General information

These release notes are kept for historical reference only. Versions on this page have been superseded by newer versions of Pale Moon and we do not provide support for them.

DiD This means that a fix is "Defense-in-Depth": It is a fix that does not apply to a (potentially) actively exploitable vulnerability in Pale Moon, but prevents future vulnerabilities caused by the same code, e.g. when surrounding code changes, exposing the problem, or when new attack vectors are discovered.




Release notes for version 31 releases

v31.4.2 (2022-12-20)

This is a bugfix and security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed JPEG-XL's transparency display for images with an alpha channel.
  • Temporarily removed regex lookbehind to stop crashes occurring on 32-bit builds of the browser.
  • Added some extra sanity checks to our zip/jar/xpi reader to avoid issues with corrupt archives.
  • Aligned cookie checks with RFC 6265 bis. See implementation notes.
  • Removed obsolete code in Windows widgets that could cause potential issues with long paths and file names on supported versions.
  • Fixed several crashes.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2022-46876, CVE-2022-46874 and several others that do not have a CVE number.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 4 fixed, 20 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • RFC 6265 has been worked on with draft changes describing how cookies are actually being handled in the real world, in the bis versions of the RFC. While these changes have not yet been finalized, browsers in general do adhere to the latest available bis version of this RFC. Specifically, the long-standing exceptions for cookie names and values have been formalized, e.g. having quoted values. Our behavior has changed in that we now once again accept Tab characters (0x09) which is the one excluded control character from the range that is otherwise forbidden. We also no longer apply these checks exclusively to those in http headers, and any way of setting cookies must now adhere to the valid range. Cookies that fail these range checks for valid characters will be ignored.



v31.4.1.1 (2022-12-01)

32-bit Windows only!

This is a rebuild of 31.4.1 for Windows 32-bit to address run-time crashes on older hardware.

v31.4.1 (2022-11-29)

This is a bugfix release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed wrong color of decoded JPEG-XL images.
  • Fixed an issue with plugins not receiving keypress events properly.



v31.4.0 (2022-11-22)

This is a major development update, adding JPEG-XL image support among other things.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added support for the JPEG-XL image format.
  • Implemented regular expressions lookaround/lookbehind.
  • Aligned CORS header parsing with the updated spec. See implementation notes.
  • We no longer fire keypress events for non-printable keys. See implementation notes.
  • Added support for MacOS 13 "Ventura" in the platform, primarily benefitting White Star.
  • Fixed potentially problematic thread locking code on *nix platforms.
  • Fixed some small issues in the display and operation of the Web Developer tools.
  • Removed unused but performance-impacting panning and tab animation measuring code. (telemetry leftovers)
  • Improved code for SunOS builds.
  • Updated Internationalization data for time zones.
  • Fixed a buffer overflow for Mac builds.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2022-45411 and potential issues without a CVE number.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 2 fixed, 1 DiD, 1 deferred, 25 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • CORS support has been updated to the current spec. Most importantly, Pale Moon now accepts wildcard entries ("*") for the CORS statements Access-Control-Expose-Headers, Access-Control-Allow-Headers and Access-Control-Allow-Method. Note that wildcards are ignored (according to the spec) when credentials are passed.
  • Pale Moon will no longer fire the keypress events in content when the key pressed is a non-printable key. This is in response to issues where webmasters would use rudimentary and naïve input-restricting scripts in onkeypress handlers that would not take into account editing keys or navigation keys, causing issues for users trying to enter data into forms (and e.g. finding they could no longer use backspace, cursor keys or tab). This aligns our behavior with other browsers for web compatibility, although it should be considered a website error expecting not all keypresses to be intercepted in keypress events.



v31.3.1 (2022-11-01)

This is a security and compatibility update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added detection suport for the newly-released MacOS 13 (Ventura).
  • Fixed a potential heap Use-After-Free risk in Expat. (CVE-2022-40674) DiD
  • Fixed potentially undefined behavior in our thread locking code. DiD
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash in the refresh driver.
  • Fixed potentially undefined behavior when base-64 decoding. DiD
  • Implemented a texture size cap for WebGL to prevent potential issues with some graphics drivers. DiD
  • Updated site-specific overrides to address issues with ZoHo.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 1 fixed, 2 DiD, 6 not applicable.



v31.3.0.1 (2022-09-28)

This is a small update to back out the changes to handling of flex containers in 31.3.0 since it caused severe usability issues on several websites.

v31.3.0 (2022-09-27)

This is a major development, bugfix and security release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Implemented .at(index) JavaScript method on built-in indexables (Array, String, TypedArray).
  • Implemented the use of EventSource in workers.
  • Enabled the sending of the Origin: header by default on same-origin requests.
  • Changed how Pale Moon is built. We are now using Visual Studio 2022 on Windows, and have made build system changes to reduce build times and pressure on the linker on all platforms.
  • Changed how Pale Moon handles standalone wave audio files (.wav). See implementation notes.
  • Improved string normalization.
  • Updated the handling of CSS "supports" to now accept unparenthesized strings (spec update).
  • Updated the handling of flex containers in web pages for web compatibility.
  • Fixed various issues when building for Mac OS X.
  • Fixed various C++ standard conformance issues in the source code.
  • Fixed several issues building on SunOS and Linux with various configurations and gcc versions.
  • Fixed an issue with regular expressions' dotAll syntax and usage. See implementation notes.
  • Switched custom hash map to std::unordered_map where prudent.
  • Cleaned up and updated IPC thread locking code.
  • Removed spacing for accessibility focus rings in form controls to align styling of them with expected metrics.
  • Removed the unnecessary control module for building with non-standard configurations of the platform.
  • Removed the -moz prefix from min-content and max-content CSS keywords where it was still in use.
  • Security fixes: CVE-2022-40956 and CVE-2022-40958.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 2 fixed, 11 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • Pale Moon would previously send standalone wave audio files (.wav) to the system-configured media player if they would be opened standalone (i.e. not inside a <media> HTML element in a page). This was done due to the historical use of rather exotic codecs in .wav files that would not be broadly supported in the browser. In the current day, however, this is much less of a concern. If you prefer to retain the old behavior and send .wav files to whatever the configured system media player is, then you should set the preference media.wave.play-stand-alone to false in about:config.
  • There was a spec compliance issue with the dotAll regular expression implementation, causing it to not work properly. Specifically, using the new RegExp() constructor would not accept "s" as a flag, and the .dotAll property was not cased properly (all lowercase) causing compatibility issues.



v31.2.0.1 (2022-08-03)

This is a small out-of-band update to address the fact that the final builds did not include the intended NSS library update.

v31.2.0 (2022-08-02)

This is a major bugfix and development update.
Special thanks to Athenian200, Jobbautista9, Martok and dbsoft for their contributions this cycle :)

Changes/fixes:
  • Implemented CSS white-space: break-spaces for web compatibility.
  • Implemented Intl.RelativeTimeFormat for web compatibility.
  • Implemented "Origin header CSRF mitigation". This is still disabled by default to investigate potential issues with CloudFlare-backed sites.
  • Implemented support for async generator methods in JavaScript.
  • Added preliminary support for building on Apple Silicon like M1/M2 SoC.
  • Added support for building with Visual Studio 2022.
  • Improved the handling of CSS "sticky" elements in tables.
  • Improved stack size limits on all platforms. See implementation notes.
  • Updated function.toString handling to align with the updated JavaScript spec. This should improve web compatibility.
  • Updated Unicode support to Unicode v11, and updated the ICU library accordingly. Building without ICU is no longer supported.
  • Updated many in-tree third-party libraries to pick up various performance and stability improvements.
  • Updated site-specific user-agent overrides to work around issues with Google fonts, Citi bank (again!) and MeWe.
  • Removed some leftover (and unused) telemetry code in the platform and front-end.
  • Fixed an issue with VP9 video playback on Windows on some systems.
  • Fixed an issue with the add-ons manager not properly handling empty update URLs.
  • Fixed a major performance regression on *nix based systems due to incorrect thread handling.
  • Fixed volume handling when building with the sndio audio back-end.
  • Pale Moon no longer applies content security policies to documents that are explicitly loaded as data documents or to images. See implementation notes.
  • Cleaned up some unnecessary code from the source tree for unused build back-ends, Firefox marketplace "apps", and the rather ridiculous moz://a protocol handler.
  • Updated NSS to 3.52.8 to pick up several defense-in-depth security fixes.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 3 DiD, 12 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • Prior to this version, Pale Moon would apply Content Security Policies (CSPs) to all requests made to servers that would respond with a policy header, as one would expect for strict use of CSPs as-intended. Unfortunately, Chrome has been less strict in applying these policies and specifically excluded applying these policies to images and "data documents". As a result, web compatibility became a problem for non-Google browsers with webmasters being oblivious about their overzealous CSPs deployed on websites, causing images (especially SVG) and data to not load or load properly. To align with mainstream browser behavior and improve web compatibility on misconfigured websites, we are now no longer applying CSPs to images or documents explicitly loaded as arbitrary data.
  • We've adjusted default per-thread stack sizes in the platform to be more generous on all platforms. This allows the browser to render more deeply nested visual elements in web pages and the new limit matches the capabilities of mainstream browsers as a result. Please note that some custom builds may need to adjust their linker's stack sizes on some operating systems to come to a stable and usable build with this change since the new Goanna rendering depth requires this larger stack size to not run out of memory. The default per-thread stack size is now 2 MB with the exception of 32-bit Windows builds where 1.5 MB is used to go easy on its limited address space. Custom Linux builds with system-default small stack sizes should adjust their build configuration accordingly.



v31.1.1 (2022-07-07)

This is a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Updated the list of blocked external protocol handlers to combat abuse of OS-supplied services on Windows.
  • Fixed a potential issue with revoked site certificates when connecting through a proxy.
  • Updated NSS to 3.52.7 to pick up some security fixes.
  • Updated site-specific user agent overrides to work around bad sniffing practices of dropbox and vimeo.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2022-34478, CVE-2022-34476, CVE-2022-34480 DiD, CVE-2022-34472, CVE-2022-34475 DiD, CVE-2022-34473 DiD, CVE-2022-34481 and a memory safety issue that doesn't have a CVE number.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 4 fixed, 4 DiD, 2 rejected, 11 not applicable.
Rejected patches were for behavioral changes to long-standing drag and drop behavior that were marked as potential security issues. The amount of social engineering and user interaction required to abuse this behavior however has made it not a real practical issue over the past 9 years and the measures required to work around it as Mozilla has now done were considered disproportional in complexity and impact on browser behavior to warrant accepting them.

v31.1.0 (2022-06-07)

This is a major development update, focusing on media support, browser stability, performance and web compatibility.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added Mojeek as an additional search engine in the browser. See implementation notes.
  • Implemented "nullish coalescing operator" (thanks, FranklinDM!) for web compatibility.
  • Fixed various crash scenarios in XPCOM.
  • Fixed an important stability and performance issue related to hardware acceleration.
  • Fixed a long-standing issue where overly-long address bar tooltips wouldn't break into multiple lines but instead cut off on the right side.
  • Fixed a long-standing issue where dynamic datalist updates for <select> and similar elements wouldn't properly update the option list.
  • Disabled broken links to MDN articles in developer tools.
  • Updated media support to include support for libavcodec 59/FFmpeg 5.0 for MP4 playback on Linux (thanks, Travis!)
  • Enabled the date picker for <input type=date>. See implementation notes.
  • Re-enabled the use of FIPS mode for NSS. See implementation notes.
  • Improved memory handling and memory safety in the JavaScript engine, further reducing current and future crash scenarios.
  • Improved memory handling in the graphics subsystem of Goanna.
  • Updated FFvpx to v4.2.7
  • Slightly reduced strictness of media checking for improved compatibility with questionable "gif" video encoders used on major websites.
  • Cleaned up the way file pickers (file open/save/save as dialogs) are handled on Windows.
  • Restored the gMultiProcessBrowser property of the browser for Firefox extension compatibility. See implementation notes.
  • Improved the way data is transferred to and from canvases to prevent memory safety issues.
  • Updated NSS to 3.52.6 to address security issues.
  • Reduced blocking severity for some extensions that were marked hard blockers for GRE (but aren't for UXP).
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2022-31739, CVE-2022-31741, and other security issues that do not have a CVE number.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 2 fixed, 1 DiD, 26 not applicable.
Implementation/build notes:
  • Following the concerns surrounding bias, censorship and unwanted filtering of search results by almost all available search engines, we've contacted Mojeek to have their search engine added by default to Pale Moon. This was done to offer a truly independent search alternative that has its own (long-standing) search index of the Web and does not rely on the major indexers like Bing, Google or Yahoo, who all apply bias and filtering to varying degrees on their search results (e.g. about politics or the war in the Ukraine). Since privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo do rely on search results from these "big indexers", whatever their "upstream" decides to be filtered out will also affect your results through those search engines. Mojeek offers its own, entirely independent search results which may provide you with truly independent alternative results. Give it a try!
  • Form input fields of type "date" will now pop up a graphical calendar to pick dates instead of having to manually enter the dates. Please note that the default format will match the base language of the browser (American English) which will be reflected in the mm/dd/yyyy placeholder. This is cosmetic only and does not actually influence how the date is passed to the server via the form. More work is needed for better localization of date and time input fields but that did not make this release.
  • FIPS mode is a special (rather archaic) operating mode of the NSS security library and software security device that handles certificates and credentials in the browser. In v31.0.0 this operating mode was no longer supported which resulted in some users who had previously enabled FIPS mode in the browser from accessing their credentials (giving errors on the master password, instead). For the time being, support for this mode is enabled again but if you use it, please disable this mode as it will go away. Standard operating mode with a master password is more secure than FIPS mode at this point, and FIPS was only ever necessary for US governmental use and "grandfathered in" without getting much attention. This will go away permanently over time so please pre-empt this removal by disabling FIPS mode if you had enabled it (its control can be found in Preferences -> Advanced -> Certificates tab -> Button "Security devices" -- yes, it's buried pretty deep ;-) ).
  • Windows binaries are now being built and linked against a newer Windows SDK (10.0.22000.0) to align with system support for Windows 11. It is unlikely that this will negatively affect any users at this point in time.
  • While we don't support multi-process browsing or "electrolysis", extensions may still be checking what Firefox used as an indicator to know if electrolysis was enabled in it, which in some cases would require the extension to adjust its behavior. To provide better compatibility with legacy extensions that might otherwise error out when the gMultiprocessBrowser property was completely undefined, we restored this property (hard-coded to "false" since we don't support multi-process).



v31.0.0 (2022-05-10)

This is a new milestone release.

After our unacceptable and recalled release of v30.0.0 and 30.0.1 with the departure of one of the core devs from our team requiring us to rewind and re-do several months of work to exclude undesired code changes and what likely lay at the root of the plethora of stability and run-time issues of the recalled versions, we're back on track with a new milestone building on UXP and Goanna (v5.1) with many improvements and additional user-requested features.
To prevent user confusion, we're skipping from 29 to 31.

Most important changes in this milestone:
  • We're once again accepting the installation of legacy Firefox extensions alongside our own Pale Moon exclusive extensions. As always, please note that using extensions for an old version of a different browser is entirely at your own risk and we obviously cannot and will not provide much (if any) support for their use. Firefox extensions will be indicated with an orange dot in the Add-ons Manager in the browser. This will include the converted extensions for the few of you who are coming from recalled versions with -fxguid suffixes.
  • Implemented Global Privacy Control, taking the place of the unenforceable "DNT" (Do Not Track) signal. Through GPC, you indicate to websites that you do not want them to share or sell your data.
  • Implemented "optional chaining" (thanks, FranklinDM!).
  • Implemented setBaseAndExtent for text selections.
  • Implemented queueMicroTask() "pseudo-promise" callbacks.
  • Implemented accepting unit-less values for rootMargin in Intersection observers for web compatibility, making it act more like CSS margin as one would expect.
  • Improvements to CSS grid and flexbox rendering and display following spec changes and improving web compatibility.
  • Improved performance of parallel web workers in JavaScript.
  • Improved display of cursive scripts (on Windows). Good-bye Comic Sans!
  • Updated various in-tree libraries.
  • "Default browser" controls in preferences has been moved to "General".
  • Added support for extended VPx codec strings in media delivery via MSE (RFC-6381).
  • Fixed a long-time regression where the browser would no longer honor old-style body and iframe body margins when indicated in the HTML tags directly instead of CSS. This improves compatibility with particularly old and/or archived websites.
  • Fixed several crashes and stability issues.
  • Added a licensing screen to the Windows installer to clarify the browser's licensing. In other installations, you may find this licensing statement in the added license.txt file in the browser installation location.
  • Removed all Google SafeBrowsing/URLClassifier service code.
  • Restored Mac OS X code and buildability in the platform.
  • Removed the non-standard ArchiveReader DOM API that was only ever a prototype implementation.
  • Removed most of the last vestiges of the invasive Mozilla Telemetry code from the platform. This potentially improves performance on some systems.
  • Removed leftover Electrolysis controls that could sometimes trick parts of the browser into starting in a (very broken) multi-process mode due to some plumbing for it still being present, if users would try to force the issue with preferences. Obviously, this was a footgun for power users.
  • Removed more Android/Fennec code (on-going effort to clean up our code).
  • Removed the Marionette automated testing framework.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2022-29915, CVE-2022-29911, and several issues that do not have a CVE number.
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 4 fixed, 1 DiD, 19 not applicable.




Release notes for version 30 releases

For historical information only. This milestone was recalled.

v30.0.1 (2022-03-20)

This is a critical bugfix release.
  • Fixed an issue with browser initialization that would leave some components (like password managing) incorrectly initialized if the (obsolete) preference privacy.donottrackheader.enabled was set.
  • Fixed an issue in XML transformation that could cause crashes, performance issues and general stability problems.

v30.0.0 (2022-03-17)

This is a new milestone release!
Following the change in direction as announced on the forum and directly driven by user feedback and community input, Pale Moon is abandoning its own GUID (globally-unique identifier) and adopting Firefox's GUID instead to provide maximum compatibility with old and unmaintained Firefox extensions alongside those that are maintained on our add-ons site.
Please understand that this gives more freedom for people to use potentially incompatible and old/insecure browser extensions, but also means we will have a more "hands-off" approach to it from this point forward which as a consequence means you will have to resolve more issues yourself and take more care, especially when using external/old extensions.
Please note that our current add-ons site will, for a while, serve both older versions of Pale Moon and newer ones in a side-by-side manner, and it is important that you do not spoof your user agent when visiting the add-ons site or you may be served the incorrect type of add-ons or add-on updates, or not receive them at all.

In addition, our platform code has been changed to a more streamlined version over the past months and UXP is no longer used (or maintained) by us in this milestone. UXP has been released to the community for maintenance and coordination to continue building on where desired. Instead, we are now building on the Goanna Runtime Environment™ (or GRE for short) focusing more tightly on the Goanna rendering engine and cutting out support for unmaintainable components and target platforms. More details about this change will follow in in-depth documentation on the developer site and/or the forum.

Due to the extensive internal changes in the source tree, these release notes focus only on relevant changes in the browser with regards to implementations, extensions and security/bugfixes, and is by no means exhaustive.

Most notable user-facing/implementation changes:
  • Implemented Global Privacy Control, taking the place of the unenforceable "DNT" (Do Not Track) signal. If you previously enabled DNT, then this preference will be adopted for Global Privacy Control (GPC). Through GPC, you indicate to websites that you do not want them to share or sell your data.
    Note: Due to an implementation bug, the DNT preference may not be migrated across to GPC properly. Please double-check and enable manually if desired!
  • "Default browser" controls in preferences has been moved to "General".
  • Updated emoji support to Twemoji 13.1.
  • Implemented Selection.setBaseAndExtent() for web compatibility.
  • Implemented queueMicroTask() for web compatibility.
For add-on developers:
  • Pale Moon now internally identifies with the Firefox GUID. This does not affect how it identifies to the web.
  • Direct support for legacy Firefox extensions has been restored. Pale Moon-exclusive extensions will need to be updated to target the Firefox GUID in their install manifest and, where applicable, in their JavaScript components and overlays.
  • The browser no longer lives in a "browser" distribution subdirectory. If you are hard-coding paths this may affect you.
  • appinfo.platformVersion is frozen for backwards compatibility. If you need to detect the platform version, you should use appinfo.greVersion instead.
  • Themes: scrollbar-width is now mapped to an attribute on scrollbar controls (bars, resizers and corner controls) for better theme support of thin scrollbars.
  • Language packs: the entire internationalization structure has changed; because this required re-verification of translations, some language packs may have a few more untranslated strings in them at the moment until our volunteers over at Crowdin catch up on the new milestone.
Bugfixes, stability and security:
  • Updated various in-tree libraries: cubeb, sqlite, cairo, ...
  • Fixed an issue with the Linux desktop shortcut file to solve potential DE integration problems on common distributions.
  • Fixed an issue with page and iframe content margins not being applied properly when passed as attributes instead of CSS.
  • Ensured JavaScript and JSON files are always recognized as known MIME types so they can be opened appropriately from local sources.
  • Fixed an issue with rapid loading and unloading of js modules causing browser crashes.
  • Fixed an issue with tooltips being cut off at the end if containing exceedingly long unwrappable series of characters.
  • Fixed several application crash scenarios. DiD
  • Fixed a large number of thread locking/mutex issues. DiD
  • Fixed a leak of content types due to inconsistent error reporting. (CVE-2022-22760)
  • Fixed an issue with iframe sandboxing not being properly applied. (CVE-2022-22759)
  • Fixed a potential leak of bookmarks from the exported bookmarks file if it included a malicious bookmarklet.
  • Fixed an issue with drag-and-drop. (CVE-2022-22756)
  • Fixed a potential crash due to truncated WAV files.
  • Fixed a memory safety issue with XSLT. (CVE-2022-26485)



Release notes for version 29 releases


v29.4.6 (2022-04-12)

This is a security and bugfix release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a potential crash issue on bing.com.
  • Updated NSS to 3.52.4 to address security issues.
  • Fixed some thread locking issues. DiD
  • Worked around a Mesa driver bug that could cause crashes.
  • Fixed a potential resource access issue in devtools. DiD
  • Security issues with CVEs addressed: CVE-2022-1097, CVE-2022-28285 (DiD) and CVE-2022-28283 (DiD).
  • UXP Mozilla security patch summary: 1 fixed, 5 DiD, 2 rejected, 23 not applicable.



v29.4.5.1 (2022-03-29)

This is a bugfix update to address performance issues due to caching.

v29.4.5 (2022-03-23)

This is a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed several application crash scenarios. DiD
  • Fixed a number of thread locking/mutex issues. DiD
  • Fixed a leak of content types due to inconsistent error reporting. (CVE-2022-22760)
  • Fixed an issue with iframe sandboxing not being properly applied. (CVE-2022-22759)
  • Fixed a potential leak of bookmarks from the exported bookmarks file if it included a malicious bookmarklet.
  • Fixed an issue with drag-and-drop. (CVE-2022-22756)
  • Fixed a potential crash due to truncated WAV files.
  • Fixed a memory safety issue with XSLT. (CVE-2022-26485)



v29.4.4 (2022-01-18)

This is a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Improved application library loading security. DiD
  • Fixed an issue in JavaScript serialization. DiD
  • Fixed a potential out-of-bounds issue in IndexedDB. DiD
  • Fixed a potential issue in widget data handling code. DiD
  • Fixed potentially exploitable crashes in handling truncated/corrupt media files or streams.
  • Fixed an issue in the DOM FileReader code.
  • Updated NSS to 3.52.3 to address a security issue.
  • Fixed the following security issues: CVE-2022-22736, CVE-2022-22741, CVE-2021-4140, CVE-2022-22746, CVE-2022-22744 and CVE-2022-22747.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 8 fixed, 4 DiD, 17 not applicable.

v29.4.3 (2021-12-14)

This is a security update with a few extras.
This update reinstates FUEL again for old extension compatibility. See implementation notes.

Changes/fixes:
  • Restored the FUEL abstraction library again.
  • Added some extra sanity checks to timers and text fragments. DiD
  • Added a potential crash safeguard in program threading logic. DiD
  • Fixed the following security issues: CVE-2021-43537, CVE-2021-43541, CVE-2021-43536, CVE-2021-43545 and CVE-2021-43542.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 5 fixed, 3 DiD, 10 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • Despite being removed in 29.4.0 and 29.4.2, the long-since deprecated FUEL abstraction functions inside Pale Moon have been restored again after considerable blowback from the community and lack of effort to fix afflicted extensions. It was decided to just restore this indefinitely in the end, since it serves no-one to have users be forced to do without or stay on insecure versions of the browser for something nobody seems to want to address in the extension ecosystem. A more in-depth announcement about a change in direction tying in with this note can be found on the forum.

v29.4.2.1 (2021-11-11)

This is a small update to address the folowing issue:
Autocomplete drop-downs would have uncorrect styling, causing issues with custom themes (e.g. unreadable) and not displaying as-intended.

v29.4.2 (2021-11-09)

This is a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a spec compliance issue with IDN that could potentially cause confusion of domain names.
  • Fixed several intermittent thread sanity issues. DiD
  • Fixed a potential UAF risk in certain situations in networking. DiD
  • Fixed a potential crash risk (not exposed). DiD
  • Fixed a potential spoofing risk using form validation. (CVE-2021-38508)
  • Fixed a script sandbox escape issue through XSLT. (CVE-2021-38503)
  • Added a preference to enable compatibility mode with earlier TLS 1.3 specifications. See implementation notes.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 3 fixed, 1 already applied, 4 DiD, 7 not applicable.
Security notice: If you have enabled HTTP Alternative Services for Opportunistic Encryption, it is strongly recommended you disable this at this time through Preferences -> Security -> Opportunistic Encryption -> Enable HTTP Alternative Services for Opportunistic Encryption. This inherently weak transitional technology for http -> https has been compromised and can be abused (partial opt-in bypass). Note that our platform default for this setting (and any other OE) is disabled due to these kinds of inherent risks, as well as lack of transparency about the connection and server contacted. See CVE-2021-38507 for more details about this problem.

Implementation notes:
  • A preference (security.ssl.enable_tls13_compat_mode) was added to allow users to enable TLS 1.3 compatibility mode that uses an older draft specification of the protocol. A restart of the browser is required when you change this preference. Please note that you should only use this option if you strictly require it for e.g. outdated proxies, load-balancers or middleware, as it potentially weakens your connection security.
  • FUEL was removed (again). If extensions that used FUEL weren't updated to account for this since the clear warning 3 months ago when we removed it in 29.4.0 and temporarily reinstated it to give extension developers more time to address this issue, then they will no longer function properly with this release.

v29.4.1 (2021-09-14)

This is a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed potential crashes. DiD
  • Fixed a potential indirect exploit of Microsoft Internet Explorer. (CVE-2021-38492)
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 1 fixed, 2 DiD, 8 not applicable.

v29.4.0.2 (2021-08-23)

This is an out-of-band update to address the issue that in rare occasions on both Linux and Windows, audio would stop working (e.g. for playing videos or MP3s). We're still investigating the root cause of this issue on Windows (Linux cause was already found) but have temporarily reverted to our previous audio library (libcubeb) version for this release to provide a proper media experience for our users in the interim.

v29.4.0.1 (2021-08-18)

This is an out-of-band update to address the following issue:
In 29.4.0, the optional FUEL component (long since deprecated precursor to the Mozilla Add-On SDK) was removed from Pale Moon. This had unexpected impact on a number of popular extensions as well as a few bits of core functionality that went unnoticed in our pre-release testing and unstable channel.
As part of our commitment to resolving issues and giving extension developers some more time to address any problems with this removal of the component from the browser, this update temporarily restores the FUEL component.
If you are an extension developer relying on FUEL components or namespaces (e.g. implicit 'Application'), please update your extension before the next major release.

v29.4.0 (2021-08-17)

This is a development, bugfix and security release. Our release schedule was adjusted here to provide web compatibility improvements and not just a security update this month.

