Pale Moon: Release notes 3.6

3.6.8a

• Fixed the problem when opening an internet shortcut or local HTML file giving an error. This should also fix the situation where IE is opened alongside Pale Moon due to aggressive handling of errors by IE as a shell.
  
• Fixed the executable identification to read "Palemoon" once again instead of "-APPVERSION"
• Fixed a crash when saving web pages to harddisk
• Fixed installer text placeholders

• Further improved DNS handling
• Changed some internal URLs to match the revamped website
  

3.6.8

• Add-ons window shows recommended add-ons again
• Browse add-ons link fixed
• Fixed crashes on some pages with heavy plugin use

• Improved DNS name lookups and name caching. Pale Moon will make DNS lookups less often, lowering bandwidth use. (Thanks for the pointer, Jim!)
• Improved page rendering
• Add-ons window shows a longer list of add-ons when using search or the recommended list (10 instead of 5)
  

• Opening an HTML file or URL from explorer potentially gives a "file not found" error while opening the file/link.
  Workaround: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Error+opening+Internet+shortcut+or+local+HTML+file
  
• Cosmetic: Pale Moon incorrectly labels itself as -APPVERSION in some locations/cases
• Installer: Missing some text placeholders
• The installation directory for the browser differs from earlier versions. (\Pale Moon instead of \Pale Moon project). It is recommended to uninstall the previous version of the browser before installing this one to prevent double entries in the start menu, on the desktop and in the registry. This is an installer problem.
  For more information: http://www.palemoon.org/troubleshooting.shtml#2_copies_on_my_system
  

3.6.6

• Pale Moon will no longer share its profile with Firefox. Too many people got confused by this fact.
  If you are upgrading from an earlier Pale Moon version, your profiles will not be picked up automatically!
  To migrate your profile (bookmarks, passwords, add-ons, etc.) to 3.6.6, USE THIS TOOL
• Pale Moon can now run side-by-side with Firefox.
  

• Cosmetic changes to the menu and other interface elements for a more consistent use of the browser name.
• Functional changes to the help menu.

• The Add-on window doesn't list add-ons in the "Get add-ons" tab. The "Browse all add-ons" link on that page sends the user to a 404 page on the Mozilla Firefox add-ons page. This will be looked at for the next release.For the time being, install add-ons directly from the web page:
     https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

• When trying to open an html or other web file from explorer or another file manager, it will give a "file not found" error, but will still open the file in the browser.
  To prevent these errors, follow the steps outlined on this page:
  http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Error+opening+Internet+shortcut+or+local+HTML+file
  

3.6.3

• In certain circumstances, the browser would crash on some systems due to the memory manager/MS runtime code. This has been fixed.

3.6.2

• The experimental parts of the HTML5 parser are disabled by default, as it causes some problems with some sites (especially ones using embedded plugins).Feel free to enable it with the about:config html5.enable if you want to take advantage of advanced HTML5 rendering, but be aware it's not flawless yet, and may display some pages incorrectly!
• On-download-completion AV scanner completely removed - it would cause unnecessary delays, has a possible race condition and uses up unneeded resources for "hanging" threads. With a proper AV resident scanner, this kind of forced scanning should not be needed anyway - it's a little paranoid.
  
• Performance fixes for flash-heavy sites.
• Performance fixes for advanced canvas rendering and streaming.
  

3.6.1

• Hitting Ctrl-Tab in a browser window with multiple tabs now opens graphical previews of the pages! Fancy fancy - see below for an example. Note: If you don't like this and want to go back to the way it was before, swapping to the next tab immediately with Ctrl-Tab, go to about:config and set browser.ctrlTab.previews to false
• Improvements to HTML5
• The acid3 test now gives Pale Moon a score of 95/100 - better than Firefox (scores 93) ;-) - see below for a screenshot.
  
• Pale Moon now identifies itself as more "Firefox-alike" by default. This will fix many issues people have had with websites.
  

• Disabled the "on download completion virus scanner" for the time being (can still be switched on, see Troubleshooting). Some issues with it, like it triggering while there not being a compatible AV scanner installed when running on XP (causes unnecessary delays). 
• Some cosmetic changes.

