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Pale Moon

Pale Moon 32 running on macOS Sonoma
Developer(s)	M.C. Straver Moonchild Productions
Initial release	4 October 2009; 15 years ago (2009-10-04)
Stable release	33.5.0  / 5 December 2024; 43 days ago (5 December 2024)
Repository	https://repo.palemoon.org/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon
Written in	C, C++, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, XML User Interface Language
Engines	Goanna, SpiderMonkey
Operating system	Windows 7 SP1 or later FreeBSD 13.0 or later OS X Lion or later Linux Contributed builds for various platforms
Platform	IA-32, x86-64, ARM64
Available in	37 languages
List of languagesArabic (ar), Bulgarian (bg), Traditional Chinese (zh-TW), Simplified Chinese (zh-CN), Croatian (hr), Czech (cs), Danish (da), Dutch (nl), American English (en-US), British English (en-GB), Filipino (tl), Finnish (fi), French (fr), Galician (gl), Greek (el), Hungarian (hu), Indonesian (id), Italian (it), Icelandic (is), Japanese (ja), Korean (ko), Polish (pl), Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR), European Portuguese (pt-PT), Romanian (ro), Russian (ru) Argentine Spanish (es-AR), Mexican Spanish (es-M), Serbian (sr), Castilian Spanish (es-ES), Slovak (sk), Slovenian (sl), Swedish (sv-SE), Thai (th), Turkish (tr), Ukrainian (uk)
Type	Web browser News aggregator
License	Source code: MPL-2.0 Binaries: Proprietary freeware, or MPL-2.0 if branding is removed
Website	www.palemoon.org

Pale Moon is a free and open-source web browser licensed under the MPL-2.0 with an emphasis on customization. There are official releases for Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux.

Pale Moon originated as a fork of Firefox, but has subsequently diverged. The main differences are the user interface, add-on support, and running in single-process mode. Pale Moon retains the user interface of Firefox from versions 4 to 28 and supports legacy Firefox add-ons.

Its motto is "Your browser, Your way."

Features

Pale Moon's default user interface is the one that was used by Firefox from versions 4 to 28, known as Strata. It always runs in single process mode and uses a rendering engine known as Goanna. The browser has its own set of extensions and supports legacy Firefox add-ons built with XUL and XPCOM, which Firefox dropped support for in 2017 with version 57. NPAPI plugins, such as Adobe Flash Player, are also supported. The browser's entire user interface can be customized by complete themes and lightweight themes are also available. Pale Moon's default search engine is DuckDuckGo and it uses the IP-API service instead of Google for geolocation. The browser is known to be lightweight on resource usage.

Pale Moon has no telemetry or data collection.

Unified XUL Platform (UXP)

Pale Moon is built upon the Unified XUL Platform (UXP), a cross-platform, multimedia application base that was forked from Mozilla code prior to the introduction of Firefox Quantum. UXP is a fork of the Firefox 52 ESR platform that was created in 2017 due to XUL/XPCOM support being removed from the Firefox codebase. It includes the Goanna layout and rendering engine, a fork of Mozilla's Gecko engine. Moonchild Productions develops UXP independently alongside Pale Moon.

Supported platforms

Windows 7 SP1 and above are supported, along with any modern Linux distribution as long as the processors support SSE2 and there is at least 1 GB of RAM. OS X Lion and above on Apple–Intel architecture and macOS Big Sur and above on Apple silicon processors are supported. FreeBSD 13.0 and above are also supported.

Previously, Windows XP and Vista were supported, but are no longer supported from versions 27 and 28 onward, respectively.

An Android build was developed in 2014 but was cancelled by the developer due to lack of community involvement a year later.

History

Pale Moon was created and is primarily maintained by one developer, M.C. Straver. Prior to version 26, Pale Moon used the same rendering engine as Firefox, known as Gecko. With version 26 in 2016, Pale Moon switched to using the Goanna rendering engine, a fork of Gecko. In 2017, the Pale Moon team began the Unified XUL Platform due to upcoming changes in the Mozilla codebase. The Basilisk web browser was developed to serve as a "reference application" for development before Pale Moon switched over to using it.

In 2019, hackers breached a Pale Moon archive server and infected the older installers with malware; then-current Pale Moon releases were not affected. The breach took place between April and June, and the affected server was taken down on July 9 when it was discovered.

In 2022, a change in direction for Pale Moon was announced to improve website and add-on capability. This resulted in version 30, which used the Firefox GUID to improve compatibility with legacy Firefox extensions and started increased development of UXP and Goanna. A few days later, version 30 had to be recalled due to one of the developers causing issues before exiting the project, such as messing up the add-ons server. Version 31 was issued in response to fix these issues.

Notable forks

MyPal was formerly a fork of Pale Moon that supported Windows XP, but after issues with the lead developer of Pale Moon regarding licensing, it was rebased on Firefox Quantum. Versions of MyPal afterwards are a fork of the Firefox 68-78 codebase.

New Moon is another fork of Pale Moon which supports Windows XP.