Changes/fixes:
  • Implemented promise.allSettled().
  • Implemented global origin on windows and workers.
  • Improved performance of memory allocations.
  • Updated libcubeb to the current development version.
    This improves OSS compatibility and addresses potential crashes, performance issues and security issues.
  • Updated SQLite to 3.36.0.
  • Improved thread safety of the web content cache. DiD
  • Added several fixes to avoid potential crashes and security issues. DiD
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 5 DiD, 12 not applicable.

v29.3.0 (2021-07-19/20)

This is a development, bugfix and security release.

Changes/fixes:
  • "Web Developer" is now called "Developer Tools" in the menus.
  • Updated and aligned about:home, the QuickDial page and logopage styling.
  • Re-organized the privacy category in the preferences window.
  • Enabled brotli compression for http for sites that support it. See implementation notes.
  • Implemented EventTarget as a constructor.
  • Updated Windows 10 toolkit styling.
  • Updated the port blacklist (removed 10080). See implementation notes.
  • CSS: Implemented calc() and animation support for stroke-dashoffset.
  • Added support for checking boolean preferences to chrome CSS style sheets, to support more advanced theming options.
  • Added support for dynamic dark color capable themes in CSS.
  • Updated ResizeObserver implementation to a more recent specification. See implementation notes.
  • Removed a metric ton of Macintosh code.
  • Removed obsolete system theme support from the layout engine.
  • Fixed several crashes.
  • Linux: blocked particularly old versions of Mesa/Nouveau drivers due to issues.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2021-30547 and several other issues that don't have a CVE number.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 3 fixed, 3 DiD, 2 deferred (DiD), 12 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • Brotli compression (introduced a few years back) has originally been restricted to https only in web browsers because there was some concern about interaction with middleware boxes with poor design trying to transparently recompress data not recognizing the new compression stream type and causing failures. The kind of processing done in those boxes (SDCH) has long since been deprecated. Since then, the segregation for Brotli between http and https has been maintained by Chrome and Firefox as a vessel to further promote https over http by artificially keeping http less efficient (denying the use of the more dense Brotli compression). Since there is no technical reason not to enable Brotli over http, we will accept (by way of Accept-encoding) Brotli over plain http from this version on, offering up to 20% less bandwidth use when servers also support it.
  • We maintain a blacklist of ports that should not be addressed from a browser (primarily to prevent scripted abuse). Not too long ago we updated these ports with a number of additional (higher range) ones, including port 10080 (Amanda). Unfortunately there is too much overlap with other common services/devices that also use this (arbitrarily chosen) port, so we've removed this particular port again from our blacklist.
  • The ResizeObserver implementation was changed to now support the updated specification for this API, including the experimental properties contentBoxSize and borderBoxSize which allows finer control to respond to size changes of elements. The old spec sizing property of contentRect remains supported for web compatibility.

v29.2.1 (2021-06-08)

This is a small bugfix release.

Changes/Fixes:
  • Worked around an issue with autocomplete popups sometimes failing to work (and added some debug console logging to it in case it happens to help find the root cause)
  • Fixed an issue with DOM mouse scrolling throwing errors.
  • Fixed a race with network detection routines firing incorrectly when resuming from standby.
  • Fixed a crash when using large uploads through DOM.
  • Fixed an issue where the menulist-button on editable menulist widgets was not visible on GTK3.
  • Reduced the number of reported "important preferences" in troubleshooting information, excluding individual printer details.
  • Fixed an issue with the JS JIT compiler not tracing debugger environments (DiD).
There were no security issues that applied to UXP or Pale Moon this release cycle.

v29.2.0 (2021-04-27)

This is a development and bugfix release.
Starting with this version, we will no longer be supporting unmaintained legacy Firefox extensions that are not updated for/targeting Pale Moon directly.
Please see this forum post for details.

Changes/fixes:
  • When opening tabs from the History side bar, Pale Moon will now warn you about the action if it would result in opening many tabs at once.
  • Pale Moon now offers "Open All in Tabs" on bookmark folders even if there is only one sub-item in it, for UI consistency.
  • Added media format controls in the Content category of Preferences.
  • Added controls for preferred color scheme. See implementation notes.
  • Updated several site-specific user-agent overrides for web compatibility.
  • Removed the ability to accept Firefox IDs for extension installation.
  • Removed conditional Macintosh code from the application front-end.
  • Updated the AV1 reference library to 2.0.
  • Cleaned up more Android code from the platform.
  • Updated the embedded emoji font to cater to even more race-dependent profession emoji.
  • Fixed an overflow in clip paths, potentially causing them to be rendered incorrectly.
  • Added CSS values smooth, high-quality and pixelated to the image-rendering keyword.
  • Implemented Intl.NumberFormat.formatToParts() to allow deconstruction of localized number formats by scripts.
  • Reinstated the dom.details_element.enabled preference and fixed a rendering issue with summary/details html elements.
  • Fixed an issue with CSP .nonce attributes on elements.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2021-29946 DiD and CVE-2021-23994 DiD .
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 DiD, 14 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
This version adds support for the prefers-color-scheme CSS keyword. This keyword is a media query keyword that indicates to websites whether your content styling preference is "light" or "dark". Unlike other browsers where this will be tied to your system color scheme and determined automatically (which might be a point on which you can be fingerprinted, so this would be a privacy concern), we've decided to give the user control through Preferences -> Content -> Colors where you will find a new control to indicate your user preference (it defaults to "light" for everyone). While this control also gives you the option to disable this feature and effectively not support the keyword, be aware that this might cause issues on some websites that do not provide styling for "unspecified" color scheme preferences.
In the future we may add an "automatic" option similar to other browsers in case you regularly switch your system application style from light to dark and v.v.

v29.1.1 (2021-03-30)

This is a minor security and bugfix update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Updated NSS to fix certificate import and keygen regressions.
  • Removed restrictions for units of width/height attributes on SVG elements.
  • Enabled scrollbar-width CSS keyword by default.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2021-23981 and a DiD fix for potential document parser confusion.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 DiD, 9 not applicable.

v29.1.0 (2021-03-02)

This is a development, bugfix and security update.

New features:
  • Language packs for the following newly-supported languages:
    • Arabic (ar)
    • Chinese Traditional (zh-TW)
    • Croatian (hr)
    • Danish (da)
    • Finnish (fi)
    • Galician (gl)
    • Indonesian (id)
    • Icelandic (is)
    • Japanese (ja)
    • Romanian (ro)
    • Serbian (cyrillic) (sr)
    • Slovenian (sl)
    • Thai (th)
  • Implemented String.prototype.replaceAll().
  • Implemented JSON superset proposal.
  • Implemented well-formed JSON stringify.
  • Implemented numeric separators in JavaScript.
Changes/fixes:
  • Updated timezone data to 2021a.
  • Updated the wording and inclusion of more select license blocks in about:license.
  • Updated some site-specific user-agent overrides for web compatibility.
  • Updated the lz4 library for performance and security updates.
  • Improved performance of JSON stringify.
  • Further improved support for building on FreeBSD.
  • Fixed a regression where changes to useragent compatibility required a restart to take effect.
  • Fixed a regression where AES-GCM in WebCrypto ("subtle" crypto API) wasn't working.
    This could make certain login procedures fail to work.
  • Fixed a full browser deadlock when page scripting would flood browsing history with rapid location state changes.
  • Disabled AV1 codec use by default again since our implementation has significant streaming issues (particularly audio) that needs further work.
  • Added required interaction with file/folder open dialog boxes on html file input elements on some operating systems to avoid malicious content tricking users into uploading sensitive files unintentionally (related to CVE-2021-23956).
  • Added a font sanity check to avoid triggering a potential vulnerability on unpatched Windows operating systems (related to CVE-2021-24093).
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2021-23974, CVE-2021-23973 and several memory safety hazards that don't have CVE numbers.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 4 fixed, 2 DiD, 19 not applicable.

v29.0.1 (2021-02-06)

This is a security and stability update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a browser crash when manipulating frame trees.
  • Fixed an issue with depth textures in ANGLE.
  • Updated the SSOAU for YouTube Studio.
  • Security issue addressed: ZDI-CAN-12197.

v29.0.0 (2021-02-02)

A new year, a new milestone!
While our initial intent was to have Google WebComponent support with this milestone, any reasonable deadline has passed for it.
Instead, this new release continues to build on further improvements and enhancements in the platform and additions to the browser, as well as a large number of bugfixes.

New additions:
  • Implemented Intl.PluralRules API for JavaScript.
  • Added a frequently-requested preference (browser.tabs.allowTabDetach) to disable "tearing off" of tabs (meaning dragging them outside of the tab bar resulting in them being made into their own window).
  • Added FLAC as a recognized filetype-by-extension.
  • Implemented basic support for the scrollbar-width CSS keyword. See implementation notes.
  • Added preliminary support for modern FreeBSD builds.
  • Selectively enabled core features of the DOM Animations API.
  • Enabled AV1 video support by default (previously built but not enabled in releases).
  • Added support for pointer events.
  • Added support for the SVG transform-box property.
  • Added support for the inputmode property for forms to enable context-sensitive display of soft keyboards.
  • Enabled shutting down of the file I/O worker when idle for a while (resource optimization).
  • Enabled blocking of auto-play of media in the background by default.
  • We now offer official GTK3 builds for Linux alongside the GTK2 builds.
  • Partial (and as of yet, not acceptably functional) implementation of Google WebComponents. See implementation notes.
Changes/fixes:
  • Updated NSPR to 4.29.
  • Updated NSS to 3.59.
  • Disabled legacy database format for storage of certificates and passwords. See implementation notes.
  • Updated several site-specific user-agent overrides for web compatibility.
  • Improved styling of the "find in page" bar to avoid unreadable text on some system themes.
  • Removed a large chunk of Android-specific code.
  • Split gkmedias.dll back out from xul.dll.
  • Cleaned up a number of redundant and obsolete code paths.
  • Fixed a regression with the Performance API.
  • Fixed an initialization issue in the browser when users would force-disable certain types of caching.
  • Fixed a crash when attempting to save a file from FTP that could be displayed in the browser.
  • Fixed the root cause of an issue with JavaScript module loading causing crashes. See implementation notes.
  • Fixed a rare initialization issue for the print preview window causing it to not display.
  • Fixed a crash on Mac when text input was not secure.
  • Disabled the Storage Manager API by default.
  • Disabled the <menuitem> html tag by default. If you still need this, you can re-enable it with the preference dom.menuitem.enabled in about:config.
  • Fixed a memory safety issue related to XUL trees (CVE-2021-23962).
  • Implemented several defense-in-depth measures to improve stability and future security.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 1 fixed, 6 DiD, 1 already implemented, 1 deferred to the next release, 24 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • We've implemented basic support for the scrollbar-width CSS keyword. The most important setting used with increasing frequency on the web is scrollbar-width: none effectively disabling scrollbars while not affecting overflow behavior when content would overflow its designated space (normally that would result in scrollbars being added to access the hidden content). This support for none is complete. A different setting for this keyword is thin. While this is implemented, it is currently reliant on the underlying system theme for widgets on various operating systems and (especially on Linux) may have little or no effect depending on the widget theme you are using, resulting in standard-sized scrollbars (the same as auto, the default for this keyword).
  • The legacy database format for storing security certificates and passwords (dbm, a Berkeley-derived format) is no longer built and as a result the browser will no longer be able to convert the old format (cert8.db and key3.db) to the current format which is SQL-based. Please see our document on profile migration for pointers on upgrading very old profiles that have not had this migration occur yet.
  • We tracked down (thanks, jarman!) the issue that had us forced to disable the inlining of code optimization in our JIT compiler for JavaScript (IonMonkey) in our previous version by default, to prevent crashes with module scripts (see release notes of 28.17.0). As a result we've been able to reclaim our temporary loss in performance of the browser while solving the crashes caused by this optimization.
  • We've implemented a good chunk of Google WebComponents (CustomElements and Shadow DOM). The incomplete code is behind a preference (dom.webcomponents.enabled) and it is strongly suggested you do not touch it unless you plan on helping us implement the remainder of this fundamentally-web-altering spec. Please do not expect that this preference is a magic wand to make Google and its puppy sites suddenly work in "modern" (mind the quotes) ways or without help (e.g. polyfills). While we've ticked a lot of the boxes already for a working implementation, this specification is kind of special in that it is all-or-nothing because it is not an extension or evolution of existing technology, but rather an attempt at redefining how websites work and are structured (with plenty of critical feedback because of that) at the most fundamental level.

Release notes for version 28 releases

v28.17.0 (2020-12-18)

This is a development, bugfix and security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Changed the way dates and times are formatted in the UI to properly adhere to the user's regional settings in the O.S.
  • Re-enabled the DOM Filesystem API for web compatibility.
  • Moved the global user-agent override to the networking component. See implementation notes.
  • Worked around crashes and run-time issues with module scripts. See implementation notes.
  • Fixed a website layout issue with table-styled elements potentially overlapping when placed inside a flexbox.
  • Fixed some code logic issues with websockets.
  • Fixed a regression when waking the computer from standby causing high CPU usage in some uncommon situations.
  • Updated the list of prohibited ports the browser can use. See implementation notes.
  • Updated root certificates.
  • Windows: Changed the way downloaded files without an extension are handled. See implementation notes.
  • Mac-beta: Improved version detection of MacOS including Big Sur.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2020-26978 and CVE-2020-35112.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 fixed, 1 deferred to the next release, 16 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • The global user-agent override was moved to the networking component where it is actually implemented. The new preference name is network.http.useragent.global_override. Please note that using a blanket override is normally (very) counterproductive and does not, in fact, help much with privacy. It would also override the compatibility modes (Native/Gecko/Firefox) in Pale Moon. As such, the browser will now warn you if the user-agent is globally overridden (in preferences) and allow you to easily reset that override and re-enable the various compatibility modes.
  • Module scripting caused some persistent and very hard to track browser crashes that we've narrowed down to a specific optimization in the JavaScript JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler (IonMonkey). This optimization is now disabled by default but if you need that little extra performance (usually only noticed in very optimized code or some benchmarks) then you can re-enable it, trading in stability, by setting the new preference javascript.options.ion.inlining to true.
  • Prohibited ports: Pale Moon maintains a blacklist of ports the browser may normally not connect to on servers, to mitigate abusive web scripting employing your browser as an attack bot on servers (e.g. by connecting to mail servers or what not), NAT slipstreaming, and similar security issues. To more thoroughly prevent known abusable ports on servers, this list was extended with a number of additional default ports for various non-http protocols.
  • Downloaded files without a file extension: When a file without an extension is downloaded, we will now open the download folder where you may choose to take any specific action manually, instead of trying to execute it as a program or through an associated program.

v28.16.0 (2020-11-24)

This is a development and security update to the browser.

Note for Linux users: With CentOS 6 going end-of-life, this version will be the last for which we will be building 32-bit Linux official binaries to download. While your distribution may choose to continue offering 32-bit versions of the browser, built from source by the maintainers, we won't be offering any further official 32-bit Linux binaries on our website. Please check with your distribution's package maintainers to know if further 32-bit support will be available on your particular flavor of Linux.

Changes/fixes:
  • Aligned CSS tab-size with the specification and un-prefixed it.
  • Updated Brotli library to 1.0.9.
  • Updated JAR lib code.
  • Optimized UI code, resulting in smaller downloads and less space consumed on disk.
  • Changed the default Firefox Compatibility version number to 68.0 (since versions ending in .9 makes some frameworks unhappy, refusing access to users)
  • Cleaned up HPKP leftovers.
  • Disabled the DOM filesystem API by default.
  • Removed Phone Vibrator API.
  • Fixed an issue where the software uninstaller would not remove the program files it should.
  • Fixed a devtools crash related to timeline snapshots.
  • Fixed an issue in Skia that could cause unsafe memory access. DiD
  • Fixed several data race conditions. DiD
  • Fixed an XSS vulnerability where scripts could be executed when pasting data into on-line editors.
  • Linux: Fixed an overflow issue in freetype.
  • Security issues addressed: CVE-2020-26960, CVE-2020-26951, CVE-2020-26956, CVE-2020-15999 and several others that do not have a CVE designation.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 4 fixed, 4 defense-in-depth, 3 rejected, 20 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • Windows binaries should all be properly code-signed again.
  • The uninstaller issue might only appear if you have not used the internal updater to update the browser after installation.
  • The DOM Filesystem and dir picker APIs are, in practice, not used on websites. We've disabled these web-exposed APIs because they are not entirely without potential risk, and intend to remove them in a future version unless there is a demonstrable need to keep them as optional (unsupported) APIs in the platform.
  • One of the rejected security patches deals with entering a single word in the address bar. Standard browser behavior in that situation is for browsers to do a normal network lookup of that word in case it is a LAN machine name (other browsers also do this) which may "leak" your entered search term to the LAN. If you want to avoid this, please always use the search box for entering web searches, as it's unambiguous what to do with single words in that case.

v28.15.0 (2020-10-27)

This is a standard development and bugfix release.

Changes/fixes:

  • Implemented support for CSS caret-color.
  • Implemented support for un-prefixed ::selection CSS pseudo-element styling.
  • Fixed another potential crashing scenario in ResizeObservers.
  • Fixed several crashes in the DOM Fetch API.
  • Fixed a crash in table pagination.
  • Security issues fixed: CVE-2020-15680 (VG-VD-20-115) and several memory safety hazards.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 1 fixed, 2 defense-in-depth, 12 not applicable.

v28.14.2 (2020-10-02)

This update fixes a few important issues.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed some additional crashes caused by the ResizeObserver API. This should take care of all crashes that have been attributed to this new code.
  • Fixed erroneous parsing of CSS percentages as number values.

v28.14.1 (2020-09-30)

This update addresses an intermittent crash in the newly-implemented ResizeObserver API (introduced in 28.14.0) occurring on a number of high-profile and often-used websites.

v28.14.0 (2020-09-29)

This is a development and security update.
  • Updated the browser identity code for website security to more clearly indicate website status.
    A detailed explanation is available on the forum and beyond the scope of these release notes.
  • Updated unofficial branding to be more generic and more clearly separate unofficial builds from Pale Moon as a product.
    Please note that this goes hand in hand with an update of our redistribution license, and from this point forward any "New Moon" products are to be considered separate, and not unofficial Pale Moon builds or in any way related to or affiliated with Pale Moon, despite the similarity in name.
  • Added a preference (signon.startup.prompt) to give users the option to ask for the Master Password the moment the application starts (before the main window opens). This allows a workaround for getting multiple Master Password prompts if individual components need access to the password store at the same time.
  • Changed the way download sources are displayed to always use the actual domain downloads are from. In some situations the browser would previously display the domain of the referring page in an inconsistent fashion.
  • Implemented the ES2019 Object.fromEntries() utility function.
  • Implemented the CSS flow-root keyword.
  • (Re-)implemented percentage-based CSS opacity values according to the updated spec.
  • Implemented the last few missing bits for a standards-compliant implementation of JavaScript modules.(preloading, resource: scheme, etc.)
  • Implemented the ResizeObserver DOM API.
  • Fixed a null crash on some websites using CSS clip paths.
  • Updated script handling inside SVGs to only run scripts if they are enabled and permitted, avoiding a potential XSS pitfall.
  • Fixed several memory safety hazards and crashes.
  • Updated the MediaQueryList interface to the updated spec. It now inherits from EventTarget and implements AddEventListener/RemoveEventListener in addition to AddListener/RemoveListener and should improve web compatibility for some sites.
  • Removed support for the archaic and non-standard <marquee> element.
  • Removed some leftovers from the discontinued plugin update checker service.
  • Removed some internal HPKP implementation leftovers.
  • Cleaned up the Windows widget code to reduce potentially vulnerable direct-dll loads.
  • Security issues fixed: CVE-2020-15676 and CVE-2020-15677
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 fixed, 1 defense-in-depth, 7 not applicable.

v28.13.0 (2020-09-04)

This is a compatibility, bugfix and security update. Special thanks to our new code contributors this cycle (you know who you are)!

Changes/fixes:
  • Updated the included site-specific user-agent overrides for a number of websites that need them.
  • Rewritten the browser's padlock code to use more modern APIs and provide more accurate security status indication.
    Now also with localized tooltips!
  • Fixed a missing close button on the undo prompt after removing a thumbnail from the QuickDial new tab page.
  • Fixed an issue with the alternative stylesheet menu in the browser's UI not working.
  • Implemented the use of intrinsic aspect ratios for images to improve layout during load and page positioning.
  • Added a preference to the use of node.getRootNode and disabled by default. See implementation notes.
  • Added CSS -webkit-appearance as an alias for -moz-appearance to improve compatibility with websites that only try to use Chrome-specific keywords to style standard form elements.
  • Updated the SQLite library to 3.33.0.
  • Reinstated precise floating point precision model in JavaScript for those alternate builders who foolishly try to use the inaccurate "fast" model.
  • Improved spec compliance of modular JavaScript use (ECMAScript modules).
  • Changed media errors to be a more generic response, and added a preference (media.sourceErrorDetails.enabled) to enable detailed error reporting of media errors for debugging purposes.
    Previously, detailed errors were provided by default which could lead to privacy issues.
  • Improved code stability of the AbortController implementation.
  • Fixed a race condition in the secure connection library (NSS).
  • Security issues fixed: CVE-2020-15664, CVE-2020-15666, CVE-2020-15667, CVE-2020-15668 and CVE-2020-15669.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 4 fixed, 1 defense-in-depth, 1 rejected, 9 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  • In 28.11.0 we introduced node.getRootNode because some websites would fail with an error if this function was not present. Unfortunately, this caused problems with other sites that (incorrectly) assume Google WebComponents are available when this utility function is present (feature detection gone wrong). While it is considered by some to be part of the Google WebComponents implementation, it actually has utility value outside of that use. Because of the problems caused, we've added a preference and disabled it by default, fixing these kinds of websites.
    When needed, you can re-enable this function with dom.getRootNode.enabled
    This should improve web compatibility by default yet still allow users to enable this function for websites that use its utility but do not use WebComponents.

v28.12.0 (2020-08-04)

This is a development, bugfix and security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added controls for WASM to the browser's preferences, and enabled by default.
  • Enabled various arbitrarily-disabled CSS functions.
  • Added the use of basic path descriptors (i.e. polygon) to css clip paths.
  • Implemented multithreaded request signal handling for the Abort API. Please see implementation notes below.
  • Updated the included US-English dictionary, adding approximately 2500 additional words.
  • Removed the DOM battery API. This was already disabled for privacy reasons for a long while.
  • Fixed an erroneous warning displayed on toolkit-only add-ons like supplied dictionaries.
  • Fixed an issue with the sessionstore tab load preference.
  • Improved the generation of the names of downloaded files to prevent confusion. (CVE-2020-15658)
  • Fixed a code issue with base64 encoding of data.
  • Fixed 2 safety hazards in JavaScript. (One being CVE-2020-15656) DiD
  • Fixed a spec compliance issue with regards to the cross-origin loading of scripts. (CVE-2020-15652)
  • Improved the loading of a system DLL on Windows, preventing low-risk hijacking potential. (CVE-2020-15657) See implementation notes.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 4 fixed, 2 defense-in-depth, 15 not applicable.
Implementation notes:
  1. In 28.11.0, we introduced the Abort API as new code. The implementation of it still had an issue where especially web workers would not always see the availability of abort signals on fetch requests while AbortSignal was implemented in the browser. This effectively made some websites (especially those using a particular polyfill for the Abort API that would detect the need to polyfill by way of Request.signal) throw errors that were fine before. We offered users a workaround by temporarily disabling the AbortController in the browser by way of a preference (dom.abortController.enabled).
    v28.12.0 fixes the multi-threaded handling of signals, which should solve these problems. As such, the workaround is no longer needed and upon upgrade the preference will be reset to enable AbortControllers again.
  2. DLL-hijacking on Windows would only be possible if a malicious actor already either gained administrative access to the program's installation folder or otherwise have unrestricted access to the program folder (by having it installed in local application folders inside the user's profile space or other insecure program locations). In that case the system is already compromised and any executable can be replaced, so having dll loading hijacked would be the least of your concerns (i.e. the main program .exe could also be replaced/infected in that case).

v28.11.0 (2020-07-14)

This is a development, bugfix and security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Changed storage format for certificates and passwords to SQLite.
  • Added a preference (browser.tabs.insertAllAfterCurrent) to enable always adding new tabs after the current tab, whether related or not.
  • Changed the way Firefox extensions are displayed in the add-on manager (provide a clear warning).
  • Denied other types of add-ons that aren't explicitly targeting Pale Moon's ID.
  • Improved the browser's DPI-awareness to be per-monitor instead of system-wide, on supported Windows operating systems.
  • Updated bookmark backups code with the other half of what should have been done way back when, so they work fully as-intended.
  • Added a preference (browser.bookmarks.editDialog.showForNewBookmarks) to enable immediately showing the edit dialog for new bookmarks.
    If set to true, clicking the star in the address bar will pop open the edit dialog immediately for changing details/sorting.
  • Fixed the useragent string in native mode, and updated UA code to properly respond to live changes to some preferences.
  • Tidied up front-end browser JavaScript.
  • Changed the way sources are compiled (on-going de-unification).
  • Improved compatibility with gcc v10
  • Removed support for the obsolete and unmaintained NVidia 3DVision stereoscopic interface.
  • Fixed some build issues in non-standard configurations.
  • Fixed wrong positions when calculating the position for position:absolute child inside a table.
  • Aligned file name extension of saved url files with other applications (lower case)
  • Fixed building with --disable-webspeech (to disable speech synthesis)
  • Added global menubar support for GTK.
  • Implemented node.getRootNode
  • Implemented AbortController (Abort API)
  • Improved the uninstaller to use elevation when prudent and actually remove program files.
  • Fixed a rare issue with editable page content.
  • Fixed a crash related to ES module scripts.
  • Aligned ES module scripting better with the current spec and removed eager instantiation.
  • Fixed a potential issue with the JPEG encoder. (CVE-2020-12422) DiD
  • Fixed a potential issue with AppCache manifests. DiD
  • Fixed a potential crash in JavaScript date parsing.
  • Fixed a problem with RSA key generation that would make it potentially vulnerable to side-channel attacks. (CVE-2020-12402)
  • Fixed a potential crash due to multithread race condition. DiD
  • Fixed a correctness issue in URL handling. (CVE-2020-12418) DiD
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 fixed, 4 defense-in-depth, 10 not applicable.

v28.10.0 (2020-06-05)

This is a development, bugfix and security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Implemented URLSearchParams' sort() function
  • Implemented ES2020 globalThis for web compatibility
  • Improved our WebM media parser to be more tolerant to different encoding styles.
  • Improved our MP3 media parser to be more tolerant to different encoding styles and particularly tiny files/stream chunks.
  • Improved performance of table drawing for more corner cases
  • Changed the way images without a src are handled in page layouts to align with the Chrome-pushed spec.
  • Added modern MIPS support
  • Split out the ICU data file from xul.dll on Windows
  • Fixed a regression in WebAudio channel handling due to a landed security fix.
  • Fixed a regression preventing scripting from properly disabling input controls
  • Fixed an issue with border radius sometimes not being honored in tables
  • Fixed some build issues in non-standard configurations.
  • Removed more telemetry code
  • Removed the in-browser speech recognition engine and API
  • Removed support for the obsolete and unmaintained NVidia 3DVision stereoscopic interface.
  • Changed handling of braille blanks in the ui (CVE-2020-12409) DiD
  • Mitigated a potential timing attack against DSA keys in NSS (CVE-2020-12399)
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 1 fixed, 1 defense-in-depth, 8 not applicable.

v28.9.3 (2020-05-08)

This is a security update.
  • Fixed a potential vulnerability in the zip file reader. DiD
  • Fixed a potential vulnerability in the JavaScript JIT compiler related to aliases. DiD
  • Ported several upstream devtools fixes (addresses CVE-2020-12392 and CVE-2020-12393).
  • Improved memory safety of some WebAudio calls.
  • Improved memory safety in the XUL window destructor. DiD
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 3 fixed, 3 defense-in-depth, 16 not applicable.

v28.9.2 (2020-04-30)

This is a minor update for stability and compatibility.
  • Re-based the 28.9 version of browsers on a separate development branch that excludes the extensive work being done for Google WebComponents, to avoid potential performance and stability issues caused by as-of-yet incomplete and in-progress code for the new milestone.
  • Enabled DOM High Resolution timestamps for compatibility with websites that strictly rely on them for operation.
  • Added a preference to allow copying the unescaped URL from the address bar (especially useful for internationalized domain names and paths).
    To enable this, set browser.urlbar.decodeURLsOnCopy to true in about:config
  • Fixed several application crashes (thanks, Fysac!)

v28.9.1 (2020-04-10)

This is a minor security and bugfix release.
  • Re-imported the ExtensionStorage js module for use by browser extensions.
  • Fixed an issue with the WebRequest module having erroneously un-processed build directives in it. This might have caused some subtle breakage.
  • Removed the use of high-resolution Windows system timers from the layout refresh driver; this should help with some performance and battery life issues.
  • Fixed an issue where various parts of hardware acceleration weren't properly linked when changing the option from preferences.
    If you have changed the preferences option to "use hardware acceleration when available" between 28.9.0 and this release, it is recommended that you go into preferences and toggle the option off/on to the preferred setting to correct any discrepancies.
  • Fixed an issue with building the user-agent string using the build date as ID.
  • Fixed an issue with the release of document content viewers (CVE-2020-6819). DiD
  • Fixed an issue with handling functions with rest parameters. DiD
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 defense-in-depth, 14 not applicable.

v28.9.0.2 (2020-03-25)

This is a small bugfix update addressing 2 more important issues in 28.9.0:
  • Fixed an issue with browser migration and initialization code causing various browser run-time problems.
  • Fixed an issue with cache behavior where some users would have trouble having their windows and tabs restored in "soft refresh" mode (see v28.9.0 release notes).
    To solve this, we reverted to the previous (pull from cache) mode for now while we investigate the cause.

v28.9.0.1 (2020-03-25)

This is a small update to address a breaking issue with user-agent override strings, causing problems on certain websites for a number of our users.


v28.9.0 (2020-03-24)

This is a major development update.

