Pale Moon 30.0 out with important changes

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 18, 2022
Pale Moon
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The developers of the Pale Moon web browser have released Pale Moon 30.0 to the public for all supported operating systems. Pale Moon 30.0 is a milestone release that includes several important changes, several improve the browser's compatibility with browser extensions.

pale moon 30

Pale Moon 30.0 can be downloaded from the project website for Windows and Linux devices. Existing users may use the built-in updating system to update the browser to the new version. A manual check for updates is available under Pale Moon > Help > Check for updates.

Pale Moon 30.0

Pale Moon 30.0 is a milestone release. It includes changes that were announced back in December 2021. Back then, the team announced that it would change the direction of the project in regards to extension compatibility.

The new release uses the Firefox GUID instead of Pale Moon's own GUID to improve compatibility with "old and unmaintained Firefox extensions".  Users of the browser get more freedom when it comes to the installation of these extensions in the browser, but the developers note that this freedom comes with the responsibility as "more issues" need to be resolved by users going forward.

The new release restores support for legacy Firefox extensions, which users may once again install in the browser. Pale Moon exclusive extensions need to be updated to target the Firefox GUID as well.

The Pale Moon website will provide downloads for the new and older versions of the browser for some time, as users may need that time to adjust to the changes.

Another important change in Pale Moon affects the use of UXP. It is no longer used in the milestone release. UXP, the Unified XUL Platform, started out as a fork of the Mozilla-Central code repository. It is now released "to the community for maintenance and coordination".

The development team plans to focus "more tightly" on Pale Moon's Goanna rendering engine, and to cut components and target platforms in the process that are unmaintainable.

Pale Moon 30.0 features several other changes of importance:

  • The Global Privacy Control has been implemented. Users find the option under Preferences > Privacy.
  • Default browser controls have been moved to the General tab.
  • Various libraries were updated.
  • Language pack structure changed. Some languages may have "a few more untranslated strings" until these are addressed in future releases.
  • Several fixes for issues, e.g. memory safety issue fix, a potential crash fix.

You can check out the full changelog here.

Now You: do you use the Pale Moon web browser?

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Pale Moon 30.0 out with important changes
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Pale Moon 30.0 out with important changes
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The developers of the Pale Moon web browser have released Pale Moon 30.0 to the public for all supported operating systems.
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Comments

  1. TREE said on May 15, 2022 at 4:31 pm
    Reply

    It eliminated my NoScript add-on, saying it can cause “severe issues” with a large (and growing) number of websites. Yeah, the issue is they want to track me, or place distracting things like ads on these sites which I hate.

  2. Greg said on April 29, 2022 at 12:51 am
    Reply

    21 march 2022
    Pale Moon 30 rollout cancelled. Following severe issues with the unexpected exit of a core dev and considerable damage caused to our operations, the milestone 30 rollout has been cancelled.

  3. Time Wasted said on April 24, 2022 at 9:43 pm
    Reply

    I came across your article and started looking for the v30 release and specifically its source code in order to build from source.

    After much searching on the Pale Moon website I came across the message in red

    ………………. Important note about v30.0.0 and v30.0.1
    ………………. The milestone release version has been recalled

    Can you not put a notice at the top of your article that the release has been canceled to save people from wasting their time searching for something that does not exist?

    Yes somebody else mentioned this in the comments above but you only see that if you scroll for several pages.

    1. VEr0NiKA said on April 27, 2022 at 9:54 pm
      Reply

      The title of this article about the v30 release of Pale Moon needs to be changed.

      “Important note about v30.0.0 and v30.0.1
      The milestone release version has been recalled”

      A notice would be really appreciated as the current title Palemoon 30.0 out with important changes is no longer accurate.

  4. Testerhood said on April 21, 2022 at 11:23 am
    Reply

    I quit using Pale Moon when I saw how incredibly hostile the (forum) leaders are. Straight up insulting users who express themselves normal and constructive is a huge no-no. Recently I saw this on Reddit, and it’s sad that it’s still reality: https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/rj5vbm/came_back_to_pale_moon_after_years_and_visited/
    Back then I found Pale Moon great due to how RAM friendly it was. But it’s difficult picking it these days when many average websites break, and when there is major ethical issues involved – using software is a matter of trust after all too.

  5. Maya Stern said on April 16, 2022 at 10:56 pm
    Reply

    The lead developer is also quite rude and dismisses people’s complaints when using the browser.
    People have been banned unjustly at the forums because of this.
    I stopped going there and let my account lapse.
    People need to be treated with courtesy and respect at forums and also when sending an email regarding a legitimate issue that they are having with a browser.
    Stop using Pale Moon when sites including YouTube and other sites stopped working for me.
    Was a member at the forums and I let my concerns be known to Moonchild who said “it’s your computer settings and not Pale Moon.”
    Suffice to say he was 100% incorrect in that statement every other browser I have tried has been able to access the sites.
    There was an issue with Basilisk.
    Pale Moon should be updated with current code from Firefox not the outdated code as it is now.

  6. TelV said on April 15, 2022 at 4:52 pm
    Reply

    Apparently one of the devs jumped ship according to the announcement on their site:

    “Pale Moon 30 rollout cancelled. Following severe issues with the unexpected exit of a core dev and considerable damage caused to our operations, the milestone 30 rollout has been cancelled.”

  7. BArBArA said on April 12, 2022 at 7:51 pm
    Reply

    The first versions of the Pale Moon browser were very good.
    Sadly. it’s gone downhill after that.
    Based on outdated code, sites not recognizing the browser, and it doesn’t work with my bank.
    Which for me is a must in order to use a browser.
    For me anyway I need a browser that I can use on all or most OS’s.
    Own a Windows desktop computer, Chromebook which also runs Linux as well as the Chrome OS, Macbook Pro, iPad, and a Samsung Galaxy Z3 5G flip phone which is an Android phone.
    Right now I am using Vivaldi and Google Chrome(on my iPad.) and also use Safari.
    On occasion I used Edge Chromium. It’s my backup on my Windows 10 desktop.
    Vivaldi is in the process of developing their browser for iOS.
    IMHO Pale Moon can’t fill those needs for users
    A while back Pale Moon dropped support for MacOS. Not a good idea IMHO.
    And in the browser market a viable browser needs to be able to run on most OSs and fulfill those needs for their users.
    Hopefully, the developer from Pale Moon will take note of that and implement changes to fulfill those needs.

  8. EP said on March 29, 2022 at 9:05 pm
    Reply

    Version 30.0 of Palemoon has been “recalled” and further development of it might be abandoned as with this post:
    https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28047&start=20#p225887

  9. Paul said on March 28, 2022 at 3:44 pm
    Reply

    @Jody Thornton

    World Wide Web: More than 1.5 billion websites
    Netflix video service: 1 website (and meant for big TV, really)

    I’ll return to my niche, 90’s, naive and ideological web browsing and leave you to your delusions.

    1. Jody Thornton said on March 29, 2022 at 1:07 pm
      Reply

      You living in the 90s IS delusional

  10. Kurt Fitzner said on March 25, 2022 at 5:28 pm
    Reply

    Palemoon stopped being usable on many fronts long ago. When Firefox lost their way and broke the user experience repeatedly on back-to-back-to-back releases, Palemoon was there and a great reprieve. But it has lost its way both technically and philosophically.

