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History of the Pale Moon project This project started off as merely fiddling with the build process on Windows, seeing first off if I could manage to make my own Windows build of the Firefox browser and then seeing how my own builds compared to official ones. Finding the difference significant, the resulting browsers (simply "my own Firefox builds") were given to a number of friends to use, with very positive results. This was back in the time when Firefox was still in its 1.5.x stage. I have since built Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey specifically for different systems, gaining experience, learning the quirks and following code development. Eventually, with Firefox 3.5.2, I settled on what I found was an optimal compromise between speed, features and useability of the browser. At that point in time, the Pale Moon project was given shape, releasing the highly optimized browser to the public from Oct 4th, 2009. Since its release, it has become rather popular, with no less than 15,000 visits to the home page just in the first month of release. With many downloads from a wide range of locations, not all of them monitored or counted, it is anyone's guess how many people are actually using it, but it has surpassed anything that was initially expected. Feedback has been positive, and as a result of several requests from people, a second build version was created of Pale Moon, to cater specifically to the capabilities of Athlon XP and Athlon MP processors, still extremely popular processors for currently used systems. Later on, a portable version was also created to allow people to take Pale Moon with them on USB stick, removable drives, or to simply have a self-contained environment for the browser. As the source code developed, so did Pale Moon, and a few major changes have been made with the transition from 3.5 to 3.6 versions, and later on to separate Pale Moon installations from Firefox ones. Always attempting to strike a balance, some minor features were removed, and later added again; feedback from the users has always been taken into account, and the development of Pale Moon has therefore been given shape, in part, by its users. When version 4.0 of the Firefox code arrived, after extensive betas, Pale Moon deviated further from its sibling by also making changes to the standard UI (User Interface) layout. UI design choices made to "innovate" the user interface, removing quite essential user feedback and changing the layout of navigation controls were considered to be poor choices, and have been altered to provide a more familiar, and also more intuitive, interface to the browser. At this point it was also decided to keep developing the 3.6.x branch separately, while version 4 and later became the "next generation" branch. An accelerated major version release scheme was started on in early 2011, with ambitious plans by Mozilla to make faster changes to Firefox. When version 5.0 arrived, though, it turned out to be a release that could just as well have been numbered 4.1 or similar, as there was surprisingly little that had changed, apart from correcting some mistakes made in the implementation of 4.0. 5.0 can therefore best be considered a "bugfix release" of 4.0, and not really a new product. Version 6.0 saw a similarly small amount of changes and both 5.0 and 6.0 have been considered to be a continuation of the "next generation" branch of the Firefox product started with version 4.0. As such, 4.0 and 5.0 were discontinued for Pale Moon. In Oct 2011 a new milestone was reached with Pale Moon 7: better resource use, faster code, and maturation of the code base to a level where 3.6.x now became depreciated in favor of this version - still, the old branch continued to be supported and developed because there was still a clear need for it. Future directions With Firefox continuing in the "carrousel" of juggling independent code snapshots, and more rapidly released major versions planned by Mozilla on a 6-week schedule, with little to no information on what exactly the changes will bring that are planned, in advance, Pale Moon will continue to focus on the current and released browser versions. The multi-stage rapid release program that has already shown its weak spots with the hurried release of Mozilla Firefox 7.0 – that required an emergency patch after it was put live because of insufficient testing – will not be closely followed, and Pale Moon's releases may become less tied to the publishing schedule of Firefox as a result. Version 3.x will see continued development and support, while the "next generation" of browsers (4+) will continue to be evaluated for usability – and may be rejected if too many new features are incomplete or partially implemented. There have been pressing, important improvements to follow Firefox releases through the current versions so far, but this may change, and Pale Moon may choose to provide continued support with point releases of a previous browser version over a current "major" release of Firefox to push new features. The outline Mozilla has sketched seems to be to make Firefox more than a browser, and to spread thin across different disciplines in an attempt to make a pseudo-web-OS out of it. These are just course plans at the moment, may look nice on paper, but would most likely see a vast amount of practical issues when trying to implement them – on top of requiring users to change their way of working every three months six weeks or so with the current plans (Firefox 5, 6 and 7 and 8 released in 2011, but 6 even barely seeing use before 7 - it's not keeping a very neat schedule to say the least). With the three months being shortened to 6 weeks, this means even less support for "release channel" browsers that are practically abandoned the moment they are published in favor of the next one in the mill. Most important though: Pale Moon aims to remain what it is: a web browser. "Added tools" are nice, but may be removed in Pale Moon if they go beyond what should normally be part of a web browser. [<-back] Firefox, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla are registered trademarks of the Mozilla Corporation. Site and contents © 2009-2012 Moonchild Productions - All rights reserved Pale Moon's distribution is subject to the following redistribution policy

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

History of the Pale Moon project

This project started off as merely fiddling with the build process on Windows, seeing first off if I could manage to make my own Windows build of the Firefox browser and then seeing how my own builds compared to official ones. Finding the difference significant, the resulting browsers (simply "my own Firefox builds") were given to a number of friends to use, with very positive results.
This was back in the time when Firefox was still in its 1.5.x stage.

