale Moon is increasingly becoming outdated.
@Iron Heart
@Jody Thornton
You are hardly a guarantee for fairness or comment-quality! So why should i respect anyone of you 2 – and allow it that i get dragged to the same level of where you guys have some personal beef to fry with the Pale Moon developers? Also, some of you seem to really believe that radical-left-wing ideology is the one and only way to look at things (towards Iron Hearts political comment from above) – not i am living in a dream-world, but more you instead @Iron-Heart. I am not right-wing – i am realist and see the world how it really is. There is a difference. The Conservative movement is the one who walks the way of progression and intelligence while the left movement is only interested in dumb-down things to the smallest common compromise.
Anyway, the browser still can be used and there is not at all reasoning why not using it as long as it working partly. The developers could work against that bit-rot of the web-standards/drafts section in the way that they hire or rent a developer who can take care of that. Why they have not even been thinking of this… i really do not know.
Anyway, compared to you guys i never would call Pale Moon “outdated and insecure” – while i do agree that the browser falls behind in supporting the modern web, this small team does what it can do – even if it is not at all enough and they lack a reliable Plan-B.
And all this i say without personal hard feelings towards the Pale Moon team. That is much more of what you 2 are capable of. So excuse me my harsh wording, but it had to be said.
“Conservatives are progressive”? Are you serious? They obtained the label “conservative” due to behaviors and attitudes conforming to the (pre- political) dictionary definition of conservative. The root of the word conservative is “conserve”, meaning to keep things the same, to resist change. That is diametrically the opposite of progress!
@Lord-Lestat wrote:
…. why should i respect anyone of you 2
Oh ….. there’s the Lord-Lestat I remember. Whew! My world makes sense again.
@Lord-Lestat wrote:
Anyway, compared to you guys i never would call Pale Moon “outdated and insecure†– while i do agree that the browser falls behind in supporting the modern web, this small team does what it can do – even if it is not at all enough and they lack a reliable Plan-B.
And all this i say without personal hard feelings towards the Pale Moon team. That is much more of what you 2 are capable of. So excuse me my harsh wording, but it had to be said.
…………………
But you are complaining about it just the same @Lord-Lestat. If you summaries your statements in this thread, you beasically DO say it’s outdated (just not in those words) In fact, at least people like me and @Iron Heart aren’t tip-toeing around our feelings. Besides, in the end, my issues weren’t about the browser – it was about the Pale Moon team. That point seems to never quite get through.
And stop generalizing and lumping together “lefties” into one movement. Day to day, as a left-of centre person, I hardly think the way that you describe, and my life isn’t “dumbed-down”. Simplified? Yes, so I can spend more time on what’s important in life.
Let’s see …. you act smug, arrogant, judgemental….. You’re right. I’m NOT at the same level as you. Thanks for proving yourself to be the lack of a whole person I originally pegged you as.
@Jody Thornton
You are totally right. Lord Lestat whines about the browser being outdated, and when we say the very same thing, he goes on to say that he would never claim such a thing. This is beyond ridiculous. It is also laughable that he whines about us supposedly having „beef“ with the Pale Moon devs, while clearly holding personal grudges against us himself.
Admittedly, I am not too fond of the Pale Moon developers, because they frequently act as trolls around here, and due to their despicable attitude towards their users. But then, let‘s suppose that the Pale Moon developers were actually nice people, would this render my criticism that Pale Moon is increasingly becoming outdated invalid? Of course not, one criticism is personal, the other is related to tech. But in the eyes of Lordy, both criticisms are one and the same and interchangeable.
He assumes the worst when it comes to us, but it‘s not that surprising. His black and white thinking is obvious to anyone who can read. There need to be white knights and utter devils, and nothing in between. That‘s also why every person left of center (politically) is nothing short of vermin in his view, even if their actual ideas are moderate and quite reasonable. He claims to be conservative, but if you ask me, he is clearly far right. And I am so, so tired of reading his tripe all day under so many articles on gHacks. He says that he is easy to get along with, but in reality he is just annoying with his spiteful attitude and his bipolar world view.
In my opinion, the gHacks moderation should do something about his diatribes, but experience tells me that nothing will happen in this regard. So we will have to live with his black / white thinking and far right propaganda going forward. Maybe he voluntarily leaves some day. I can‘t wait for this day to arrive.