New features:
  • Implemented asynchronous iterators (await iterator.next() and for await loops) (ES2018)
  • Implemented promise-based media playback.
  • Implemented non-standard legacy CSSStyleSheet rules functions.
  • Implemented the html5 <dialog> element. To switch this on, flip dom.dialog_element.enabled to true.
  • Implemented the optional hiding of pinned tabs in CtrlTab/AllTab panes. (controlled through the preferences browser.ctrlTab.hidePinnedTabs and browser.allTabs.hidePinnedTabs)
  • Added 1.25x playback speed to html media elements.
  • Added a hidden pref (browser.places.smartBookmarks.max) to control the sizes of default smart bookmarks categories.
Changes/fixes:
  • Aligned document.open() with the overhauled specification.
  • Aligned the way DOM styles are computed with mainstream browser behavior.
  • Removed the (unused) DOM promise implementation.
  • Enabled seeking to next frame in media files.
  • Enabled dynamic UA updates for emergency use.
  • Implemented rule processing stub for font-variation-settings.
  • Increased the maximum XML nesting depth to 2048 levels for extreme corner cases and to conservatively align with other browsers.
  • Improved the privacy of geolocation lookup calls, with thanks to a generous service donation from ip-api.com
  • Improved reporting of the operating system in site-specific user-agent overrides.
  • Improved table drawing performance again after the rewrite for sticky positioning making it slower.
  • Updated CSP processing to allow custom scheme wildcards to be specified without a port.
  • Aligned the behavior of outlines with other browsers when dealing with CSS-repositioned elements.
  • Changed the way hardware acceleration is controlled from the application.
  • Changed the default monospace font for main languages from Courier New to Consolas.
    This provides a more balanced font for fixed-width text that is slightly more condensed and more in line with the naturally compacter variable-width fonts used everywhere else.
  • Changed the browser's behavior when restoring tabs from previous sessions. To prevent stale pages, it will now by default perform a "soft refresh" of the page instead of drawing it purely from cache without checking if the page needs updating. If you prefer the old behavior, set browser.sessionstore.cache_behavior to 0 in about:config.
  • Updated NSPR to 4.24 and NSS to ~3.48.1-RTM, removing the previous custom patch level with NSS being able to support custom rounds for DBM now.
    For extensive release notes with all NSS changes, see NSS_Releases
  • Implemented an NSS performance optimization for Master Password use with limited effect.
  • Fixed some potential crashing scenarios with WebGL on Linux.
  • Completely removed showModalDialog.
  • Disabled some logging in production builds.
  • Removed various gadgeteering/redundant/dead DOM APIs (casting/presentation, FlyWeb)
  • Removed support for a number of critical libraries being system-supplied.
  • Removed "Copy raw data" button from the troubleshooting information page, since it's never used by us in that format, and users mistakenly keep using it instead of copying text.
  • Removed a bunch of Android and iOS support code.
  • Fixed an issue with form elements sometimes being incorrectly disabled.
  • Fixed several crashes.
  • Fixed an issue with Captive Portal detection sometimes firing even when disabled by the user.
  • Performed various tree-wide code cleanups.
  • Backed out a large code cleanup patch for causing subtle issues in website operation (e.g. WordPress). This will have to be revisited later; the reintroduced code is not in use in practice.
  • Cleaned up the application updater code.
Security-related fixes:
  • Fixed a potential pointer issue in cubeb. DiD
  • Disabled allowing remote jar: URIs by default for security reasons. If you need this functionality for your non-standard environment, you can enable it with the preference network.jar.block-remote-files, but please consider moving away from this method of providing web-based applications.
  • Removed a potentially dangerous and otherwise ineffective optimization from the JavaScript engine.
  • Fixed unwanted behavior where created/focused pop-up windows could potentially cover the DOM fullscreen notification, hiding it from users. (CVE-2020-6810)
  • Fixed an issue where copying data as a curl request from developer tools would not properly escape parameters. (CVE-2020-6811)
  • Updated our sctp library code with several upstream fixes.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 4 fixed, 3 already mitigated, 1 rejected, 11 not applicable.

v28.8.4 (2020-03-01)

This is a small security and compatibility update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Implemented optional catch binding (ES2019).
  • Fixed a hazardous crash related to module scripting (CVE-2020-9545).

v28.8.3 (2020-02-18)

This is a regular maintenance bugfix and security release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed an issue in CSP blocking requests without a port for custom schemes.
  • Fixed a potentially hazardous crash in layers.
  • Fixed random crashes on some sites using IndexedDB.
  • Changed the way the application can be invoked from the command-line to prevent a whole class of potential exploits involving modified omnijars.
    If your special-needs environment requires that you launch the browser with custom browser/gre omnijars from the command-line, you must set the UXP_CUSTOM_OMNI environment variable before launch from this point forward.
  • Fixed an issue in the html parser after using HTML5 template tags, allowing JavaScript parsing and execution when it should not be allowed, risking XSS vulnerabilities on sites relying on correct operation of the browser. (CVE-2020-6798)
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 fixed, 2 DiD, 10 not applicable.

v28.8.2.1 (2020-02-04)

This is a minor release in response to YouTube deprecating their old web UI. This change will enable the new YouTube UI by default.


v28.8.2 (2020-01-28)

This is a small bugfix and compatibility update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Reverted the addition of JavaScript regular expression lookarounds since the implementation caused crashes. We'll have to revisit this later.
  • Fixed an issue where FTP servers would hang the browser if they were not sending answers according to the protocol specification.
  • Added a workaround for GitHub trying to enforce more Google-isms (which we don't support at this time) to browsers that identify as "Firefox-alike".

v28.8.1 (2020-01-11)

This is an important security and stability release. Please update your browser to this version as soon as possible.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a sampling issue in libsoundtouch (DiD)
  • Fixed an issue with a new upcoming Windows 10 feature not honoring Private Browsing mode by default (DiD)
  • Fixed several stability and memory safety hazards. (DiD)
  • Fixed an issue where files could inadvertently be executed with the designated file type handler instead of opened. (CVE-2019-17019)
  • Fixed an issue with the JavaScript JIT compiler that could lead to exploitable crashes. (CVE-2019-17026) actively exploited
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 fixed, 7 DiD, 12 not applicable.

v28.8.0 (2019-12-10)

This is a major development release. Many things have been improved, some landmark features have been added/enabled, and many libraries have been updated for added stability and performance. We hope you are as happy with this progress as we are!

All the best wishes for the Holidays to everyone!

New features:
  • Added support for modern Solaris operating systems like Illumos (thanks Athenian200!).
  • Implemented position:sticky for table parts - You can now use CSS to e.g. stick table headers so they don't scroll off the screen!
  • Enabled basic implementation of module type scripting. While not fully spec compliant (yet), this will fix the few web compatibility issues with sites that rely on this feature without fallback (e.g. the Chromium bugtracker).
  • Implemented Promise.prototype.finally() (ES2018).
  • Implemented Regular Expression lookbehind (ES2018).
  • Implemented Regular Expression /s flag (dotAll support) (ES2018).
  • Implemented String.prototype.matchAll (regex) (ES2020).
  • Added Ekoru to the list of default search engines. This is a Bing-backed search engine that donates the majority of its revenue to various charities that support the planet and animals. An environment-supporting alternative to Ecosia if you don't want to support Google in the process.
Changes/fixes:
  • Changed the way tables are rendered to fix a number of spec compliance issues and allow relative positioning of table parts.
  • Now building against the Windows 10 SDK 10.0.17763.132 for increased compatibility with Windows 10 and improved Spectre mitigation.
  • Removed the unused DiskSpaceWatcher component.
  • Updated cairo code.
  • Updated SQLite to 3.30.1.
  • Updated the Brotli library to 1.0.7.
  • Updated the woff2 library to 1.0.2.
  • Updated the OpenType Sanitizer to 8.0.0.
  • Updated the Javascript math library for precision and performance fixes.
  • Updated the embedded Emoji font to Mozilla's COLR-mapped twemoji 0.5.0 (Twemoji 12.1.3), to support Emoji 12.
  • Improved CSS grid rendering.
  • Changed packaging for archives to use 7z/xz instead of zip/bz2.
  • Made the second argument of (DOM/CSS) insertRule() optional for (Chrome) web compatibility.
  • Removed the non-standard object.prototype.watch()/unwatch() functions. Please note that this may affect some extensions; those will need to be updated to no longer use these non-standard functions.
  • Fixed the status bar module to work around an issue with relying on watch()/unwatch().
  • Fixed a build failure in the libcubeb sndio module.
  • Fixed a small oversight in the release branch that would potentially still mark "jnlp" (Java Web Start) files as executable.
  • Fixed the certificate retrieval logic in the certificate exception dialog.
  • Fixed an issue with add-ons potentially getting confused during add-on updates due to cached scripts.
  • Fixed a crash due to unnecessary reparenting calls in layout.
  • Reinstated the mentioning of the number of accelerated/total windows in Troubleshooting Information, for completeness.
  • Moved the embedded font for Emoji from application to platform so all UXP applications can easily benefit from it (thanks Tobin!).
  • Cleaned up the jemalloc code: Removed dead/unused code, removed conditionals around "always on" code, and made the allocator VLA-free.
Security-related fixes:
  • Removed the silent fallback to insecure install locations on Windows.
    Pale Moon will no longer by default install into unprotected program locations (this was a regression in v28).
    If your operating system account does not have the necessary privileges, you need to manually select an accessible folder to install into. This is important to prevent malware from modifying installed programs in well-known but otherwise unprotected installation locations.
  • Added a preference for, and disabled, the confirmation prompt for URL authentication (prevents evil traps).
  • Disabled the use of HPKP by default due to the inherent risks involved with this feature. A preference was added to completely disable header processing, and using preloaded pins is effectively disabled. Please note that this is automatically disabled by default for everyone, regardless of your previous setting for this feature, and it is strongly recommended you keep this feature disabled. HPKP will eventually be removed (overall Internet concensus).
  • Fixed a potential issue when interacting with plugins. (DiD)
  • Fixed a potential crash scenario when reading PAC configuration. (DiD)
  • Fixed a potential issue with text selection painting. (DiD)
  • Fixed an issue with element references not being properly updated. (DiD)
  • Fixed an issue with incorrect saving of web pages as text. (DiD)
  • Fixed a potential issue with clipboard handling. (DiD)
  • Fixed a potential issue with attaching the debugger to web workers. (DiD)
  • Updated NSS to 3.41.4 to address CVE-2019-11756 and CVE-2019-11745.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 2 fixed, 8 DiD, 16 not applicable.

v28.7.2 (2019-10-29)

This is a security and bugfix update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Disabled the use of ICC color profiles for images on Linux by default.
  • Updated timezone data for internationalization functions.
  • Fixed the option to use hardware acceleration over RDP for Windows 8.1 and 10.
  • Fixed an issue with inner window navigation potentially leaking.
  • Fixed a startup crash caused by Qihoo 360 Safeguard/360 Total Security.
  • Ported some expat parser fixes from upstream.
  • Ported several NSS upstream fixes to our build.
  • Aligned handling of U+0000 in the html5 parser with expectations.
  • Added size checks to WebGL data buffering.
  • Fixed build issues with newer glibc versions.
  • Fixed build issues for ARM targets.
  • Worked around a gcc9 compiler issue that would prevent building with it.
  • Sec bug fixes: CVE-2019-15903, CVE-2019-11757, CVE-2019-11763 and several potentially exploitable crashes and memory safety hazards that don't have a CVE number.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 6 fixed, 6 DiD, 1 rejected, 24 not applicable.

v28.7.1 (2019-09-12)

This is a security and bugfix update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where saving a webpage to disk would sometimes drop tags from the document.
  • Fixed an issue with click-to-play plugin content throwing up a blank notification.
  • Fixed an issue in the renderer where region intersections would sometimes return the wrong result.
    This fixes a regression caused by the fix for CVE-2016-5252.
  • Fixed security issues: CVE-2019-11744, CVE-2019-11752, CVE-2019-11737, CVE-2019-11746, CVE-2019-11750, CVE-2019-11747 and CVE-2019-11738.
  • Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 7 fixed, 1 DiD, 1 already covered, 22 not applicable.

v28.7.0 (2019-08-29)

This is a major development update involving a partial JavaScript engine overhaul and improvement, implementing several website-impacting changes. It should be noted that these changes follow some revisions of specifications (also adopted by mainstream browsers) that are not necessarily backwards compatible for web content as some scripting behavior has changed. If you are targeting Pale Moon specifically (e.g. through ua sniffing) please check and verify the behavior is still as expected.

Changes/fixes:
  • Landed a large JavaScript parser tune-up, which as a targeted goal brings our ES6 stringification fully in line with the ES2018 revision for classes, and implements rest/spread parameters for object literals. (Cheers to Luke!)
  • Fixed a crash with the tuned-up parser code when certain error messages were triggered.
  • Aligned browser behavior with mainstream regarding inner window behavior when domain is manipulated.
  • Improved performance dealing with frame properties.
  • Improved performance for handling html5 strings.
  • Improved performance of image content loading.
  • Fixed potential type confusion in array joins.
  • Fixed an issue on some pages causing high CPU usage when wrongly specifying plugin content.
  • Fixed an issue with the add-ons manager "discover" pane if no network connection is present.
  • Fixed an issue with bookmark/history search results offering context menu options that would be invalid without a selection.
  • Fixed the devtools JSON viewer and enabled it by default.
  • Fixed searching from about:home not working for search plugins using the POST method.
  • Fixed an issue with the checkboxes for location bar preferences.
  • Fixed SVG alignment issues if SVG-containing elements fall on odd pixel sizes, causing blurry display of especially small SVGs like icons/glyphs.
    SVGs will now always be pixel-snapped to provide expected crisp display.
  • Fixed precompilation of Sync client modules when packaging. This also removes the redundant services.sync.enabled pref.
  • Added support for matroska containers and h264-based webm video formats.
  • Added support for AAC audio in matroska and webm video formats.
  • Added support for spaces in the Mac package and application name.
  • Added an exception to the unique file origin policy for font types.
  • Added native file picker support for xdg on Linux.
  • Updated the default bookmark icons.
  • Updated the SQLite lib to 3.29.0.
  • Removed e10s information from about:troubleshooting.
  • Removed hotfix leftovers.
  • Removed the WebIDE developer tool.
  • Removed conditional build-time disabling of the Pale Moon status bar code.
  • Removed "Delete this page" and "Forget about this site" links from live bookmarks (since they make no sense on feeds).
  • Removed the Financial Times' polyfill user-agent override since they updated their detection to work with Pale Moon.

v28.6.1 (2019-07-25)

This is security and bugfix update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Improved handling of FTP resource loading (allow save-as and cater to some FTP-based browsing).
  • Added a preference (security.block_ftp_subresources) to allow users to completely bypass the blocking of FTP subresources if required for their environment, if the improvements made in this release do not suffice.
  • Added blocking of authentication-locked cross-origin image subresources by default to prevent spurious auth prompts.
    A preference (network.auth.subresource-http-img-XO-auth) was added to allow users to bypass this blocking if required for their environment.
  • Changed the behavior of file: URIs to treat each URI as a unique origin. This prevents cross-file access from scripting.
    A preference (security.fileuri.unique_origin) was added to allow users to relax this restriction if required for their environment.
  • Implemented a revised version of http2PushedStream to address some thread safety issues.
  • Aligned browser behavior with mainstream regarding inner window behavior when domain is manipulated.
  • Backed out a 28.5.* patch for causing multiple issues in the UI and web content.
  • Updated NSS to 3.41.2 (custom) to pick up several upstream fixes.
  • Fixed a type confusion issue in JavaScript Arrays. (DiD)
  • Added a fix for cross-thread access of Necko. (DiD)
  • Added a port safety check for Alternative Services.
  • Implemented fixes for applicable security issues: CVE-2019-11719, CVE-2019-11711, CVE-2019-11715, CVE-2019-11717, CVE-2019-11714 (DiD), CVE-2019-11729 (DiD), CVE-2019-11727 (DiD), CVE-2019-11730 (DiD), CVE-2019-11713 (DiD) and several networking and memory-safety hazards that do not have CVE numbers.

v28.6.0.1 (2019-07-04)

This is an out-of-band update to fix some pressing issues with the latest release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Updated the application icon to provide better visuals on Windows classic and other grey backgrounds.
  • Reduced the Master Password hashing rounds to prevent issues with stored password retrieval while still sufficiently strengthening the encryption.
    If you have previously re-keyed the database after the update to 28.6.0, you should do so again by going through the change master password process to reduce access times.
  • Updated the WhatsApp Web site-specific user-agent override to respond to Google refusing access based on the old string.
  • Updated the branding for the portable launcher.

v28.6.0 (2019-07-02)

This is a major development update, focusing on under-the-hood improvements and bugfixes, code cleanup, and performance.

Changes/fixes:
  • Implemented String.prototype.trimStart and String.prototype.trimEnd (ES2019)
  • Implemented Array.prototype.flat and Array.prototype.flatMap (ES2019)
  • Implemented Symbol.prototype.description (ES2019)
  • Added support for gzip-compressed SVG-in-Opentype fonts.
  • Updated official branding.
  • Updated reader view components.
  • Added a preference to control the setting of cookies through meta header information (non-standard feature) and disabled by default.
  • Updated ES6 Atomics and re-enabled them.
  • Updated internationalization code to support updated time zones and the Japanese Reiwa era.
  • Updated NSS to a custom version to have better encryption strength for master passwords.
    IMPORTANT: To use this strong encryption and re-key the password database with it, change your master password (can be changed to the same one you already had if desired, but you have to go through the change password process). Depending on your computer and the number of stored passwords, this encryption update may take some time, so please be patient. Please be aware that once re-keyed, the password store will be locked to the new encryption and will no longer be accessible with the master password in older versions of Pale Moon.
  • Restored "Release notes" in the help menu.
  • Rearchitectured the application/extension update code.
  • Added several performance improvements to DOM and the parser.
  • Improved JavaScript garbage collection of dead compartments.
  • Fixed a performance issue with painting on some pages.
  • Improved performance of some websites with complex event regions.
  • Fixed a potential performance issue in display lists on some pages.
  • Fixed a rendering bottleneck for the use of XRender when using a remote session.
  • Fixed graphical artifacts/flickering when using XRender on Intel or Intel-hybrid GPU setups.
  • Added a DiD fix for potential future issues with inlining array natives.
  • Fixed a potential UAF situation in the HTML5 parser (DiD)
  • Fixed an origin-clean bypass issue.
  • Changed the way permissions for predefined sites are loaded.
  • Reverted the 28.5.1 change to treat *.jnlp files as executables (CVE-2019-11696) after input from an Oracle representative. Java Web Start files are not executable and should not be treated any different than regular documents handled by external applications.
  • Removed SecurityUI telemetry.
  • Removed some other dead telemetry code.
  • Removed geo-specific selection of default search engines.
  • Deprecated the use of FUEL.
  • Removed the unused code for "enhanced tiles" in the new tab page.
  • Removed preference to brute-force e10s to on.
  • Removed Unboxed Array code.
  • Removed Unboxed Object code.
  • Fixed failure to print if a page contains a 0-sized <canvas> element.
  • Fixed an issue with tab-modal dialogs being presented in the wrong order.
  • Fixed an issue with the tab bar remaining collapsed in customize mode if normally hidden.
  • Fixed an issue with Sync when choosing to overwrite data with synced data.
  • Fixed an issue with tab previews on the taskbar.
  • Fixed an issue with IntersectionObserver viewport accuracy.
  • Fixed Scroll bar orientation on Mac OS X.
  • Fixed an issue with anchor/link targets not re-using a named target.
  • Fixed a build issue with Gnu-CC on PPC64.
  • Fixed browser.link.open_newwindow functionality.

v28.5.2 (2019-06-05)

This is a minor update to fix a breaking problem in 28.5.1.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed issues with image/texture allocation incorrectly being marked as insecure.

v28.5.1 (2019-06-04)

This is a security and bugfix update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Restored a global getBoolPref() function shortcut for extension compatibility with old extensions.
    If you are currently using this global function, please change it to Services.prefs.getBoolPref()
  • Fixed an issue with the UI when the address bar was removed from the navigation toolbar.
  • Fixed an issue with scripting of the Help menu.
  • Fixed a crash resulting from non-standard manipulation of XML stylesheets by extensions.
  • Fixed Aero Peek (taskbar previews) on Windows.
  • Fixed browser.link.open_newwindow functionality.
    Sorry, not yet! This will be in the next major update.
  • Removed the default handler for webcal since the site doesn't seem to be properly maintained.
  • Prevented some ways smart places queries could be abused for social engineering attacks.
  • Ported an upstream Skia fix.
  • Improved the origin-clean algorithm for canvases.
  • Improved the efficiency of certain types of memory allocations in the JavaScript compiler.
  • Changed the way the application update checker code is hooked up so it will not require a user to go idle before being activated.
    This solves the primary issue with application updates not notifying users as promptly as they should; more improvements are slated for the next major release.
  • Applicable security issues fixed: CVE-2019-7317, CVE-2019-11701, CVE-2019-11698, CVE-2019-9817 (DiD), CVE-2019-11700, CVE-2019-11696, CVE-2019-11693, and several potentially exploitable crashes and memory safety hazards that do not have a CVE number assigned to them.

v28.5.0 (2019-04-30)

This is a major development and bugfix update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Redesigned the about box.
  • Added "Check for updates" menu entries to the AppMenu and classic menu (since the About box redesign no longer has application update in it).
  • Restored the app.update.url.override pref for AUS testing/override.
  • Added "Loop" control to html5 video.
  • Fixed a crash with frames (e.g. when using Tile Tabs).
  • Fixed an issue with textarea placeholders (spec compliance).
  • Removed the Windows Maintenance Service one last time.
  • Improved http basic auth DoS heuristics.
  • Fixed an issue on big-endian machines (e.g. PPC64/linux).
  • Removed e10s code from widgets.
  • Preffed the various http "Accept" headers and aligned with the Fetch spec (except for image requests).
  • Aligned URLSearchParams with the spec.
  • Updated several site-specific UA overrides.
  • Fixed "Yet Another special case of a flex frame being the absolute containing block"™
  • Fixed border drawing when the tab bar is hidden.
  • Pref-controlled and disabled the use of unboxed plain objects in JavaScript's JIT compiler.
  • Improved handling of interrupted connections through proxies and pseudo-VPN extensions.
  • Removed contextual identity.
  • Updated the 7zip installer stub to a much more recent code version.
  • Fixed an issue with applying percentages to 0 in layout sizes.
  • Fixed an issue with calculating linear sums in JS JITed code.
  • Added default value feature to get*Pref() preference functions.
  • Fixed an issue that would occasionally overwrite the new tab custom URL.
  • Updated the SQLite library to 3.27.2
  • Killed the crashreporter toolkit files and exception handler hooks.
  • Fixed an issue with a missing border on the tab bar when on the bottom.
  • Fixed a crash with badly-formatted SVG files.
  • Showed the robots to the exit after squatting in the browser for decades.
  • JavaScript: Implemented TC39 toString() revision proposal.
  • Rearchitectured the JavaScript front-end parser to provide better and more logical parsing of JS code.
  • Removed support code and leftovers for unsupported SunOS, AIX, BEOS, HPUX and OS/2 operating systems.
  • Fixed a scrollbar arrow issue on OS X.
  • Removed all Firefox Accounts code.
  • Made the CSS parser more robust and aligned url() behavior with the CSS3 spec in case of bad input.
  • Fixed an issue with blocklist updates not actually dynamically applying due to a wrong URL.
  • Updated the embedded emoji font to the TweMoji v11.4.0 equivalent.
  • Fixed an issue with async/deferred scripts preventing page loads from completing.

v28.4.1 (2019-03-27)

This is a security and bugfix update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed hover state arrows on some controls.
  • Fixed potential denial-of-service issues involving FTP (loading of subresources and spamming errors).
  • Disabled Microsoft Family Safety (Win 8.1) by default. This prevents security issues as a result of a local MitM setup.
  • Added several site-specific overrides (Firefox Send and polyfill.io) to work around website UA-sniffing isues.
  • Implemented the origin-clean algorithm for controlling access to image resources.
  • Cleaned up the helper application service code.
  • Ported applicable security fixes from Mozilla (CVE-2019-9791, CVE-2019-9792, CVE-2019-9796, CVE-2019-9801, CVE-2019-9793, CVE-2019-9794, CVE-2019-9808 and ZDI-CAN-8368).
  • Implemented several defense-in-depth measures (for CVE-2019-9790, CVE-2019-9797, CVE-2019-9804, and a JavaScript issue).
  • Fixed several memory safety hazards and crashes.
  • Binaries are now code-signed again (including the setup program for the installer).

v28.4.0 (2019-02-19)

This is a major development, stability and security release.

Changes/fixes:

  • Removed more telemetry code from the platform.
  • Fixed implementation of the IntersectionObserver API to avoid crashes, and enabled it by default.
  • Switched to the new ffmpeg decode API to avoid dropping of frames.
  • Fixed a buffering issue in the WebP decoder that caused intermittent browser crashes.
  • Improved resource-efficiency for internal stopwatch timers.
  • Improved handling of incorrectly-encoded CTTS in media files, resolving some playback issues of videos.
  • Improved the Cycle Collector and Garbage Collector.
  • Improved fullscreen navigation bar handling in the situation it has focus when switching to full screen.
  • Aligned instanceof with the final ES6 spec.
  • Improved Windows DIB (bitmap) clipboard data handling.
  • Exposed TLS 1.3 cipher suite prefs in about:config in case people want to disable them individually.
  • Allowed empty string on the location.search setter to clear URL query parameters from JS.
  • Added a potential fix for external links not opening in the current window/tab (untested).
  • Enabled C++11 thread-safe statics in the entire application.
  • Updated several preferences for integration with the new add-ons site.

Security fixes:

  • Fixed a potential use-after-free in IndexedDB code. (DiD)
  • Improved proxy handling to avoid localhost getting proxied. (CVE-2018-18506)
  • Ported upstream Skia fixes. (CVE-2018-18356, CVE-2018-18335)
  • Fixed an additional Skia issue. (CVE-2019-5785)
  • Fixed several potentially-exploitable memory safety hazards and crashes. (DiD)
  • Fixed a possible data race when performing compacting GC.

v28.3.1 (2019-01-23)

This is a minor bugfix and stability release.
If you are using a language pack, please make sure you have the matching version for this browser version installed. Some strings were added for Captive Portal detection (see below) and outdated language packs will cause blank preference pages.

