Pale Moon is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

licensed under the MPL-2.0 with an emphasis on customization. There are official releases for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. Pale Moon originated as a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

, but has subsequently diverged. The main differences are the

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

, add-on support, and running in single-

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management * Business process, activities that produce a specific s ...

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 A goanna is any one of several species of lizard of the genus ''Monitor lizard, Varanus'' found in Australia and Southeast Asia. Around 70 species of ''Varanus'' are known, 25 of which are found in Australia. This varied group of carnivorous r ...

. The browser has its own set of extensions and supports legacy Firefox add-ons built with XUL and

XPCOM Cross Platform Component Object Model (XPCOM) is a cross-platform component model from Mozilla. It is similar to Component Object Model (COM), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and system object model (SOM). It features multiple ...

, which Firefox dropped support for in 2017 with version 57. NPAPI plugins, such as

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is a discontinuedExcept in China, where it continues to be used, as well as Harman for enterprise users. computer program for viewing multimedia ...

, 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 DuckDuckGo is an American software company focused on online privacy whose flagship product is a search engine named DuckDuckGo. Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, its later products include browser extensions and a custom DuckDuckGo web ...

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 Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots ''tele'', 'far off', an ...

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 Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates. They range from . Geckos are unique among lizards ...

engine. Moonchild Productions develops UXP independently alongside Pale Moon. Pale Moon 29 Tabs on Top Mode Multi-OS

Supported platforms

Windows 7 SP1 and above are supported, along with any modern

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

as long as the processors support

SSE2 SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2) is one of the Intel SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) processor supplementary instruction sets introduced by Intel with the initial version of the Pentium 4 in 2000. SSE2 instructions allow the use of ...

and there is at least 1 GB of RAM.

OS X Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Speci ...

and above on

Apple–Intel architecture The Apple–Intel architecture is an unofficial name used for Macintosh personal computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. that use Intel x86 processors, rather than the PowerPC and Motorola 68000 ("68k") series processors used in th ...

and

macOS Big Sur macOS Big Sur (version 11) is the seventeenth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and w ...

and above on

Apple silicon Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture family, ARM architecture. They are used in nearly all of the company's devices including Mac ...

processors are supported. FreeBSD 13.0 and above are also supported. Previously,

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

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. Pale Moon 8 Screenshoot

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.

References

External links

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Pale Moon history
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pale Moon (web browser) 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 *