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

Pale Moon: Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.)

Since there are a number of common questions people have been asking, they are listed here. Please read through these questions and answers before contacting me, as your question may already be included here. This F.A.Q. is a work in progress and may see additions and changes to it, so please check back here first if you have a new question.
If you have a problem or technical issue, please also check out the Troubleshooting section.
You may also find your answer on the forum.

General:

Feature preferences:


The following FAQ entries relate to general questions:

Is Pale Moon safe to use?

Absolutely! Pale Moon is built from the Firefox release source code that has a large community of developers and security-aware people, next to having seen over a decade of development by now. It includes, among other things, protection against dangerous add-ons, scam sites, automatic checking for updates of add-ons, anti-phishing, anti-malware, password protection (master password), website-identity information in the address bar, and private browsing.

Pale Moon's development includes a critical evaluation of potential security risks which are addressed in each new release, with on occasion a point-release for critical issues that is released as soon as possible after the security issue comes to light.

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My antivirus software complains that Pale Moon is a trojan, keylogger, PUP, PUA, ...

Some Antivirus software is a little too paranoid in their scanning for potentially dangerous programs. It seems scanning with what is called "heuristics" is still something extremely difficult for people to implement properly, and as a result, some AV scanners are rather paranoid whenever a complex piece of optimized software is encountered, especially if it interacts with multiple other programs (like the plugin container does). Pale Moon has been scanned by several leading and independent software distributors and found to be 100% clean and safe.

If your anti-malware package keeps complaining and your system is otherwise clean, please report it to your security software vendor as a false positive. Reporting it to the browser author serves no purpose as it's the malware detector's scanning engine that needs fixing.

A critical note: the popular AVG and Norton scanners seems to be particularly paranoid about Pale Moon and have, in numerous cases, "fixed" what wasn't broken, i.e. deleted parts of the browser resulting in a broken or destroyed browser. This has been reported many times to the AV developers but has not been addressed, and the official recommendation is therefore: find yourself a different antivirus package. There are plenty of free-for-home-use antivirus packages available.

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Why do some add-ons not work (properly) with Pale Moon?

This can be caused by several different things, the most important:
  • Hardcoding: some add-ons "hard-code" calls to Firefox in its compiled state. Since Pale Moon is a different binary than Firefox, this kind of coding will never work for any build that is not exactly Mozilla Firefox's distribution.
  • Naming: some add-ons or external programs expect the program to be called "firefox.exe" - a simple problem with a simple solution for the add-on programmers to implement.
  • Use of components not present in Pale Moon: If an add-on tries to use components that are specifically excluded from Pale Moon (like accessibility features, ActiveX, parental controls) it will fail.
That being said, most add-ons function without a hitch.

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Does it come with a preloader?

Pale Moon does not come with a preloader, or "quick start" tool that loads components of the browser in memory and keeps them resident there. As it is, startup times of Pale Moon are sufficiently low not to need something like that. External preloaders may not work with Pale Moon for the same reason some add-ons may not work.

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Will there be a Mac version?

No, Pale Moon is for Windows only.

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Will there be a Linux version?

No, Pale Moon is for Windows only.
It can be noted that Pale Moon will run in the Wine emulator, and shows decent speed.

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Will there be a version in my (non-English) language?

Pale Moon is released as a US-English browser. If you prefer a different language for the User Interface, you can install a Pale Moon language pack and set your browser to use it.
More information here: http://www.palemoon.org/langpacks.shtml

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How do I update Pale Moon?

Pale Moon has a built-in update checker, which is enabled by default since 3.6.13. If you let Pale Moon automatically check for updates (which occurs once a week by default), you will be notified and given the option to download and install the later version from within the browser.

Important: Pale Moon will not automatically update across the two major development branches. i.e.: You will not be offered an automatic update from version 3.6 to version 7.0.
This is done because of add-on compatibility - when upgrading across major browser versions, a number of your add-ons may stop functioning, and some will not even be available for the new version at all.
It has to be a conscious choice to download and install the next generation browser, and to go through the process of checking and updating/changing add-ons.