Changes/fixes:
  • Improved toolbar icon display for all DPIs on Windows.
  • Disabled the IntersectionObserver API by default while we work on resolving crashes caused by it.
  • Added isIntersecting to the IntersectionObserver API per specification.
  • Added an option to the preferences window to enable Captive Portal detection (Advanced -> General). If your network connection regularly encounters Captive Portals (e.g. using a laptop on the road or other WiFi connections that require login or agreement to terms) then enabling this detection may make your use of such networks more convenient.
    For those worried about privacy: the detection service makes use of our own infrastructure and does not contact third parties like Apple or Google.

v28.3.0 (2019-01-15)

This is a major development and bugfix release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added AV1 support for MP4/MSE videos. Please note that this is a reference library implementation and the upstream decoding lib currently has poor performance for higher resolutions (720p+). This is disabled by default; use the about:config preference media.av1.enabled to enable this codec.
  • Changed the API used for video playback with FFmpeg 58+. This should solve performance issues with VPx.
  • Redesigned the main toolbar icons as SVG images to make them HiDPI compliant.
  • Fixed the sync notification (infobar) icon.
  • Fixed a potential cycle collector resource leak.
  • Added icons and controls to tabs to indicate if sound is playing the tab and if so, allowing the user to mute it with a click.
    This is a native implementation of the API in use in Basilisk and performs the same function as the "expose noisy tabs" extension, although the extension may still be preferred by some for e.g. skinning capabilities. The feature may be disabled with browser.tabs.showAudioPlayingIcon.
  • Removed support for VR hardware.
  • Fixed out-of-bounds sizes for CSS calculation strings.
  • Removed the DirectShow component since it is no longer necessary.
  • Removed Firefox Accounts integration, phase 1:
    • Changed the Sync client to the one from Tycho.
    • Made Sync optional at build time.
  • Stopped trying to cater to addons.mozilla.org since they no longer offer anything useful to Pale Moon after the Great XUL Extension Purge™.
  • Added an option to process favicons for optimal sized display and removing animations. Enable this with browser.chrome.favicons.process
  • Fixed an incorrect preference reference in feed reader.
  • Fixed an issue with lazy frame construction on display:contents elements. This should solve e.g. the use of mathjax in comments on stackoverflow.
  • Media code improvements and cleanup (ongoing).
  • Updated the DropBox useragent override to solve login issues.
  • Fixed potential crashes due to shutdown observers in VTT and font lists. DiD
  • Enabled some mistakingly-disabled optimizations in the JS JIT compiler.
  • Fixed several potential crashes in JS. DiD
  • Fixed several potential crashes in WebCrypto. DiD
  • Fixed a potential crash in JS Range Analysis. DiD
  • Fixed a potential crash in the layout engine due to combo boxes. DiD
  • Fixed a potential shutdown crash in non-standard environments related to 2D Canvas. DiD
  • Fixed a potential overflow in the PNG writer. DiD
  • Fixed a potential double-free in the MAR signing utility. DiD
  • Fixed an issue where URLs could be extracted cross-origin (CVE-2018-18494).
  • Updated NSPR to v4.20.
  • Updated NSS to 3.41, providing (among other things) full compatibility with the final version of TLS 1.3 on websites.
  • Updated location.protocol to the latest spec.
  • Updated Intersection Observers to the latest spec and enabled them by default.
  • Updated the SQLite lib to 3.26.0.
  • Fixed errors about the login manager's recipeManager not being available (yet).
  • Switched status bar download arrow to SVG.
  • Fixed a crash in IntersectionObservers.
  • Fixed initialization of the Search service from browser code to avoid synchronous init.
  • Added logging of performance warnings to devtools consoles.
  • Fixed favicons in taskbar tab preview listings.
  • Blocked Comodo IS dll < version 6.3 to prevent startup crashes.
  • Fixed issues in the HTML form submit observer module.
  • Limited resolving depth of CSS variables to a sane maximum (fixes cras.sh issue).
  • Removed Mozilla's proprietary constructor on WebAudio's AudioContext, aligning it with the standard specification.
  • Exposed the previously hidden preference in about:config for page thumbnail generation (some people prefer this for local privacy).
  • Aligned Element.ScrollIntoView with the DOM specification. This improves, among other things, compatibility with the React framework.

v28.2.2 (2018-12-06)

This is a minor update to address a few pertinent issues.

Changes/fixes:
  • Changed the about:feeds icon for external applications to a generic icon, since that kind of access to executables is no longer allowed for security reasons.
  • Fixed issues with copying/pasting bookmarks in the Library View.
  • Fixed a crash occurring when using HTTP pipelining over some (broken) proxies.
  • Fixed several issues with animated WebP display (animations stopping, corrupted frames on lossy images, etc.)
  • Fixed an issue with the display of truncated GIF images.
  • Fixed an issue with deleting recent history not working properly.
  • Fixed incorrect duplicate compatibility mode preferences in about:config.

v28.2.1 (2018-11-16)

This is a bugfix release to address critical usability issues with the bookmarks/history window.

v28.2.0 (2018-11-13)

This is a major development and bugfix release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a major performance issue with web workers.
  • Fixed a rare crash on local networks with HTTP basic auth and unsupported cipher suites.
  • Fixed a performance/timer issue when leaving the browser idle.
  • Fixed an issue causing an empty dialog when launching executable files from the browser.
  • Fixed an issue preventing making entries to disallow sites to store data for off-line use.
  • Removed code to prevent extensions with binary components.
  • Fixed an issue with common dialogs being sized incorrectly for their content.
  • Fixed an issue with event handling on the tab bar that would cause frustrating behavior when trying to open/close tabs in rapid succession.
  • Switched default behavior for scrolling when a context or pop-up menu is open to allow scrolling, like in v27. This also affects scrolling in very long menus, e.g. bookmarks.
  • Added experimental Asynchronous Panning and Zooming (APZ) for desktop use.
  • Re-enabled the use and parsing of ICC v4 color profiles.
  • Removed telemetry code from the caching subsystem.
  • Improved full-screen detection for suppressing status messages.
  • Made all arguments passed to Init*Event() optional except the first for parity with other browsers.
  • Cleaned up some internal installer code.
  • Fixed making caret width configurable when dealing with CJK characters (regression).
  • Fixed drawing of table borders consistently when zooming a page (regression).
  • Exposed the "Save download location per site" pref in about:config.
  • Improved media handling (ongoing).
  • Added experimental support for AV1 in WebM videos (disabled by default).
    Note: this is for WebM only for now, so MP4 and MSE AV1 streams (e.g. YouTube) will not (yet) play.
  • Removed the (defunct and incomplete) in-browser translation code.
  • Fixed an issue with CSS Grid layouts unnecessarily shrinking element blocks.
  • Fixed notification settings menu entry (opes about:permissions with relevant data now).
  • Fixed the launching of an undesirable background content process for capturing page thumbnails.
  • Fixed a focus issue in the bookmark properties dialog.
  • Changed the setting for reporting CSS errors to the console to false by default, to prevent unnecessary performance loss for recording this data.
  • Added control mechanisms for Opportunistic Encryption (both for alternative services and upgrade-insecure-requests) in preferences, and disabled this by default due to potential security and privacy issues with this transitional technology.
  • Updated the default reported Firefox version in Firefox Compatibility Mode to prevent "too old Firefox" complaints on websites.
  • Updated libnestegg, ffvpx, reader view components and several other modules from upstream.
  • Implemented security fixes for CVE-2018-12381, CVE-2017-7797, a better fix for CVE-2018-12386 (DiD), CVE-2018-12401 (DiD), CVE-2018-12398, CVE-2018-12392, several Skia bugs, and several crashes and memory safety hazards that do not have a CVE number.

v28.1.0 (2018-09-20)

This major update is focused on performance, security and some regression and bug fixes.

Changes/fixes:
  • Updated NSS to 3.38, removed TLS 1.3 draft version check since it's considered final.
  • Reinstated RC4 as an optional encryption cypher for non-standard environments (e.g. old routing/peripheral networked hardware on LAN). RC4 and 3DES are marked weak and disabled, and will never be used in the first handshake with a site, only as last-ditch fallback when specifically enabled (meaning they won't show up on ssllabs' test, for example).
  • Removed Telemetry accumulation calls, automatic timers and stopwatches. This removes a very noticeable performance sink for all operations on all platforms.
  • Fixed many occurrences of discouraged types of memory access for primarily GCC 8 compatibility. This improves overall code security as a defense-in-depth measure.
  • Re-implemented the pref-controlled custom background color for standalone images.
  • Updated session history handling for internal pages. about:logopage is no longer stored in history, and you can choose to store the QuickDial page in history by setting the pref browser.newtabpage.add_to_session_history to true. This is disabled by default (meaning you can't use the "Back" button to go back to the QuickDial page) as a defense-in-depth security measure.
  • Added ui.menu.allow_content_scroll to control whether content can be scrolled if a context menu is open.
  • Fixed incorrect code removal in ipc.
  • Removed support for TLS session caches in TLSServerSocket.
  • Added support for local-ref as SVG xlink:href values.
  • Changed the find bar to be a browser-global toolbar again (like in Pale Moon 27) instead of per-tab. For people who prefer search terms to be saved on a per-tab basis (like with the per-tab findbar previously), this is possible by setting findbar.termPerTab to true. This resolves a number of issues, including styling with lightweight themes not applying to the find bar, and status pop-ups overlapping the find bar.
  • Ported all relevant security fixes from Mozilla's Gecko/62 release, including CVE-2018-12377 and CVE-2018-12379.
  • Restored part of the searchplugin API that was removed by Mozilla, so extensions can provide and save edits to installed search engines.
  • Improved the speed of restoring browsing sessions upon startup.
  • Fixed the "Restore previous session" button sometimes being missing from about:home, while a restorable session would be present.
  • Fixed tab previews in the Windows taskbar (if enabled).
  • Fixed the setting of the new tab page being "My Home Page" so it'll pick up subsequent changes to the home page URL automatically.
  • Removed the Firefox Accounts migrator from Sync.
  • Fixed an issue with the enabled state of number controls if appearances changed.
  • Stopped building ffvpx on 32-bit platforms (except windows) to use the (faster) system-installed lib instead.
  • Re-added a horizontal scroll action option for mouse wheel. (regression)
  • Fixed handling of content language if the locale is changed.
  • Fixed document navigation with the F6 key.
  • Fixed toolbar styling in toolkit themes.
  • Fixed viewing the source of a selection.

v28.0.1 (2018-08-31)

This is a bugfix point release to address serious performance bottlenecks and general run-time issues (UI slowness, crashes, hangs) with the browser. Once again this impacted 32-bit operating systems more severely than 64-bit ones due to its more limited address space that would get flooded with bogus data.

Changes/fixes:
  • Backed out a Mozilla upstream patch causing issues with IPC and texture allocation for the compositor.
  • Backed out a Mozilla upstream patch causing issues with Javascript memory buffer allocation.

v28.0.0.1 (2018-08-28) - Windows only

This is a Windows-only update to address some stability/performance issues that have popped up with the new milestone release on especially 32-bit systems.
The cause seems to be a compiler bug in Visual Studio 2015 with certain optimizations. Although 64-bit does not seem to be directly affected, we are still applying more cautious optimizations there too from this point forward until we can figure out exactly what the cause is and which (more aggressive) optimizations are safe to use.

v28.0.0 (2018-08-16)

We are excited to bring you Pale Moon 28.0. This is a new major milestone in Pale Moon's release history.

We are now building on the Unified XUL Platform which has been forked off from Mozilla's mozilla-central at a point before Rust and Quantum to continue focus on the XUL interface language and traditional browser extensions. Many thousands of things have changed since the v27 (AKA "Tycho") versions, which can't possibly all be listed here. Instead, the most pertinent improvements in this new release are highlighted here:
  • SpiderMonkey update: The JavaScript engine has received a major upgrade and now supports all landmark features from the ECMAScript standards as carried by mainstream browsers. This should put an end to the increasing JavaScript issues we've seen due to web frameworks not being browser-agnostic in that respect, or the browser not supporting what websites expect.
  • Goanna update: The layout and rendering engine (Goanna) has been updated to its 4th generation (version 4.*) which brings with it improved compatibility with "trendy" CSS styling techniques that build on a few very specific features (e.g. CSS Grid). Goanna continues to build on tried-and-tested software fallbacks in case hardware acceleration can't be used, and Linux remote desktop users can continue to leverage xrender for speedy remote screen updates in Pale Moon.
  • DOM enhancements: Enhancements in the Document Object Model provides websites with updated APIs to perform their tasks. (e.g. Fetch, WebAnimations, WebCrypto, HTML Input Element Extensions, etc.)
  • Media enhancements: Our media back-end update is, for all intents and purposes, complete. MSE media streaming (for MP4) should be compatible with all major players on the market now. MSE for WebM is still disabled by default due to some compatibility issues that need to be examined, but you may enable this in preferences to e.g. allow 4k video playback on some sites that only offer UHD in WebM format. We now also support playback of FLAC-encoded audio.
  • New: WebGL2 support! Pale Moon now supports the WebGL2 standard for enhanced graphical experiences in 2D and 3D.
  • Devtools have been given a refresh. Just in case you thought they weren't extensive enough yet, some new categories have been added to inspect and manipulate all aspects of web content.
  • Updates to the login manager: Login credentials can now be stored specifically with or without a user name, and selected individually. This is a behavior change from previous, and clicking a password field can now pop-up a selection list of user names for which passwords are stored (if multiple credentials are saved). Clicking the appropriate login name (or date-stamped version if no name is present) will fill in the accompanying password.
  • We no longer support Windows Vista.
What might be more important for people worrying about upgrading to this milestone is what hasn't changed.
  • We continue to support NPAPI plugins.
  • We continue to support complete themes as well as lightweight themes.
  • We continue to offer a fully customizable interface like before. Australis (like seen in Basilisk) is not used.
  • We continue to support XUL overlay, bootstrapped and (deprecated) Jetpack extensions (collectively called "legacy extensions" by Mozilla).
  • We do not include any DRM in the browser (people needing this can use e.g. the Silverlight plugin to play protected content), even though the platform we build on supports it.
Our primary goal has been to lift Pale Moon up to the new platform and as such most changes are "under the hood" and won't be seen in casual use (aside from more things "just working"). We aim to keep your user experience consistent and logical; but some things will have changed, of course. Browser extensions may need updating or may need a different version, for example.

Of course with such a big change of platform, there are some things that have regressed (worked before but no longer work), and we will work on fixing these regressions over time (hopefully with your help).

Reality check: Even though we have extensively tested the browser in daily use for a few months (also thanks to the brave souls on our unstable channel) we don't expect that the browser will be flawless or bug-free. If you find bugs, regressions or issues with the new release, please discuss them on the forum. Let's work together as a community of users to make this the best browser yet!

Big thank-yous and kudos go out to everyone who has, in one way or another, contributed to this milestone release and helped make it possible. This one belongs to all of you!

Release notes for version 27 releases

27.9.4 (2018-07-17)

This is a security and usability update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Updated the useragent for addons.mozilla.org to work around their "Only with Firefox" discrimination preventing users from downloading themes, old versions of extensions, and other files with Pale Moon.
  • Restricted web access to the moz-icon:// scheme that could potentially be abused to infringe the user's privacy.
  • Prevented various location-based threats. DiD
  • Fixed a potential vulnerability with plugins being redirected to different origins (CVE-2018-12364).
  • Improved the security check for launching executable files (by association) on Windows from the browser. For users who have (most likely accidentally) granted a system-wide waiver for opening these kinds of files without being prompted, this permission has been reset.
  • Fixed an issue with invalid qcms transforms (CVE-2018-12366).
  • Fixed a buffer overflow using the computed size of canvas elements (CVE-2018-12359).
  • Fixed a use-after-free when using focus() (CVE-2018-12360).
  • Added some sanity checks on nsMozIconURI. DiD
  • Fixed an issue in the case the preferences file in the profile would not be writable (e.g. temporary permission issues due to backup, virus scanning or similar external processes).
DiD This means that the fix is "Defense-in-Depth": It is a fix that does not apply to a (potentially) actively exploitable vulnerability in Pale Moon, but prevents future vulnerabilities caused by the same code, e.g. when surrounding code changes, exposing the problem, or when new attack vectors are discovered.

27.9.3 (2018-06-12)

This is a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • (CVE-2017-0381) Ported a patch from libopus upstream. Note, contrary to that report, the libopus maintainers state they don't believe remote code execution was possible, so this was not a critical patch.
  • Fixed an issue with task counting in JS GC.
  • Fixed a use-after-free in DOMProxyHandler::EnsureExpandoObject (thanks to Berk Cem Göksel for reporting).
  • Portable only: Included the previously omitted registry helper. This may in some cases help with file/type associations.

27.9.2 (2018-05-18)

This is a security and stability update.

Changes/fixes:
  • We changed the language strings for softblocked items so people will cry less when we do our job.
  • (CVE-2018-5174) Prevent potential SmartScreen bypass on Windows 10.
  • (CVE-2018-5173) Fixed an issue in the Downloads panel improperly rendering some Unicode characters, allowing for the file name to be spoofed. This could be used to obscure the file extension of potentially executable files from user view in the panel.
  • (CVE-2018-5177) Fixed a vulnerability in the XSLT component leading to a buffer overflow and crash if it occurs.
  • (CVE-2018-5159) Fixed an integer overflow vulnerability in the Skia library resulting in possible out-of-bounds writes.
  • (CVE-2018-5154) Fixed a use-after-free vulnerability while enumerating attributes during SVG animations with clip paths.
  • (CVE-2018-5178) Fixed a buffer overflow during UTF8 to Unicode string conversion within JavaScript with extremely large amounts of data. This vulnerability requires the use of a malicious or vulnerable extension in order to occur.
  • Fixed several stability issues (crashes) and memory safety hazards.

27.9.1 (2018-05-07)

This is a maintenance release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Removed the unused/incomplete places protocol handler.
  • Worked around an issue with MSE media without a Track ID. This should help with the playability of some live streams.
  • Ported across jemalloc improvements from UXP.
  • Ported across cairo mutex improvements from UXP.
  • Added support for FFmpeg 4.0/libavcodec 58.
  • Added a fix for Windows 10's "isAlpha()" not being what one would expect in v1803.

27.9.0 (2018-04-17)

This is the last major development update for the v27 milestone (codenamed "Tycho").
After this, we will be focusing our efforts for new features entirely on UXP and the new v28 milestone building on it. We will continue to support v27.9 with security and stability updates for a while, but no major new features will be added from this point forward.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a number of spec compliance issues in our media subsystem.
  • Added a trailing slash to referrers when policy is set to fix some web compatibility issues.
  • Fixed the property order in Object.getOwnPropertyNames(string) and others for web compatibility.
  • Updated RegExp(RegExp object, flags) to the ES6 standard specification.
  • Changed the embedded font from the no longer free EmojiOne to the open-licensed Twemoji (with additional fixes). This also further extends unicode support to Unicode 10 emoji(s). Please note that as a result, color emoji(s) will look different than before.
  • Adjusted some things in our memory allocator code to provide, among other things, better allocation alignment on Windows.
  • Made the attempt to migrate people from the old sync server domain name to the current one more aggressive. We will be retiring the old pmsync.palemoon.net Sync server address shortly to remove the need for us to maintain a security certificate for it; this preference migration should automatically put everyone on the correct server address (pmsync.palemoon.org) when upgrading.
  • Made reading of the sessionstore synchronous, to speed up startup and prevent the homepage from being loaded when restoring a session.
  • Added a fix to switch to the correct window/tab when a web notification is clicked.
  • Changed the placeholder text to not include "Search" when all search functions from the address bar are disabled.
  • Enabled the use of Skia for canvas on Linux and OSX.
  • Worked around a potential cause for some non-standard bitmapped fonts ending up with incorrect line heights (I'm looking at you, Noto fonts!).
  • Added a workaround for incorrectly-encoded JPEG-XR images with planar alpha. Ultimately, the jxrlib reference implementation should be fixed to encode according to spec.
  • Aligned XCTO:nosniff allowed script MIME types with the updated spec.
  • Improved the logic for storing vector images in the surface cache.
  • Fixed character set handling for XMLHttpRequests.

27.8.3 (2018-03-28)

This is a small update to address a pervasive crashing issue.

Changes/fixes:
  • Backed out some responsive layout code that caused intermittent but not uncommon crashes in the browser depending on window sizes and page content.

27.8.2 (2018-03-22)

This is a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Privacy fix: prevented update checks for the default theme.
  • Added a user-agent override for Dropbox to improve compatibility with their service.
  • Fixed an issue with mouseover handling related to (CVE-2018-5103). DiD
  • Disabled the Mac OSX Nano allocator. DiD
  • Fixed (CVE-2018-5129) OOB Write.
  • Updated the lz4 library to 1.8.0 to solve potential issues. DiD
  • Fixed (CVE-2018-5137) Path traversal on chrome:// URLs
  • Fixed several memory safety an synchronicity hazards.

27.8.1 (2018-03-06)

This is a small update to address some breaking issues.

Changes/fixes:
  • Backed out the NSPR/NSS update from 27.8.0 for causing crashes, general operational instability and handshake issues.
  • Disabled TLS 1.3 draft support by default, because with the NSS backout we only support an older draft right now that is no longer current and may cause connectivity issues. You can manually re-enable it at your own risk in about:config by setting security.tls.version.max to 4.

27.8.0 (2018-03-02)

This is a development update with new and improved features and bugfixes.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added support for emojis on Windows systems that have relatively poor support for them with standard font sets by including our own font (EmojiOne based for now).
  • Added a setting in preferences to select the use of tab previews with Ctrl+Tab.
  • Added Eyedropper menu entry to the AppMenu.
  • Added a preference to control whether the text cursor (caret) should be thicker when dealing with CJK characters or not (default = yes).
  • Added URL fix-ups for schemes (mis-typed "ttp://" etc.).
  • Added support for ES6 "Symbol species".
  • Updated our TLS 1.3 support to the latest (probably final) draft.
  • Fixed gap inconsistency in the tabstrip.
  • Fixed a number of browser crashes.
  • Fixed a crash with the exponentiation operator "**"
  • Set the performance timer granularity to 1 ms.
  • Updated the kiss-fft library to our forked 1.4.0 version.
  • Disabled a potentially problematic optimization on Win 8+ with high contrast themes in use.
  • Removed the notification bar when in full screen to prevent unwanted visible screen elements.
  • Removed unmaintained and insecure WebRTC code - building with WebRTC enabled is no longer an option.
  • Removed redundant checks for "Vista or later" since that is all we support.
  • Added display of the http status to raw request displays.
  • Added a workaround for cloned videos not retaining their muted state.
  • Added a temporary workaround to avoid crashes on trackless media.
  • Removed some superfluous ellipses from menu labels.
  • Fixed undesired shrinking of line heights as a result of setting minimum font size in preferences.
  • Fixed some issues with setting the new tab preference (regression).

27.7.2 (2018-02-01)

This is a security and stability update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Changed the X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff behavior to only check "success" class server responses, for web compatibility reasons.
  • Changed the performance timer resolution once more to a granularity of 1 ms, after evaluating more potential ways of abusing Spectre.
    This takes the most cautious approach possible lacking more information (because apparently NDAs have been signed over this between mainstream players), follows Safari's lead, and should make it not just infeasible but downright impossible to use these timers for nefarious purposes in this context.
  • Improved the debug-only startup cache wrapper to prevent a rare crash.
  • Fixed a crash in the XML parser.
  • Added a check for integer overflow in AesTask::DoCrypto() (CVE-2018-5122) DiD
  • Fixed a potential race condition in the browser cache.
  • Fixed a crash in HTML media elements (CVE-2018-5102)
  • Fixed a crash in XHR using workers.
  • Fixed a crash with some uncommon FTP operations.
  • Fixed a potential race condition in the JAR library.

27.7.1 (2018-01-18)

This is a minor emergency update to address website breakage and a theme issue.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added support for Array.prototype[@@unscopables].
    Unfortunately, the addition of Javascript's ES6 Unscopables in 27.7.0 was incomplete, which caused a number of websites (e.g. Chase on-line banking, some Russian government sites) to display blank or not complete loading after updating to that version of the browser. This update should fix the problem by adding the missing part of the feature.
  • Fixed an issue with the default theme causing tab borders to be drawn too thick at higher settings for visual element scaling (125%/150%) in Windows.

27.7.0 (2018-01-15)

This is a stability and bugfix release, as well as adding a number of new features to further improve web compatibility.

Changes/fixes:
  • Reorganized access to preferences (moved to the Tools menu on Linux, and renamed from "Options" to "Preferences" on Windows).
  • Renamed "Restart with add-ons disabled" to "Restart in Safe Mode" to better reflect what it does.
  • Worked around an issue with some improperly-encoded PNG files not decoding after our libpng update.
  • Fixed an issue on Mac builds not properly populating the application menu.
  • Added "My home page" as an option for new tabs.
  • Added an option to disable the 4th and 5th mouse buttons (Windows).
    (mouse.button4.enabled and mouse.button5.enabled, respectively)
  • Improved the resetting of non-default profiles.
  • Fixed an issue with details/summary having the incorrect height if floated, breaking layouts.
  • Made several more improvements to the details/summary tags to align them with the current spec and fix some additional bugs.
  • Implemented support for flex/columnset contents inside buttons to align its behavior with other browsers.
    (this should fix layout issues with Twitch's new web interface)
  • Fixed an issue where CSS clone operations would draw a border.
  • Changed the way fractional border widths are rounded to provide more natural behavior.
  • Fixed an issue where number inputs would incorrectly be flagged as read-only.
  • Added assets for tile display in the Windows start panel.
  • Finished sync infra swapover by adding a one-time pref migration for server used.
  • Improved WebAudio API: Return the connected audio node from AudioNode.connect()
  • Added support for a default playback start position in media elements.
  • Fixed an assert in cubeb-alsa code (Linux).
  • Added support for media cue-change events (e.g. subtitles).
  • Updated SQLite to 3.21.0.
  • Fixed a crash when trying to use the platform embedded.
  • Fixed devtools (gcli) screenshots on vertical-text pages.
  • Fixed devtools copy as cURL for POST requests.
  • Improved the HTML editor component (several bugfixes).
  • Added support for ES7's exponentiation a ** b operator.
  • Fixed an issue with arrow functions incorrectly creating an 'arguments' binding.
  • Added Javascript's ES6 "unscopables".
Security/privacy fixes:
  • Disabled automatic filling in of log-in details by default to prevent potential risks of credentials being abused (e.g. for tracking) or stolen.
  • Added a preference (in the category security) to easily enable or disable automatic filling in of log-in data.
  • Removed the sending of referrers when opening a link in a new private window.
  • Added an option to disable the page visibility Web API (dom.visibilityAPI.enabled), allowing users to prevent pages from knowing whether they are being actively displayed to the user or not.
  • Removed the "ask every time" policy for cookies. For granular control, please use any of the excellent available extensions to regulate cookie use on a per-site or per-url basis.
  • Added support for X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff (for scripts).
  • Changed the resolution of performance timers to a level where any future potential abuse for hardware-timing attacks becomes impractical. DiD

27.6.2 (2017-11-28)

This is a security and minor bugfix update to the browser.
This will most likely be the last update for 2017, with the holidays not far away.

Changes/fixes:
  • Implemented the concept of so-called "cookie-averse document objects" which is a security&privacy measure that blocks certain web content from setting cookies. This mitigates cookie-injection, which might help against "hidden" cookie tracking.
  • Mitigated some domain name spoofing through IDN by using dotless-i and dotless-j with accents. (CVE-2017-7832)
    Pale Moon will display these kinds of spoofed domains in punycode now in the actual address bar.
    Please note that the identity panel will always be able to help you on secure sites when IDNs are in use to notice potential spoofing, as opposed to relying on detection algorithms in the URL itself. As such, some other issues like CVE-2017-7833 are already mitigated by us.
  • Fixed an issue with mixed-content blocking. (CVE-2017-7835)
  • Added an extra check for the correct signature data type on certificates.
  • Added missing sanitization in exporting bookmarks to HTML. (CVE-2017-7840)
  • Fixed several crashes and memory safety hazards.
  • Fixed the Linux load throbber image to be properly encoded, to prevent flickering.
  • Removed the shortcut key combination for restarting the browser to avoid issues with people using certain keyboard layouts hitting the combination and unintentionally triggering a browser restart.

