Pale Moon is an Open Source, Goanna-based web browser available for Microsoft Windows and Linux (with other operating systems in development), focusing on efficiency and customization.
Pale Moon offers you a browsing experience in a browser completely built from its own, independently developed source that has been hard forked off from Firefox/Mozilla code, with carefully selected features and optimizations to improve the browser's speed*, resource use, stability and user experience, while offering full customization and a growing collection of extensions and themes.
Main features:
Optimized for modern processors
Based on the Unified XUL Platform (UXP) containing our own optimized layout and rendering engine (Goanna)
Safe: forked from mature Mozilla code and regularly updated with the latest security patches
Secure: Additional security features and security-aware development
Supported by our user community, and fully non-profit
Privacy-aware: zero ads; no telemetry, spyware or data gathering
Familiar, efficient, fully customizable interface
Support for full themes: total freedom for any element's design
Support for easily-created lightweight themes (skins)
Smooth and speedy page drawing and script processing
Superior gradients and fonts
Will continue to support NPAPI plugins like Flash and Java
Support for a growing number of Pale Moon exclusive extensions
Extensive and growing support for existing web standards
Pale Moon will continue to provide grouped navigation buttons of a decent size, a bookmarks toolbar that is enabled by default, tabs next to page content by default (easily switchable) and not in the least a functional status bar and more freedom in customization, to name a few things.
This project is community-supported to benefit the development of not only a web browser but any other application that builds on the freely available XUL platform we are developing and using.
Pale Moon 33.0 launched with +250 commits, enhanced security, performance & user control
muhammadfarag added Pale Moon as alternative to Avira Secure Browser
POX added Pale Moon as alternative to Oku Web Browser
POX added Pale Moon as alternative to Hüma Browser
POX added Pale Moon as alternative to Download It Browser
Comments and Reviews
After FF's UI turned into a Chrome clone (I hate the Chrome's GUI, not my style at all) this is the browser to use, if you're looking for a browser that doesn't look like Chrome and functions like Firefox. Nothing bad to say about this, all addons work and there's also a x64 version available.
the application itself is workable however you will find many new browser features are not supported. Websites may also complain that you need to upgrade your browser. But if you are using this browser you probably chose it for the lack of support of HTML5, and you instead chose it for all the security and performance reasons. Then please go ahead and use this browser.
However the developers are complete fools who do not want to work with the free software opensource community. They think way too highly of themselves.
Never disrespect people that work for free to make your software work on their platforms. https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86
That is very good to know. I'm going to stray away from Pale Moon.
Reply written Oct 5, 2020
Ah, Pale Moon... it's not without its merits, certainly. But those flaws—those persistent lags, the bugs that creep in so quietly—how could I ignore them? It's almost tragic. Four stars... and that, perhaps, is generous.
Extremely old technology that aged like milk. While Pale Moon had its time and place, that has long past now. The lack of multiprocess support is probably the biggest flaw, meaning that one slow GIF will cause the whole browser to freeze. The older XUL tech is really fun to work with, but Mozilla is right - it's horribly insecure against modern organized/militarized cyber threats and can basically rewrite the whole browser at a second's notice. And the developer has also been a bully at times, putting a "my way or the highway" approach on development.
If you really wanna retro compute, spin up an XP virtual machine with Firefox 3 installed. Don't touch Pale Moon ever again.
Back in the day of the real Mozilla, Pale Moon was the best branching. Leaner, quicker, more secure.
Nowadays, though ...
Standards have evolved. Pale Moon has nae. Their buffleheaded refusal of HTML5 for security reasons may have some thuth as it basis, but the end result is that many, many modern sites are broken. OAuth2 ? Disnae work properly, so Office apps will go bonkers from time to time. HTML5 ? No sir, so no point-to-point crypted transfer possible. Forget wormholing or banking sites. And so on and so forth.
It's come to the point they need their very own plugin repository because the old XUL Mozilla ones are not guaranteed to work.
And Moonchild constant aggressiveness does nothing to bring in developers or solutions, search the BSD Palemoon debacle on the web.
So, all in all, this was a very good browser, that is now dead by lack of evolution.
Still has its niche use though, you can have the portable version, put a NPAPI flash plugin inside, and play old flash games :D Or actually work with Canon's incredibly outdated extranet.
Pale Moon is based on extremely outdated Firefox code, lacks proper sandboxing with site isolation, and still uses XUL which was dropped from Firefox years ago as it was a huge security risk. Pale Moon is a security nightmare and one of the worst browsers for privacy. It's much saner to use Google Chrome and disable telemetry in the settings.
I was extremely surprised that this suddenly became my new favorite browser after just a little bit of customization. Although the ready made themes are somewhat limited, luckily I found a few that I liked, & 1 in particular (the Halloween themed one) that I very much enjoy. It works quite well, even with my tendency to have way to many tabs open, & is still quick & stable. It has a pretty descent amount of extensions available (some users may miss the google store add-ons, but I am NOT one of them, so for me this is a plus, not a negative.) It already has Ublock Origin as 1 of the available add-ons, which I already use in other browsers, although I need to use another available script blocker for Pale Moon, (eMatrix in my case) instead of my usual no script add on, but this seems to work just as well for my purposes in this browser, so no drama there. I love the way I can drag & drop customize the layout of the tool buttons etc. when it is customizing mode & that after I am done arranging the modifications to the lay out, closing the customization menu, it "locks" them in place so that I don't accidentally drag & drop them in normal use mode. :) It is true that I have trouble downloading most applications from this browser, but maybe that is just an error in my settings on my part, but it doesn't affect me because I just download from one of my lesser browsers when I need to do that, which is not that often. I thought this would be a difficult browser but I was very pleasantly surprised at how well we get along, & I have found myself saying regularly that "I LOVE Pale Moon way more than I expected to at first glance" & that "I hope it never ever becomes discontinued"....