Firefox-based web browser that offers fast browsing speed while retaining a traditional user-friendly interface adopted by earlier versions of Firefox. #Internet browser #Internet navigator #Web browser #Browse #Navigate #Browser
A whole lot has changed in the last 10 years in regards to how the Internet affects and helps our lives, but one thing that’s remained largely the same is that we still use web browsers as our staple picks when it comes to getting work done online.
Nowadays, the browser industry is heavily dominated by a few popular names, but the most interesting aspect of it is the sheer number of good alternatives currently present on the market. Released in late 2009, Pale Moon has managed to carve a good reputation among the best browsers of the industry and has since remained one of the best options for a specific niche of users out there.
Sporting the motto “Your browser, Your way,” Pale Moon is all about customizability, stability, and speed. Most of you might know by now that the project is actually a fork of Mozilla’s Firefox with various hand-picked features and optimizations.
Here’s a quick overview: Pale Moon always runs in single-process mode, whereas the modern versions of Firefox all run on a multi-process mode. It replaced the Gecko browser engine with Goanna-forked one, defaults to a welcoming and very customizable start page (start.me collaboration), it uses DuckDuckGo as its default engine (instead of Google or !Yahoo), and it uses the IP-API service and not Google’s geolocation engines.
Even though it uses the somewhat old-school user interface of Firefox browsers of old (version 4-28), the browser is a modern and actively-maintained product. This means that it is optimized for modern processors, it’s secure since up-to-date security features are constantly added to the project’s core, and extensive and growing support for some of the latest and most relevant web standards.
There are various other divergences from the Firefox version, and two of them represent two of the main reasons people love Pale Moon. The first and foremost is the fact that the browser uses the pre-Australis Firefox user interface. Even though outdated in terms of looks (the interface is still preferred by many users for its numerous customization capabilities and somewhat more approachable nature.
The second feature that makes Pale Moon so popular is the fact that it still supports various old Firefox add-ons (most of which are no longer supported by the newer version of Firefox, and had to be built from the ground up to make them work). To be more precise, it offers support for XUL, XPCOM, and NPAPI plugins, the so-called “legacy” Firefox extensions.
Other noteworthy benefits include support for lightweight themes, as well as for full-themes offering users potentially limitless freedom when it comes to any element’s design, as well as support for a growing number of Pale Moon-exclusive extensions.
The short answer is – "it's difficult to tell." Despite its impressive popularity, Pale Moon was never intended to be a fierce competitor for the big names of the industry. Instead, it was created to offer the best possible user experience for users who loved the old Firefox.
Even if we were to disregard all the aforementioned features, Pale Moon would still be a good browser. Because the browser does not bundle some of the many irrelevant bits and bobs found in the old Firefox engine, it’s incredibly fast and very stable. Install it on a modern machine and you can definitely see a slight improvement in speed when compared to your modern browser, but the beauty of Pale Moon is that it also works on older machines with older versions of Windows.
It also boasts almost everything a modern browser offers. You can work with multiple tabs, pin your favorite ones, activate full-screen view, create, save, and manage bookmarks, change the default search engine, clear your recent history, manage downloads with ease, and import or export details such as options, bookmarks, passwords, and other such details from other browsers. All of that, plus the big benefit of being able to almost fully customize all aspects of the app’s GUI.
To conclude, Pale Moon never was and will also never be regarded as the best all-round browser out there. However, thanks to its unique approach towards offering a top-notch user experience focused on stability, customizability, and security, it will continue to be the favorite option for some particular people out there.
What's new in Pale Moon 33.1.0:
- New features:
- Implemented support for single-use <link rel=preload> meta tag. This implementation allows use of it without specifying a second <link rel={type}> meta tag to actually load the linked document which was originally intended for this tag (to hint to a browser it should pre-load the document for fast painting).
- Implemented CSP v3 keywords script-src-elem, script-src-attr, style-src-elem and style-src-attr.
- Enabled the use of html5's <dialog> by default. While this is not yet a complete implementation, use of it in the wild dictated we enable this early. The implementation should functionally suffice for usage seen so far.
Pale Moon 33.1.0
add to watchlist add to download basket send us an update REPORT- portable version
- Portable Pale Moon
- runs on:
-
Windows 11
Windows 10 32/64 bit
Windows 8 32/64 bit
Windows 7 32/64 bit - file size:
- 29.7 MB
- filename:
- palemoon-33.1.0.win32.installer.exe
- main category:
- Internet
- developer:
- visit homepage
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