27.6.1 (2017-11-15)

This is a minor bugfix release to address some pressing issues people have reported.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a regression with new windows (opening two windows from the command-line or file association, focus issues on new windows, not loading the home page in a new window, etc.)
  • Aligned XHR with the currect spec to allow withCredentials.
  • Fixed an input element focus issue within handlers.
  • Fixed the processing of all-padding HTTP/2 frames to prevent rare HTTP/2 hangups.
  • Updated CitiBank override to work around their login issues.
  • Updated Netflix override to a community-supplied one that seems to satisfy their arbitrary restrictions better.

27.6.0 (2017-11-07)

This is a major development update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Dropped support for Direct2D 1.0 to avoid font rendering issues. Windows installations not capable of using Direct2D 1.1 will now fall back to software rendering. As a result, fonts may look different from this version onwards if you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7. Users on Windows 7 affected by this should install the Platform Update to re-enable Direct2D.
  • Updated the Brotli decoder library, and enabled support for Brotli HTTP content-encoding by default.
  • Added notifications to inform users about WebExtensions not being supported if they try to install them (as opposed to "extension is corrupt")
  • Added a number of DOM childNode convenience functions. This should fix some lazy-loading frameworks.
    (enjoy your LOLcats again!)
  • Changed automatic updates over to the new infrastructure.
  • Added extra proxy settings in Options, covering DNS lookups through SOCKS v5 and automatic proxy authentication with known credentials.
  • Added a selectable fallback character encoding of UTF-8 and fallback to UTF-8 as a last effort. (Issue #1423)
  • Improved timing of canplay and canplaythrough firing to work around a potential race condition locking up queued video playback.
  • Improved upmixing of mono sound for multi-channel setups.
  • Fixed a parallelization issue with the KISS-FFT library causing CPU-deadlocked threads (Issue #1425)
  • Fixed "Remove from history" function from the downloads panel.
  • Forced focus on the address bar in new windows if the content is a blank/empty document.
  • Fixed the dropmarker in the address bar to allow the suggestions to be closed with a click.
  • Further cleaned up the status bar code.
  • Disabled window.showModalDialog; it's been removed from the spec 2 years ago and has potential abuse issues (modal dialogs block the UI)
  • Fixed image decoder calls to make sure the image load event doesn't fire prematurely.
  • Updated LibPNG to 1.6.28, and enabled faster SSE2 decoding.
  • Updated WOFF2 code from upstream.
  • Updated the zlib compression library.
  • Made general improvements to internal code structure and spec adherence.
  • Fixed an issue with certain command-line parameters being used.
  • Updated the default theme to improve consistency and contrast of toolbar and download buttons.
  • Increased the default duration of notification pop-ups and made them configurable.
  • Improved handling of audio-visual media (ongoing).
  • Fixed an issue in CSS where elements would sometimes reflow to the next line even with sufficient visual space.
  • Aligned the implementation of for(let x=y;;) loops with the final ES6 specification.
  • Fixed the selection system inside of a nested contenteditable element being broken.
  • Fixed Windows 10 detection for blocklisting graphics drivers.
  • Enabled pasting of clipboard data in documents without an editor element to improve web compatibility.
  • Fixed the uninstallation routine of restartless add-ons.
  • Fixed the handling of unimplemented functions in the console API.
  • Updated the Facebook user-agent to enable otherwise vendor-restricted functionality.
  • Updated the SVG scaling cache limit to be more lenient for larger SVG images at a small performance trade-off, working around some sites' design issues.
Security/privacy fixes:
  • Added an option to clear Site Connectivity Data (delete history).
  • Removed stale entries from the HSTS preload list, and improved generation/processing of it.
  • Removed undesired certificate issuer organization to common name fallback (if issuer org is empty).
  • Added pretty-printing for ECDSA-SHA224, 256, 384 and 512 hashed certificate signatures.
  • Worked around some more issues with broken Apple fonts.

27.5.1 (2017-10-10)

This is a security and stability update to the browser, as well as fixing some issues users have indicated.

Changes/fixes:
  • Changed the default Windows 10 styling when no accent color is applied to black-on-white.
  • Changed the theme styling on Windows 10 when the system window frame is used (menu bar enabled) to use the window manager background directly, preventing visual lag updating the window color when it changes.
  • Updated user agent overrides for DropBox, YouTube and Yahoo to work around user agent sniffing issues.
  • Fixed a crash in the media subsystem.
  • Fixed a regression where video playback hardware acceleration was disabled incorrectly on some systems.
Security fixes:
  • Updated the hyphenation library to the latest upstream code to fix a security issue.
  • Updated NSPR to 4.16-RTM with a patch to un-bust building on win64.
  • Updated NSS to 3.32.1-RTM.
  • Worked around some more issues with Mac fonts (CVE-2017-7825).
  • Fixed a potential rooting hazard in NPAPI plugin code. DiD
  • Fixed a potential reference issue in JavaScript arrays. DiD

27.5.0 (2017-09-26)

This is a major update furthering general development of the browser.

Changes/fixes:
  • User interface:
    • Added a menu option to restart the browser.
    • Added Windows-specific CSS parameters and queries for the use of the system accent color. Added are parameters -moz-win-accentcolor and -moz-win-accentcolortext, and the media query -moz-win-accentcolor-applies to know if Windows is actively using an accent color.
    • Changed Windows' browser CSS sheet ot use variables instead of hard-coding colors, simplifying its style and making it more flexible. Further cleaned up the Windows 10 specific browser style.
    • Changed the theme on Windows 10 to use the new accent colors and improve O.S. consistency.
    • Fixed some general inconsistencies in the Windows theme on all Windows operating systems.
    • Updated Windows widgets to be able to pick up Windows 10 accent colors dynamically and have the browser 's look and feel respond accordingly, even with automatic color changes based on desktop wallpaper.
    • Removed the experimental FF4 prerelease status-in-addressbar feature because the already-crowded address bar needs a break. This should solve some extension interop issues, theme issues and domain highlighting issues people have reported.
    • Cleaned up some dead code for the plugin updater that no longer exists.
    • Fixed a text direction issue in preferences.
    • Fixed an issue with disabled context menu entries after using Customize...
    • Reorganized and cleaned up the status preferences.
  • Media:
    • MSE Media updates (ongoing). We are focusing on improving MP4 handling.
    • Improved MP3 metadata parsing (e.g. incorrect duration with embedded album cover)
    • Fixed a number of searching issues in MP3 files
    • Fixed a few crashes.
  • Fixed an issue with automatically exporting bookmarks to HTML on shutdown.
  • Fixed a regression re: domains allowed to/blocked from installing add-ons.
  • Fixed several internal errors thrown in the front-end.
  • Fixed several minor issues in the devtools.
  • Added a fix to prevent the home page from being loaded (and subsequently overridden) when restoring a session.
  • Added an option to control add-on blocklist behavior (Options -> Security)
  • Added DOM function isSameNode().
  • Added DOM onvisibilitychange event.
  • Added document.scrollingelement (CSSOM).
  • Added a basic implementation of Object.values and Object.entries enumerator functions (ECMA2017 draft).
  • Added "Open in new private window" to bookmarks, feeds and history entries.
  • Added HTTP request method OPTIONS.
  • Added an option to exit to a no-content page after encountering a network or security error.
    This is controlled with the preference browser.escape_to_blank -- when set to true, "Get me out of here" buttons will load a blank page instead of the browser's home page.
  • Added experimental Brotli accept-encoding (alternative to gzip/deflate compressed http data transfer). Disabled by default for now because it causes issues.
  • Improved the handling of several CSS selectors.
  • Changed session storage to remember form data for https sites by default.
  • Added (yet another) trap prevention method to onbeforeunload events.
  • Fixed privacy preferences not correctly resetting all options when choosing "Remember History"
  • Fixed not being able to deselect loading bookmarks in the sidebar.
  • Limited the display of user names and hosts in the http auth dialog to sane lengths, preventing over-sizing issues.
  • Fixed a number of potential crash points.
  • Improved the security of the Windows dll loader module.
  • Reinstated "Open all in tabs" option on folders of live bookmarks (feeds).
  • Made URL matching more liberal in selected text to make it easier to open stated addresses.
  • Fixed an issue with Graphite font rendering where automatic font collision fixing didn't always work.
  • Color Management for images is now disabled by default on Linux, due to many distributions not having a streamlined setup with sane default ICC profiles, which makes images look worse when color management is enabled.
  • Tightened the update security check to prevent acceptance of update manifests that have been intercepted/replaced through https MitM attacks.
    Please be aware that https-filtering antivirus may interfere with future application updates as a result.
  • Updated the ANGLE library to broaden WebGL support and reduce the potential of crashes (due to junk being sent to the video driver).
  • Added content-sniffing for WebP images (working around CloudFront's incorrect content-type headers).
  • Fixed a problem with some H.264 media not playing (SPS NAL).
  • Improved timer efficiency (switch back to lower precision when high precision is no longer needed, reducing CPU/power consumption).
  • Improved context search on selected text/links.
  • Updated address bar handling with Alt or Shift modifiers, so that "switch to tab" with a modifier can open copies of already-opened sites.
  • Added a fix on Linux for starting the browser from Enlightenment.
  • Privacy fix: Pale Moon will now clear QuotaManager storage (asm.js cache/IndexedDB data) as part of clearing Offline Website Data.

27.4.2.1 (2017-08-28)

This is an out-of-band update for the portable version of the browser only (Windows).
This fixes a few issues in the portable shell regarding backups and settings.

To update, please follow the recommended update procedure listed on the Pale Moon Portable page.

27.4.2 (2017-08-22)

This is a small update to address some security and stability issues.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a number of crashes.
  • Enabled the opt-in debugging feature to log SSL keys to a file in all builds.
  • Added a fix for TLS 1.3 handshakes causing a browser hangup.
    Handshakes should be considerably faster now and no longer stall in the wrong circumstances.
Security fixes:
  • Updated NSPR to 4.15.
  • Updated NSS to 3.31.1.
  • Fixed a DoS issue using overly long Username in URL scheme (CVE-2017-7783)
  • Fixed an issue where (cross domain) iframes could break scope (CVE-2017-7787)
  • Fixed an issue in WindowsDllDetourPatcher (CVE-2017-7804)
  • Fixed an issue with elliptic curve addition in mixed Jacobian-affine coordinates (CVE-2017-7781)
  • Fixed a UAF in nsImageLoadingContent (CVE-2017-7784)
  • Fixed a UAF in WebSockets (CVE-2017-7800)
  • Fixed a heap-UAF in RelocateARIAOwnedIfNeeded (CVE-2017-7809) DiD (accessibility is disabled)

27.4.1 (2017-08-03)

This is a small update to address some media and web compatibility issues.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where media playback would not use hardware acceleration properly when using MSE.
    This would cause high CPU usage and/or choppy playback for HD video on e.g. YouTube.
  • Fixed ES6 iterator chains to be spec-compliant.
  • Fixed ES6 vector append calls and some related memory leaks.
  • Added a workaround to reduce the likelihood of a potential rare (timing-critical) crash.

27.4.0 (2017-07-12)

This is a major update to straighten out most of the media streaming issues, as well as adding the necessary enhancements, bugfixes and security fixes to the browser.

Changes/fixes:
  • Completely re-worked the Media Source Extensions code to make it spec compliant, and asynchronous as per specification for MSE with MP4. This should fix playback problems on YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo and other sites that previously had some issues. A massive thank you to Travis for his tireless work on making this happen!
    Please note that MSE+WebM (disabled by default) is not using this new code yet (planned for the next release), and as such there is a temporary set of things to keep in mind if you don't use default settings:
    • If you have previously enabled MSE+WebM, this setting will be reset when you update to avoid conflicting settings with the updated MSE code.
    • We've added an extra setting in Options to disable the updated MSE code (asynchronous use) in case you need to use WebM or are otherwise having issues with the updated code (please let us know in that case).
    • Once again, the MSE+WebM and Asynchronous MSE use are currently mutually exclusive. You can have one or the other, not both, until we sort out the code for WebM. To enable MSE+WebM you will first have to disable Asynchronouse MSE in settings (otherwise the WebM setting will be greyed out and disabled).
  • Added a control in options/preferences for HSTS and HPKP usage.
  • Changed HTML bookmark exports to write CRLF line endings to the file on Windows.
  • Leveraged multi-core rendering for libVPX (VP8/VP9 WebM decoding).
  • Fixed some issues accessing DeviantArt (useragent-sniffing).
  • Aligned CSS text-align with the spec.
  • Added a recovery module for browser initialization issues (e.g. when using a wrong language pack).
  • Fixed spurious console errors for XHR requests with certain http response codes.
  • Enabled v-sync aligned refresh for a smoother scrolling experience.
  • Removed support for CSS XP-theme media queries.
  • Improved console error reporting.
  • Fixed resetting toolbars and controls from the safe mode dialog.
  • Fixed bookmark recovery option from the safe mode dialog.
  • Fixed innerText getters for display:none elements.
  • Fixed a GL buffer crash that might occur with certain combinations of drivers and hardware.
  • Added some more details to about:support.
  • Fixed a potential crash when the last audio device is removed during playback.
  • Fixed a crash on about:support when windowless browsers are created.
  • Updated <select> elements to blank if the actively set value doesn't match any of the options.
  • Updated the interpretation of 2-digit years in date formats to match other browsers:
    0-49 = 2000-2049, 50-99 = 1950-1999.
  • Added "q" units to CSS (quarter of a millimeter).
  • Added .origin property to blobs.
  • Fixed several minor layout issues.
  • Fixed disabled HTML elements not producing the proper JS events.
  • Implemented web content handler blacklist according to the spec, allowing more than feeds to be registered.
  • Fixed a spec compliance issue with execCommand() on HTML elements.
  • Fixed a problem with table borders being drawn uneven or being omitted when zooming the page.
  • Added devtools "filter URLs" option in the network panel.
  • Added visual sorting options to the Network inspector.
  • Added importing of login data from Chrome profiles on Windows (Chrome has to be closed first).
  • Added importing of tags from bookmark export files (HTML format).
  • Updated usage of SourceMap headers with the updated spec (SourceMap header, keeping X-SourceMap as a fallback).
  • Fixed several cases of wrongly-used negations in JS modules.
  • Added the auxclick mouse event.
  • Added a control to not autoplay video unless it is in view (media.block-play-until-visible).
  • Updated the Graphite font library to 1.3.10.
  • Updated how image and media elements respond to window size changes (responsive design).
  • Added parsing and use of rotation meta data in video.
  • Fixed several crashes in a number of modules.
  • Fixed performance regression for scaling large vector images (e.g. MSIE Chalkboard test) \o/
  • Fixed some issues with notification icons.
  • Fixed some internal errors with live bookmarks.
  • Updated SQLite to 3.19.3.
  • Fixed several reported issues with devtools (cli-cookies, cli help, copying cURL, inspecting SVGs, element size calculations, etc.)
  • Fixed an issue where a server response was allowed to override add-ons' specified version ranges even for add-ons that have strict compatibility (e.g. themes, language packs).
Security fixes:
  • Removed preloading of HPKP hosts and enabled HPKP header enforcement.
  • Added support for TLS 1.3, the up-next secure connection protocol.
  • Fixed an issue with TLS 1.3 not supporting renegotiation by design.
  • Relaxed some restrictions for CSP to temporarily work around web compatibility issues with the CSP-3 deprecated `child-src` directive.
  • Updated NSS to 3.28.5.1-PM to address some security issues.
  • Updated the installer selfextractor module to address unsafe loading of libraries.
  • Changed the way certain resources are included to reduce effectiveness of some common fingerprinting techniques. (e.g. browserleaks.com)
  • Fixed a regression in the display of security information in the page info dialog for insecure content.
  • Fixed two potential issues with allocating memory for video. DiD
  • Fixed a potential issue with the network prediction algorithm. DiD
  • Restricted the use of Aspirational scripts in IDNs to prevent domain spoofing, in anticipation of the UAX#31 update making this official.
  • Prevented a Mac font specific issue that could be abused for domain spoofing (CVE-2017-7763)
  • Fixed several potentially exploitable crashes. (CVE-2017-7751) (CVE-2017-7757) and some that do not have a CVE designation.

27.3.0 (2017-04-28)

A major development update. Many things have changed in the media back-end, but please understand that some things are still a work in progress, and you may still encounter some html5 video playback issues with MSE.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed up, checked and enabled vertical text writing modes!
    Pale Moon will now be able to display vertical, right-to-left script.
  • Added the option to reset non-default profiles.
  • Fixed various issues in the WebP image decoder.
  • Added internally-supported document types to allowed <embed> types.
  • Fixed locale selection in ICU after update to ICU58.
    (Note: Pale Moon uses the system locale for date formatting, not the browser locale)
  • Re-implemented the previous spellchecker dictionary logic (allow user override of document/element language, improve logic and make it unambiguous).
  • Ongoing fixes for the MP4 parser and MSE.
  • Made HTML Media Elements' preload attribute MSE-spec compliant.
    The preload attribute on HTML media elements is now ignored in the case of an MSE source. This prevents an issue with sourceopen not firing when preload="none".
  • Fixed some issues with Windows WMF media playback.
  • Fixed an issue with Synced preferences sometimes overwriting stored individual preferences.
  • Fixed display of RSS folder icons.
  • Fixed issues with custom context menus.
  • Fixed an issue importing bookmarks with separators losing their extra data.
  • Changed the way numeric addresses are handled in the address bar so it doesn't perform a search when it shouldn't.
  • Added an option (browser.sessionstore.cache_behavior) to control from which source restored tabs pull their page content:
    0 = load restored tab data from cache (current behavior, default)
    1 = refresh restored tab data from the network
    2 = refresh stored tab data from the network and bypass any cached data.
  • Improved upon a v27 performance regression with SVG scaling.
  • Improved performance by being more selective which CSS animations to process.
    As a side-effect, elements changing their display from "none" to something visible now also animate.
  • Increased memory allocation for the use of very large PAC files.
  • Added menu entries for the permissions manager and improvements to its function and display.
  • Added preferences to control "highlight all" behavior of the find bar:
    accessibility.typeaheadfind.highlightallbydefault = true/false highlight all found words by default.
    accessibility.typeaheadfind.highlightallremember = true/false remember the last-used state of Highlight All.
  • Added devtools command-line options.
  • Added remote IP and protocol to Devtools->Network entry details.
  • Added support for <details> and <summary> HTML tags.
  • Fixed a regression in the MSIE profile migrator.
  • Removed migration of browser-specific settings when migrating data from IE/Safari.
  • Implemented optional parameters for permessage-deflate in preparation for RFC7692 errata making acceptance of them mandatory (and to prevent web compat issues due to the current conflicting text of it).
  • Made the image document favicon skinnable.
  • Aligned DOM selection addRange with the spec.
  • Exposed mozAnon constructor js binding to system scopes for XHR.
  • Enhanced form data handling from JavaScript.
Security/privacy changes:
  • Updated NSS to 3.28.4-RTM to address a number of issues.
  • Added support for RSA-AES(-GCM)-SHA256/384 suites to broaden compatibility.
  • Reconfigured networking security: disabled static DHE suites by default, enabled all RSA-AES(-GCM)-SHA256/384 suites in their stead.
  • Fixed referrer policy keyword to align with the current spec ("cross-origin" vs "crossorigin").
  • Added an option to display punycode domain for IDN websites to combat phishing.
    This is enabled by default for domain-validated https sites.
    Preference: browser.identity.display_punycode
    0 = Display IDN name in identity panel (previous behavior)
    1 = Display punycode name for DV SSL domains (default)
    2 = Also display punycode for HTTP sites if IDN name used
  • Fixed an issue to prevent contacting remote servers when a connection might get blocked.
  • Fixed 3 public security flaws in libevent, which may affect Mozilla-based products. DiD
  • Fixed several memory- and thread-safety hazards.
  • Fixed an address bar spoofing issue. (CVE-2017-5451)
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash with HTTP/2. (CVE-2017-5446)
  • Fixed several security hazards in XSLT processing. (CVE-2017-5438) (CVE-2017-5439) (CVE-2017-5440)
  • Fixed several security hazards in old protocols. (CVE-2017-5444) (CVE-2017-5445)
  • Fixed out-of-bounds access in text formatting. (CVE-2017-5447)
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable issue with innerText. (CVE-2017-5442)
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable issue in graphite font shaping.
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash with credential-authentication.
  • Fixed out-of-bounds access with text selection in rare cases.
  • Fixed a security hazard in the ANGLE library.

27.2.1 (2017-03-24)

This is a small update to fix some stability and usability issues.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed an issue with planar alpha handling (transparency) when drawing JXR images.
  • Fixed a crash related to a change JavaScript array handling introduced in 27.2.0.
    This became apparent with the pentadactyl extension, but could happen in other situations as well.
  • Fixed a crash when opening ridiculously large images with HQ scaling enabled (default).
    Pale Moon will now only apply HQ scaling for images within reasonable limits (64 Mpix or smaller). Images larger than that may not display properly when zooming in, or may not display at all, even scaled down (e.g. >256 Mpix large) and show a "broken image" placeholder instead; please use dedicated image viewer applications for those kinds of images; it is outside the scope of a web browser to handle such large images.
  • Changed the way URL hashes are handled, and will no longer %-decode anchor hash identifiers by default.
    Note that this is against RFC 3986, which states that any part of the URL scheme that isn't data should be decoded.
    This is required for web compatibility because several sites use hash links to pass actual data to web applications (Please don't do this! Hashes ar part of the URL address, should only consist of "safe" characters, and aren't suited to pass arbitrary data) and the most common browsers no longer follow the RFC in that respect.
    If you want RFC compliance, switch dom.url.getters_decode_hash to true
  • Restored 2 RSA Camellia cipher suites that were missing: TLS_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_CBC_SHA and TLS_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_CBC_SHA
  • Fixed an issue with custom toolbars getting deleted during upgrade from 27.0/27.1 to 27.2

27.2.0 (2017-03-18)

This is a major update to the browser with a focus on back-end improvements and security.

Changes/Fixes:
  • Updated the ICU lib to 58.2 to fix a number of issues.
  • Added proper control for the user for offline storage for web applications.
  • Added a check to prevent auto-filled URLs from copying the auto-filled selection to clipboard/primary.
  • Added the feature to pass a URL to open in a private window from the command-line.
  • Improved the display of the downloads indicator on the button in bright-text situations.
  • DOM storage now honors the "3rd party cookie" setting in that it will not allow 3rd party data to be stored if 3rd party cookies are disallowed.
  • Allowed toolbar button badges to be properly styled.
  • Updated the hunspell spellchecking library to 1.6.0 to fix a number of issues.
  • Fixed desktop notifications being off-screen if fired in rapid succession.
  • Added Element.insertAdjacentElement and Element.insertAdjacentText DOM functions.
  • Added support for JPEG-XR images.
    This makes Pale Moon have the broadest support for image formats of all web browsers.
    (enabled by default; you can disable this with media.jxr.enabled).
  • Completely removed the use of GStreamer on Linux.
  • Added support for element.innerText.
  • Custom toolbars should now properly remember their state.
  • Fixed some more playback issues with MP4/MSE videos.
    Please be aware that we are still working on further improving MSE video handling.
  • Changed media processing to reduce dangerous processing asynchronicity.
    This should also make media elements and playback more responsive.
  • Fixed a useragent string regression always displaying the minor Goanna version as .0
  • Updated NSPR to 4.13.1.
  • Updated NSS to 3.28.3-RTM.
  • Fixed unrestricted icon sizes in PMkit buttons.
  • Fixed unresponsive buttons on support page when not building the updater.
  • Fixed the use of "View image" and "Save image as" on extremely large images.
  • Changed the way "View Image" and "Save image as" work on canvas elements.
  • Made checking for dangerously large resolution PNG images smarter.
    It will now accept larger "strip"-aspect ratio images while reducing unsupported large image resolutions.
    This will e.g. fix Gmail's "emoji" window that uses a ridiculously long but very narrow single image to store all the emoticon pictures.
  • Converted several hard-coded URLs to preferences.
  • Updated the google.com override so it would not cripple services based on UA sniffing.
  • Added Inner and Outer Window ID administration.
  • Fixed the add-on discovery pane detection.
  • Added support for canvas ellipse.
  • Improved drawing of certain MathML elements at problematic zoom levels.
  • No longer building gamepad support.
  • Updated Harfbuzz font shaper to 1.4.3 to fix a number of issues.
  • Fixed a number of crashes (layout, plugins, uncommon navigation, bad URLs).
  • Aligned SVG specular filters with the spec.
Security/privacy changes:
  • Added support for 256-bit AES-GCM encryption.
  • Added support for ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption.
  • Removed support for Camellia-GCM since nobody seems interested in it.
    (Camellia in 128/256-bit CBC block mode is still fully supported).
  • Added support for SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 to Crypto utils.
  • Improved status handling of secure sites to be less sensitive to "insecure" items that are local.
  • Fixed print preview hijacking. (CVE-2017-5421)
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash in OnStartRequest. (CVE-2017-5416)
  • Fixed potential cross-origin content-stealing through a timing attack. (CVE-2017-5407) DiD
  • Fixed a denial-of-service problem with view-source. (CVE-2017-5422)
  • Fixed crash in directional controls. (CVE-2017-5413)
  • Fixed a perceived problem with chrome manifests. (CVE-2017-5427)
  • Fixed the use of an uninitialized value. (CVE-2017-5405)
  • Fixed a buffer overflow. (CVE-2017-5412)
  • Fixed a UAF situation. (CVE-2017-5403)
  • Fixed a potential spoofing issue with the address bar. (CVE-2017-5417)
  • Fixed a potential issue in libvpx. (CVE-2017-5402) DiD
  • Fixed a potential issue with HTTP auth. (CVE-2017-5418)
  • Fixed several memory safety hazards and potentially exploitable crashes. DiD

27.1.2 (2017-03-03)

This is a small update adding a workaround for potential deadlocks happening in media elements.

27.1.1 (2017-02-21)

This is a stability and bugfix update to the browser.

Changes/Fixes:
  • Implemented a fix in media handling to prevent crashes with concurrent videos and/or rapidly starting/stopping video playback in the browser.
  • Fixed the way the Adobe Flash plugin is detected to prevent confusion with other plugins that identify themselves as "Flash" (e.g. VLC).
  • Windows: Solved stability issues caused by the release build process, resulting in unexpected behavior (e.g. hangups).

27.1.0 (2017-02-09)

This is a major update with lots of development and bugfixes. It also introduces the so-called "PMkit" modules, our effort to restore compatibility with Jetpack/SDK extensions and making it possible for extension developers to convert their SDK extensions with little effort to a Pale Moon compatible format. For more details please check the PMkit documentation on the developer wiki.

