The Pale Moon Project - Custom-built and optimized Firefox browsers for Windows Operating Systems

Pale Moon: Release notes for version 8

8.0

A major update building on the Firefox 8.0 code base, with improvements that were planned for the (unreleased) version 7.0.2.
This version sees the following improvements in addition to those inherent to Firefox 8:
  • Improved cache handling: this will make the browser handle system resources more efficiently on most systems.
  • Improved networking: communication with web servers should be noticeably faster and smoother
  • Fix for a rare image decoding bug (garbage, possible crashes)
It should be noted that the shift in focus of development has been towards the back-end of the browser (background resource handling and background networking), considering the rendering and scripting speed is not the bottleneck for current versions of the browser. Inherently, this may result in less of a clear difference in benchmark scores when comparing to its vulpine sibling or previous versions of Pale Moon because of rebalancing of code priority when building. Maximum benchmark scores are nice, of course, but the main goal of Pale Moon remains to be as efficient as possible when taken as a whole, including those parts that aren't measured in limited benchmark tests.

Pale Moon: Release notes for version 7 (discontinued)

7.0.1

This update fixes a very important speed regression issue for Pale Moon 7.0. It impacts mostly the page content layout engine and DOM handling, which will be on par again with what they should be for Pale Moon in this point release. Bug: 20111001-CCBug
Benchmarking scores will see a significant jump from 7.0 to 7.0.1 as a result, as well.
There are no other functional or UI changes for this release.

7.0

A new release building on the Firefox 7.0.1 code base. This version sees a large number of performance increases, as well as lower resource use than the previous version.

Additional changes:
  • Introduction of the Tab Groups (panorama) button in the user interface for easy access (Next to the All Tabs button)
  • Several additional performance improvements on individual browser components
  • A change of the Application Menu button color to blue shades instead of a "foxy orange"

Pale Moon: Release notes for version 6 (discontinued)

6.0.2

A security update seeing the following changes:
  • Removed trust exceptions for certain certificates (bug 683449)
  • Resolved an issue with gov.uk websites (bug 669792)
  • Revoked permissions for the root certificate for DigiNotar in the built-in certificate store (bug 682927)
In addition, there has been some work done on the x64 build method to prepare for performance fixes in a future release.

6.0

New release based on Firefox 6.0!
Of course the necessary bugfixes and changes as part of the new code base, with a number of additional changes:
  • Add-ons will no longer automatically update by default the moment they are checked and found to have a newer release, giving the user the choice to accept or reject the update, read release notes, etc.
  • Update of the status bar add-on to v2.2, fixing compatibility issues and extending some configurability.
  • Link right-click menu has "Open in new tab" on top now, like Firefox. If you are having trouble retraining yourself for this behavior, please download a menu editing Firefox add-on to customize your menus. This change was made based on user feedback.
  • Added ak, ast, br, bs, en-ZA, gd, lg, mai, nso, and son language packs

Pale Moon: Release notes for version 5 (discontinued)

5.0

New release based on Firefox 5.0!
Of course a large number of bugfixes were applied as part of development on the Mozilla trunk, compared to 4.x

Changes/fixes:
  • Performance issues fixed on some systems
  • Instability problems fixed on some systems
  • Updated artwork for the new about box
  • Cosmetic changes: more occurrences of "palemoon" in the UI should now read "pale moon"
  • Zulu language added for the language packs

Pale Moon: Release notes for version 4 (discontinued)

4.0.7

Fixes:
  • Windows 7 jumplists fixed
  • Fix for errors in the error console when closing tabs in certain situations
  • Potential fix for printing problems (no text printed) Still an issue.

4.0.6

Update of the source base to Firefox 4.0.1, fixing a large number of bugs.

Additional updates:
  • Performance fix: Switched back globally to fast floating point model, with a patch to prevent rounding errors in javascript.
  • Compensated for a number of internal compiler errors causing build issues and potential browser stability problems on some systems.

4.0.5

A number of fixes and a cosmetic update:
  • Performance fix: Javascript performance improved.
  • Crash fix: Prevent crashes in optimized builds of JS due to 20110410-CCBug.
  • Updater fix: Internal updater should function again from this version onward.
  • Add-ons window shows the proper add-ons page when loading it.
  • Shell integration fixed for Vista and 7: The browser should no longer complain that it's not the default program when it, in fact, is. See bug 20110408-SHBug.
  • Main Pale Moon program icon updated with a higher-res version of the logo image.

4.0.3

Some stability bugfixes and improvements:
  • Fix for a potential crash of the browser due to 20110406-PRBug.
  • Fix for the internal manual updater when a language pack is installed.
  • DirectWrite now default OFF (gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled=false) to provide better compatibility with problematic (integrated) graphics processors. If it worked for you for 4.0, feel free to switch it back on (set to true)
  • Improvements to GUI/chrome speed.
If you use a language pack, you will have to update it to the latest version for it to work.

4.0

This is a brand new release!

Built on Gecko 2.0, the browser has the following new features:
  • Hardware acceleration of browser windows using Direct3D
  • Direct2D rendering on operating systems and hardware that support it
  • DirectWrite font rendering on systems that support it
  • WebGL 3D graphics, either using native OpenGL (default) or DirectX (via ANGLE)
  • HTML5 support
  • New Jaegermonkey javascript engine
  • Blazingly fast DOM handling
Of course, the well known features from version 3.x are still present, as well:
  • Graphical tab previews (on a nice glass pane if you have Windows 7) with search
  • Dynamic/downloadable fonts (including WOFF)
  • Support for personas and Firefox themes
  • Support for Firefox 4 compatible add-ons
  • Support for OOPP (Out-of-process plug-ins)
  • Able to use existing Firefox profiles, bookmarks and settings (either using the migration tool or using Sync)
Since this is a new release, it may be a little less stable than the tried-and-tested 3.x releases, but no major issues have been found thus far.

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Pale Moon's distribution is subject to the following redistribution policy