@Lord-Lestat wrote:
…. why should i respect anyone of you 2
Oh ….. there’s the Lord-Lestat I remember. Whew! My world makes sense again.
@Lord-Lestat wrote:
Anyway, compared to you guys i never would call Pale Moon “outdated and insecure†– while i do agree that the browser falls behind in supporting the modern web, this small team does what it can do – even if it is not at all enough and they lack a reliable Plan-B.
And all this i say without personal hard feelings towards the Pale Moon team. That is much more of what you 2 are capable of. So excuse me my harsh wording, but it had to be said.
…………………
But you are complaining about it just the same @Lord-Lestat. If you summaries your statements in this thread, you beasically DO say it’s outdated (just not in those words) In fact, at least people like me and @Iron Heart aren’t tip-toeing around our feelings. Besides, in the end, my issues weren’t about the browser – it was about the Pale Moon team. That point seems to never quite get through.
And stop generalizing and lumping together “lefties” into one movement. Day to day, as a lfet-of centre person, I hardly think the way that you describe, and my life isn’t “dumbed-down”. Simplified? Yes, so I can spend more time on what’s important in life.
Let’s see …. you act smug, arrogant, judgemental….. You’re right. I’m NOT at the same level as you. Thanks for proving yourself to be the lack of a whole person I originally pegged you as.
{Delete this copy of the comment} – spelling mistake
@Iron Heart:
I know! This new found viewpoint of his blew me away as well. I thought – “Wow! Lord Lestat is coming toward reason.” It seemed we’re now all on the same page.
But alas, when I extended that olive branch of kindness up above, he had to step on it. I’m saddened by it really.
@Iron Heart
@Jody Thornton
And for everyone who is wondering – it is pretty easy to get along with me. Simply do not get in my way or do not anger/provoke me – and we are all fine to get along with each other.
Also, i rather would side and feel sympathy with Cthulhu or your random daily appearing Eldritch abomination out of the deepest of all possible abysses before i would with people like Appster (Sunglasses) www@com or similar.
There is a certain moral red-line which even i would not cross.
Already said Goodbye to Firefox. Firefox squeezes lots of CPU and RAM in Windows 10 [The Surveillance OS].
SeaMonkey is like a feather on Windows 10 [Along with FireMin], uses less RAM and CPU. Palemoon is a legacy browser. My choice is SeaMonkey, You can open umpteen tabs with less RAM and CPU.
I have been using palemoon for several years now and it has never been any trouble at all.I just appreciate it for what it is which is an alternative choice of browser which we are free to use.
No doubt Pale Moon is a “craft” browser. It has a following of folks who value the ability of those crusty old “legacy” add-ons to expand the built-in security aspects and other aspects to their liking. PM is reminiscent of the old days when upstart Firefox was the challenger to Internet Explorer. While some are offended by some of PM’s developers, they respond to users concerns directly and promptly. It’s doubtful that the head dude at Mozilla or any of the board of directors will show up to help users as Moonchild & company do for PM users. So there is a choice: either mainstream big buck$ browsers that slurp, nudge and play politics or Pale Moon that operates on a higher ethical plane as just a browser.
Which browser do you choose, Grasshopper?
[Here. Just give me a sec while I squeeze into my “League of Pale Moon Avengers” costume.]
A mini-bug-fix release to this major release was just issued. Release notes can be found here: http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml
The Reader View extension, which had stopped working and which as a “vision-challenged” person I rely on pretty heavily, got updated as well.
I continue to be impressed at how quickly the Pale Moon team and its extension developers stay on top of problems. (Well … at least readily *fixable* problems. I seem to recall coming across one Pale-Moon-specific extension that didn’t survive the jump to 28.x and never got updated. Sorry — I just don’t remember which one it was, and I don’t even know whether it’s still listed on Pale Moon’s extensions site.)
Anyway, no major awfulness to report from this end, so far, especially now that Reader View has been fixed.
[Oof! I just peeled off my costume and let my stomach out. Boy, does that feel good!]
@Peterc Yeah, sorry about the slight delay there – I fully intended to have the RV update out *before* the PM release. Still, glad you find it useful. :)
Palemoon is life, Palemoon is love.