Changes/Fixes:
  • Reworked the media back-end completely (thanks Travis!) to use FFmpeg (including support for FFmpeg v3 and MP3 playback) and our own MP4 parser, and no longer relying on gstreamer on Linux, as well as adding some improvements on Windows for media parsing and playing.
  • On Linux, Apple .mov files of the correct type will also be played through FFmpeg now, for those rare occasions where they are still in use, considering there is no Quicktime plug-in available on that operating system.
  • Restored the classic about:config styling.
  • Added a fallback to US-ASCII if the autoconfig UTF-8 conversion fails.
  • Improved cross-compartment wrapper handling when managing a large number of tabs (fixes a performance regression with v27).
  • Changed the way audio and video synchronization is calculated to account for (slow) device latency, preventing things from getting out of sync on e.g. BlueTooth-connected speakers.
  • Changed the way scripts are handled when they are stopped from the "unresponsive script" dialog, to prevent browser lockup. We will now stop all scripts in the affected compartment in one go.
  • Fixed several errors in the devtools.
  • Fixed a nasty crash caused by cross-origin referrers.
  • Fixed the installer to allow 64-bit versions of the browser to be installed on Vista again.
  • Added HTML5-spec clipboard handling for content (cut&copy only -- paste is not allowed for security reasons).
  • Made multiple changes to the toolkit jetpack modules to cater to PMkit extensions.
    This should make running SDK-based modules as PMkit extensions fairly simple for extension developers. See the introductory text to these release notes.
  • Fixed a css layout issue: make max-width affect contributions to intrinsic min-width.
  • Implemented several updates to the permissions manager. Among others, Improved the permissions manager (about:permissions) with a more complete set of permissions for pages.
  • Removed otherwise unused Metro browser platform/widget code.
  • Removed support for non-standard/deprecated let blocks and expressions.
  • Made the use of let as a keyword versionless and ES6 compliant.
  • Made the privacy category in preferences a tabbed setup to better fit the current options.
  • Fixed a regression preventing certain MP4 video files from playing.
  • Fixed a regression where seeking in media files would halt playback/jump to the end of the stream.
  • Fixed a crash caused by certain downloadable fonts with DirectWrite in use.
  • Improved downloads-button indicator legibility on some combinations of Windows versions and system theme colors.
  • Changed the Facebook user-agent override to be our native one, based on reports from users that it is (finally) working acceptably.
  • Fixed site-specific useragents being ignored if a global override is defined.
Security/privacy changes:
  • Changed CORS handling to allow data: sources, assuming they are same-origin. This should fix the infamous "Facebook endless reload" issue and may make some other sites that assume this particular (unspecified) CORS behavior happy with Pale Moon.
  • Reinstated the network.stricttransportsecurity.enabled preference so people who choose privacy over HSTS can do so again.
  • Added, In HSTS "off" state, prevention of HSTS site status from being written to disk.
  • Updated the IDN blacklist with more extended unicode characters that "look very similar to" normal ASCII characters, to prevent spoofing of well-known domains. If blacklisted characters are found, the IDN domain name will be displayed in its punycode form. (CVE-2017-5383 and similar)
  • Fixed an exploitable crash when using MP4 video. (CVE-2017-5396)
  • Fixed an exploitable crash in XSL parsing. (CVE-2017-5376)
  • Fixed a potential security issue when exporting certificates with specially-crafted credentials. (CVE-2017-5381)
  • Fixed a potential use-after-free situation in frame selection. (CVE-2017-5380) DiD
  • Fixed a leak of window details through the Ion compiler in certain situations.
  • Fixed the potential for an exploitable crash involving Javascript GC. DiD
  • Fixed a potential overflow situation in (non-released) WebRTC code. DiD
  • Fixed a potentially unsafe situation in websockets. DiD
  • Fixed several memory and other safety hazards (BMO bugs 1318766, 1325877, 1328834 DiD, 1288561 DiD, 1322420 DiD, 1293327 DiD, 1322315, 1325344, 1285960).

27.0.3 (2016-12-16)

This is a bugfix and security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed certain network errors not displaying.
  • Fixed network error page styling.
  • Fixed the writing of DOM storage data to tabs (should solve the "tabs not loading their contents" issue when migrating a profile and some other situations).
  • Disabled downloadable font unicode-ranges on non-Windows platforms.
  • Added a Google Fonts user-agent override for non-Windows platforms so they don't send unicode-ranged composite fonts (Feature detection? Google apparently still doesn't know what that is).
  • Re-enabled the reporting of CSS errors to the console by default to prevent issues with some extensions who rely on this (e.g. Stylish).
  • Fixed and updated preferences for location bar suggestions.
  • Fixed several x64-specific issues in memory allocation code (regression fix).
  • Fixed timer issues when resuming a computer from stand-by (regression fix).
  • Fixed a number of branding and textual issues in the browser.
  • Fixed prompting for the saving of off-line data (previously always allowed without prompting).
  • Fixed a layout regression that would cause block elements following left floats to not wrap to the next line if there wasn't enough clearance.
  • Fixed a mismatch in Firefox extension compatibility-mode installation where Firefox extensions served by addons.mozilla.org would be marked incompatible when trying to install.
Security-related and crash fixes:
  • Fixed use-after-free while manipulating DOM events and removing audio elements (CVE-2016-9899).
  • Fixed CSP bypass using the marquee tag (CVE-2016-9895).
  • Fixed a vulnerability in the internal Jetpack modules (CVE-2016-9903). DiD
  • Fixed use-after-free in Editor while manipulating DOM subtrees (CVE-2016-9898).
  • Fixed an error in the buffer logic in http-chunked decoder.
  • Fixed a crash in generational GC code (not in use by default) DiD
  • Fixed a compartment mismatch bug in plug-in code
  • Fixed a crash trying to get a nonexistent property.
  • Improved MediaRecorder's observer safety.
  • Fixed a crash related to document history.
DiD This means that the fix is "Defense-in-Depth": It is a fix that does not apply to an actively exploitable vulnerability in Pale Moon, but prevents future vulnerabilities caused by the same code when surrounding code changes, exposing the problem.

27.0.2 (2016-12-02)

This is a minor update to address usability and security issues:
  • Enabled Firefox Compatibility mode by default for the useragent string.
    Unfortunately too many websites (and especially the big players who should know better like Google, Apple and Microsoft) still require the "we must pretend to be Firefox if we want this site to work" status quo to be maintained, because people still insist on using useragent sniffing to determine "browser features", or even worse, discriminate against free choice of browser by flat-out refusing service (I'm looking at you, banking industry and cloud services!) when visiting websites just because companies don't want to provide assistance to any but users on the main 3.
    HTML offers plenty of ways to do proper feature detection; site owners should use them.
    Seriously people, it was a bad idea 20 years ago, and it's a worse idea in 2016.
  • The built-in devtools are back, and with a facelift!
    Thanks to some consistent community help, the built-in devtools, sorely missed by a number of our users, are back. They've received a code and style update and should be fully functional on the new platform. This was originally planned for 27.1, but it was decided to include this as soon as possible, not in the least to assist extension developers in their efforts to adapt to Pale Moon 27.
  • Security fix:
    Fixed a crash in SVG, related to CVE-2016-9079, as a defense-in-depth measure.

27.0.1 (2016-11-28)

This is a bugfix release for some of the issues that popped up with the new milestone.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed removal of distribution/bundles/ copies of status bar code and ruby annotations code.
    This should clean up everything on install/upgrade that currently causes double code to create intermittent/odd behavior.
  • Backed out some media back-end changes to fix MSE playback on Twitch.tv and other similar sites.
  • Disabled pop-up network status in full screen by default (since video detection is rather iffy at the moment).
  • Fixed a regression causing the "reset profile" button to not appear in about:support on the default profile.
  • Worked around bad Netflix interface changes - it will now use a more compatible web UI.
    Please note that these Netflix changes were unrelated to the actual release of Pale Moon (26.5 is also affected).
  • Aligned base status bar colors with default prefs.
  • Fixed status bar options not being remembered.
  • Added an override for Amazon Prime videos so they won't stop us at the front door any longer when not using the Firefox Compatibility user agent mode.
  • Re-applied proper branding text to in-app licensing.

27.0.0 (2016-11-22)

After about 8 months of development, we now have a new milestone release with literally too many changes to list even concisely. These release notes will therefore only highlight the most important parts of this release.
In this release we've done a full upgrade of our back-end platform, meaning many things work different "under the hood" and you may run into a number of extension compatibility issues as a result.

New and updated features:
  • Support for DirectX 11 and Direct2d 1.1 on Windows. This will bring Pale Moon more in line with the capabilities for current-day operating systems and graphics hardware.
  • Update of the Goanna engine to 3.0 - with many changes to layout and rendering for the modern web.
  • Pale Moon now fully supports HTTP/2.
  • Ruby Annotations are now an integral part of the HTML parser, controllable with CSS.
  • Media Source Extensions have been implemented to solve many video playback issues.
    This can be enabled/disabled and configured in Options. It's recommended at this time to not enable MSE for WebM since there are a few issues with it on services like YouTube (e.g. losing audio when looping/skipping).
  • Support for reading and playing so-called "fragmented" MP4 files has been added, further solving media playback issues.
  • Support for SSL/TLS connections to proxy servers.
  • Support for the WOFF2 font format for downloadable fonts.
  • The JavaScript engine has been updated with support for many landmark ECMAScript6 features (chief among them promises and generators). This will solve many of the web compatibility issues that people have started to run into in the past few months (e.g. webmail interfaces, some sites coming up blank because they are script-generated).
  • The way web content is cached has been changed to be more efficient. If you want to immediately take advantage of this, clear your cache.
Removed support/features:
  • Removed support for Windows XP. If you are still running Windows XP, then your only option is to continue using Pale Moon 26.
  • Removed the internal PDF (pre)viewer. This module was not maintained, was unable to display even half of the PDF documents correctly, and could not reasonably remain included in the browser. Please use a separate reader and/or install a PDF reader plugin.
  • Disabled building of the devtools. They will not be included in release versions of Pale Moon from this point forward. If you are a web developer or otherwise need those tools, fear not! They are available as a browser extension.
  • Removed the active XSS filter. This feature, although effective, was prone to some instability and needs to be rewritten for the update of our platform. It may or may not return in the future, depending on whether the original author has time to rewrite parts of this filter implementation.
  • Removed support for Add-on SDK extensions (JetPack extensions), considering the Mozilla/Gecko SDK is no longer compatible with our combination of application and platform code.
Security highlights:
  • All relevant security fixes up to and including Firefox 50 have been ported across from Mozilla to continue to provide an as secure as possible browser.
  • Several libraries have been updated to their latest versions to pick up any important vulnerability fixes.
  • There's a new option and control to determine whether to save zone information (marking files as "downloaded from the Internet") on downloaded files (Windows+NTFS). You can find this in Options.
Other important notes:
  • When first upgrading your browser to v27, your profile will be migrated to the new format for the browser. This is a one-time conversion and unfortunately this migration can cause some issues. Please see the forum FAQ for more details.
  • Pale Moon 27 will initially only be available in English. We are working on getting localization done to have language packs available over time.
    Important: You can not use the previous language packs since many strings have changed. Trying to do so will likely prevent the browser from starting or functioning. Pale Moon will automatically disable language packs for the previous version, but if you have explicitly disabled add-on compatibility checking you may run into trouble.
  • We will continue to fully support the following:
    • NPAPI plugins
    • Extensions with binary/XPCOM components
    • XUL/Overlay and bootstrapped extensions
    • Complete themes
    • Unsigned and author-signed extensions
    • The Camellia encryption cipher (also in GCM mode)
    • Graphite font shaping
    • Sync 1.1 (albeit without support for syncing add-ons)
    • Full customization of the UI as before

Release notes for version 26 releases

26.5.0 (2016-09-28)

Fixes/Changes:
  • Implemented a breaking CSP (content security policy) spec change; when a page with CSP is loaded over http, Pale Moon now interprets CSP directives to also include https versions of the hosts listed in CSP if a scheme (http/https) isn't explicitly listed. This breaks with CSP 1.0 which is more restrictive and doesn't allow this cross-protocol access, but is in line with CSP 2 where this is allowed.
  • Fixed an issue with the XML parser where it would sometimes end up in an unknown state and throw an error (e.g. when specific networking errors would occur).
  • Improved the performance of canvas poisoning by explicitly parallelizing it.
Security fixes:
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash related to text writing direction. (CVE-2016-5280)
  • Made checking for invalid PNG files more strict. Pale Moon will now reject more PNG files that have corrupted/invalid data that could otherwise lead to potential security issues.
  • Changed the way paletted image frames are allocated so the space is cleared before it's used. DiD
  • Fixed a crash in nsNodeUtils::CloneAndAdopt() due to a typo. DiD
  • Fixed several memory safety issues and crashes.
DiD This means that the fix is "Defense-in-Depth": It is a fix that does not apply to an actively exploitable vulnerability in Pale Moon, but prevents future vulnerabilities caused by the same code when surrounding code changes, exposing the problem.

26.4.1 (2016-09-12)

This is a minor bugfix and security release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a crash in the XSS filter.
  • Slightly changed the address bar shading on secure sites to be more subtle and easily-blended.
  • Fixed the occurrence of "null" titles in bookmarks dragged from special folders.
  • Fixed an error initializing the browser due to trying to restore scratchpad data from a stored session when having switched from a version with devtools to a version without devtools, and the previous version had scratchpad data saved.
  • Fixed some minor issues in scratchpad and gcli devtools.
Security fixes:
  • Updated the HSTS preload list to a much more updated source list, and performing our own checks on validity from now on to have the list be as accurate as possible.
  • Disabled Triple-DES cipher suites by default (mitigating SWEET32).
Portable-only: Changed the behavior to, by default, allow it to start a new copy or multiple copies without checking if Pale Moon is already running on the system. You will need separate profiles to run multiple browsers concurrently.

26.4.0.1 (2016-08-23) - Linux only

This Linux-only release is once again using GStreamer 0.10 for video support, which should prevent Pale Moon from crashing when playing some HTML5 videos.

Additional changes/fixes:
  • A blacklist for GStreamer has been implemented and enabled by default (can be disabled with the media.gstreamer.enable-blacklist about:config pref).
  • The flump3dec GStreamer plugin (known to be crashy) & h264parser element (a potential security risk) have been blacklisted.
  • Fixed a couple other GStreamer related crashes.
  • No longer force Link Time Optimization with GCC 6

26.4.0 (2016-08-17)

Changes/fixes:
  • Removed Google Search as a bundled search provider. If desired, you can manually install it (or other search engines) after the update by following the steps in the Manage Search Engines topic.
  • Fixed the URL API to allow "stringification" of the object per specification. This should make a number of websites happy.
  • Added the ES6 string .includes() function in addition to the pre-existing .contains() function for checking if a string contains another string. The .contains() function is retained for compatibility with web and extension scripts that adhere to the ES6 pre-release specification up to and including RC3.
  • Fixed the calculation of standalone SVG embeds width and height, which should solve some reported issues with html5 graphs being displayed incorrectly.
  • Linux: improved memory allocation.
  • Updated the graphite font library to 1.3.9.
  • Added a blocking rule for F-Secure's 64-bit deepguard library to prevent crashes.
  • Updated the SQLite library to 3.13.0.
  • Download= properties of links are now honored from the context menu "Save" option.
  • Fixed a crash in the XSS filter.
  • Fixed a crash in the DOM error module.
  • Worked around a crash on Linux
  • Linux: Improved optimization and GCC6 compatibility (Note: compiling with GCC 6 is still not recommended and it may or may not work, depending on your environment)
Security fixes:
  • (CVE-2016-5251)Potential URL spoofing in the address bar.
  • (CVE-2016-0718) Context-dependent crash in expat 2.1.0.
  • (CVE-2016-5266) Outgoing dataTransfer items are not properly filtered.
  • Fixed potentially exploitable crash in the array splice implementation.
  • Fixed potentially exploitable crash caused by badly formatted ICO files.
  • (CVE-2016-5254) Heap-use-after-free in nsXULPopupManager::KeyDown

26.3.3 (2016-07-01)

Another small bugfix update to address some breaking issues. Sorry for the rapid-fire releases, everyone; this is not our intention.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed an additional issue found that could cause menu text on Windows 10 to be white-on-white (and therefore unreadable).
  • Fixed an issue with news feeds not showing up when embedded in web pages.
  • Removed recently-added parsing of the child-src content security policy directive, after some web compatibility issues with it came to light, as well as it becoming clear that the CSP spec will see it removed in favor of the previous directive for embedded content. This should fix some intermittent issues people have reported on e.g. the main google.com page and phpMyAdmin installations.

26.3.2 (2016-06-27) - Windows only

This release only has pertinent changes for Windows. Other operating systems do not need this update.

Changes/fixes:

  • Fixed a rare issue where the browser would not initialize properly (missing bookmarks and menu entries) if certain Windows registry values were missing (Windows 8 only).
  • Fixed an issue on Windows 10 where the classic menu bar would become unreadable (white on white).
    Update: There's apparently a different issue still remaining that can cause the same trouble. Please see the Known Issues page for status and workaround.
  • Portable only: Switched to non-compressed binaries to prevent issues with antivirus packages, to prevent issues with browser run-time operation, and to simplify code signing.

26.3.1 (2016-06-25)

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed an issue with new tab button theming on dark toolbars.
  • Reverted the useragent identification of Firefox compatibility mode to 38.9 to avoid WOFF2 font issues for sites that don't use proper font deployment as recommended by the W3C.
  • Added a site-specific override for Google fonts to make sure it always works even if not using Firefox compatibility mode.
    (workaround pending for a proper solution on Google's side)
  • Adjusted the "dark color" detection routine to switch text to white at higher relative contrast levels.
    This will more closely match Windows 10's "flip point" for different accent colors and is within the recommended range determined by the WCAG.

26.3.0 (2016-06-21)

Changes/fixes:
  • Added detection for dark system themes on Windows 10 and re-worked Windows 10 specific theming to better integrate into the OS and provide more clarity.
  • HTML5 media controls have been reworked to a horizontal volume control on all media, including HTML5 audio that was previously without an element-control for volume.
  • Default HTML5 media volume preference added as media.default_volume -- fractional, default 1.0 (=100%).
  • String.prototype.match() and .replace() are now fully spec compliant.
  • NSPR and NSS now correctly no longer enforce IA32 architecture compatibility, getting the advantage of SSE2 like the rest of the code.
  • Worked around crashes in the XSS filter when navigating back in history due to document fragments.
  • Instated a hard minimum of 10,000 places entries regardless of free disk space and total memory to prevent undesired expiration of history. That is around 16MB for an average entry size, which should be sane enough even on low-memory machines.
  • Fixed a typo in networking code introduced in 26.2.2 that would cause issues on some sites due to adding extra forward slashes to the URL.
Security fixes:
  • Fixed a number of memory safety hazards and potentially exploitable crashes.
  • Fixed CVE-2016-2821 Use-after-free in the mozilla::dom::Element class
  • Fixed netaddr deserialization for AF_UNSPEC and AF_LOCAL.
  • Fixed a memory overrun error in the VP8 encoder. DiD
  • Fixed non-threadsafe re-use of pixman images to prevent potential race conditions. DiD
  • Fixed CVE-2016-2825 Partial Same Origin Policy violation

26.2.2 (2016-05-10) & Android 25.9.2

This is mainly a security update.

Changes/fixes:
  • Added a detection routine for dark window colors on Windows 8 and later (system themes using dark window frames) to better adapt to dark system colors. Theme developers can take advantage of this by checking for darkwindowframe="true" on #main-window in CSS selectors.
  • CSS classes prefixed with "--" no longer stop parsing of the selectors.
  • Several crash fixes.
Security fixes:
  • Made GC suppression more aggressive to prevent issues when actually out of memory.
  • Fixed a memory safety hazard in jpeg decoding.
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash when using bi-directional text.
  • Updated NSS to 3.19.4.2-PM, fixing CVE-2016-1938 among other things.

26.2.1 (2016-04-08)

This is a small update to fix a problem with keyboard navigation of the user interface.

26.2.0 (2016-04-05)

This is a major update and bugfix release.

Changes:
  • Implemented the URL API that's needed for a number of websites.
  • Changed internal keystroke handling within the spec to better align with generally expected behavior.
    This should fix the infamous "backspace" issue on Facebook.
    Web developers please note: calling preventDefault() in a "keydown" event handler will now prevent most keypress events from firing.
  • Linux: gstreamer 1.0 support has been implemented and enabled by default (hats off to Travis!)
    From this version forward you will need to have gstreamer 1.0 libraries for video playback (0.10 is no longer supported).
  • Re-styled about:sessionrestore to use more available screen real estate for tab info.
  • Added an option to use the mousewheel for horizontal scrolling (mouse action value 4).
    (e.g. setting mousewheel.with_shift.action to 4 makes Shift+wheel scroll horizontally)
  • Bumped max icon size for search engine icons to 32 KB to cater to more common use of HiDPI icons.
  • Fixed some hard-coded branding strings in Sync still reading "Firefox", and similarly changed sync information URLs to point to our relevant pages.
  • Removed default profile bookmarks pointing to Firefox/Mozilla since the information there no longer applies to us.
  • Updated UA overrides and XSS configuration to deal with some problematic sites (e.g.: Google, Embedly)
  • Fixed several issues with the default theme causing problems with behavior due to styling (thanks, Antonius32) (Issue #384 and friends)
  • Fixed some miscellaneous issues in the internal jemalloc implementation.
  • Added a configure option to use the full jemalloc lib (jemalloc v3) if the builder so wishes (used for Linux, sys mallocs are not happy there either, so for our generic binaries we switched to this lib now)
  • Worked around a crash caused by the XSS filter on some fora by bailing on too short and empty strings.
  • Fixed layout of reflowed comboboxes without enough space.
  • Fixed a crash related to flexboxes overflowing themselves. (Issue #396)
  • Added a simple implementation for Weak Messagelisteners. (Issue #399)
  • Fixed a crash for losing our cache entry while finishing up compression.
    (re-apply after unintentional back-out switching to Goanna)
  • Linux: Worked around driver bugs with Intel drivers that falsely report what they can support in max texture size.
  • Portable only: Removed compression of the browser components library after some reports that in certain configurations and environments it was causing issues with the browser.
Security fixes:
  • Updated the graphite font library to 1.3.7+ to solve CVE-2016-2796 and no less than 14 of its friends.
  • Updated NSS to 3.19.4.2-PM to address several vulnerabilities (UAF, heap overflow).
  • Updated libvorbis to a much more recent version to fix multiple issues.
  • Crash fix and DiD fixes by holding strong references to objects in suspect places in the HTML parser. (CVE-2016-1961) (ZDI-CAN-3574)
  • Fixed several out-of-bounds issues in the VP8 decoder.
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash in XML/XSLT handling.
  • Applied some Kung Fu to HTML animations and transitions to prevent memory hazards.
  • Fixed applicable Mozilla code vulnerabilities CVE-2016-1965, CVE-2016-1960 (ZDI-CAN-3545), CVE-2016-1966, and CVE-2016-1963.

26.1.1 (2016-02-24)

This is a bugfix release to improve stability and extension compatibility.

Changes/fixes:
  • Fixed a few oversights in the Firefox extension compatibility changes in 26.1.0 that should improve compatibility with a number of Firefox extensions.
  • Changed memory handling to (hopefully) address the memory inflation issues some people have experienced with 26.1.0.
  • Updated YouTube compatibility, which should once again allow users to choose between Flash and HTML5 players on YouTube.

26.1.0 (2016-02-16)

This is a web compatibility, stability and bugfix release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Disabled our ES6 Promise implementation introduced in 26.0 since there were some severe issues with its implementation that caused a lot of inexplicable failures on websites. This means that some sites that insist on using Promises without checking availability and that do not provide sufficient web client compatibility by way of server-side libraries or polyfills will currently not work as-intended. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause; providing a perfectly-working implementation will be our top priority going forward.
  • Improved website compatibility with many sites and web applications by making our cookie gate less strict.
  • Fixed web compatibility with Google Hangouts and Yahoo Calendar.
  • Changed the memory allocator on Windows platforms to a much more modern full-library implementation of jemalloc, with miscellaneous additional fixes. This should give comparable speed to the system one and will allocate free memory more dynamically. This should fix issues like "huge animated gif choking" and inexplicable pauses when using many tabs, scrolling (extremely) long pages, or viewing media.
  • Fixed a few rare crashing issues on Windows due to the build process.
  • Reduced so-called "jank" on inner frame scrolling reflows.
  • Extension compatibility: partial implementation of Firefox 26 download js modules as shims; this should make more Firefox extensions compatible with us out-of-the-box. (Thanks, Chaoskagami!)
  • Added a "superstop" key combination (Shift+Esc) that will stop all (foreground and background) network activity, stop animated gifs, etc. even after the page itself has fully loaded (and the stop button not being available) - some web applications may not like this if you use it since it will also cancel XHR requests, etc.
  • Updated NTLM authentication, deprecating v1 and adding a proper v2 implementation (Thanks, Trava90!)
  • Updated the default theme to tweak/improve it some more (Thanks, Antonius32!)
Security fixes:
  • Updated the Graphite2 font library to 1.3.5+ to fix a number of vulnerabilities (and some font bugs).

26.0.3 (2016-02-05)

This is a small bugfix release:
  • Changed our cookie gate to allow cookie names with spaces in them, to improve web compatibility.
    Critical note: if your site uses cookie names with spaces in them, please consider moving away from doing that so you are no longer in the "grey" area of cookie behavior.
  • Changed the configuration of our XSS filter to address some known, harmless filter hits that have been reported.

26.0.2 (2016-02-03)

This is a bugfix, security and web compatibility release.

Changes/fixes:
  • Removed the sanity check for unsupported point-of-sale XP-based operating systems by user request.
    Please see the forum for information on which operating systems we can reasonably support.
  • Changed the way "transparent" is handled in Goanna to improve transparent gradients using this keyword.
  • Made sure that dom.disable_beforeunload is predefined in about:config.
  • Fixed web compatibility issues with Youtube, Youtube Gaming, Yuku fora and Netflix.
  • Fixed web compatibility with Comcast/XFinity webmail and other sites or web applications that expect older JavaScript versions as default.
  • Reinstated the about:config warning by default.
  • Fixed 2 potential browser crashes.
Security fixes:
  • Updated NSS to 3.19.4.1-PM to fix a potential UAF and CVE-2015-7575.
  • Crash fix: Prevented queueing multiple media sources that could lead to unsafe memory access.
  • Prevented unsafe memory manipulations in zip archives. (CVE-2016-1945) DiD
  • Prevented a potential buffer overflow in WebGL. (x64 only) (CVE-2016-1935) DiD
  • Updated the way binaries are code-signed. Not only does v26.0 use a new SHA256-signed digital certificate, but starting this version will also be signed with both SHA1 and SHA256 digest algorithms to satisfy later Windows' code-signing requirements.
DiD This means that the fix is "Defense-in-Depth": It is a fix that does not apply to an actively exploitable vulnerability in Pale Moon, but prevents future vulnerabilities caused by the same code when surrounding code changes, exposing the problem.

26.0.1 (unreleased)

Internal development/test version.

26.0.0 (2016-01-26)

This is a new milestone release! It's been in the works for a good number of months, and has many hundreds of notable changes, fixes, and improvements that can't possibly all be listed here.

These release notes for this version are a concise summary, lifting out the most prominent and important changes. You may find slightly more detailed release notes on the forum.