    Technically it is just a kludge. I went from using it exclusively, to using it with an occasional backup browser, to using the backup browser more than the “primary” one. It doesn’t support basic banking sites any more. And you literally can’t bring issues like this up on the forum – the forum is so toxic you need a CM7M gas mask to even survive there.

    Philosophically their self inconsistencies will make you dizzy. They are allergic to DRM on one hand and refuse to implement it. Which, ok, fair enough they are making a stand – “DRM is inherently evil” is a perspective I respect. But then they are hyper-critical (to the point of “it’s a plot against PaleMoon” paranoia) of the fact that the one working DRM provider for Netflix (Silverlight) is ceasing support.

    My take is that they are technically out of their depth and their team is incapable of keeping up, and that the toxicity on the forum is a symptom of that. Instead of being up front, they have taken the stance that anything they don’t have the expertise to implement is “bad anyway”. And so instead of saying “we can’t do that”, they just lash out at anyone who asks why it’s not working. “How dare you ask that…” is their response, and it ends with whatever weapon they can lay their hands on to justify their anger. That’s been asked before, that’s a dumb question, because Google is evil, because DRM is evil, because because because….

    I have recently moved to Ungoogled Chromium. I am hoping it gets some better support, it is still a bit challenging to get Netflix working on it, for example. But it’s doable and once done gives a browser that basically just works, and which I can stomach. Some undocumented features in it even allow it to still work with my Aero Glass and makes it transparent, which is a plus.

    1. Paul said on March 28, 2022 at 1:05 pm
      Reply

      @Kurt Fitzner Pale Moon is a free web browser, a community project meant for web browsing. Netflix is a paid, multi-billion video streaming company. Complain to them for a change. Jeez.

      1. Jody Thornton said on March 28, 2022 at 2:00 pm
        Reply

        @Paul:

        Still free or not – if you want a viable web browser, it needs to work with well known sites and services. Otherwise, Pale Moon is a niche browser, and needs to advertise itself as such.

        It is certainly not “Your Browser – Your Way”

      2. Paul said on March 28, 2022 at 3:06 pm
        Reply

        @Jody Thornton

        You don’t get to declare what makes a web browser. It’s pretty clear that compatibility with mutli-billion, paid subscription video services, isn’t what the WWW creators had in mind.

        Also, it’s up to Netflix to select on which browsers their closed, locked and paid service will work.

        Hilarious how you consider free web browsing “niche” and paid service Netflix “viable”.

        It is certainly not “Your Browser – Netfilx’s Way”. Get real, and do what Netflix tells you to do to use their services.

      3. Jody Thornton said on March 28, 2022 at 3:22 pm
        Reply

        You’re living in the 90s version of free and open web. I really do get your frustration. But big business has moved in and monetized the web. Right or Wrong: You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

        And the web we have now, right or wrong, is the web we have. So any useful browser needs to work with that to be useful to most people.

        No big corporations are going to kowtow to Moonchild, no matter how “right” that is to do. Big corporations call all of the shots. Perhaps, when one day Netflix loses more market shre to say Amazon or Apple TV, they’ll talk to Moonchild, but until that day, most people like Netflix just the way it is. If Moonchild wants Pale Moon to survive, he needs to work with them – NOT the other way around.

        You’re naively letting ideology rule over reality, thinking that because you’re “right” you’ll win at the end of the day. That’s foolish in this regard.

  11. Mystique said on March 22, 2022 at 12:31 pm
    Reply

    I’m not exactly sure why it has been recalled but it doesn’t sound too good. This definitely needs a deep dive if for no other reason than to have a double take from an outsider although I am satisfied with Moonchild’s comments in the above linked thread.

    So the extensions/addons website is down? You know who’s website isn’t down? JustOFF’s which was actually pretty handy because it also covered a backup of all older extensions from mozilla’s old AMO but the last few versions of 29.X did away with those kinds of extensions support so this is like another step back. which ever way you look its a step back.

    I feel like things will be okay but its going to take time. it’s just a hard and fast lesson for moonchild and all involved.

    I totally feel that this could be a revival for the browser if they play their cards right which it seems Moonchild is from what he has said but its the bridges that have been burned along the way in the past that may not be possible to mend.

    For the most of us this has rift in the community has been obvious for a long time.

    I honestly feel terrible for Matt and the lose of his father though. I stand by my opinion that him leaving the project is probably the best for everyone and in time he will probably reconcile with himself to see it that way also. Grinding away your talents on a project that you are at odds with as well as the community is terribly taxing and will definitely not bring out the best in you or the best of your abilities.
    I have been in similar situations and its hard to separate yourself from it all and find harmony. The stress and load becomes insurmountable and given exterior stress factors such as the passing of a family member then it’s pretty much a recipe for a mental breakdown and disaster.

    I can’t say for sure but there seems to have been a bit of dysfunction in the work environment behind the scenes. Perhaps an absence of, communication, structure, roadmap, roles, etc.
    I have never managed a project let alone a potentially large one such as this so I am just being an armchair critic but I expect things to improve for the best in the future. Pale Moon has been around for a very long time and has outlived every other fork or been around longer than any other from memory.

  12. Graham said on March 22, 2022 at 6:59 am
    Reply

    The rollout of PM 30 has been cancelled.
    https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&p=225418

  13. know it all said on March 22, 2022 at 6:29 am
    Reply

    According to palemoon.org web site, 30.0.x has been recalled, and they are doing “damage control”. Not a pretty sight! LOL

  14. Mystique said on March 21, 2022 at 3:06 pm
    Reply

    New Version released.

    v30.0.1 (2022-03-20)
    This is a critical bugfix release.

    Fixed an issue with browser initialization that would leave some components (like password managing) incorrectly initialized if the (obsolete) preference privacy.donottrackheader.enabled was set.
    Fixed an issue in XML transformation that could cause crashes, performance issues and general stability problems.

  15. Mystique said on March 21, 2022 at 1:47 pm
    Reply

    Yeah I don’t know about all of this and never have involved myself in the affairs of the people behind the browser. I guess I’m not that deeply invested but we will all have to see how this pans out in the future.

    It’s never nice to lose developers but if as a result we see more developers jump on board and get involved then great. I know a few people have complained about the environment and specifically sighted one person in particular so I guess now is the time for people to roll up their sleeves and help create a community and browser they would like to use and be a part of.

    it’s time to put the drama behind us. The web browser scene is already a miserable scene as it is without all of this dragging on.

    I feel like Matt could probably do with a bit of a break anyway and maybe pursue something else. I’m not going begrudge anyone but I am also not about to enable people to behave poorly.

    Anyway, its onwards and forwards.

    Btw, you gotta love how the conversation stream on that thread has now gone into a different direction about helping an addon developer work on something he wanted to in the past. If things continue to track in such a constructive manner then I feel things will be okay for PaleMoon.