@Dilly Dilly
I agree: I never experienced problems with crashed websites during the number of years( 5 ) with PM as my main browser.
so please, anyone: name the exact websites, that don’t work
I’m curious and would like to check out.
Old technology. E.g can’t show animated thumbnails on xHamster.
No lag, none with scrolling, none with surfing. There is nothing wrong at all with Pale Moon other than the fact that it’s still not in the Ubuntu and Solus repositories. Lighter than chromium browsers and will load facebook even when those browsers make an oopsie and fail to load the site. MC Straver is working on newer privacy and canvas controls under the hood, but he also occasionally adds extra security and privacy features in the settings themselves. Easy to set up and the engine and browser itself are constantly being updated. Just because the number is lower than Firefox, doesn’t mean the browser is outdated or less than Firefox. Mozilla recently had an issue with their certificates being outdated, if this is how they do business, Pale Moon’s developer has worked around plenty of the nonsense right in Mozilla code in the past. He strips out a lot of unnecessary stuff so that there is less of an attack vector for exploitation. Many of Mozilla’s patches that apply get implemented on schedule, but a lot of the security comes from the developer.
@Anonymous:
Pale Moon may not be in Ubuntu’s official repos, but it *does* have two officially endorsed PPAs. I use one of them (Steve Pusser’s). New releases appear *very* promptly, and it’s worked flawlessly for me in Linux Mint and Kubuntu through several updates. (I can NOT say the same for Waterfox, which I ended up uninstalling from Linux because it was just too much of a PITA.)
I don’t think we’re *ever* going to see Pale Moon in Solus. The repo curator over there is like the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld. He passes quick, one-time judgment on prospective repo candidates and if anything displeases him, it’s “Next!” Solus doesn’t carry Tor Browser or Waterfox, either, so it’s not just because Pale Moon’s developers didn’t play nice enough with the BSD kids during recess…
Been using Palemoon for 1.5 years now as my primary browser, and continue to be fully satisfied by it’s ease of use, customization ability, and fast page loading. I very rarely use other browsers now.
I wish I could use it. I really dig the UI as I can make it like Firefox 2.x and 3.x, but the web compatibility of this browser is piss poor. Thanks, but no thanks, I will stick with Chromium Edge.
@Lambo-san
Yeah, they are unable to implement a lot of important and necessary web-drafts or web-standards – for example=
1) rest spread parameters for object literals
2) Add window.event
3) ES6 modules support
My personal opinion is that:
When it is known that developers – also including their users – can not implement that kind of features, every normal browser developer would add some person to the team which CAN handle features like that. While i am using Pale Moon i am less than amused that the project maintainers look at that kind of issues, realize it is too difficult for them and hand it over to the user-base. The users are unable to do it, so the issue stays open forever – and the browser falls more and more behind and the developers still argue that everything is becoming better and better when it is NOT the case!
As soon as something more complex is upcoming it is not getting done. I do not fully blame the developers of Pale Moon personally for this fault, they just do not have the necessary kind of knowledge, but as stated… you CAN hire experts which CAN handle features like that. Doing NOTHING to solve issues… that is an attitude which sucks.
If you develop a browser it should be in your own interest to do something that also more complex features can be added.
I don’t have a clue what those 3 things are. I go to a website and it works. As long as I can do my business I’m not gonna worry about it. If at some point in the future I have to do something else . . . I’ll do something else. For now, I’m fine. Certainly, of course, I appreciate everybody’s concern.
@Anonymous
The issue is many important pages do no longer work or do only partly work..
– Skype for the web is fully broken and content is not shown
– Google/Chromium bug-tracker is fully broken and content is not shown
– At pages like homdepot the pictures at the product pages to the side can not be opened
– Sub-pages at Garmin are partly working horrible and almost hang the browser
And many more pages like that have the same issues and the number of pages with issues is growing. That is the effect of not supporting such standards like the 3 in my post and others which also can not be implemented because the developers of Pale Moon have no clue how to do it.
They do not respond, they do as it seems not care. They push this to the user to fix, even while knowing if they are not capable enough to fix issues like that, their users are even less.