General release notes:
  • Goanna logoPale Moon is now building on the new Goanna engine instead of Gecko. Although close relatives in terms of web technology, they are not the same under the hood and any reports of bugs with the layout/rendering engine should be as detailed as possible to allow us to pinpoint the cause of the bugs and fix them (just stating "it works in Firefox" really doesn't help us!). If you wish to report issues, please either use the issue tracker on GitHub or report a detailed description and steps to reproduce on the forum.
  • We've had to reduce the number of supported languages for our language packs. With the need to move to our own full localization and lacking translators to support and maintain less common languages in use around the world, we've reduced our number of offered languages to a little over 30. The languages still supported should more than cover the common languages spoken around the globe. You will need to update your language packs!
  • Although we've given this release extensive testing, it is still possible you run into some website compatibility issues (usually because of websites doing useragent sniffing) and e.g. some sites displaying a mobile version if they do not recognize or incorrectly recognize the new browser engine. Please always try contacting the webmasters first before posting support requests at our address, since this is usually not something we can provide solutions for, ourselves, and we end up having to redirect you anyway.
Fixes/changes:
  • The layout parser/renderer has received many updates with this change over to Goanna, improving web compatibility and standards compliance in many areas.
  • The browser user interface has received updates, making it more compatible with Windows 10 in many respects and more in line with the general styles of the operating system version it is run on in terms of the shapes of controls and color setting.
  • Updated graphics/media support: Pale Moon now supports the WebP image format, properly scales EXIF rotated JPEGs, has updated support for different WebGL texture formats, improved scaling of vector images, updated libpng, libjpeg-turbo, libvpx, and misc other upstream libraries/modules, and more!
  • Library changes:
    • The library now has a scope bar (pops up when searching) with the option to select what you want to search in (either bookmarks or history) and the option to save your searches.
    • By default, there will be a history menu drop-down in the browser's user interface next to the bookmarks one.
    • Added "Containing folder" and "Containing folder path" columns so you can see exactly where a bookmark is located at a glance when searching (after enabling the columns).
  • Added support for Ruby annotations. If you need this functionality, set the about:config preference browser.ruby.enabled to true, and restart the browser.
  • Added conservative image decoding: it will now only decode images that are (almost) in view, greatly improving overall memory use and initial loading of graphics-heavy pages.
  • Aligned 3D CSS transforms and perspective with the spec.
  • JavaScript improvements: added basic support for ES6 Promises, added element.matches(), updated property assignments, added Bin/Oct literals in Number(), improved performance of TypeOf calls, improved GC memory shrinking, improved memory allocations, improved RegEx performance and compatibility, and more!
  • Added CSS media queries to determine the OS the browser is running on, allowing theme designers to make specific changes based on OS at run-time.
  • Added a control preference for onunload= events as dom.disable_beforeunload. This allows you to completely disable events fired when leaving a page.
  • Changed the memory allocator to the (faster) system allocator on modern operating systems.
  • Improved the handling of very large numbers of tabs.
  • Added Ecosia as a "green" search engine alternative for the environmentally aware surfer.
  • Autoplay of media now has a separate control preference for scripted content as media.autoplay.allowscripted, to block script-initiated autoplay of media.
Security updates:
  • Added support for 128-bit Camellia-GCM ciphers in addition to the existing CBC ciphers to offer a more internationally diverse choice of secure encryption ciphers than just AES.
  • Added an advanced, active XSS (cross-site scripting) filter. Pale Moon will now check for XSS attacks and block XSS content in the resulting pages. This is brand-new technology and feedback on this filter specifically (e.g. bugs, false positives, etc.) should be posted in the dedicated thread on the forum for this feature. Please also see that thread for details on how to use and control this filter.
  • Distrusted several root certificates in accordance with security best practice.
  • Aligned cookie acceptance with RFC 6265 §4.1.1. We still make an exception for allowing spaces and double quotes in cookie values, but this will be made more strict in the future for full spec compliance. If you are a web designer and use cookies, please verify that you are RFC compliant in terms of both cookie names and cookie values, or the browser may reject them.
  • Removed several hazardous modules like the maintenance service and the identity module.
  • Ported all security updates from Mozilla that are applicable/relevant to our code base (up to and including all security issues made known to us until now). Considering v26 has been kept updated over its long development until release, the list of fixes/CVEs would be too exhaustive to list in these release notes individually.

Release notes for version 25 releases

25.8.1 (2015-11-28)

A small update to address two important issues:
  • Fix for a crash that could occur at random since the update to 25.8.0.
  • Fix for CSP (Content Security Policy) to be more lenient towards the incorrect passing of full URLs with all sorts of parameters in the CSP header, leading to misinterpretation of the header and incorrectly blocking the loading of content.

25.8.0 (2015-11-17)

This is a security, stability and usability update.

Fixes/changes:
  • Updated LibVPX to 1.4.x to be able to play more kinds of VP9-encoded videos.
  • Updated the JPEG decoder library to 1.4.0.
  • Fixed and cleaned up XPCOM timer thread code to avoid intermittent issues with events not firing (especially after stand-by).
  • Updated overrides to work around issues with Facebook and Netflix.
  • Fixed an issue where too-old system-supplied NSPR and/or NSS libraries would be accepted for use.
Security fixes:
  • Updated the libpng library to 1.5.24 to address critical security issues CVE-2015-7981 and CVE-2015-8126
  • Updated the NSPR library to 4.10.10 to address several security issues.
  • Updated the NSS library to 3.19.4 to address several security issues.
  • Fixed a memory safety hazard in SVG path code (CVE-2015-7199).
  • Fixed an issue with IP address parsing potentially allowing an attacker to bypass the Same Origin Policy (CVE-2015-7188).
  • Fixed an Add-on SDK (Jetpack) issue that would allow scripts to be executed despite being forbidden (CVE-2015-7187).
  • Fixed a crash due to a buffer underflow in libjar (CVE-2015-7194).
  • Fixed an issue for Android full screen that would potentially allow address spoofing (CVE-2015-7185).
  • Added size checks in canvas manipulations to avoid potential image encoding vulnerabilities like CVE-2015-7189. DiD
  • Fixed potential information disclosure vulnerabilities through the NTLM authentication mechanism. Insecure NTLM v1 is now disabled by default, and the workstation name is set to WORKSTATION by default (configurable with a preference for environments where identification of workstations is done by actual reported machine name). This avoids issues like CVE-2015-4515.
  • Fixed a potentially vulnerable crash from a spinning event loop during resize painting. DiD
  • Fixed several Javascript-based memory safety hazards. DiD

25.7.3.1 (Android only!) (2015-10-15)

A small update to the Android version only to fix an issue with the Sync setup still not working properly on Android clients.

25.7.3 (2015-10-14)

This is a usability update needed due to the fact that Mozilla has shut down their key exchange (J-PAKE) server along with the old Sync servers. This was unexpected and required us to set up our own key server (testing indicates this works as-expected, but please do report any issues on the forum) - which also required reconfiguration of the browser.
Please note that older versions of the browser will no longer be able to link devices to a sync account using the 12-character code since it requires a Mozilla server no longer present. If you need this functionality, you must update to this version or later.

25.7.2 (2015-10-02)

This is a stability update, addressing 2 critical hangs:
  • Fixed a critical hang caused by recursive reloads that might happen in iframes if its hash changed.
  • Fixed a critical hang caused by lazy-loading of stylesheets through a specific web programming technique as advocated by Google's PageSpeed.

25.7.1 (2015-09-28)

This is a security, stability and web-compatibility update. This also marks a security update for the Android version of Pale Moon to keep users of the otherwise currently unmaintained OS updated regarding known security vulnerabilities.

Fixes/changes:
  • Code cleanup: Removed the majority of remaining telemetry code (including the data reporting back-end and health report) to prevent a few issues with partially removed code in earlier versions.
  • Fixed a crash due to handling of bogus URIs passed to CSS style filters (e.g. whatsapp's web interface).
  • Permitted spec-breaking syntax in Regex character classes, allowing ranges that would be permitted per the grammar rules in the spec but not necessarily following the syntax rules. This impacts a good number of (also higher profile) sites that use invalid ranges in regular expressions (e.g. Cisco's networking academy site, Yahoo Fantasy Football).
  • Fixed a crash due to the newly introduced WASAPI handling of audio channel mapping that doesn't like actual surround hardware setups (e.g. playing a video with quadraphonic audio on a 4-speaker setup).
  • Fixed an issue where site-specific dictionary selections would be written to content preferences without the user's action, potentially overwriting or clearing a previously-chosen dictionary.
  • Added support for drag and drop of local files from sources which use text/uri-lists. (Some Linux flavors/file managers)
  • Updated libnestegg to the most current version.
  • Fixed an issue where setting the location to an empty string could cause a reload loop.
Security fixes:
  • Changed the jemalloc poison address to something that is not a NOP-slide. DiD
  • Fixed a memory safety hazard in ConvertDialogOptions (CVE-2015-4521)
  • Fixed a buffer overflow/crash hazard in the VertexBufferInterface::reserveVertexSpace function in libGLES in ANGLE (CVE-2015-7179)
  • Fixed an overflow/crash hazard in the XULContentSinkImpl::AddText function (CVE-2015-7175)
  • Fixed a stack buffer overread hazard in the ICC v4 profile parser (CVE-2015-4504)
  • Fixed an HTMLVideoElement Use-After-Free Remote Code Execution 0-day vulnerability (ZDI-CAN-3176) (CVE-2015-4509)
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable crash in nsXBLService::GetBinding
  • Fixed a memory safety hazard in nsAttrAndChildArray::GrowBy (CVE-2015-7174)
  • Fixed a memory safety hazard for callers of nsUnicodeToUTF8::GetMaxLength (CVE-2015-4522)
  • Fixed a heap buffer overflow/crash hazard caused by invalid WebM headers (CVE-2015-4511)

25.7.0 (2015-08-26)

This is a bugfix and maintenance release.

Fixes/changes:
  • Code cleanup: Removed the (otherwise unused) visual event tracer code.
  • Code cleanup: Removed reflow performance tracing code (telemetry).
  • Fixed a key JavaScript bug where defining properties on an object would wipe the object.
    This seems to be a common issue with "modern" libraries that use "define" instead of "change" and expecting the other properties on the object to be retained, resulting in "x is undefined" errors all over the place if the object is wiped.
    This aligns the behavior with ES6's "Validate and apply property descriptor" pseudo-function.
  • Updated the SQLite library to 3.8.11.1.
  • Added support for the element.matches() Web API function.
  • Added support for BASE tag parsing in source view. Previously, when viewing the source of a document, clickable links would be incorrect if a base path was specified in the document with this tag.
  • Fixed an issue with running timers after the computer would have been put to sleep with the browser opened.
Security fixes:
  • Added protection against potential bugs where our SVG mPositions is out of sync with the characters in the DOM. DiD
  • Fixed use-after-free vulnerability in XMLHttpRequest::Open() (CVE-2015-4492)
  • Fixed use-after-free vulnerability in the StyleAnimationValue class (CVE-2015-4488)
  • Fixed crash or memory corruption in nsTArray (CVE-2015-4489)
  • Fixed crash or memory corruption in nsTSubstring::ReplacePrep (CVE-2015-4487)
  • Fixed potential escalation of privileges or crash (out-of-bounds write) via a crafted name in MARs (x64 only) (CVE-2015-4482)
  • Fixed an issue that would allow man-in-the-middle attackers to bypass a mixed-content protection mechanism via a feed: URL in a POST request. (CVE-2015-4483)

25.6.0 (2015-07-27)

This release addresses some security issues and a range of usability improvements to the browser.

Fixes/changes:
  • Canvas anti-fingerprinting option: Pale Moon now includes the option to make canvas fingerprinting much more difficult. By setting the about:config preference canvas.poisondata to true, any data read back from canvas surfaces will be "poisoned" with humanly-imperceptible data changes. By default this is off, because it has a large performance impact on the routines reading this data.
  • Added a feature to allow icon fonts to be used even when users disallow the use of document-specified fonts. This should retain full navigation for icon-font heavy websites (no more dreaded "boxes" with hex codes) when custom text fonts are disabled.
  • Added a feature to prevent screen savers from kicking in when playing full-screen HTML5 video. This is currently not yet operational on Linux because of stability issues we've run into on that OS, but Windows should properly benefit from this change.
  • The "autocomplete=off" parameter for signon forms is now completely ignored by default, to keep the user in control of their browser's behavior and allowing credentials to be saved if wished. If you prefer the previous behavior, allowing a website to determine whether autocomplete should be allowed or not, then change the about:config preference signon.ignoreAutocomplete to false.
  • Reinstated the packaging of pre-compiled scripts in the browser. Hopefully this will fix the reports by some users who found that initial start-up after installation/upgrade of the browser was unacceptably slow. Unfortunately this means a slightly larger download/install size as a trade-off.
  • Added the option to use Chrome://../skin/ overrides, in effect allowing the use of "Icon themes"; toolbar icon replacements to customize your browser icons without the need for any CSS or full-blown theming.
  • Added a count for the number of matches in the find bar. it will now list the total number of matches found, and which match is the currently highlighted one.
  • Fixed the issue where highlighted words after finding and highlighting them all in a page would remain highlighted when closing the find bar.
  • Added support for CSP 'nonce' keywords (CSP 1.1/2.0). Please note that this is still experimental and may not work 100% as-expected. Please report any bugs you may find.
  • Aligned CSP more with the spec in terms of reporting and case-sensitivity of matches, and made it more app-friendly.
  • Added -moz-os-version selectors for @media CSS queries to simplify theming on different operating systems (esp. Windows).
  • Updated and improved several languages for the Status Bar code, and added Slovenian.
  • Fixed an issue in the internal updater window not showing proper language strings.
  • Fixed an issue where the unexpected use of "backface-visibility" on non-3D transformed elements (like the body) would break positioned elements on web pages.
  • Fixed text positioning in the combobox display area when a non-default height is set for the combobox.
  • Fixed a crash caused by bad Opus audio encoding in media files.
  • Fixed a crash when trying to measure memory in about:memory while playing video.
  • Fixed a rare crash in sLayersAccelerationPrefsInitialized
  • Fixed miscellaneous other crashes.
  • Fixed a DNS prefetching issue for the people using this feature.
  • Fixed an issue with single-word searches from the address bar when a proxy is in use.
  • Fixed a number of build issues on Linux when using system libs.
  • Added support for link-time optimization on newer Linux compilers.
  • Removed more telemetry code (ongoing project!).
Security fixes:
  • Fixed a memory safety bug due to a bad test in nsZipArchive.cpp (CVE-2015-2735).
  • Fixed a memory safety bug in nsZipArchive::BuildFileList (CVE-2015-2736).
  • Fixed a memory safety bug caused by an overflow in nsXMLHttpRequest::AppendToResponseText (CVE-2015-2740).
  • Fixed a Use After Free in CanonicalizeXPCOMParticipant (CVE-2015-2722).
  • Fixed off-main-thread nsIPrincipal use of various consumers in the tree (only grab the principal when needed).
  • Fixed an issue where an IPDL message was sent off the main thread.
  • Fixed a potentially exploitable TCPSocket crash due to a race condition.

25.5.0 (2015-06-10)

This is an important maintenance update with mostly under-the-hood changes.

Fixes/changes:
  • Logjam fix: Refuse DHE keys with less than 1024 key bits
  • Search plugin updates to re-enable Google suggestions and reduce tracking (Squarefractal)
  • Allow plugin-specific (.dll based) OOPP overrides also for npswf. This will not be used for the "master switch" for OOPP and Flash will still be in the plugin container, unless a specific dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf*.dll boolean is set to override.
  • Fixed a crash during WebGL Conformance Tests for undefined indices (Toady)
  • HSTS preload list updates (Squarefractal)
  • Status bar locale addition: cs
  • Implemented a fix for the toolkit update service so that the same version as the current application will not be offered as a valid update (Tobin)
  • Reorganized the AppMenu (give equal ease for windowed and tabbed browsing, deprioritize Sync)
  • Disabled the Sync promo box in doorhangers.
  • Updated libpng to version 1.5.22
  • Fixed support for builds using newer freetype on Linux. (Axiomatic)
  • Fixed --with-system-pixman builds. (Isaac Dunham)
  • Updated SQLite to version 3.8.10.1
  • Changed the after-upgrade page loaded to the release notes instead of the home page.
    (and hoping people actually do take a moment to read them, preventing unnecessary support requests)
  • Fixed navigator.geolocation - should never be null, to properly adhere to the specification (Travis)
  • Moved paintlock event delay to greprefs, and adjusted it for 2015's heavier sites
  • Fixed the about dialog scripting for pre-release builds (includes build date now as-intended and no longer errors the script)
  • Reorganized how pushed floats are handled in layout flow
  • Implemented a change to run the updater from the install directory instead of copying it.
  • Fixed transparency of the Pale Moon document icon for 256x256
  • Updated padlock code:
    - Added mixed-mode shading, and reorganized shading pref values more logically
    (0=off, 1=secure only, 2=secure+mixed, 3=all)
    - Cleaned up CSS
    - Cleaned up padlock logic a little
  • Hard-coded internal UA sniffing values for the extension legacy of devtools
  • Updated NSPR to 4.10.8
  • Updated the NSS security lib to 3.19-RTM + re-worked Pale Moon changes
  • Bumped the built-in site-specific UA compat mode overrides to v38
  • Fixed a compressed-cache crash due to losing our cache entry while finishing up compression.
  • Updated and patched libcubeb, the main media sound library, to fix a number of audio issues (e.g. when switching output device) and audio-related crashes
  • Added the option to load modules into a named scope (see issue #88)
  • Removed quick access keys for buttons on the updater window (since it may pop up unannounced when people are typing, causing them to make unintended choices)
  • Updated jemalloc and mozjemalloc memory allocator libraries to improve performance
  • Removed implicit access to a whole range of internally-used interfaces and classes that page content has no business calling anyway
  • Added a preference for always preferring a certain dictionary language.
    To use this, create a new preference spellchecker.dictionary.override (string) and set it to your language code.
More information about changes in this version that would be important for extension developers and web programmers can be found here.

Security fixes:
  • Fixes for miscellaneous memory safety hazards (relevant and applicable fixes from CVE-2015-2708 and CVE-2015-2709)
  • DiD (defense-in-depth) fix to prevent potential overflows in CSS restyling
  • Fix for updater hijacking (CVE-2015-2720)
  • Fix to prevent potential disclosure of sensitive information in Android logs (CVE-2015-2714)
  • Fix for a buffer overflow in the XML parser (CVE-2015-2716)
  • Fix for a potentially exploitable crash in DNS handling

25.4.1 (2015-05-10)

This is a small but important update to the previous major release to address some critical issues:
  • Fixed loss of the browser's disk cache on startup due to incorrect corruption detection logic
  • Fixed a browser crash on some HTML5 games

25.4.0 (2015-05-08)

IMPORTANT: If you use a language pack, make sure to update it to the latest version! We do have automatic updates enabled for language packs but please double-check that the version matches. If you are using an older language pack with this version of the browser, some dialog boxes may come up blank.

This is a major update - too much has changed for this little blurb to do it justice so please see below for the most important changes/fixes in this release:

Fixes/changes:
  • Updated SQLite from 3.7.17 to v3.8.8.3, improving history/bookmark/etc. performance by up to 50% depending on operation
  • Added a new "mixed-mode" state for HTTPS connections. Clarified mixed-mode connections with a mixed-mode padlock and better tooltips.
  • Added a conditional partial shading to the URL bar and made it default (shading only on secure sites, no red shading at all by default).
  • Dev: Fixed file system mode flags for *nix systems, to make executable files like scripts actually flagged as executable
  • Added native IPv6 lookups to NSPR to solve IPv6-only and dual-stack setups in some situations
  • Added a pref to control the unloading of idle plugins from memory and lowered the default "idle" time to 60 seconds before plugins are unloaded
  • Fixed version strings for e.g. flash on Linux being displayed with commas instead of periods - this should also fix the incorrect "your plugin is vulnerable" message while being on the latest version
  • Windows: Set the double-click/Ctrl+arrow word selection to not eat the space (only select the actual word)
  • Android: DNS fix for VPN connections, preventing the "server not found" issues people have been reporting for certain VPN providers on mobile
  • Updated a number of trusted root certificates, and distrusted the CNNIC root certificate by popular demand
  • Linux: Worked around the slice memory allocator not being properly disabled on later GLib versions
  • Android: updated the random number generator handling on later versions of Android
  • Added fix to prevent spurious re-paints with plugins (performance/UX improvement)
  • Removed the plugin check link from the Addons Manager, since it's no longer reliable and not officially available for browsers except Mozilla Firefox. (Bonus: no user profiling/tracking through optimizely!)
  • Optimized the NSS callback for secure connections
  • Updated the domains that are whitelisted for installation of extensions/themes/personas, streamlining the use of addons.palemoon.org
  • Added personas support to titlebar text (adopt the lightweight theme's coloring/shading) in custom titlebar mode (Pale Moon appmenu/button)
  • Added display of HTTPS protocol (SSL/TLS) to the page info window (thanks Travis!)
  • Improved certificate display: Removed MD5 and added SHA256 fingerprint, and made them selectable/copyable
  • Updated classification of secure connections: Classify any encryption with less than 128 bits or including RC4 (if manually enabled, see previous version notes) as weak.
  • Dev: Added availability of the full ciphersuite string for use in extensions to the nsISSLStatus interface (nsISSLStatus.cipherSuite)
  • Added MAKE_UNLINKABLE to the about: page redirector and added that as default for the reader mode on Android
  • Removed the compilation and inclusion of a one-time-use pre-compiled startup cache in omni.ja, reducing overall application size significantly and avoiding a number of quirks of both the build process and the operation of the browser
  • Fixed an NVIDIA specific GLX server vendor bug for pixmap depth and fbConfig depth
  • Removed most telemetry code, reducing code complexity and wasted CPU
  • Linux: Added OSS support (mutually exclusive with ALSA): configure with --enable-oss
  • Made DNS caching a lot less aggressive to align the browser's behavior with the dynamic nature of the modern web.
  • Removed Mozilla-specific parameters for searches. Search suggestions should now work again for Google searches
  • Added the option to allow users to use a fixed (JSON) file-based geolocation response in favor of a GeoIP service.
  • Dev: Improvements to Clang builds (thanks Axiomatic/BitVapor!). Clang is not currently producing stable builds on Linux, so please use GCC for that operating system.
  • Linux: removed GnomeVFS that's no longer in use
  • Fixed the "double padlock while loading a secure site" niggle in the UI
  • Dev: added allowance of using -moz-appearance:none on drop-down lists to hide the arrow button (catering to custom styling of the control)
  • Added some more ES6 math/number functions:
    • Implemented Math.fround(x)
    • Implemented Number.isSafeInteger(x)
    • Implemented Math.clz32(x)
Security fixes:
  • Fixed several memory safety hazards (UAF/DF/UU); applicable bugs covered by CVE-2015-0814 and CVE-2015-0815
  • Fixed CVE-2015-0811 [qcms] heap info leak
  • Fixed CVE-2015-0810 clickjacking attacks via a Flash object in conjunction with DIV elements
  • Fixed CVE-2015-0801 a variant of CVE-2015-0818
  • Fixed CVE-2015-0800 improve randomness of DNS resolver queries on Android
  • Fixed CVE-2015-0798 access to privileged URLs through about: redirector

25.3.2 (2015-04-25)

This release is an emergency update to fix crashes that started occurring because of Mozilla improperly signing the extensions and extension updates as offered through the Firefox Add-ons site addons.mozilla.org. Any improperly signed extension would not be able to be installed, and would immediately crash the browser.

No other changes were made in this release - this is a bugfix for this particular issue only.

25.3.1 (2015-03-25)

This is a security update to the browser to address a critical vulnerability found in the pwn2own contest. Only one vulnerability found in this contest applies to Pale Moon, which has been addressed in this update.

Fixes/changes:
  • Fixed security vulnerability CVE-2015-0818. This vulnerability would allow remote attackers to bypass the Same Origin Policy and execute arbitrary JavaScript code with chrome privileges via vectors involving SVG hash navigation.
  • Fixed IPv6 DNS resolution regression in some less common cases.

25.3.0 (2015-03-13)

This is an important update to improve features and performance, as well as address important security issues.

Fixes/changes:
  • Overhauled WebGL. It now properly supports depth textures, shadow mapping and glow shaders.
    Note that older operating systems or older/embedded video processors may be limited in their support of these features.
  • Updated the ANGLE library to a much more current version.
  • Removed the crash reporter code completely to improve overall browser responsiveness and operation.
    Please note that a necessary victim of this has been the in-browser (devtools) SPS profiler because of its reliance on crash reporter data-gathering tools.
  • Removed the Mozilla Plugin Finder Service (no longer in use @Mozilla).
  • Android: removed the Mozilla "product announcements" service.
  • Re-added control of the number of concurrent tabs to be restored from a session with browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs (accepted values 1-10)
  • Significantly improved performance and accuracy of date/time/timer handling.
  • Significantly improved performance of the creation of DOM elements with plain text content.
  • Added several significant performance optimizations for arrays and strings in javascript.
  • Added several code performance optimizations and bugfixes in SVG, the presentation shell, SCTP, style gradients and CSS parsing routines. (Thanks, Axiomatic!)
  • Added an "Open link in current tab" context menu entry on links for UI consistency.
  • Updated styling of the browser with personas (lightweight themes) once more to improve display in tabs-on-top mode, improve overall legibility of tab text, and display of inverted close buttons on some controls on dark personas.
  • Added a special case check for the Flash plugin version check on Linux failing due to commas instead of periods in the version string.
  • Added Windows 10 compatibility in executable manifests.
  • Android: Fixed a crash on GL canvas surfaces.
  • Fixed incorrect Sync "howto" instruction links from the Sync dialogs.
  • Fixed the color of selected tabs in Linux when personas (lightweight themes) are in use that do not match the overall tone of the OS system theme.
  • Fixed a bug where a variable in parentheses would abort Javascript parsing.
  • Fixed a bug where the address bar would incorrectly be cleared.
  • Fixed padding issues for dropdown lists.
  • Fixed DNS lookups so proper record types are requested for IPv4 and IPv6.
Security fixes:
  • Disabled all RC4-based encryption ciphers by default. [More info]
  • Fixed several miscellaneous memory safety hazards.
    (applicable bugs related to CVE-2015-0835 and CVE-2015-0836)
  • Fixed loading of locally stored DLL files through the internal updater. (CVE-2015-0833)
  • Fixed a potential crash point in IndexedDB. (CVE-2015-0831) DiD
  • Fixed a double-free situation when using non-default memory allocators and a 0-length XHR. (CVE-2015-0828)
    Note: production builds of Pale Moon were never vulnerable.
  • Fixed a crash using DrawTarget in the Cairo graphics library. (CVE-2015-0824)
  • Fixed potential reading of local files through manipulation of form autocomplete. (CVE-2015-0822)
  • Fixed a potential PNG heap-overflow crash. DiD
  • Followed up on research regarding CVE-2014-8639 (see 25.2) and made cookie handling through proxies more restrictive again.
DiD This means that the fix is "Defense-in-Depth": It is a fix that does not apply to an actively exploitable vulnerability in Pale Moon, but prevents future vulnerabilities caused by the same code when surrounding code changes, exposing the problem.

25.2.1 (2015-01-27)

This is a small update to address cookie handling through proxies causing issues for some authenticating proxies in corporate environments.

25.2.0 (2015-01-15)

This is an important update after rapid development on the back-end to extend browser capabilities and implement some ES6 draft functions for web programmers, as well as provide some important crashfixes, bugfixes and security updates.

Fixes/changes:
  • ES6: Added the following functions:
    • Array.prototype.find and Array.prototype.findIndex
    • IsConstructor(arg)
    • Array.of(items...)
    • Number.parseInt and Number.parseFloat
    • Advanced math functions: hyperbolic sin/cos/tan/asin/acos/atan, hypotenuse, cube root, expm1, log1p, log10, log2, sign and trunc
    • Map.prototype.forEach and Set.prototype.forEach
  • ES6: Added the following number constants: EPSILON, MIN_SAFE_INTEGER and MAX_SAFE_INTEGER
  • ES6: Added the use of binary and octal numeric literals (&b... and &o...)
  • ES6: Updated behavior of accessing indexed values in accordance with the spec.
  • CSS: Added overflow-clip-box:content-box|padding-box
  • DOM: Added table.createTBody() function
  • Added a clearer alltabs button for dark personas.
  • Added a development tools toggle hotkey (F12)
  • Added a preference prompts.tab_modal.focusSwitch to enable or disable tab switching when a modal dialog (e.g. javascript confirmation) is presented in a page.
  • IonMonkey on Android: fixed the implementation of AbsI.
  • IonMonkey: fixed a bug where actively used objects were discarded.
  • Fixed register initialization to prevent incorrect detection of SIMD instructions on some CPUs.
  • Optimized some loops in the spell checker to increase performance.
  • Simplified cache handling, updated cache parameters to better reflect current web use, and enabled automatic cache sizing by default.
  • Adjusted memory cache sizing to better reflect capacities of current hardware.
  • Updated UserAgent override workarounds for Netflix and FaceBook to fix some site issues.
  • Aligned programmatic access to geolocation with the spec.
  • Fixed a crash when being fed a data file (XML) with too deeply nested tags.
  • Fixed a crash in HTML5/WebAudio that affected some games.
  • Fixed a crash when programmatically collapsing elements.
  • Fixed a few non-breaking bugs related to e10s code.
  • Fixed text input/padding issues.
  • Updated surround downmixing code for Vorbis.
  • Improved tolerance in WebAudio for loading multichannel audio files.
  • Android: Fixed an issue with Flash, it should now run on more devices.
  • Updated the DDG search plugin to make the actual query be the last parameter in the address bar for easy editing after a search has been performed.
  • Removed some unused update channel code.
  • Updated branding to more clearly indicate Pale Moon's trademark.
  • Updated some licensing texts in-browser to properly reflect used code and rights.
Security/privacy fixes:
  • Added a preference network.stricttransportsecurity.enabled to enable or disable the use of HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), allowing users to choose between privacy and security in this matter. (hidden pref)
  • Fixed CVE-2014-1589 by whitelisting XBL bindings that may be applied to untrusted content.
    Important: extension developers should read this related thread.
  • Fixed CVE-2014-1593.
  • Mac: fixed CVE-2014-1595.
  • Fixed CVE-2014-8639 by adjusting cookie handling through proxies.
  • Fixed CVE-2014-8636.
  • Fixed several memory safety hazards that do not have CVE numbers.

