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Pale Moon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, seePale Moon (disambiguation).
Pale Moon
Developer(s)M.C. Straver[1]
Moonchild Productions[2]
Initial release4 October 2009;14 years ago(2009-10-04)
Stable release
33.2.1[3]Edit this on Wikidata / 15 July 2024;19 days ago(15 July 2024)
Repositoryhttps://repo.palemoon.org/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon
Written inC,C++,Cascading Style Sheets,JavaScript,XML User Interface Language
EnginesGoanna,SpiderMonkey
Operating systemWindows 7 SP1or later
FreeBSD 13.0or later
OS X 10.7or later
Linux
Contributed builds for various platforms[4]
PlatformIA-32,x86-64,ARM64[5]
Available in37 languages[6]
List of languages
Arabic (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 [cyrillic] (sr), Castilian Spanish (es-ES), Slovak (sk), Slovenian (sl), Swedish (sv-SE), Thai (th), Turkish (tr), Ukrainian (uk)
TypeWeb browser
News aggregator
License
Websitewww.palemoon.orgEdit this on Wikidata

Pale Moonis afree and open-sourceweb browserlicensed under theMPL-2.0with an emphasis on customization. Its motto is "Your browser, Your way." There are official releases forMicrosoft Windows,FreeBSD,macOS,andLinux.

Pale Moon originated as aforkofFirefox,but has subsequently diverged. The main differences are theuser interface,add-onsupport, and running in single-processmode. Pale Moon retains the user interface of Firefox from versions 4 to 28 and supports legacy Firefox add-ons.

Features

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Pale Moon's default user interface is the one that was used by Firefox from versions 4 to 28, known as Strata.[8]It always runs in single process mode and uses a rendering engine known asGoanna.[9]The browser has its own set of extensions[10]and supports legacy Firefox add-ons built withXULandXPCOM,[11][12]which Firefox dropped support for.[13]NPAPI plugins are also supported. The browser's entire user interface can be customized by complete themes and lightweight themes are also available.[14]Pale Moon's default search engine isDuckDuckGoand it uses the IP-API service instead of Google for geolocation.[15]The browser is known to be lightweight on resource usage.[16][17]

Pale Moon has notelemetryor data collection.[10][9]

Unified XUL Platform (UXP)

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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 ofFirefox Quantum.[18][19]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.[20]It includes the Goanna layout and rendering engine, a fork of Mozilla'sGeckoengine.[21]Moonchild Productions develops UXP independently alongside Pale Moon.[22]

Pale Moon running onUbuntu Linux,Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7

Supported platforms

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Windows 7 SP1and above are supported, along with any modernLinux distributionas long as the processors supportSSE2and there is at least 1 GB of RAM.[10]macOSonIntelandARMprocessors is supported.[23]FreeBSDis also supported.

Previously,Windows XPandVistawere supported, but are no longer supported from versions 27[24][25]and 28[26][27]onward, respectively.

AnAndroidbuild was developed in 2014[28]but was cancelled by the developer due to lack of community involvement a year later.[29]

History

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Pale Moon was created and is primarily maintained by one developer, M.C. Straver.[30]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.[21][31]In 2017, the Pale Moon team began the Unified XUL Platform due to upcoming changes in the Mozilla codebase. TheBasilisk web browserwas developed to serve as a "reference application" for development before Pale Moon switched over to using it.[19]

In 2019, hackers breached a Pale Moon archive server and infected the older installers with malware; then-current Pale Moon releases were not affected.[32]The breach took place between April and June, and the affected server was taken down on July 9 when it was discovered.[33][34]

In 2022, a change in direction for Pale Moon was announced to improve website and add-on capability.[35]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.[36]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.[37]

Pale Moon 8

Notable forks

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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.[38][39]Versions of MyPal afterwards are a fork of the Firefox 68 codebase.[40]

New Moon is another fork of Pale Moon which supports Windows XP.[39]