  16. Iron Heart said on March 20, 2022 at 9:36 pm
    Reply

    So, in Matty’s mental meltdown thread, one of the Pale Moon users had the following to say about Matt Tobin:

    “I would like to call everybody to forgiveness. To set the US American courts against Tobin only invites further revenge in specific ways that could doom the Pale Moon project, but I would rather not elaborate in public.”

    Quoted from here: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=28003&p=225245&sid=b8f414a6111e3455753733ef225765b0#p225245

    Please, do tell us more about it. :D

    On a more serious note: If there is something wrong with the software itself, shouldn’t we be informed about it?

  17. Mystique said on March 20, 2022 at 5:39 am
    Reply

    @Jody

    I wrote up a reply to your earlier comment but I believe ghacks anti-spam settings or something deleted my post. It wasn’t anything bad but it occasionally happens here. I don’t know if it something done manually or otherwise but its gone now and I can’t be bothered. The fire and passion is gone and the post is lost now.

    In regards to your comment about the forum I had noticed that some parts of the website had suddenly gone down too.

    Moonchild had this to say:

    “As you may have noticed there has been an unplanned outage of all palemoon.org sites and services.
    Unfortunately this was caused by foul play at the hands of one of our own. I’ll do a proper write-up of everything later, when I’ve gathered all the necessary data to make a coherent post explaining what happened.”

    1. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 2:37 pm
      Reply

      @Mystique:

      Completely understand. Someone on Reddit posted screen captures of the whole blowup between Moon-Matt, so I’m caught up. The site is back in operation too. :)

  18. Andy Prough said on March 20, 2022 at 2:04 am
    Reply

    I’m liking it. Faster and better looking in my use so far. Seems to have solved a few of the website incompatibility issues as well. As the only major browser that’s developed independent of the tech-monopolies/spy agencies, it’s worth using as much as possible. I don’t use any of the old extensions, so can’t comment on that.

  19. kalmly said on March 19, 2022 at 11:30 pm
    Reply

    Hmm. Yes. I have used Pale Moon as my secondary browser for many years. After the update, the few addons and extensions I used are inoperable and any attempt to find replacements ends with a Page Not Found message.

    In my humble and tech-challenged opinion, when I open a browser, it should just work, take me where I want to go and if not, then I should be given enough information to easily figure out how to fix things. Links to Pale Moon’s own pages are not working. I’ve spent about 45 minutes trying to find addons. I have other things to do. I am through. I will miss the browser – for a while.

  20. Tree said on March 19, 2022 at 9:53 pm
    Reply

    I choose to use Pale Moon for most of my browsing for protecting my privacy. I object to Gurgle, FaceBUTT, etc, trying to know all about me. Even if they were not evil. It is none of their evil business what sites I visit and what I search for. I have the browser pretty locked down. I really miss two extensions: RIP (Remove it Permanently) and NoSquint. What really make it bad, though is that My Last pass passwords are long gone.
    Many websites (Portals) are not much better than those old bouncing monkeys unless I stop scripts. I also use Brave for the sites which don’t work.

    1. Cassette said on March 19, 2022 at 10:43 pm
      Reply

      Why can’t you get your Last pass passwords? Even if the extension doesn’t work anymore, the website still exists and you can log in to it. Most extensions that report to not work are usually fixable with a simple change. I thought that NoSquint stopped working due to something being removed from the browser that was later restored so it should be working, but I don’t use the extension. I prefer Zoom Page, but it doesn’t work correctly without modifications.

  21. computer said no said on March 19, 2022 at 7:49 pm
    Reply

    Tobin has in fact left the project and is now just moonchild at the helm.
    All info is at the pale moon forum.

    1. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 2:41 am
      Reply

      So Martin, are my responses about Matt Tobin and the Pale Moon forum offline being deleted? If so, can you explain why?

      1. Martin Brinkmann said on March 20, 2022 at 6:48 am
        Reply

        No they have not been. If you post links, they are usually kept for moderation. Comments without links may also be held in moderation. Posts may be deleted, but only for specific reasons, such as attacking others or spam.

      2. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 6:49 am
        Reply

        Thanks. It took awhile for them to appear, but it showed up. Cheers Martin.

    2. Jody Thornton said on March 19, 2022 at 9:53 pm
      Reply

      Looks like he might of gassed the Pale Moon forum on the way out
      https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/ti1okk/ntpmat_hes_done_finally/

  22. computer said no said on March 19, 2022 at 7:25 pm
    Reply

    it should be noted that tobin one of the pale moon developers has in fact left the project and is now banned from the forum so moonchild will more or less be on his own now.

    https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&p=225083&sid=8354cd3e5470b7ee1b9bb53f73c74a6c#p225083

  23. Mystique said on March 19, 2022 at 4:11 pm
    Reply

    @Jody

    Be that as it may, its important not to buckle to google and any other big business. They have us just about over a barrel and handing them more power won’t help you any more down the line. what happens if google decides to monetize different aspects or take away more of your freedoms and control then where are you going to go?

    I try not to get involved into the politics of the browser itself but have noted the sentiment people are sharing here which is why I wrote the above (I didn’t refresh the page yet to see the additional replies).
    I feel as though the lead developers would be better to focus on the browser itself and not get involved with petty arguments which I feel as though it is what they are trying to do at least by token and my perspective.

    A browser with a strong, flexible, powerful foundation is what we need. Each and every user should be able to configure the browser they want with as little limitations as possible be they political or otherwise.

    1. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 2:43 pm
      Reply

      But this is what concerns me: what “freedoms” is Google taking away? I have a choice to use another service, browser, ecosystem, or what have you. If I want to use a killer feature that Google has, then I guess I will have to use Google.

      But what features have they taken away? Monetizing a service and charging what was once free isn’t taking away services. I’m in the radio industry, and there are a lot on the bottom floor that engage in internships. Then they get part-time and full-time jobs. The things people used to get from them for free, well they can’t anymore.

      Though I’m fully with you on the politics being absent from the Pale Moon team; that would be a major plus.

  24. Mystique said on March 19, 2022 at 3:52 pm
    Reply

    I would like to see the unbanning of members such as JustOff.

    It’s a situation of luring extension developers, creating a welcoming environment for them and on the other hand its ferociously developing the engine and overall browser to not only compete but surpass all others. It’s a tall order indeed.

    The sad truth is that the firefox community has already been splintered and there are a few great extensions/addons that are made specifically for Firefox and not for the XUL based system. Whilst it can be done the question is will they be done. Some may say it’s all in the extensions developers hands but I disagree, its a joint task. If PaleMoon rises up and makes a lot of noise for excellent reasons you will find that developers will be more than willing to develop their extensions for PaleMoon

    It was just a fatal mistake for Mozilla to start with to dump the older XUL system. It’s not as if webextensions have lived up to the claims and expectations by expanding and improving over the years to become comparable to XUL now has it?

  25. Jody Thornton said on March 19, 2022 at 3:10 pm
    Reply

    @Ivan:

    Bingo! Also if they’d ease up on ideology and work on getting some form of Web Components in place. You HAVE to be able to run Facebook, YouTube and bank sites on a browser.

    All of the Chromified Web, anti-Google arguments are long in the rear view mirror. Face it, business took over the web and that’s final. Whenever Moonchild, Matty Tobin or Moonbat (he’s just as nasty) say, “Your Browser, Your Way”, they might want to review that mission statement. My way is at least working on sites that most people need. Othjerwise, actuall SAY that your a niche browser.