Yes, Pale Moon can still be used, i use it too. But the mentality of the developers about problems like that is more than troublesome – Actually heavily disturbing! Instead they like to argue with their users about no big issues and discussions are getting heated, while the important part of the browser – the web-standard section is going to bit-rot over time!
And if you confront them about issues like that – they react quite angry.
Moonchild & Tobin seem as knowledgeable as anybody in this field. It’s hard to believe they “have no clue how to do it” or can’t figure anything out. I don’t agree that they don’t respond. They’re all over the forum. The nature of their responses, now that’s another issue.
My understanding is they’re not going to implement something they have some kind of philosophical disagreement with or is a half-done, incomplete standard.
@anonymous They also have not been able to implement complex web-standards like Promises, ES6 Classes or ES6 block-level functions in the past, so the usage of new engine revisions from Mozilla have been necessary.
There is a difference between DRM which is against the philosophy – or functions which require deep going knowledge which only big browser developers like Google, Mozilla or Apple do have – knowledge which only experts do have and the Pale Moon team is not having one single one of that so-called experts. Point is, the Pale Moon developers have not been able to implement more difficult web-standard/draft features in the past – and it is again shown that they still are not able to do so.
And that is the truth.
@Lord-Lestat:
See though, even you realize how angry they get at being confronted on issues that are relevant, and yet, look at how much you an I disagreed and argued over it. I’m glad we’re not doing that anymore.
Cheers!
:)
@Jody Thornton
So if you want to get peacefully along with me – do never ever try to place me on the same level like you – Even i have certain limitations of how much i can take before being forced to act in a not so appropriate way, thank you very much!
@Lord-Lestat
At least @Jody Thornton is able to apply common sense, whereas your judgement is always clouded by right-wing ideology. And therefore, I am thankful that @Jody Thornton has not yet sunken to your level. Two disturbing ideologists of your kind would be too much for gHacks.
@Lord-Lestat:
And so I’m clear, what is the “same level as me”?
@Jody Thornton
There is a difference between the way to voice your opinion in a reasonable and calm and neutral way.
And there is the way of how you or many others liked to voice it. So, sorry but no – between us 2 are still worlds in-between. And of that i am thankful.
Instead of users complaining that Palemoon wont work on certain web sites why don’t you post those websites. I don’t have issues with the websites I visit including my bank, broker, netflix, amazon, search sites and sites I pay bills at.
Same here, all the sites I visit daily work, as well as some I visit while surfing. Just upgraded old uMatrix (the last compatible version) to eMatrix (forked just for PM, works in Basilisk too). Also, the new one loads YouTube faster than anything I remember recently.
My opinion towards Palemoon… which i use since quite some time now:
There is nothing which speaks against using it the same way like you can also use Waterfox or Seamonkey or any random Chromium based browser like for example Brave.
But as it is no mainstream browser… and a forked project – You are in need for a secondary installed browser, as there are certain pages which are either not working correctly or working not at all in Palemoon. Or pages which make the browser stalled because of heavy use of modern scripts.
The situation is the following: Smaller developer teams have no dedicated experts for topics like html5, ecmascript or css3 – which other major browser developers do have – and simple rebranded browsers do not need, as they use constantly the latest engine of the mother-ship project. Additionally as Palemoon relies also partly heavily on user interaction – if the developers are unable to implement certain features the user is required to get them inside the browser – it is a rather common thing in Open Source projects, that the source project relies on patch contributions.
And as it was told that there is zero chance anymore that the browser gets updated with another engine update (from Mozilla-upstream) like it happened with earlier major milestones – this issue is not decreasing but is increasing – the result as mentioned because of lacking user contributions and experts in the team regarding this special topics. If there is no chance of finding additional developers which are willing to contribute – either volunteering for free – or hiring a paid developer with the help of user donations perhaps – it is just a matter of time until the issue is appearing again which in the end forced the need of adopting a later engine variant – which is – no option anymore at that point in time as stated.
In the end, Palemoon is in combination with a secondary browser right now perfectly usable – if you are aware of the (sadly increasing) limitations as mentioned and if you would have no issue to find another browser alternative at a not so far amount in time again. This situation is affecting the UXP base as a whole and as the users are not able to contribute more complex code – the lack of researching/opening alternative routes to find a different way that also complex web standards can be implemented is rather disappointing. If the user base can not deliver as hoped the responsibility is back again in the hands of the developers to still make it happen. Which makes the confident believe into long-term-reliability of UXP by the developer team less realistic.