To be informed more quickly of new releases, and stay updated with some other miscellaneous news related to Pale Moon and the Pale Moon web site, you have a few options:
  1. You can register on the Pale Moon forum, and subscribe to the Announcements board, which will send you an e-mail when a new announcement is posted to it. Your e-mail is safe, it will never be disclosed to anyone for any reason.
  2. You can use the RSS/Atom feed of the forum's Announcements board, either by using a separate RSS reader or simply by going to the following URL and making it a Live Bookmark (built-in functionality of Pale Moon): http://forum.palemoon.org/feed.php?f=1
  3. You can also follow the Twitter feed
  4. You can also like/follow the Facebook page
To update Pale Moon manually, simply download the installer of the new version and run it. No need to uninstall first! You can install the new version in the same location as the old one, and it will perform an upgrade.

Note: If you are one of the people using a ZIP packed version, it is recommended you remove the old browser installation first, and not unpack a new version on top of an old one, because the program structure and included files may have changed across versions.

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Are there going to be builds based on beta code?

No. Pale Moon will only be built on release code. Side projects (like Lorentz), prereleases, alpha's, betas, release candidates, etc. will not be released. In addition, Pale Moon may skip some release versions of the Firefox code base if it's not considered a significant enough change.

There may be some beta development releases available in the pre-release section, especially for source code that is currently undergoing rigorous beta testing at Mozilla (e.g. new major releases like 3.0, 4.0). These versions are made available mainly for testing, are not considered releases, and are used, at all times, at your own risk.

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What are the differences with Firefox?

Firefox is created with maximum compatibility in mind, Pale Moon is created with efficiency and speed in mind. These two approaches are pretty much mutually exclusive, and result in some functions being enabled/disabled in one browser but not the other. For extensive detail on the actual differences under the hood, please check the technical details page.

Pale Moon 4 and later also has a number of changes to the user interface, to provide an as intuitive, predictable, logical and usable user interface as possible for the best user experience. These changes are user-configurable, and can be changed to what the Mozilla Foundation envisioned for this generation of browser if you so wish.

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How does it compare to other browsers?

This is very much a subjective question, and there is no single answer to it. Short answer: YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) -- it all depends on what you are looking for in a browser to choose which one would work best for you. In general, Pale Moon aims to be full-featured, but without compromise to efficient resource/hardware use. It doesn't necessarily aim to be a lightweight browser, but seems to achieve that goal in some circumstances as a side effect. Overall, comparison between browsers would put Pale Moon in a similar position to its parent Firefox, albeit with more speed and efficiency. Synthetic benchmarks aren't the end-all of things, either, so it's difficult to obtain unbiased comparisons between different browsers.

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Isn't this just the same kind of optimization I can do on Firefox?

No, it isn't. There are a number of tools and add-ons out there that will allow you to "tweak" Firefox with custom settings to maximize its performance for your specific setup and internet connection, but Pale Moon's optimizations are unrelated to this kind of tweaking. Given, there are a few pre-set preferences in Pale Moon that help alleviate some basic issues a stock Firefox suffers from (better defaults), but for the most part, preferences and settings are the same as a standard Firefox installation.

If you compare a "tweaked" Firefox with a "default" Pale Moon, as some people do, it does not give a clear picture re: speed and efficiency as Pale Moon in that case may suffer from settings that have been optimized (for your specific setup and internet connection) in the tweaked Firefox installation, but not in the standard Pale Moon installation.

Pale Moon's optimizations are done at the actual browser (baseline) level, not at the settings level. These optimizations cannot be done "after the fact" on an already compiled binary executable, as they would require you to actually change .dlls and .exes, which can never be done with an add-on or setting.

In short, the Pale Moon optimizations are done in the actual core program, and are carried over and cumulative to any "tweaking" done on top of it. You can't do that kind of optimization in Firefox without rebuilding it from the source code.

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Why don't I see any difference in speed between Firefox and Pale Moon?