3.6.0.5

• Javascript performance problem fixed!
• Overall boost in speed - optimized the new memory manager and runtime core
• Changed the browser's full name internally from "Pale Moon project" to "Pale Moon" - it's nicer on the eyes
  
• Some minor cosmetic changes

3.6.0.1

• Overall major performance increase due to a change in build method
• Greasemonkey works again (reintroduced the javascript debugging library it needs)
• SVG and Canvas rendering tweaked

• Javascript performance needs to be improved. The cause is now known, and this should be fixed in the next release!

3.6

• Completely redesigned the build environment. The amount of changes because of this are significant. See the technical details page for more in-depth information if you really, really want it.
• Changed the memory manager used, which should increase performance.
  
• Enabled HTTP pipelining by default for increased performance for pages with lots of elements
  
• Improved Windows Vista and Windows 7 compatibility
• Removed the javascript debugger developer tool - you won't ever need this for normal browsing
• Removed wifi access point scanner engine
• Removed unnecessary logging
  
• Updated graphics and branding to accomodate code base changes
• Some other cosmetic changes

• Update of the Mozilla rendering engine to 1.9.2
  
• Built-in support for Personas - easily change the look of your browser (also available as an add-on for older versions of Pale Moon)
• Open, native video in full screen
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time.
• Asynchronous scripting support
• Further support for downloadable fonts
• Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events
• Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications, which allow for more interactive web pages

• Antivirus and Pale Moon: Pale Moon 3.6 may crash when you have a resident scanner active. The antivirus download scanner is still a bit of an Achilles' heel of Pale Moon, I may remove it from future releases if this remains an issue. If you use Avast or another AV package that scans on download (browser integration), please try disabling it if Pale Moon hangs/crashes when downloading files.
  
• Javascript performance in synthetic tests may not measure up. This is in part due to the complete changeover of build environment that was done and the quirks resulting from it (a lot has changed and will need some trial and error to find the optimal combination of components/settings again like before). This is being worked on as it may be causing a slight decrease in performance on some systems or some sites.
• Greasemonkey does not work with the current version. This should be fixed in the next release.
  

Release Notes 3.5 series

3.5.8 (27 Feb 2010)

• No more page stalls! I think I finally eliminated this problem for good.
• Using the experience gained from building 3.6 versions I've incorporated similar optimizations into 3.5.8, this will see increase in performance over earlier versions.
• Used PGO with a custom browse profile to further optimize speed and efficiency of the browser.
• Extension/add-on manager problems fixed
• Browser identification changed - this will fix a LOT of problems with websites that use a too strict checking on specific browsers (They will now see Pale Moon 3.5.8 as if it is Firefox 3.5). You shouldn't need any manual changes of the useragent anymore to use these sites.
  

3.5.6.1

3.5.6

• Updated the code base to Firefox 3.5.6 - this includes over 60 bugfixes and stability improvements.
• Removed the internal updater module - Pale Moon doesn't have the server-side components for automatic updates, so this is redundant. This also removes the "Check for updates" menu entry.
  
• Fixed the manual update check URL to point to the right page (Pale Moon's homepage).
  
• Included some additional options for networking buffers. Apart from improving overall networking performance this may also help with some timing issues that were reported when trying to load pages.
  

3.5.5

• Branding issues solved
• Main executable name problem solved. Installer updated accordingly. No source modifications were necessary, after all.
  
• Some incorrect strings solved (localization problems with hard-coded "Firefox" in error messages)

• Installer/uninstaller: In some cases, when Pale Moon and Firefox are installed side-by-side, the uninstaller may remove someone's profile bookmarks/plugins. The same goes for Firefox's uninstaller when used in this situation.

3.5.4

• Release notes URL (in the help menu) fixed
• Download scanner AV compiler problem fixed. Scanning on-download for some AV suites now works exactly as intended.

• Aesthetical: main executable name is firefox.exe, not palemoon.exe - Apparently this cannot be fixed at compile-time without changing the source code, and I do not wish to deviate from the official source of Firefox. I will look into this when I have time to look at the packaging system for distribution and the installer. It is low priority.

3.5.2

• Release notes URL (in the help menu) is incorrect
• Aesthetical: main executable name is firefox.exe, not palemoon.exe