What is ur primary browser?
Anonymous, My main has become Palemoon – and Vivaldi is now filling the secondary browser role
It uses less resources and loads pages faster than FF (but then what doesn’t?). It’s pretty much on par with Brave for page loads. The main problem I have with PM is the lack of choice when it comes to password mangers. If you don’t like keepass then there aren’t too many options. Shame that Bitwarden will never support it.
“Why would you use this browser? It’s so much worse than Firefox.”
True, and a quick look at their forum confirms more and more sites are inaccessible or don’t display correctly without fiddling about with the UA!
Guess that’s the ‘UI customization’ Mr Otter Pop above’s referring to ?
As for “developers have shown more friendliness and understanding” !? No comment.
@Stan The problem is that changing the user agent for any browser is trivial. User agents are not and should not be considered a reliable way to identify a browser or its capabilities. If websites didn’t do this, Pale Moon and other smaller browsers wouldn’t have as many of these “compatibility” issues.
Nonsense!
Trivial to a geek living in the last decade maybe, how’s you grandmother making out fiddling with the innards of a browser?
Rolls Eyes.
@Stan No, trivial from a technical standpoint for any HTTP client to change (or spoof) another client’s user agent. It’s like determining if a job applicant is a good fit for the job based on what their name is. Sites are refusing to use proper feature detection and instead are serving or not serving something based on what is essentially a nametag.
https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
@Stan:
Couldn’t agree more about the (…ahem) “friendliness” of the developers.
@Lord Lestat:
(let’s you and I be civil this time, shall we?)
And as for your comment on Mozilla abandoning a loyal group to attract a larger market, well that’s business. First off, Mozilla’s market-share plummeted after Chrome arrived in 2008. Now I’m no Chromium fan at all, but would you not say that a LARGE amount of Mozilla’s user base left Firefox and went over to Chrome? Meaning specifically that a LARGE number of former Firefox users cared not in the least ofr UI customization or XUL add-ons? Well if few care, why cater to such a shrinking audience? How will that build revenue and continue development?
Your letting ideology get in the way of common-sense. In radio, if there is no advertising market for an audience that likes a music type of format, then you don’t find it on the air. Either you chase the money, or you don’t – plain and simple. Sure there are users that like to customize their UI and use XUL tools. But if that share of the market is near 0.00012%, then you just don’t cater to it, unless you are an independent, and have time to develop a sideline project. That’s why you have Waterfox and Mr Moon there.
Having said all of that, I am about to move to Firefox ESR 68 in the coming months. Should there be too many changes under the hood, that makes Quantum work differently than ESR 60, then I may need to place my tail between my legs and go back to Pale Moon. I installed the New Moon recompilation for v28.6 on my mom’s PC, and it works with aplomb (at least for now). I can use the legacy uBlock Origin, and the Photonic theme looks a lot like Quantum.
We will see.
@Jody Thornton
I was a big supporter and vocal advocate of old-Mozilla – because of their highly idealistic attitude and their visions to empower the user instead of restricting them for “their own benefit” or because “one feature set and one look fits everyone”.
The truth is, this construct which calls itself Mozilla today is just your random generic money and influence hungry dollar-hunting company – which has given up in believing in the ability of their user-base to be able to increase their skills and rather would lock all down as much as possible to be 100% compatible with the most stupid users demands and skills. They are on the same moral level like Microsoft, Apple, Google or Opera.
So… Lowering themselves to the least available skill/morality level. Mozilla these days betrays their legacy and heritage. If they would have at least a little bit respect of their own origin, they would rename themselves and the browser. Because Mozilla and Firefox of today have nothing at all in common anymore with Mozilla and Firefox of the past.
@Jody Thornton
Mozilla cared for an eternity for different things than “market share” or “ever growing money fountains” – They have been idealists which believed in what they created. Until Google with Chrome came along. Hey, Vivaldi can survive with smaller audience, Brave can do, Watefox and even Otter-Browser. Additionally Firefox is FOSS – so users can contribute too.