See also

• Waterfox
• LibreWolf
• K-Meleon
• SeaMonkey
• Timeline of web browsers
• History of the web browser

References

1. M.C. Straver. "About Moonchild Productions". Archived from the original on 13 March 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
2. M.C. Straver. "About Moonchild Productions". Archived from the original on 9 April 2020. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
3. "Release Notes".
4. "Contributed builds of Pale Moon". Pale Moon. Retrieved 12 February 2017.
5. "Pale Moon - Technical Details". www.palemoon.org.
6. "Pale Moon language packs". Moonchild Productions. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
7. "Pale Moon redistribution", Official website, retrieved 10 February 2017
8. Proven, Liam. "Waterfox: A Firefox fork that could teach Mozilla a lesson". The Register. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
9. ^ Ganguly, Suparna (24 March 2022). "5 Lesser-Known Open Source Web Browsers for Linux in 2022 | Linux Journal". www.linuxjournal.com. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
10. ^ "Review: Is Pale Moon a viable privacy browser?". Avoid the Hack (avoidthehack!). 19 September 2021. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
11. Sanchez-Rola, Iskander; Santos, Igor; Balzarotti, Davide (16 August 2017), "Extension Breakdown: Security Analysis of Browsers Extension Resources Control Policies", USENIX Security Symposium (26): 680–682, ISBN 978-1-931971-40-9
12. "Avoid The Hack: 6 Best Privacy Browser Picks for Windows | Avoid the Hack (avoidthehack!)". avoidthehack!. 1 June 2023. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
13. Vaughan-Nichols, Steven (21 September 2015). "Mozilla drops XUL, changes Firefox APIs; developers unhappy". ZDNET. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
14. Serea, Razvan (21 September 2023). "Pale Moon 29.4.0.2". Neowin. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
15. Brinkmann, Martin (11 August 2016). "Pale Moon to remove Google Search completely - gHacks Tech News". gHacks Technology News. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
16. Abdul, Shan (13 November 2023). "7 Lightweight Windows Browsers Tested for RAM Usage: Which Is the Best?". MUO. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
17. Siyal, Gaurav (8 February 2022). "The 7 Best Lightweight Web Browsers for Linux". MUO. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
18. Richardson, John (2018). Introductory XUL (7th ed.). Lulu.com. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-304-60870-3.
19. ^ Larabel, Michael (17 November 2017). "Pale Moon Project Rolls Out The Basilisk Browser Project". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
20. Meiert, Jens (7 April 2020). The Web Development Glossary. Frontend Dogma.
21. ^ Brinkmann, Martin (22 June 2015). "Pale Moon to switch from Gecko to Goanna rendering engine - gHacks Tech News". gHacks Technology News. Retrieved 31 March 2024.
22. Abdul, Shan (13 November 2023). "7 Lightweight Windows Browsers Tested for RAM Usage: Which Is the Best?". MUO. Retrieved 31 March 2024.
23. Brinkmann, Martin (22 March 2023). "Pale Moon 32.1.0 launches with major web compatibility improvements - gHacks Tech News". gHacks Technology News. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
24. "End of Windows XP support in Pale Moon". 29 September 2017. Archived from the original on 29 September 2017. Retrieved 18 June 2024.
25. "Pale Moon - Release Notes". 27 November 2016. Archived from the original on 27 November 2016. Retrieved 18 June 2024.
26. "Pale Moon 28.0.0 released!". 16 August 2018. Archived from the original on 2 July 2019.
27. "Pale Moon - Release Notes". 24 August 2018. Archived from the original on 24 August 2018. Retrieved 18 June 2024.
28. Kondrat, Tomek (22 July 2014). "Pale Moon Browser Ported to Android". XDA Developers. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
29. "I may have to let Pale Moon for Android go. :(". 16 April 2015.
30. Hoffman, Chris (22 February 2018). "Why You Shouldn't Use Firefox Forks Like Waterfox, Pale Moon, or Basilisk". How-To Geek. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
31. Peers, Nick (26 January 2016). "Pale Moon adopts new Goanna browser engine, fine-tunes interface". BetaNews. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
32. Cimpanu, Catalin (19 July 2019). "Pale Moon says hackers added malware to older browser versions". ZDNET. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
33. Gatlan, Sergiu (10 July 2019). "Hackers Infect Pale Moon Archive Server With a Malware Dropper". Bleeping Computer. Bleeping Computer LLC. Retrieved 13 August 2022.
34. Kovacs, Eduard (11 July 2019). "Archive Server of Pale Moon Open Source Browser Hacked". securityweek.com. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
35. Brinkmann, Martin (17 December 2021). "Pale Moon Project announces change of direction - gHacks Tech News". gHacks Technology News. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
36. Brinkmann, Martin (18 March 2022). "Pale Moon 30.0 out with important changes - gHacks Tech News". gHacks Technology News. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
37. Brinkmann, Martin (10 May 2022). "Pale Moon 31 is out now - gHacks Tech News". gHacks Technology News. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
38. Pardo, Lisandro (2022). "MyPal: Un navegador para Windows XP en 2022 – NeoTeo". www.neoteo.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 6 April 2024.
39. ^ Bolaji, Ola-Hassan (7 February 2023). "10 Best Browsers for Windows XP That Still Work in 2024". Windows Report. Archived from the original on 15 May 2023. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
40. Proven, Liam (24 July 2023). "Want to live dangerously? Try running Windows XP in 2023". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 6 April 2024.

External links

• Official website
• Pale Moon history

• 2009 software
• 2017 software
• Free FTP clients
• Free software programmed in C++
• Free web browsers
• Linux web browsers
• MacOS web browsers
• News aggregator software
• Portable software
• Software forks
• Software that uses XUL
• Software using the Mozilla Public License
• Web browsers based on Firefox
• Windows web browsers
• Pale Moon extensions