There are a number of possible answers to this question, but the most likely ones are:
  1. You are visiting pages that are quick to load and render, and you can't visibly see any difference. The difference is there, but the human brain can't process it that quickly.
  2. You are visiting pages that suffer from particularly slow loading or heavy load. The speed limiting factor there is the web server, not the browser. Pale Moon can't "magically" fix a server-side problem, after all ;)
  3. You are using add-ons that slow things down in such a way that Pale Moon's optimizations are negated. The speed limiting factor there is the add-on.
  4. Your local network slows things down. This can have any number of causes and solutions beyond the scope of this FAQ
  5. You are comparing synthetic test results. Tests like Sunspider (tests only the already optimized javascript core for later versions of Firefox code) and Peacekeeper  (tests mostly hardware, and less the actual browser) may give you skewed or even incorrect results, depending on your specific browser and hardware setups. They are, at least, not giving you a complete picture. I have yet to find a good test that tests -actual- page rendering speed, network back-end speed, plugin-speed and interpreter speed, and not just either hardware or how fast a single library can spit out machine code.
  6. You are comparing a tweaked/optimized version of Firefox with a stock installation of Pale Moon. These tweaks will give better performance to Firefox for your specific situation. The same tweaks can be applied to Pale Moon to add to the increase in performance already present. If you want to compare, make sure to compare unaltered installations of either browser on either a new or equally loaded profile.
As said, these are the most likely answers, but it is by no means a complete list.

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Can I run Pale Moon and Firefox at the same time?

Yes, since version 3.6.6, you will be able to start Firefox and Pale Moon at the same time. Earlier versions did not allow this.

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Version 3.6.6 or later: How do I get my old Pale Moon profile back?
How do I copy my existing Firefox profile to Pale Moon?

If you have upgraded to Pale Moon 3.6.6 or later from an earlier version, you will notice that your existing profile has not been picked up by the new version. This is because Pale Moon 3.6.6 and higher no longer shares its profile with existing Firefox browsers.

To migrate a Firefox or earlier Pale Moon profile (bookmarks, passwords, add-ons, etc.) to Pale Moon 3.6.6 or later, USE THIS TOOL (alternate download here). This tool will copy the profile(s) from Firefox to Pale Moon 3.6.6+
If for whatever reason, the tool doesn't work, you will have to copy things manually. See the Troubleshooting section for help.

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Will Firefox and Pale Moon work together in the future?

Since Mozilla has obviously chosen to follow a different path at the management level, it doesn't seem likely that Pale Moon and Firefox will ever see a unification or joining of forces.

Mike Beltzner (Product Director for Mozilla Firefox) did get in touch, but the contact was rather brief, limited to him asking about the baseline optimization of Pale Moon and asking to discuss the main differences, but it was made clear that Firefox was not going to cut away the essential things needed for the kind of optimization done in Pale Moon. With the way the query was put and the lack of further responses after explaining  the basic optimization being done in the build process and not by changing code, it feels rather like Mozilla was looking for a quick fix/source code snippets to address some issues Firefox seems to have, rather than a sincere offer for cooperation. I'm therefore also less inclined to take future approaches seriously.

In addition, there have been and are growing conflicts of interests between Pale Moon and Firefox as far as the so-called UX (User eXperience) developments are concerned. This results in a different user interface approach in Pale Moon. For example, less stress is put on minimizing the size of UI elements or saving every pixel possible to benefit the content area - in this day and age of full HD monitors and laptops that seems to be very counter-intuitive.

On the flipside, some developers seem to complain that Pale Moon "is no different than other optimized builds out there", meaning other people who have built Firefox from source on Windows machines, which might be true to some extent (if the additional features in Pale Moon's core are ignored); in the end, though, it is still the past experience to strike the balance needed for a general browser, that can be used not just by tweakers or developers but by everyone, that counts. Following the step-by-step instructions in the Mozilla Developer Center, and probably with some trial and error, anyone with a decent level of computer knowledge could build Firefox on Windows (if you have the right hardware and software), but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be stable or efficient.