See also

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References

[edit]
  1. ^M.C. Straver."About Moonchild Productions".Archivedfrom the original on 13 March 2017.Retrieved19 April2018.
  2. ^M.C. Straver."About Moonchild Productions".Archivedfrom the original on 9 April 2020.Retrieved23 April2020.
  3. ^"Release Notes".Retrieved15 July2024.
  4. ^"Contributed builds of Pale Moon".Pale Moon.Retrieved12 February2017.
  5. ^"Pale Moon - Technical Details".palemoon.org.
  6. ^"Pale Moon language packs".Moonchild Productions.Retrieved2 March2021.
  7. ^"Pale Moon redistribution",Official website,retrieved10 February2017
  8. ^Proven, Liam."Waterfox: A Firefox fork that could teach Mozilla a lesson".The Register.Retrieved6 April2024.
  9. ^abGanguly, Suparna (24 March 2022)."5 Lesser-Known Open Source Web Browsers for Linux in 2022 | Linux Journal".linuxjournal.Retrieved6 April2024.
  10. ^abc"Review: Is Pale Moon a viable privacy browser?".Avoid the Hack (avoidthehack!).19 September 2021.Retrieved6 April2024.
  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,ISBN978-1-931971-40-9
  12. ^"Avoid The Hack: 6 Best Privacy Browser Picks for Windows | Avoid the Hack (avoidthehack!)".avoidthehack!.1 June 2023.Retrieved6 April2024.
  13. ^Vaughan-Nichols, Steven (21 September 2015)."Mozilla drops XUL, changes Firefox APIs; developers unhappy".ZDNET.Retrieved6 April2024.
  14. ^Serea, Razvan (21 September 2023)."Pale Moon 29.4.0.2".Neowin.Retrieved6 April2024.
  15. ^Brinkmann, Martin (11 August 2016)."Pale Moon to remove Google Search completely - gHacks Tech News".gHacks Technology News.Retrieved6 April2024.
  16. ^Abdul, Shan (13 November 2023)."7 Lightweight Windows Browsers Tested for RAM Usage: Which Is the Best?".MUO.Retrieved6 April2024.
  17. ^Siyal, Gaurav (8 February 2022)."The 7 Best Lightweight Web Browsers for Linux".MUO.Retrieved6 April2024.
  18. ^Richardson, John (2018).Introductory XUL(7th ed.). Lulu. p. 4.ISBN978-1-304-60870-3.
  19. ^abLarabel, Michael (17 November 2017)."Pale Moon Project Rolls Out The Basilisk Browser Project".phoronix.Retrieved6 April2024.
  20. ^Meiert, Jens (7 April 2020).The Web Development Glossary.Frontend Dogma.
  21. ^abBrinkmann, Martin (22 June 2015)."Pale Moon to switch from Gecko to Goanna rendering engine - gHacks Tech News".gHacks Technology News.Retrieved31 March2024.
  22. ^Abdul, Shan (13 November 2023)."7 Lightweight Windows Browsers Tested for RAM Usage: Which Is the Best?".MUO.Retrieved31 March2024.
  23. ^Brinkmann, Martin (22 March 2023)."Pale Moon 32.1.0 launches with major web compatibility improvements - gHacks Tech News".gHacks Technology News.Retrieved6 April2024.
  24. ^"End of Windows XP support in Pale Moon".29 September 2017. Archived fromthe originalon 29 September 2017.Retrieved18 June2024.
  25. ^"Pale Moon - Release Notes".27 November 2016. Archived fromthe originalon 27 November 2016.Retrieved18 June2024.
  26. ^"Pale Moon 28.0.0 released!".16 August 2018.Archivedfrom the original on 2 July 2019.
  27. ^"Pale Moon - Release Notes".24 August 2018. Archived fromthe originalon 24 August 2018.Retrieved18 June2024.
  28. ^Kondrat, Tomek (22 July 2014)."Pale Moon Browser Ported to Android".XDA Developers.Retrieved6 April2024.
  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.Retrieved6 April2024.
  31. ^Peers, Nick (26 January 2016)."Pale Moon adopts new Goanna browser engine, fine-tunes interface".BetaNews.Retrieved6 April2024.
  32. ^Cimpanu, Catalin (19 July 2019)."Pale Moon says hackers added malware to older browser versions".ZDNET.Retrieved6 April2024.
  33. ^Gatlan, Sergiu (10 July 2019)."Hackers Infect Pale Moon Archive Server With a Malware Dropper".Bleeping Computer.Bleeping Computer LLC.Retrieved13 August2022.
  34. ^Kovacs, Eduard (11 July 2019)."Archive Server of Pale Moon Open Source Browser Hacked".securityweek.Retrieved5 April2024.
  35. ^Brinkmann, Martin (17 December 2021)."Pale Moon Project announces change of direction - gHacks Tech News".gHacks Technology News.Retrieved6 April2024.
  36. ^Brinkmann, Martin (18 March 2022)."Pale Moon 30.0 out with important changes - gHacks Tech News".gHacks Technology News.Retrieved6 April2024.
  37. ^Brinkmann, Martin (10 May 2022)."Pale Moon 31 is out now - gHacks Tech News".gHacks Technology News.Retrieved6 April2024.
  38. ^Pardo, Lisandro (2022)."MyPal: Un navegador para Windows XP en 2022 – NeoTeo".neoteo(in Spanish).Retrieved6 April2024.
  39. ^abBolaji, Ola-Hassan (7 February 2023)."10 Best Browsers for Windows XP That Still Work in 2024".Windows Report.Retrieved6 April2024.
  40. ^Proven, Liam (24 July 2023)."Want to live dangerously? Try running Windows XP in 2023".theregister.Retrieved6 April2024.
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