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Pale Moon

4.1/5 1,371
Certified 100% FREE MPL     /  Donationware   

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  

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4.0/5

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 Even though outdated in terms of looks (the interface is still preferred by many users for its numerous customization capabilities and somewhat more approachable nature.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 33.0.2:

  • Fixed an issue with attributes on duplicate html tags.
  • Aligned the behavior of internal pointer structures to be more uniform. DiD
  • Security issue addressed: CVE-2024-2610
Read the full changelog
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Pale Moon 33.0.2

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  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-33.0.2.win32.installer.exe
  19 screenshots:
Pale Moon - Pale Moon provides a user-friendly browser that can help users explore the web with easePale Moon - Users will be able to quickly and easily bookmark their favorite webpages in order to rapidly access them at a later timePale Moon - The browser makes it very easy for users to view the browsing history, restore previous sessions and even recently closed tabs with no more than a few mouse clicksPale Moon - screenshot #4Pale Moon - screenshot #5Pale Moon - screenshot #6Pale Moon - screenshot #7Pale Moon - screenshot #8Pale Moon - screenshot #9Pale Moon - screenshot #10Pale Moon - screenshot #11Pale Moon - screenshot #12Pale Moon - screenshot #13Pale Moon - screenshot #14Pale Moon - screenshot #15Pale Moon - screenshot #16Pale Moon - screenshot #17Pale Moon - screenshot #18Pale Moon - screenshot #19
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