Mozilla would have been perfectly able to survive – even if the simple users would have left the ship. This was a simple case of Mozilla at one point valuing money and market share higher than idealist values. They saw Chrome rise like a rocket – and same like Opera they decided that everything is acceptable as long they are able to get a piece of the cake.
Anyway… there is zero reason not to combine simplicity and a feature rich concept (make it optionally) – as long as you are not deciding that money and influence and market share becomes your holy personal trinity. Mozilla just decided to get greedy – which resulted them betraying their origin users without thinking twice.
All decisions done by Mozilla since Australis have one goal… to directly compete/rival with Chrome without hesitation and remorse. Also, if we speak about shrinking user numbers… Around version 20-24 Firefox had around 20-23% users – and look at them now.
Money and influence should not be that important for a FOSS project – From a FOSS project you expect different standards. And even in that Mozilla has failed so badly.
@Jody Thornton: “if there is no advertising market for an audience that likes a music type of format, then you don’t find it on the air.”
True, but you also don’t find the fans of the other formats sanctimoniously telling those people who are no longer adequately served that the new format is better and they should be listening to it even if they don’t like it anymore rather than switching to a different station that serves them better.
Also, the people who are no longer being adequately served will complain about that — and there’s nothing wrong with that.
@John Fenderson:
Oh I have no problem with others’ complaining. It’s a free society (well at least in this forum), but all I’m saying is that Mozilla isn’t responsible for providing you that “choice” you seek. If you think Mozilla is “bad” for abandoning the tech-saavy users, then that is just wrong. If they are too small a target, simply no on will serve them. That was all I meant.
@Stan and last but not least… to throw away everything one once has developed/created because of a different user-group now – which is the target-user group of the competitors product…and instead adopting the technology of the competition to be even more attractive to the competitors products target-user-group…
This is hardly of what a developer can be proud of. And only people without respect for others can be proud of such a developer.
Luckily there are people out there for which morality and integrity is of value. And that kind of people are no longer using Firefox, but instead one of the many alternatives. And as long as there are websites out there which can be watched with the alternatives, as long as that is an alternative of value.
@Stan i suggest to read… i wrote…
“more friendliness and understanding to geeks/nerds/power-users as compared to Mozilla.”
So…
-Who has sacrificed customization for Chrome/simple users or for catching Chrome’s market-share?
– Who has betrayed it’s origin user-base and expert add-on/theme developers?
I can not remember that it was the Pale Moon team. The opposite is the case, they value power-users and their demands/needs. So does Vivaldi or Otter Browser or Qutebrowser too. And that is much more than what can be expected from Mozilla these days.
Each of those developers has more soul and honesty and respect of advanced users, while Mozilla has none of it anymore. And what is the worst? Even a commercial browser team like Vivaldi has more spirit as compared to Mozilla.
What for a lame joke :)
I’ve been a Palemoon user for over a decade now. No problems at all. Some of my old fav plugins still run in compatibility mode too like Stratiform. Adblock Latitude with a custom block list and Toggle Java Script take care of all ads and malicious behavior.
Yup, another bork-free, quick and easy update on W7 Home and W7 Pro. PM just works, mainly because it’s a real browser, not a data slurping platform masquerading as a browser.
Love the background image.
Firefox sux
I’ve been using Pale Moon for the past weeks as my main browser and so far I’m happy with it. No bells and whistles, no super-duper modern features and UI customizations and whatnot, but it does what it says it does and lets me browse the web just fine without worrying about ads and such. I’m also using Waterfox on the side which serves me nicely as well, and I keep Firefox as a backup for everything else when I need it.
Now the comments will come about how this and that is useless, unusable, etc, etc; but quite honestly in my experience this 3 are a pretty good combo at least on desktops. I had tried Pale Moon years ago and I can’t remember exactly why it didn’t stick with me back then, but these days it just works and gives me another alternative which is always a great thing to have
Incoming riposte by the League of Palemoon Avengers in 3, 2, 1…
Wait … I’m in a *League*? Cool! Do we get costumes?
The league of extraordinary pasties.
Why would you use this browser? It’s so much worse than Firefox. All those customized versions of Firefox don’t give you anything additional.