    1. Iron Heart said on March 19, 2022 at 4:34 pm
      Reply

      @Jody Thornton

      Hey Jody, my main man, good to see you back here! How are you doing these days?

      Yes, it is hilarious how ideology gets in their way all the time. Websites do user agent sniffing, yet Moonchild refuses to use the Firefox UA by default… because he wants to prove a point (Look here, Pale Moon exist! We are legion!). He also refuses to rebase on a newer version of Gecko, despite the fact that even most legacy extensions would still work if he forked / fixed them, which would be much less troublesome than trying to implement Web Components… but he doesn’t do it, because he wants to prove a point (Goanna is its own thing! We are using 95%++ of Gecko, yet we are our own thing! Come and see!). Their issues are stemming from manpower shortage (unfixable with Matty around) and ideology-driven development (which you can only afford, up to a point, if you fix the manpower issue, ironically).

      It’s hilarious how they are concentrating on every area except the main one, web compatibility, and when they get around to it they don’t pick the straightforward way because of ideology reasons.

      It should be clear to them that most users stuck around because of add-ons, literally every other aspect of the browser you can find elsewhere and much better. If this is the main reason for people to use their browser anyway, why don’t they just fork a newer version of Firefox and fix the add-ons for it? I think the reason the developers assume why most people are using Pale Moon (it being its own thing) is not the same as the actual reason (add-ons) that has been communicated by people many times over.

      1. Jody Thornton said on March 19, 2022 at 5:21 pm
        Reply

        I’m doing fine @Iron Heart. Still lurking.

        For me, web compatibility is also top priority. I need to get work done. One of the sites I use for work is driven by WebRTC to record audio. Insecure? I’ll bet it is, but I still need to use it.

        Tangerine Bank …. not working on Basilisk or Pale Moon because evil Web Components are likely used to build the site? I guess so, but I still need to perform that money transfer.

        I was suggesting on MSFN and Reddit (not my original idea mind you) that perhaps a WebKit/Blink plugin should be created to run chromified sites in a Pale Moon, Basilisk or Waterfox tab. I guess it would be akin to reviving Chrome Frame from years ago. Someone made a comparison to IE Tab, which was a similar XUL add-on for self-explanatory purposes.. Perhaps, something like that could give Basilisk Moon (hee hee) new life.

      2. Iron Heart said on March 19, 2022 at 5:57 pm
        Reply

        @Jody Thornton

        You should seriously take a look at Vivaldi, they are making steady progress and web compatibility is top notch thanks to Blink. Assuming you want a customizable browser, that is, personally I am using Brave.

        Embrace Blink / Chromium, Jody. I did years ago when Firefox lost the powerful add-ons and therefore its only real, non-ideological selling point. Has been smooth sailing ever since.

      3. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 2:46 pm
        Reply

        Funny you say this. I’ve been trying Vivaldi out over the last couple of weeks. It doesn’t appear as slow and cludgy as before. Definitely, site compatibility is there.

        I’m in the process of finding CSS script that places tabs under the address bar in v5x. Once I find that, it could be switching time.

      4. Iron Heart said on March 20, 2022 at 4:33 pm
        Reply

        @Jody Thornton

        Perhaps you could follow this thread, they made tabs on bottom work with current versions of Vivaldi:

        https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/56809/tabs-below-address-bar-and-bookmark-bar/

      5. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 7:05 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        Took the CSS code and messed around with it. It’s working great (as long as I don’t need a Bookmarks Bar)

        Yay for me!

      6. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 5:00 pm
        Reply

        Yes I’ve been through that one, but it eventually fails on 4.2 and higher. No biggie. For now, I’ve using tabs side-by-side with the URL bar and it looks pretty snazzy.

        Thanks again Iron Heart.

  26. Ivan said on March 19, 2022 at 2:35 pm
    Reply

    I’d consider using this browser if the developers behind it wouldn’t be so controversial with their politics and drama.

    1. ruler is straight said on March 19, 2022 at 6:11 pm
      Reply

      Many fork apps developer have preferences politics and sometimes full of drama. Accept it.

      1. Jody Thornton said on March 20, 2022 at 2:47 pm
        Reply

        No we don’t have to accept it. I used their browser (if I choose to, that is). Their eccentricities, rudeness or attitude is not what one signs up for.

      2. ruler is straight said on March 20, 2022 at 4:13 pm
        Reply

        What are you talking about? We should accept their freedom of voice even if you don’t like it, but they also should accept our freedom to choose.

      3. OldFoxBetterFox said on May 3, 2022 at 11:04 am
        Reply

        So they can express their opinions, but they shut down and abuse anyone who disagrees (I have witnessed this multiple times). There’s a word for that: Hypocrisy

        That’s why no one wants to work with them no much begging they do for extra help

  27. Mystique said on March 19, 2022 at 4:54 am
    Reply

    @beemeup5

    Well said.

    Google absolutely wants to dominate the entire webspace to their standards and they’re only objective in such a campaign is to line their pockets to best suit their business needs. As much as I will rip on Mozilla they are a damn sight better than Google when it comes to behaviour.
    Google has disrupted the entire way in which we view the web and subverted web standards, there was a small but loud resistance at first but eventually the dimwitted audience that clutched onto their shiny new foistware browser could not see that nor did they care because the majority were internet explorer refugees and fools bamboozled by the shiny new thing that they just let it happen.

    Mozilla was holding up well with their community and XUL interface complete with its infinitely more powerful extension system and then good got into their ear and they decided they would plunge their browser into obscurity with a half arsed attempt to mimic chrome and appeal to the masses thinking people would drop chrome for them when chrome still fits their dimwitted needs thus turning their backs on the community and power users.
    I mention power users but honest Firefox was for everyone, you could make it anything you wanted and was open to all levels of users.

    Chrome has improved over the years but it is still governed by Google and their politics no matter which fork or derivative you use. Mozilla by comparison WAS far better and open hence why there used to be so many forks/mods, extension and community support.

    I don’t mean to diminish users of chrome and they are free to use what ever they want as I know there are several power users there too but we all know that we are simply just compromising every which way we look these days.

    At this point W3C are as relevant to tech/web development as a bag of chips.

    I also feel that Youtube should not have been sold to Google, yes they had the money, knowledge and ability to run it but Youtube is something I feel belongs to society by its very nature but google was happy to own it to expand its poisonous roots across the web knowing full well what power it had behind its name and established presence.
    As long as they have their name, politics and standards connected to anything then its a win for them.

    Microsoft is another good example of this tyrannical behaviour. The gaming landscape is becoming like this now more than ever which is why we are seeing Sony, Microsoft and to a lesser extent Nintendo buying development houses. Microsoft doesn’t care if they sell 10 consoles or 10 billion consoles as long as you invest into their ecosystem and their name is associated with it then they are winning.

  28. Anonymous said on March 19, 2022 at 2:25 am
    Reply

    Palemoon has been my main browser for several years now.
    It is the only one that gives me the level of control I had with Opera pre v12.
    The right tool for the right job.
    K.I.S.S. principal in action.