Some have even claimed that the Pale Moon project as such was given shape to gain fame -- they should consider that the popularity was unexpected. Pale Moon is, and has always been, released in the hope that it might be useful to its users, nothing more. It takes up a good chunk of my free time (between developing/building, releasing, website maintenance, and providing e-mail support and running the forum), and I'm happy to see it finding good use among its users.

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Will Pale Moon bundle the extension/add-on {xxxx}?

Pale Moon releases come without any pre-defined and pre-installed add-ons/extensions.
There are a number of "custom" browsers out that are basically a stock Firefox with simply added a number of add-ons and released as a package - this is fine if you are looking for a browser that comes pre-installed with extensions for a specific purpose and you don't want to install them yourself, but this is not part of Pale Moon's goals.

Pale Moon will be released as a browser without any extensions, since users of Pale Moon should have freedom of choice to install or not install any extensions/add-ons that are available for it. I would of course strongly recommend to look through the add-ons site for Firefox and pick some that you think work well for you, or use the add-ons window in the browser to search for extensions on specific keywords, as there are some real gems out there, but by policy, Pale Moon will not bundle any add-ons with the browser.

If you see Pale Moon offered bundled with extensions or "extra functionality" or whatever people would like to call it, it will be an unofficial download and is not recommended (and potentially dangerous or unstable - you don't know what all has been added to or changed in the browser). Don't rely on unofficial downloads or releases offered with add-ons/extensions already in it. Go the official route if you need extra functionality and install Pale Moon, then add your extensions to it.

Historical note: The one notable exception was the Pale Moon status bar add-on that came with versions 4 to 9; this was chosen as a solution over editing the core layout of the browser to prevent incompatibilities and unnecessary bugs, as well as being a result of getting direct feedback from Pale Moon users. It was therefore considered a "core functionality add-on" that forms an essential part of the browser itself. In later versions, this add-on is no longer bundled as the functionality has been re-integrated into the browser.

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Can I see your mozconfig/build environment/configuration files?

A few people have asked about getting a detailed run-down of my build (software) environment, configuration, .mozconfig file, path details, etc.; clearly not always with good intentions.

The answer is: No, this is my baby.

Changed source files have been posted as per the MPL. You can download the source code of the browser from the Technical Details page (in the Geek corner). Branding, configuration files, build setup, profiling method, etc. are not considered part of the source code. I will not give out or publish any files related to the actual build environment or process. If you are interested in the build flags and compiler switches, you can use about:buildconfig in the address bar to get all the flags and config parameters used from the .mozconfig.

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The following FAQ entries relate to feature preferences:

Preference: I prefer the old Ctrl-Tab behavior

If you don't like the graphical preview pane for switching between browser tabs, you can restore the old method:
In the address bar, type about:config and press enter. This opens the advanced configuration editor.
Find the parameter browser.ctrlTab.previews and set it to false

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Preference: I prefer new Tabs to be inserted next to the current Tab

If you prefer new browser tabs to be inserted immediately to the right of your currently active tab, Pale Moon does offer this feature (like some other recent browsers).
In 12.1 and later, you can find this feature under Options, category Tabs.

In 12.0 or older, it can be set as follows:
In the address bar, type about:config and press enter. This opens the advanced configuration editor.
Find the parameter browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent and set it to true

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Preference (v4+): I prefer to use the old style menu bar.

On Windows versions that support it, Pale Moon 4 and later will, by default, hide the menu bar and show an application menu pane from a button in the title bar instead. If you prefer the standard windows application layout with a menu bar and the page title shown in the title bar of the application, hover over Options until the sub-menu opens (or click the arrowhead), then click "Menu Bar":
Version 4: how to restore the menu bar.
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Preference (v6+): I prefer the right-click menu on links to show "Open in new Window" on top, like version 3!

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to swap the two items in the browser itself. It's possible, but you have to manually edit the browser.xul in browser.jar, which is way more advanced than the average user should be doing. A LOT can go wrong if you make the slightest mistake in that code, including a completley broken browser and interface.
Recommended solution: A menu editing add-on like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/menu-editor/

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