@watako Tatako.
You shot yourself in the foot..Compare the customisation of firefox and palemoon and then you will realise why people use palemoon instead.
Keyword for you is CUSTOMISATION and you used it in your opening rant.!
Customisation is what made firefox stand out from the others and i cannot believe this did not occur to you.
@Watako Tatako
Well, it may be worse than Firefox, but it has a better UI. But Firefox is also trash, Chromium-based browsers are better at supporting the web, which is more important than anything else.
Who cares about anything else if a browser can’t render a website properly…
I mean DOUBLE YOU TEE EFF, this browser does not even have Telemetry: imgur.com/kH571Np
How can this even compete with our browser?? Am I rite, mozillian followers?
Telemetry. Makes. Us. Stronger.
-repeat after me-
Telemetry! Makes! Uhs! STRONKERR!!!111eleven hurrghhhhhh
I’ve got to say I, while I don’t fully agree with everything they say, I thoroughly enjoy Yula’s rants. I can understand the point of view if you live in certain situations.
I’ll wait until they put it in some repo I don’t have to terminal in manually to try it. Plus it looks very dated from what I’ve seen. Guess you can always theme it.
How’s the video codec situation, is it comparable to FF or half assed like chromiums on nix systems?
Powerful addons+UI customization
@Watako Tatako:
I don’t use PM, but I do use a different Firefox port. I do so because, for my purposes, it’s superior to post-Quantum Firefox.
How is it “worse” than Firefox? The fact that you don’t use it don’t mean nuthin’ to me or anybody else. Are you the browser police? If so, we don’t need your services.
Because it has loaded a page while Firefox is still performing a TLS handshake?
Because it’s easy on my RAM and I don’t need to plan my budget for a new computer just for the browser (new FF is worse than Chrome)?
Because I can still have mouse gestures on Linux?
Because it starts and switches between tabs faster?
Because it does everything Firefox used to do?
I don’t see where it’s “so much worse” than Firefox.
Well… Waiting my new assembled PC I’m using Mypal browser on an old Pentium M 512 RAM laptot Win XP for emergency. No issue during surfing, nearly all my essential add-on are present (I just got to get used to eMatrix instead of NoScript), no need to customize the interface for obvious reasons.
Soon I’ll be back to Waterfox and Firefox, but I think Palemoon remains a good alternative and I have to say thanks to those crazy people for this XP fork, no time to try Linux.
As you asked… PaleMoon does everything that Firefox used to do, which Firefox no longer does. The privacy’s better than Firefox’s. When PaleMoon gets updated, I’ve never known anything to break, as a result, as Firefox did, when I used it. It’s faster than Firefox, for me. I can put the tabs on the bottom, where I want them, which Firefox won’t let me do. PaleMoon works. Always has. Never had a single issue, since I started using it, years back. It’s far more configurable than Firefox is.
It’s not my main browser, as I’ve rather grown to love Vivaldi. But, I still use Opera v12 and it’s by far the best browser I’ve ever used, by miles. Never, ever get any problems, with that, apart from one site, which displays wrongly. Firefox? I’m afraid I don’t see the point, now. I’ve given up, trying to work out what Mozilla want it to be and I find it to be too cluttered and user-unfriendly. I s’pose the big thing, for me, is that Mozilla lied about it’s telemetry settings, some time back and I’ve never forgiven them.
That’s just me, though. Those things might be just fine, for you.
Surely you can’t be serious about Opera 12 on the eve of 2020. One site? Out of how many, two? I stopped using it about three years ago, and for years *before* that it was a constant compatibility battle. I can’t even imagine how much worse it’s become.
We won’t even get into how far behind its fallen on performance (this happened even before Opera switched to Chromium) and security (think how many security fixes ALL browsers today push out every month–it’s staggering–then multiply that by years).
Pale Moon does at least not bow down to Google technology and Google code like Mozilla does it. And so far the developers have shown more friendliness and understanding to geeks/nerds/power-users as compared to Mozilla.
Also, as Firefox does not feature anymore large amounts of UI customization features, alternatives like Otter Browser, Vivaldi or Pale Moon do have something additional what simple users Firefox no longer has.
Pleased to use on Linux, each releases version is even better than previous.