  29. Ray said on March 18, 2022 at 11:11 pm
    Reply

    I stopped using Pale Moon years ago, but I applaud their change to add in GPC.

  30. GLD said on March 18, 2022 at 7:28 pm
    Reply

    I would still use Pale Moon but the list of pages it didn’t work on grew and grew, even if the page is doing something incorrectly rather than the browser. And bringing it up in the forums just brought unhelpful responses from the devs who imagine malevolent intent from comments where there was none.

  31. llorc said on March 18, 2022 at 3:35 pm
    Reply

    @DAN
    agree with this “feeling”,
    theres something spezial!

    llorc

  32. Dan said on March 18, 2022 at 2:37 pm
    Reply

    This is my daily driver browser. I do however use all other browser at work quite a lot. Pale Moon is not the fastest and it does have its problem. But there is something about the “feeling” of the browser that is hard to explain that none other can replicate. Other browsers, with their modern interfaces, bundled services, and strange design decisions are just not joyful to use. Perhaps it’s because I’m an old-school power user that likes to tinker and have it my way. Anyways, cheers to the Pale Moon team for your great work!

    1. Sombra said on March 18, 2022 at 3:54 pm
      Reply

      It’s a piece of software… It either works or it doesn’t work in today’s internet.
      If this browser barely works, then it is not good for much anymore, and it will become more and more useless probably.
      There are other browsers, not just Chromium/Blink or Gecko, the problem is they barely work, because todays internet even the simplest website, a recipe website or something that shouldn’t need much it is done with JS and heavy and takes 30 seconds to fully load, even if all it needs is some images and text for the steps, not fancy animations or effects or anything like that.

      That’s the reality, and if this browser will fail at many websites then, it should not even be used.

      Stop humanizing or romanticizing software, it is dead, it won’t “hate you” for not using it.
      I don’t even understand why being ‘old-school power’ has anything to do with it, but it seems you are just weird and you got attached to a piece of software like if it was a human, when it is dead, it is not alive, it is just code that is outdated and Palemoon will never catch up.

      1. Jody Thornton said on March 19, 2022 at 3:14 pm
        Reply

        @Sombra!

        Well said! The open and free web is long gone. Google isn’t evil. All business (regardless of size) harness assets and monetize things to build wealth for stakeholders. That’s what business does.

        I’m on Firefox ESR 91 right now, but I’m seriously looking at Vivaldi. In either case, at least they work.

      2. Ron said on March 19, 2022 at 7:03 pm
        Reply

        Anybody who says Gooble isn’t evil isn’t anybody I’d listen to.

      3. Jody Thornton said on March 19, 2022 at 9:47 pm
        Reply

        @Ron. You’re sounding like someone who’s afraid of the bogeyman. I get that Google is business and business only, with no regard to web standards, open sharing and what not. Ruthless, right? But I know small business operators who are also like that on a smaller scale. Business is meant to build wealth, and then after that, build more wealth and dominance. They’re not running a charity.

        But Google is no more or less evil than Coca Cola, Walmart, Subway, McDonalds, etc…

        And it’s NEVER going backwards. Right or wrong, Google has played it smart. MOST people love Google. They just don’t care that their Android phone is giving away all of their information to Google, because at the end of the day, they can find that nearby restaurant, shop online, or get driving directions. In the latter case, do you think that user cares about location privacy?

        And these are not “sheeple”. Many are VERY aware of these security risks, but they feel they get more than what it’s worth. As long as the majority of people agree, good luck fighting Google, or getting web sites designers to be browser agnostic.

      4. OldFoxBetterFox said on May 3, 2022 at 11:01 am
        Reply

        *facepalm*

        Coca-cola doesn’t censor inconvenient political facts. Google has appointed itself arbiter of truth, and lies in ways that manipulates billions of people into believing things that are not true and against their own interest.

        “You have not been paying attention”. Whatever, some people chose to live their lives in a wilful coma

  33. Dumbledalf said on March 18, 2022 at 1:59 pm
    Reply

    I like the path of the browser, but it still performs poorly on websites, so I don’t see much use of it, I will continue to alternate between Opera, Brave and Vivaldi.

    1. Anonymous said on March 19, 2022 at 10:58 am
      Reply

      Opera? Why when you have Vivaldi? Opera is a big question mark at this point.

  34. Paul(us) said on March 18, 2022 at 12:23 pm
    Reply

    How long will it take for the add-on website to adapt to the new reality?
    In fact, I can’t find even vague information about this.

  35. m3city said on March 18, 2022 at 12:14 pm
    Reply

    Just tried an officially released portable version. Tried changing some settings about:config eg cache location to ramdisk, but the setting would not persist relaunch of the browser. Palemoon seemed to work smoother on ad-heavy pages even without adblocking. And it did create folders in c:\users\…, empty ones. But IceWeasel portable, that I have created by frankensteining Firefox Portable (from portableapps.com) creates these folders as well, so I guess it’s not a real problem.
    PM30 – love that url bar is above tabs. I look forward to further PM releases.

    What does dropping UXP mean from user perspective?

    1. Iron Heart said on March 18, 2022 at 12:24 pm
      Reply

      @m3city

      > What does dropping UXP mean from user perspective?

      Nothing aside from branding. They still can’t implement Web Components. This browser is dead in the water in terms of using it for the modern web. Maybe you don’t use any modern web page, but most people do. 2 – 3 developers can’t accomplish what legions of engineers at Mozilla, Google, or Apple can (quelle surprise…). And backporting from Mozilla is out of the question because Moonchild disagrees with them on certain dev choices they’ve made. In short, the browser is DEAD for anything but niche use cases.

      1. m3city said on March 18, 2022 at 12:31 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        Thx. It does fail on some pages (banking, social… so you are right here). Reading through PM forums it seems that developers are full aware of compatibility issues…

        One of “niches”: works on old PCs, low core/ram laptops pulled out of closet. And these can be still usable by ones who don’t have a computer at all or have very limited needs.

      2. Iron Heart said on March 18, 2022 at 12:51 pm
        Reply

        @m3city

        Yes, they are aware of the issues of course. But the easiest way out would be to backport from Mozilla which they can’t because the lead dev disagrees with certain development choices Mozilla made.

        Here is how I would fix Pale Moon, btw:

        1. Rebase on a modern version of Firefox, likely ESR because it remains stable enough for them to decrappify it and not worry about new negative input from Mozilla all the time.
        2. Keep WebExtensions compatibility intact in order to profit from Mozilla’s add-on library.
        3. Throw out telemetry, Pocket, FF Experiments and other crap similar to what LibreWolf does, minus the breakage-inducing web compat changes.
        4. Restore compatibility with legacy extensions (yes, you can actually still run them in Firefox Dev Edition if they have been modded for modern Firefox, like the Tab Mix Plus version for modern FF that is currently beta-tested)
        5. Evaluate which legacy extensions didn’t lose functionality as a WebExtension, like uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere etc. Let these developers do their thing. Of the rest of the, let’s say, top 100 legacy extensions that didn’t make it into WebExtension format without functionality loss, fork them (license permitting, of course) and update them for modern Firefox.
        6. Ask the community what to do with the current Pale Moon UI, whether to keep it and modify the current Firefox UI to resemble it OR keep the current Firefox UI and turn the current Pale Moon UI in a full theme (I would be in favor of the latter).
        7. Profit.