I have since built Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey specifically for different systems, gaining experience, learning the quirks and following code development. Eventually, with Firefox 3.5.2, I settled on what I found was an optimal compromise between speed, features and useability of the browser. At that point in time, the Pale Moon project was given shape, releasing the highly optimized browser to the public from Oct 4th, 2009.

Since its release, it has become rather popular, with no less than 15,000 visits to the home page just in the first month of release. With many downloads from a wide range of locations, not all of them monitored or counted, it is anyone's guess how many people are actually using it, but it has surpassed anything that was initially expected.

Feedback has been positive, and as a result of several requests from people, a second build version was created of Pale Moon, to cater specifically to the capabilities of Athlon XP and Athlon MP processors, still extremely popular processors for currently used systems. Later on, a portable version was also created to allow people to take Pale Moon with them on USB stick, removable drives, or to simply have a self-contained environment for the browser.

As the source code developed, so did Pale Moon, and a few major changes have been made with the transition from 3.5 to 3.6 versions, and later on to separate Pale Moon installations from Firefox ones. Always attempting to strike a balance, some minor features were removed, and later added again; feedback from the users has always been taken into account, and the development of Pale Moon has therefore been given shape, in part, by its users.

When version 4.0 of the Firefox code arrived, after extensive betas, Pale Moon deviated further from its sibling by also making changes to the standard UI (User Interface) layout. UI design choices made to "innovate" the user interface, removing quite essential user feedback and changing the layout of navigation controls were considered to be poor choices, and have been altered to provide a more familiar, and also more intuitive, interface to the browser.
At this point it was also decided to keep developing the 3.6.x branch separately, while version 4 and later became the "next generation" branch.

An accelerated major version release scheme was started on in early 2011, with ambitious plans by Mozilla to make faster changes to Firefox. When version 5.0 arrived, though, it turned out to be a release that could just as well have been numbered 4.1 or similar, as there was surprisingly little that had changed, apart from correcting some mistakes made in the implementation of 4.0. 5.0 can therefore best be considered a "bugfix release" of 4.0, and not really a new product.
Version 6.0 saw a similarly small amount of changes and both 5.0 and 6.0 have been considered to be a continuation of the "next generation" branch of the Firefox product started with version 4.0. As such, 4.0 and 5.0 were discontinued for Pale Moon.

In Oct 2011 a new milestone was reached with Pale Moon 7: better resource use, faster code, and maturation of the code base to a level where 3.6.x now became depreciated in favor of this version - still, the old branch continued to be supported and developed because there was still a clear need for it.

Future directions

With Firefox continuing in the "carrousel" of juggling independent code snapshots, and more rapidly released major versions planned by Mozilla on a 6-week schedule, with little to no information on what exactly the changes will bring that are planned, in advance, Pale Moon will continue to focus on the current and released browser versions. The multi-stage rapid release program that has already shown its weak spots with the hurried release of Mozilla Firefox 7.0 – that required an emergency patch after it was put live because of insufficient testing – will not be closely followed, and Pale Moon's releases may become less tied to the publishing schedule of Firefox as a result.

Version 3.x will see continued development and support, while the "next generation" of browsers (4+) will continue to be evaluated for usability – and may be rejected if too many new features are incomplete or partially implemented. There have been pressing, important improvements to follow Firefox releases through the current versions so far, but this may change, and Pale Moon may choose to provide continued support with point releases of a previous browser version over a current "major" release of Firefox to push new features.

The outline Mozilla has sketched seems to be to make Firefox more than a browser, and to spread thin across different disciplines in an attempt to make a pseudo-web-OS out of it. These are just course plans at the moment, may look nice on paper, but would most likely see a vast amount of practical issues when trying to implement them – on top of requiring users to change their way of working every three months six weeks or so with the current plans (Firefox 5, 6 and 7 and 8 released in 2011, but 6 even barely seeing use before 7 - it's not keeping a very neat schedule to say the least). With the three months being shortened to 6 weeks, this means even less support for "release channel" browsers that are practically abandoned the moment they are published in favor of the next one in the mill.

Most important though:
Pale Moon aims to remain what it is: a web browser.
"Added tools" are nice, but may be removed in Pale Moon if they go beyond what should normally be part of a web browser.

[<-back]

Firefox, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla are registered trademarks of the Mozilla Corporation.
Site and contents © 2009-2012 Moonchild Productions - All rights reserved
Pale Moon's distribution is subject to the following redistribution policy