        But then again, I am sane, a pragmatic. I am not driven by ideology, this is not how I make my choices. This is how Moonchild partially makes his choices, which is in turn why the current road is a dead end. If he could de-crappify modern Firefox and offer an additional library of powerful add-ons, he would be a serious contender and well-respected.

      3. Yash said on March 18, 2022 at 4:07 pm
        Reply

        In other words, shift current approach to Librewolf + legacy extensions. Sounds great(not being sarcastic).

      4. Rex said on March 18, 2022 at 1:15 pm
        Reply

        There is no point in rebasing on Firefox when Firefox already exists, and without breaking existing XUL/XPCOM compatibility which is the whole reason for its existence. And before anyone brings up Watefox Classic, that one is already made long after Mozilla dumbed down the UI with the Australis update in version 29. Pale Moon UI is based off version 24, the final rebase they did was with Firefox 52 to get the final working set of platform code (which is where XUL/XPCOM resides). So while Waterfox Classic does appear to support both WE and XUL, its support for both is limited to a subset of features of each since by then Mozilla had already moved onto the ‘restartless’ bollocks that they were pushing back then.

        The platform was what was Mozilla’s crown jewel that they squandered – Firefox and Thunderbird were both clients written on it, and they could’ve tried to popularize it as a powerful way to write full desktop applications with a knowledge of just XML/Javascript, and ported it to Android the same way. There used to be Mozilla based applications like the Songbird media manager. I’d rather have those than the totally crappy, dumbed down and massively bloated Electron ‘desktop apps’ used by Whatsapp Desktop and the like which just bundle the mobile webpage with a Chrome instance and call it a day.

      5. OldFoxBetterFox said on May 3, 2022 at 10:54 am
        Reply

        Australis isn’t “dumbed down”. The DEFAULT settings were but the interface itself has an unparalleled level of customisation available to the user.

        For 15 versions after Australis was introduced you could still use XUL extensions. It was a bit annoying that you needed to use extensions to enable a lot of the old customisations, but the fact is they were there and then some.

        Palemoons failure to understand this was a huge mistake and made their browser years closer to obsolete than necessary. But the attitude of the project leader forbids rational discussion of anything with which he disagrees. That’s why the project is dead in the water. It’s a shame, because it could have been good.

        And for those like me who like their tabs below the URL bar you can still do that in the latest firefox 102 via CSS and also in the chromium based Vivaldi

      6. Iron Heart said on March 18, 2022 at 1:23 pm
        Reply

        @Rex

        > There is no point in rebasing on Firefox when Firefox already exists

        There is also no point in having a browser that can’t render modern webpages properly. Sorry to break it to you. 2 – 3 developers can’t do what the engineering squads at Mozilla / Google / Apple can do. You will fall behind if you don’t loosely follow the main engine developer (Pale Moon used to do that until Gecko 52, actually).

        Didn’t you read what I wrote after? Restore legacy extension compatibility, update / fork legacy extensions that lost functionality or ceased to exist when WebExtensions hit, then offer them on the Pale Moon add-ons page. I think Pale Moon should really focus on de-crappifying modern Firefox and on being a provider of the most powerful add-ons. Engine development with just a few developers is a lost cause, essentially dead on arrival.

      7. beemeup5 said on March 18, 2022 at 11:48 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        What you’re basically suggesting is that Pale Moon becomes LibreWolf (decrappified Firefox), but LibreWolf already exists so there’s no point. If you’re suggesting that Pale Moon becomes LibreWolf + XUL compatibility, that isn’t technically possible. The approach used by Waterfox Classic for instance comes with hard compromises and isn’t ideal for either classic XUL addons pre-Australis, or for the full set of WebExtension compatibility. It’s also unsustainable since you basically have to maintain essentially two browsers on the internal backend, which is why in all likelihood Waterfox Classic will soon be retired, as it’s already on life-support as it is.

        XUL is a UI language, not a rendering engine. It is not only responsible for how the browser looks but also for how every visual element interacts with the underlying components. XUL addons and extensions have the same level of access to the browser internals as the browser itself, which is _why_ they are so powerful and versatile. They _literally_ “extend” the browser. WebExtensions and Chrome extensions by comparison have their access to the browser internals greatly limited, which is why powerful addons like ‘Session Manager’ or ‘DownThemAll’ can’t exist as WebExtensions. The less informed chalk this up as a “security win” but we’ve seen over the years that this doesn’t do much to curb the prevalence of malicious addons which can still compromise your privacy and exfiltrate data from anyone gullible enough to install them.

        Mozilla abandoned what made them truly special in pursuit of matching Chrome, but all that’s gotten them is lower market share year over year. Contrary to what most people incorrectly assume, it doesn’t require hundreds of developers to maintain a web browser, so long as web site designers are competent and adhere to long established standards. A recent ghacks article talks about how Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla want to form a new “standards” cartel, but as I’ve said in that article what they’re doing is pointless and only reveals how each of them (Google especially) wants to have their own standards and reshape the web to best suit THEIR business (which is locking users in to a specific platform, selling their data, and of course, advertising).

      8. Iron Heart said on March 19, 2022 at 1:25 am
        Reply

        @beemeup5

        > What you’re basically suggesting is that Pale Moon becomes LibreWolf (decrappified Firefox), but LibreWolf already exists so there’s no point.

        No, I don’t want it to be just another LibreWolf because…

        > XUL compatibility, that isn’t technically possible

        …what you say here is incorrect. You are part of the Pale Moon community, right? For a community that is rather strongly opposed to Mozilla you have been drinking a bit much of their kool aid in the past few years. Firefox can still totally run privileged extensions, even such beasts as Tab Mix Plus. You can literally install Tab Mix Plus (yes, the OG one, not the WebExtension joke) on Waterfox G4 or Firefox Developer Edition. Don’t believe me? Then do the following:

        1. Download and install Waterfox G4 (not Classic, I really mean G4 here) for example.
        2. Go to this page: https://github.com/onemen/TabMixPlus/releases and download the XPI file in Waterfox under “Assets”
        3. Go to about:addons, cogwheel left of the TMP extension, now check out the settings page of the add-on.

        That is privileged access to browser internals, my friend. Just because Mozilla doesn’t officially allow XUL extensions anymore… doesn’t have to mean they don’t run anymore. :) Do your research, modern Firefox is not as incapable as you think it is for extensions.

        As I said, developing a rendering engine with, like, 3 people, is a non-starter, dead on arrival even. That is not the way forward unless you want your project to die. Instead, better fork modern Firefox, then fork extensions that can’t be made into WebExtensions properly, then profit. In this order. There is no alternative, independent engine development is out of the question really.

        But then again, you know my posts so far, don’t you? I have long held that even Firefox itself is pretty much dead in the water with 3% market share. The market is pretty much heading into a Blink / WebKit duopoly (already the case on mobile). So even forking modern Firefox might not save the Pale Moon project long term. But remaining on Gecko 52 with little improvement is even worse, so…

        > XUL is a UI language, not a rendering engine.

        I am fully aware of this, no need to discuss this.

        > new “standards” cartel

        Yes. On the one hand, thinking that any of the members is really opposing the others is a bit ridiculous (this is what Mozilla is being shilled as here). On the other hand, in reality, the members of this “cartel” are pretty much having 99% of the market under them in terms of what rendering engines are being used, and the W3C was never proactive in creating new web standards, the W3C waiting for proposals coming from the main engine devs is how it has always been. This is not a new development at all. Just my 2 cents.

      9. beemeup5 said on March 19, 2022 at 12:39 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        I never said modern Firefox was incapable, only that it’s not as capable as it once was.
        TabMixPlus is not as good of an example as you think it is. For one, TMP was completely refactored to work as a WebExtension, the big caveat being that it also requires using userChromeJS scripts, particularly BootstrapLoader to function properly. Waterfox already includes the equivalent functionality out-of-the-box, but Firefox does not, which is why TabMixPlus can’t simply be installed from the Mozilla addon site like all the other addons.

        TMP was lucky in that it deals mostly with tabs and nearly all of the older API calls have an equivalent WebExtension API, but not all of them. You’ll notice that TMP’s session manager component isn’t enabled, and this is because there is no equivalent WebExtension API for granular control over multiple sessions, and it looks like there won’t be one for a veeeery long time: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427928

        With WebExtensions, every additional piece of functionality requires its own API that must be individually approved then created on a case-by-case basis, with priorities set by corporate (the developers have little say in the matter). With the older XUL paradigm, the world was your oyster. You could do ANYTHING! The only limits were your skill and imagination. There was even a nifty addon called ‘Torrent Tornado’ which allowed you to load torrents directly in your browser! Will there ever be a WebExtension API for that? Hah! Fat chance. Sure there’s a WebExtension substitute for most things, but in many instances you are settling and making do with less. WebExtensions will never surpass the peak of XUL/XPCOM because they are limited by design.

        Also, why can’t 3 people maintain a browser engine? Assuming web site developers adhere to open standards, there’s nothing so daunting about maintaining a rendering backend that 3 dedicated people can’t do it. I’ve seen small teams and even individuals maintain PDF programs and office applications. How? Because things like PDF and XLS are open standards and everyone plays by the same rules. HTML and CSS are basically the same. So why do some sites not work in Pale Moon? There are basically only two reasons why a site doesn’t work with Pale Moon (excluding sites that only work in Internet Exploder 6):

        1) Browser or useragent discrimination:
        Basically some sites have an internal whitelist and if you’re not on the approved guest list you get bounced. More vindictive sites will even have a blacklist which will bork Pale Moon specifically. Certain technologies also have gatekeepers, like Widevine decryption and WebRTC. Guess who? Yes, it’s Google! (Surprise surprise!) Moonchild politely requested access for Basilisk and Pale Moon, but Google denied the request, with no reason given. However anyone who wasn’t born yesterday could read between the lines. It’s an exclusive club and niche browsers aren’t invited, especially those of the non-Blink variety.

        2) Obfuscated javascript:
        Essentially a blackbox where only the web developers can see how it works. Why does it work in Chrome or Firefox but not Pale Moon? Only the site developers would know for sure, but an educated guess is because Chrome and Firefox play it fast and loose with the standards so even lazy work gets a pass. Chrome gets away with it because it’s 80% of the web, and Firefox follows suit because what choice do they have. The sad reality is that way too many web devs haven’t a clue what they’re doing and they’re likely confused when something actually works just as often as when it doesn’t, but hey, if no one’s complaining just call it a day. It’s a pervasive issue, but bad web design isn’t a problem for browsers to fix. People just need to get gud and stop pushing out garbage.
        Yes, one can only dream.

      10. Iron Heart said on March 19, 2022 at 4:16 pm
        Reply

        @beemeup5

        I think you should rewind a bit to November 2017, that is when Firefox 57 hit. Ask yourself these questions:

        What were the top 100 add-ons then? How many of those are WebExtensions now? If they are WebExtensions now, have they lost any functionality?

        Then, after you have filtered out all add-ons that are now WebExtensions and haven’t lost any major functionality in the transition, focus on the rest! If you can make the rest work on current versions of Firefox, then you should be rebasing.

        You should realize that Pale Moon currently doesn’t have a vibrant add-on developer ecosystem, nobody is rushing to write extensions for your browser. Since it has web compatibility that is somewhat between bad and mediocre, and since you refuse to fix it (rebasing on newer versions of Firefox is the only fix I can see, due to a lack of manpower), most of the add-on devs think that your ship is sinking anyway – can’t really blame them, can you?
        Web compatibility is priority numero uno for a web browser, it is the bread and butter of your application. Without decent web compat, anything else is pointless, users wouldn’t want to use the browser anymore, developers wouldn’t be attracted to it either. No need to elaborate on this, right? Do we agree here? Good.

        You should perhaps also understand that legacy extensions will never become a relevant type of extension development again, it is all WebExtensions now across all major browsers. If someone creates a totally new add-on for you, it would be with the outlook of it never being widely used due to your user base being small (which is in turn the case because web compat sucks). Since the legacy extension format will never regain dominance, perhaps you should focus on preserving what you got from Mozilla, which is (was) amazing in its own right.

        Oh and the web compat issues you cite are twofold, the user agent one is Moonchild’s ideology getting the better of him again: Why don’t you just use a Firefox user agent? I get that Moonchild wants Pale Moon to be somewhat more visible, but that needlessly causes issue with websites doing user agent sniffing (a method you will never get rid of, let’s be real here)! I mean, who does he think he is? Brave has 50 million monthly active users and still has to use Chrome’s user agent string to avoid being discriminated against (which websites would have an incentive to do, because of the adblocker). If Brave can’t do it realistically, why do you think you can?
        The second issue (obfuscated JavaScript) is a real one, and can only be solved realistically by, well, rebasing on a newer version of Gecko!
        See, I am a usability maximalist, kind of… What is the best outcome with the manpower Pale Moon has? I think modern Firefox with the most important legacy add-ons working again would be your best outcome, usability-wise though not ideology-wise.

        I followed Pale Moon’s IRC conversation (don’t ask me why, let’s just say it is a hilarious sight to behold), and they were basically begging @athenian200 to implement Web Components, which he couldn’t do, he could backport from Mozilla up to a point and then it stalled… Moonchild and Tobin both said they couldn’t do it either. They have certain woes they are unlikely to overcome without rebasing on a newer version of Gecko, I know this first hand from public channels where they are more honest than they are on their forums.

        And the so called “standards”, LOL. Don’t get me started. Standards are a nice theory but no major browser is really compliant and has their custom implementations and that’s really how it has always been as well. Pale Moon yelling at competitors million times larger than them, is not going to achieve anything and is a complete waste of time. And to be honest, if I were a web dev, I would implement my stuff for Blink and WebKit and call it a day, covers 97% of all users easily. Can’t blame them considering the numbers and the reality of very custom implementations within the browsers.

        Notably, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I have a niche use case for Pale Moon until Tab Mix Plus for newer Gecko versions leaves beta. I don’t expect it to work on each and every website, I have Brave for that. I should also point out that Moonchild’s insistence on having his own engine without having the necessary manpower behind him to make it work strikes me as foolish, considering web compat is nr. 1 priority of any web browser.

      11. beemeup5 said on March 21, 2022 at 3:48 am
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        I like Pale Moon and use it regularly, but I also don’t hold any delusions of it becoming more than a very niche browser, and that’s fine for me. From purely a privacy perspective it doesn’t make any sense to use just one browser for everything to begin with, so some websites not working with Pale Moon doesn’t affect how I use it at all. It’s just one of many browsers I use.

        XUL is what makes Pale Moon unique, so relinquishing it by rebasing on modern Firefox doesn’t make any sense. And there’s no “Oh just rebase one more time and we’ll be good”, no, another rebase would inevitably mean more rebases down the line until you become LibreWolf and XUL is dead for real. Strictly speaking, some kind of “WebExtension compatibility layer through XUL” is _technically_ possible given the versatility of XUL/XPCOM but currently infeasible as it would be an enormous undertaking.

        The Goanna engine could also be separately overhauled to more or less reach feature-parity with current Gecko or even Blink (except for components requiring Google approval) but that’s another large endeavor that won’t happen overnight. Trying to integrate current Gecko into Pale Moon would require even more work than just overhauling Goanna. This is the same reason why Mozilla doesn’t simply adopt Webkit, as getting Firefox to use Webkit would involve more work than just building a new Webkit browser from scratch.

  36. Pet said on March 18, 2022 at 10:59 am
    Reply

    BRAVE and B. A.T Rewards.
    Unless another browser gives you something back, i am sticking to it.

    Btw, i am so sick of all ”expert” talking about security and blah blah blah. They only think yoy guys achieve is to leave the average user totally ignore you.
    Every time an update of the a,b browser comes up, tens of thousands of ‘users’ start to write about the history of their lives…

    Half of them don’t even know what cyber security means. And the other half, want to live in a fantasy island that blocks advertisements like they are coming from an Occult Heresy. Most of them think that google, ms, apple, xiaomi, etc etc etc, watch them in a 24/7 basis. They want to kill them, steal them, have sex with their wives, enslave their kids and take their bicycles.

    Stop thinking you are important guys. You are not. You are just an ant crawling around a big sphere.

    1. Privacy Schmivacy said on March 18, 2022 at 12:09 pm
      Reply

      @ Pet,
      Knowledge is Power.
      Knowledge specific to you, is power over you.
      Knowledge specific to a community or culture, is power over that community or culture.

      Tracking your past actions is a good way to predict your future actions.
      In your personal life, if a member of your family is late coming home:
      You will be either fearful, angry or indifferent based on their past activities in such.

      Angry: if you suspect they went to the bar after work and are getting drunk with his no-account friends which he promised not to do any more.

      Fearful: if they are never late and something must have happened to them.

      Indifferent: if they are often times late for various reasons that are not serious.

      Now, let all these key-hole peepers keep track of everything you do on-line and track where you are with your phone location and when, and you are easily punked at their whim.
      People are creatures of habit. Knowing you past predicts your future…

  37. Nihal247 said on March 18, 2022 at 10:34 am
    Reply

    I use this browser as it is endorsed and used by my friend Iron Heart

    1. Iron Heart said on March 18, 2022 at 12:11 pm
      Reply

      @Nihal247

      First off, you should stop being an imposter of GitHub accounts that you have zero claim to. It is misleading people and fails to be funny.

      Secondly, yes, of course I endorse Pale Moon for a very specific use case: Running powerful extensions that can’t be run on any modern web browser. Like Tab Mix Plus in my case. It is also more trustworthy than most mainstream browsers in that it doesn’t want to track its users, the lead dev has a good track record of not betraying people’s trust in him. I am not endorsing it as a general use browser since it has shoddy web compatibility these days and lacks certain modern exploit mitigations. I use Brave as my browser 99% of the time, but you have to misrepresent my 1% use of Pale Moon as me “endorsing” it for general use in order for your trolling to be halfway effective… *Yawn*

      Idiotic as your post under a stolen nickname is, I felt it necessary to write a real talk reply because that frustrates my personal pet troll the most.

      1. Nihal247 said on March 18, 2022 at 1:54 pm
        Reply

        Show me my dear best friend ever where this nick is reserved, copyrighted or trademarked – or limited in any way shape or form on this website

        You need to channel your inner anger at being banned from privacyguides into something more constructive, like shilling for Brave

      2. retroboy said on March 19, 2022 at 11:09 am
        Reply

        pale meme is the best, so retro with slow loading and performance, its like the 90s on dialup

      3. Iron Heart said on March 18, 2022 at 4:28 pm
        Reply

        @Nihal247

        It’s OK, my personal pet troll, it’s OK…

        Like, isn’t r/firefox missing you?

      4. iron-head_S_paradigm-head said on March 18, 2022 at 1:53 pm
        Reply

        iron-head or paradigm-head?
        Does they give U pale-bats or lame-bats rewards for shilling, too?

  38. Mystique said on March 18, 2022 at 10:13 am
    Reply

    I hope this lures back old extension developers from both the long past and those that were with the project and left due to the change of direction and issues.

    I know this is a pretty polarizing issue given both pathways but I feel that this may pay off for Pale Moon. If this had been the path and the direction held firm over years then things might have been a lot further along for Pale Moon.
    What needs to improve is the marketing of this value. They absolutely have to put a positive spin on old extensions rather than being somewhat pessimistic by suggesting that older extensions are bad when it is one of your positive aspects. We get it some extensions are old and unmaintained but that does not make them festering portals to the demon realm. We should be encouraging developers to the platform not discouraging them with such negativity.
    I respect that there is some validity to it but one can’t go around being a sad sap about it all.

    Focus on the positive and let the respective extension developers work on their extensions.

    Hopefully the community is strong enough to maintain the aspects of the browser of which key developers will not be any longer.

    This is and always has been a browser one should have installed and

    I’d like to know everyone else’s take on this “new” direction Pale Moon is taking. If history is anything to go by I will definitely get it on this website. hahaha.

    1. Norio said on March 23, 2022 at 6:31 pm
      Reply

      I use and appreciate this browser. A plus for me is the fact it uses a different renderer from most, if not all, of the others. I make donations a couple times per year.
      Yeah, you’re right about the history of responses on this website. Seems like a lot of negativity.
      Stick your neck out and your head will get chopped off, haha.

    2. Rex said on March 18, 2022 at 1:07 pm
      Reply

      It won’t do anything. The removal of support for Firefox extensions was fairly recent with the 29 milestone release, before that also when Firefox extensions were supported for more than a decade, few of the original developers bothered to return, let alone any current users offering to fork them. In fact after version 29, the count of PM exclusive extensions (made from the ground up for PM) actually started to rise.

      1. saywhat said on March 18, 2022 at 2:53 pm
        Reply

        @Rex
        “the count of PM exclusive extensions (made from the ground up for PM) actually started to rise.”
        Care to back up this claim? Forking old extensions under a new name with functional changes approacing zero hardly qualifies as “made from the ground up for PM”.

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