25.1.1 (2014-11-28) Android only!

This point release for Android only addresses critical browser issues (crash on startup) when trying to run Pale Moon on Android 5.0 (AKA Android-L or Lollipop). No other changes involved in this release.

25.1.0 (2014-11-14)

This is an important update after rapid development on the back-end to keep pace with the current changes on the web and improve compatibility with websites.

Fixes/changes:
  • New feature: multi-line flexbox support.
    Pale Moon now supports more advanced multi-line and multi-column flex elements. This will allow websites to use these elements for easier responsive design of web pages and ordering/layout of multiple elements. This has been on Pale Moon's to-do list for a while but was rather complex to tackle, hence the delay in implementation. This should address layout issues on several recently-updated websites (e.g. the MSN home page).
  • New feature: added support for collapsed flex element items.
  • Enhanced feature: Content Security Policy (CSP)
    Pale Moon now fully supports the CSP 1.0 specification allowing websites to set restrictions on content to prevent XSS (Cross-site scripting) attacks. Previously, the implementation in Pale Moon was partial, and did not support a number of features, resulting in some websites not rendering properly because Pale Moon was being too strict in enforcing the policy. This should address issues on websites enforcing CSP (e.g. the Dropbox web interface and FaceBook galleries).
  • New feature: added support for iframes with inline content.
  • Updated the Firefox Compatibility mode version to 31.9.
    With the improvements in rendering and overall feature set, the Firefox Compatibility mode (as presented in the UserAgent string) has been bumped to prevent websites from complaining about "using a too old/unsupported version of Firefox" (e.g. Google websites).
  • Pale Moon no longer builds the so-called "media navigator" by default.
    This module provides access to the user's webcam and microphone. Although it can be used for other purposes, in practice this is only used for WebRTC and, in fact, its support (GetUserMedia) is often mistaken for actually supporting WebRTC in a browser (causing errors since Pale Moon does not support WebRTC). No longer including these features reduces input complexity and overhead for a feature not actively used. This also circumvents privacy concerns/confusion like CVE-2014-1586.
  • Improved tab handling on lightweight themes (personas) some more to enhance contrast on certain themes and to make the tab hover effect slightly more distinct.
  • Fixed oversized/blocky menu arrows on Windows 8.1 in HiDPI mode.
  • Fixed incorrect operating system being passed on to addons.mozilla.org.
  • Fixed an error being thrown in the error console/web console when opening a new window.
  • Removed the NVidia 3D Vision auxiliary utility library.
    This library has been the likely cause for a number of crashes on NVidia cards, and is completely unnecessary for Pale Moon.
  • Made the installer less aggressive for file type associations, to prevent "stealing" of globally associated file types.
  • Android: improved restoring of session tabs.
  • Android: added an option to automatically restore tabs.
    An important thing to note with this new option is the following: with the option enabled, Pale Moon will now automatically restore tabs you had open previously when the app gets suspended (pushed out of memory by other apps, closed by swipe, etc.). The "quit" main menu option, however, completely shuts down your session, unloads Pale Moon from active memory, and tabs will not be automatically restored when you launch Pale Moon again. This is by design. To restore tabs in that situation, use the link from the home screen.
  • Fixed memory security hazards CVE-2014-1574 and CVE-2014-1575 security fix
  • Fixed CVE-2014-1581. security fix
  • Fixed bug 1069584: Bail if a cairo surface is in an invalid state. security fix
  • Made sure to initialize surfaces for draw targets. security fix
  • Fixed CVE-2014-1594: Use AsContainerLayer() in order to avoid a bad cast. security fix
  • Fixed several problems in the HTML parser. security fix
  • Improved security of XHR by filtering out types of requests that can potentially be abused. security fix

25.0.2 (2014-10-24)

This is a small update to address a number of teething problems with the new milestone release.

Fixes/changes:
  • Added a "Firefox compatibility mode" selection in Options -> Advanced.
    This mode is enabled by default (reluctantly so), because too many websites (including some very big players who, themselves, promote an Open Web...) still use very poor browser detection methods based on arbitrary User Agent string comparisons, not catering to alternative browsers, and the resulting user experience being poor (being presented with mobile site layouts, broken pages, or even being flat-out refused service because someone exercises freedom of choice for web browser used). This should alleviate most, if not all, issues with browser-discriminating websites.
  • Improved active tab display on particularly dark personas.
    People using "black" personas/lightweight themes should now have a lot less difficulty distinguishing the active tab.
  • Disabled SSL 3.0 by default (to put a muzzle on the POODLE).
    Please note that this may cause issues with some poorly configured web servers (usually ones with a hopelessly broken security setup that do not support TLS 1.2 or secure (re)negotiation of the protocol).
  • Fixed add-on update issue (that was preventing update checking through addons.palemoon.org).
  • Fixed the redundant redundancy in asking redundantly if the browser would be allowed to ask to install an extension when not on addons.mozilla.org.
  • Fixed the internal UA-sniffing insanity that broke devtools in a few different and colorful ways.

25.0.1 (2014-10-15)

This is a small update to address an important Jetpack extension compatibility issue and includes a number of security fixes.

Fixes/changes:
  • Update of the add-on SDK to add missing "Pale Moon" engine entries to lists. This should fix extension compatibility issues for jetpack extensions that otherwise already work with the new GUID.
  • About box release notes link corrected
  • Fix for VP9 decoder vulnerability security fix
  • Fix for direct access to raw connection sockets in http security fix
  • Fix for unsafe conversion to JSON of data through the alarm dom element security fix
  • Update of NSS to 3.16.2.2-RTM security fix

25.0.0 (2014-10-10)

Pale Moon 25.0 is a new major release with a large number of changes. A summary of the most important changes can be found here; for more details about this release, please check the forum.

Fixes/changes:
  • Change of the browser's GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) to properly differentiate from Firefox.
    The new GUID is {8de7fcbb-c55c-4fbe-bfc5-fc555c87dbc4}.
  • Allow extensions with both Pale Moon GUID and Firefox GUID to be installed natively (dual-ID system).
    Pale Moon GUID blocks will have preference over Firefox (compatibility) blocks.
  • Disconnect of Pale Moon's "Firefox compatibility" version from Pale Moon's application version to maintain Firefox 24.* extension compatibility regardless of Pale Moon version.
  • Disable Firefox Compatibility mode by default.
    This means Pale Moon will no longer have a Firefox/xx.xx indicator in its UserAgent string.
    This may impact some websites that check browsers by UserAgent and possibly warn, complain or block you. You should contact the site's owners and request support for Pale Moon. Pale Moon will allow you to override the UserAgent on a per-site basis if you absolutely must visit the site and they absolutely won't cater to your freedom of browser choice.
  • Use the alternative sync implementation on a new server.
    Current Pale Moon sync accounts cannot be ported over, so you will have to create a new account when updating to v25.
    The previous server implementation has already been shut down due to continued issues, and will be retired on the very short term to free up infrastructure and reduce expenses. The alternative sync implementation is Sync 1.1 compatible, like before.
  • Stop building the WebApp runtime by default.
    The use of "Web Applications" started from the command-line is such a niche feature that it has no business being in Pale Moon's main-line builds.
    If you need the WebApp runtime for your specific organization and want to use Pale Moon, you can build Pale Moon from source with the feature enabled.
  • Stop supporting Windows XP. As mentioned a few times before, Pale Moon's support for Windows XP (and any other NT 5.x based operating system) has now ended. An exception to this is the specialized Atom build because of limited operating system availability on netbooks and the like. More details on the dedicated page for this change.
  • By default, do not sync add-ons.
    Syncing between different devices will likely not want you to sync the add-ons in use. There's a reason you're using different devices, after all.
  • Un-prefix CSS box-sizing.
    You can now use box-sizing:border-box, box-sizing:padding-box and box-sizing:content-box to switch box-sizing mode on elements using CSS.
  • Implement image-orientation in CSS.
    You can now use image-orientation: {angle} [flip] in CSS to rotate images in 90 degree steps and optionally flip them.
  • Improve bookmark menu item-dragging.
    Dragging bookmarks in the bookmarks menu is now more convenient (allow diagonal dragging, prevent tooltips from interfering, etc.).
    (Fixes bugs 225434, 419911 and 555474)
  • Move the option to "use the classic downloads window" from status bar preferences to the main options window.
    This way, it's easier for people to find and it's in a much more logical place. The classic downloads window will not go away any time soon in Pale Moon.
  • Update branding images for official/unofficial logo, and some about: pages.
  • Add a new type of "blank new tab" page with logo-styling.
    This logo page will be the default setting (instead of about:blank).
  • Add Opus audio to WebM.
  • Add VP9 codec to WebM on both desktop and Android/ARM.
  • Allow absolute-in-relative positioning in table and CSS table-cell elements.
  • Allow the user to override the use of accessibility colors in the browser with browser.display.ignore_accessibility_theme
  • Improve the display of tabs when lightweight themes (personas) are in use for both light and dark themes.
  • Enable cache compression by default to more efficiently use disk cache.
  • When shutting down the browser while you still have downloads in progress, Pale Moon will now by default warn you that the downloads will be cancelled.
  • Added language packs for Acholi, Assamese, Kashubian, Pulaar Fulfulde, Armenian, Khmer, Ligure, Mongolian, and Swahili.
Bug/regression fixes:
  • Prevent error in removeobserver() for the padlock code when closing a window
  • Hang fix: Release XPCOM timer immediately after firing to prevent a race condition. (CVE-2014-1553)
  • Android & any ARM processor: Always use integers for audio instead of floats.
  • Properly apply the use of high contrast themes on Windows 8/8.1
  • Prevent the accumulation of hidden about:blank windows in some situations.
  • Android: prevent deadlocks due to invalidations when using plugins (Flash)
  • Re-enable high-quality downscaling of particularly large images (selective HQ downscaling) and improve fast image scaling method (use Lanczos instead of Hamming)
  • Hang/DoS fix: Avoid uninterruptable infinite loops in IonMonkey in some situations. (CVE-2014-1548)
  • Android: improve the handling of zooming to input fields
Security fixes:
  • Properly derive/insert the host of a URL
  • Avoid negative audio ratios (can lead to crashes) (CVE-2014-1565)
  • Avoid some root hazards in the style parser
  • Add is-object check to IonBuilder::makeCallHelper (CVE-2014-1562)
  • Clear the jumplist icon cache when history is cleared (privacy fix)
  • Crash fix on Windows (JS JIT) (CVE-2014-1554)
  • Prevent buffer overrun in text directionality component (CVE-2014-1567)
  • Update NSS to 3.16.2.1-RTM (CVE-2014-1568)

Release notes for version 24 releases

24.7.2 (2014-09-11)

This is a small bugfix and security update.

Fixes/changes:
  • Use (i) icon for error console informational messages instead of (?)
  • Properly derive and insert the host of a URL security fix
  • Avoid negative audio ratios. security fix
  • Release XPCOM timer immediately after firing to prevent a race condition.
  • Add is-object check to IonBuilder::makeCallHelper. security fix

24.7.1 (2014-08-06)

This is a bugfix release for some outstanding issues in 24.7.0.

Fixes/changes:
  • Fixed a text rendering issue with the new back-end on overdraw layers when hardware acceleration is in use on Windows. This may also solve some additional small issues in the user interface that weren't present before 24.7.0.
  • Fixed the use of Google Maps.
    If you previously used the workaround in 24.7, then please remove the user-set preference (right-click -> reset).

24.7.0 (2014-07-29)

This is a large update to address a good number of different things across the board. If you want more details about these changes, check the more detailed announcement on the forum.

Fixes/changes:
  • Fixed some performance issues with the new rendering engine on Windows. Rendering should be faster for all objects on hardware-accelerated layers now.
  • Font rendering on Direct2D will no longer fall back to greyscale in some situations, preserving ClearType.
  • CSS outlines will now properly outline the object, and not the overflow area (e.g. box shadow).
  • The delay for hiding the default status has been increased from 10 to 30 seconds to keep it on screen sufficiently long but not permanently.
  • Queries for "can play type" on WebM videos now get an HTML5-compliant response ("maybe" instead of "yes" as per the specification when a codec is not included in the request).
  • Pale Moon's gecko rendering engine and Firefox compatibility version now properly follows the minor version of Pale Moon again instead of always returning .0 - this should help UA sniffing websites to more easily detect Pale Moon or adapt to further-developed gecko 24 versions.
  • When using dark/black personas (lightweight themes), the tab close buttons would be almost invisible. They have been lightened a little to make them clearer.
  • Linux: the click behavior on the address bar has been unified with that on Windows, aiming for current-day desktop-clipboard use (select-when-clicked). This is configurable with a preference.
  • "In-content" preferences (preferences displayed in a tab instead of the normal dialog box) has been removed because of redundancy and incompleteness.
  • Checking for updates from the about box now always puts the user in control and never downloads anything directly from the about box. It will pop up the larger update window when an update is found.
  • Google SafeBrowsing, which is defunct, has been removed from the browser. privacy fix
  • Made the building of the Web Developer tools optional when compiling Pale Moon through --disable-devtools.
  • The Atom-optimized version no longer ships with the Web Developer tools to slim down the browser for limited platforms where these tools are considered generally unneeded.
  • Fixed domain highlighting in the address bar. It should no longer randomly lose this formatting when switching tabs or otherwise updating the browser UI.
  • Fixed missing click-to-play overlay on some zoom levels for plugins embedded in an iframe.
  • Fixed large delays in print enumeration on Windows, especially when printing to file: ports.
  • Updated the list of known domain suffixes.
  • Updated site-specific user-agent strings to prevent incorrect complaints from websites (google.com, aol.com, etc.) that use poor detection scripts.
  • Added granular referer control. See the release announcement on the forum for more details on how to use this.
  • Added gr locale to the status bar options.
  • Disabled HQ image downscaling. This is a workaround for the broken Mozilla HQ downscaling back-end causing constant invalidations and redrawing if 2 downscaled images with the same source were in view.
  • Updated the NSS library to 3.16.2 RTM to address a few critical SSL issues. security fix
  • There was a possibility to lose the source frame for raster images if images had to be discarded in low-memory situations. This has been fixed. security fix
  • Made refcounting logic around PostTimerEvent more explicit. security fix
  • Prevented an invalid pointer state in docloader. security fix
  • Added proper refcounting of font faces. security fix
  • Android: lots of branding updates to make it more release-ready.
  • Android: explicitly set the Pale Moon Sync server in preferences.
  • Android: IonMonkey (ARM): guarded against branches being out of range and bail out if so. security fix
  • Android: enabled Firefox compatibility mode on Android to allow the installation of extensions from AMO.
  • Android: added a "Quit" option to the app menu to properly immediately close the browser.
  • Android: IonMonkey (ARM): prevented a performance issue due to clobbering the primary scratch register.
  • Android: enabled mobile-specific optimizations to increase performance on mobile devices.
  • Android: enabled AES-128 and AES-256 in addition to RC4 for Sync.

24.6.2 (2014-06-16)

A point release to address some further outstanding issues with the overhauled rendering engine.

Fixes/changes:
  • Automate rendering back-end selection and use cairo as appropriate.
    This should fix start-up problems on all types of graphics cards regardless of vendor.
  • Fix font subpixel rendering in menus when on cairo backend (D2D off)
  • Cairo: Prevent falling back to padding when not strictly needed.
    Performance regression fix if D2D isn't used.
  • Azure: Use correct device offsets.
  • Prevent crashes due to the allocation of source surfaces to errored surfaces
    This prevents some miscellaneous browser crashes occurring with cairo on azure.

24.6.1 (2014-06-08)

A quick point release update mainly to address startup crashes.

Fixes/changes:
  • Update to address startup crashes if users previously changed the setting for Azure for Content
  • Update for texture handling to restore GDI compatibility (should fix some graphics glitches)
  • Fix to handle invalid PDF plugin overlay state
  • Misc. additional security fixes ported over from Firefox (bug #s 991981, 995679, 999651, 1009952, 1011007)

24.6.0 (2014-06-06)

This is a major update including a rendering engine overhaul and a number of very important fixes. For details about the changes, please see the detailed changelog on the forum.

Fixes/changes:
  • Allow animated personas (lightweight themes)! You will need to set a preference for this.
  • Fix regularly occurring browser crashes with hardware acceleration enabled on DirectWrite 6.2/6.3 (Win 7 with Platform Update, Windows 8/8.1).
  • Fix font rendering issues on DirectWrite 6.2/6.3, especially on legacy AMD hardware. (KB2670838 issues).
  • Fix Windows version detection issues on Windows 8.1.
  • Shuffle reported plugin installation order to confuse trackers.
  • Clean up jumplist icons so they no longer pile up on disk on some systems (also a privacy concern).
  • Change the sync server to a (new) Pale Moon sync server.
  • Update the status bar code: Full-screen HTML5 video will no longer have status pop-ups overlaid.
  • Add code to selectively ignore "autocomplete=off" on signon input fields.
  • Linux: reduce gstreamer CPU overhead.
  • Fix styled HTML buttons to address misaligned button contents (wrong baseline), e.g. gmail account chooser.
  • Fix an old IonMonkey bug resulting in incorrect math results in some cases.
  • Improve the performance of editor initialization.
  • Update the Pale Moon icon for better display on lower color depths.
  • Media: use a simpler way to discard superfluous audio packets.
Security fixes:
  • Bug #994907 - imgDecoderObserver does reference counting on different threads, so should be using thread safe reference counting.
  • Bug #992274 - Tweak an edge case in line number handling.
  • Bug #995603 - Ensure mouse-enter/exit events are sent to plugins as appropriate.
  • Bug #1005552 - Stop binding marquee event handlers + misc related fixes.
  • Bug #1000185 - Fix several issues with SMIL.
  • Bug #978811 - Fix isFakeExitFrame to return true for entry frames.
  • Bug #996715 - IonMonkey: Remove the code that bails when determining if the second instruction in a chunk is a branch.
  • Bug #967354 - Fix incorrect usage of UpdateWebGLErrorAndClearGLError();
In addition, Pale Moon also has a public Git repository now:
https://repo.palemoon.org/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon

24.5.0 (2014-04-25)

This is a security and bugfix release, to address outstanding known issues and streamline browser identity.

Fixes/changes:
  • Fix plugin doorhanger code for removed-node confusion.
  • Remove Mozilla Corp specific details from search plugins, to clearly indicate the client is Pale Moon, and to make sure searches are not counted by search providers towards any other browser's search totals by mistake.
  • Make sure to set both "warnOnClose" and "warnOnCloseOther" prefs to false when users choose to disable this check in the popup prompt.
  • Update branding: Remove nightly branding altogether - only have unofficial+official,  and fix the broken About dialog branding.
  • Bugfix: Clamp level of WebGL TexImage operations to 32-bits to avoid issues on x64 architectures.
  • Update Linux theme: feed icon
  • Bugfix: Add Firefox Compatibility flag to unofficial branding.
  • Workaround for several prominent websites complaining about an "outdated browser".
Security fixes:
  • Bug #987003 - Be more careful sandboxing javascript: URLs.
  • Bug #952022 - Add missing detachAsmJSModule.
  • Bug #986843 - Replace AutoHoldZone with AutoCompartmentRooter.
  • Bug #989183 - Check for nsXBLJSClass.
  • Bug #980537 - Only store FakeBackstagePass instances in mThisObjects.
  • Bug #986678 - Fix type check in TryAddTypeBarrierForWrite.
  • Bug #966006 - Fix security issue in DNS resolver.
  • Bug #944353 - Avoid spurious decoding of corrupt images.
  • Bug #969226 - Avoid buffer overflow in corrupt ICC profiles.
  • Bug #991471 - Fix offset when setting host on URL.
  • Bug #993546 - Don't try to malloc-free 0-size memory chunks.
  • Bug #992968 - Avoid OOM problems with JIT code caching

24.4.2 (2014-04-02)

A small bugfix release, and implementing OCSP-stapling for SSL connections.

Fixes/changes:
  • Added OCSP-stapling.
  • Removed download status indicator from default set in status bar code to fix erroneous pop-up locations of the downloads panel.
  • Fixed errors with synchronous OCSP-stapled calls.
  • Reduced the timeout for OCSP requests to 2 seconds unless OCSP is required by the server.
  • Added proper handling of fragment loading (Bug #s 895557&987140). security fix
  • Updated status bar localizations: kn-IN and pt-PT.

24.4.1 (2014-03-19)

A small security and bugfix release.

Fixes/changes:
  • Bugfix: the new status bar code in 24.4.0 had a bug, preventing the downloads panel/window from opening when clicking on the download status indicator. There may have been a few other, similar small usability bugs in the same code that have now been fixed.
  • Feature update: Selecting "Warn me when closing multiple tabs" in the Options window will now apply both to closing a window and closing other tabs in the tab bar.
  • Bug #940714 - Add an RAII class to make synchronous raster image decoding safer.
  • Bug #896268 - Use a stateless approach to synchronous image decoding. security fix
  • Bug #982909 - Consistently use inner window when calling OpenJS. security fix
  • Bug #982957 - Fix crash if certain sweeps run out of memory. security fix
  • Bug #982906 - Remove option for security bypass in URI building. security fix
  • Bug #983344 - JavaScript: Simplify typed arrays and fix GC loops. security fix
  • Bug #982974 - Be paranoid about neutering ArrayBuffer objects. security fix

24.4.0 (2014-03-10)

This update changes the new title behavior slightly and updates a lot of things under-the-hood.

Fixes/changes:
  • By popular request: the new page title (when using the Pale Moon App button) will now follow the operating system default alignment (in most cases), meaning it will align left on Windows Vista and Windows 7 by default instead of center. If you want to hide the title or align it differently, please see the FAQ section on the forum.
  • Updated status bar code to the latest "non-australis" version and license change to MPL 2.0 to bring it in line with the rest of the browser code, making it an integral part of the source tree to streamline building (also for 3rd parties).
  • Changed the way Pale Moon handles file and protocol associations. This will prevent interoperability issues if you have both Firefox and Pale Moon installed on the same system. A side effect is that Pale Moon will ask you (once) to make it the default browser again when you install this update, because of the new associations to be made.
  • Changed the search default to DuckDuckGo.
  • Added DuckDuckGo logo to about:home.
  • Changed some things in the build system, back-end code and build configuration to improve overall performance of the browser.
  • Switched to the use of a more compact browser filesystem layout, improving overall start-up speed.
  • Precompiled script cache in the application, improving overall start-up speed at the expense of some disk space.
  • Added MPS detection for non-windows operating systems (NSPR fallback method) instead of always "1".
Bugfixes ported over:
  • Bug #968461 - Fix imgStatusTracker.h to build with gcc 4.4.
  • Bug #912322 - Make sure document.getAnonymous* is no longer available to web content.
  • Bug #894448 - Move IsChromeOrXBL to xpcpublic.h.
Security fixes:
  • Bug #963198 - Don't mix up byte-size and array-length.
  • Bug #966311 - Calculate frame size for stereo wave.
  • Bug #958867 - Consistent OwningObject handling in IDBFactory::Create methods.
  • Bug #925747 - Patch file extraction cleanup.
  • Bug #942152 - Fix error handling on NSS I/O layer.
  • Bug #960145 - IonMonkey: Don't ignore OSR-like values when computing phi ranges.
  • Bug #965982 - Clean up client threads before I/O on shutdown.
  • Bug #950604 - Backport of a small typed array bugfix.
  • Bug #967341 - Fix up URI management.
  • Bug #963974 - Null mCurrentCompositeTask after calling Cancel() on it.

24.3.2 (2014-02-11)

An update to implement TLS v1.2, implement a few new features and fix some minor bugs.

Fixes/changes:
  • New feature: Implemented the TLS v1.1 (RFC 4346) and TLS v1.2 (RFC 5246) protocols for improved https security.
  • Changed the list of supported encryption ciphers and order of preference to provide you with secure, speedy connections wherever possible.
  • New feature: Added CSS background-attachment:local
  • New feature: Added dashed-line stroke support for canvas drawing (set/get/offset)
  • Adjusted geolocation timings to prevent IP bans in testing mode and to give you a slightly faster response to the request.
  • Adjusted the new window title position some more to account for edge cases.
  • Fixed the installer to use the proper class for checking if Pale Moon is already installed/running.
  • Security fix: bug #966021 - Fix load_truetype_table in the cairo dwrite font backend.

24.3.1 (2014-01-31)

A minor bugfix release to address some issues with new code in 24.3.

Fixes/changes:
  • Fine-tuned the title-bar title text position to work a little better on Windows 8 systems.
  • Fixed a problem with the classic download manager window not opening and/or downloads not starting when using the classic download manager.
  • Security fix: Bug 945334 - Fix runnable pointer holding.
  • Merged Linux-specific theme code into the source tree for the pm4linux project.

24.3.0 (2014-01-28)

A fairly significant update with feature updates, bugfixes, and security fixes.

Changes and bugfixes:
  • New build: Atom-optimized Pale Moon
    After some thorough testing, the Atom/netbook builds are being released as final. These builds are specifically made for PCs with Intel Atom processors. More information can be found on the Atom builds page.
  • New feature: the title has been brought back to the title bar
    When using the Application Menu (Pale Moon button), the title bar of the browser window would be blank. Considering this is wasted space, the page title will now be displayed in the title bar again (it's called a title bar for a reason, after all!). Several different styles have been implemented to cater to different OS version layouts.
  • Removal of the services tab in the Add-on Manager
    It will be visible only if someone actually has a service extension installed (similar to how language packs work)
  • Improvement of UI consistency
    Removal of illogical selective hiding of the navigation bar and toolbars when in tabs-on-top mode (Add-ons manager, permissions manager, etc.). Browser chrome will now never be hidden.
  • Bugfix: When using the classic downloads window, downloads in private windows were not shown
    If you use the classic downloads window and would open a Private Browsing (PB) window, there was no easy way to see which downloads were done in the PB window. When checking the downloads, it would open up the (non-PB) classic downloads window which does not have downloads listed from the PB session. This has been fixed, and PB windows will now open a new tab in the PB window with the downloads from that private session.
  • Bugfix: Geolocation didn't work in Pale Moon
    This was caused by the Firefox standard geolocation provider (Google Inc.) now requiring an API key to request geolocation coordinates. Only official Mozilla Firefox builds will have working geolocation from Google.
    Pale Moon has switched provider to IP-API.com to address this issue, with the required re-write of code for the different type of request. More information on the forum.
  • Bugfix: The "More information" link for blocked add-ons didn't work
  • Bugfix: Certain scaled fonts would have malformed letters
    On Vista and later with hardware acceleration enabled, certain letters of some font families would become malformed and difficult to read because of a Direct2D scaling issue. These fonts should now render sharp and more legibly.
  • Romanian has been added to the status bar localizations
Bugfixes ported over:
  • Bug #903274 - Have the search bar binding's initialization callback bail out if the binding is destroyed.
  • Bug #951142 - Check for a close method to be present on the binding before invoking it.
  • Bug #908915 - Fix compartment mismatch in shell decompileThis and disassemble functions.
  • Bug #950909 - Forward native aggregation to the root XPCWrappedJS.
  • Bug #937152 - Remove XPCWrappedJS::mMainThread and mMainThreadOnly.
  • Bug #948134 - Fix "value is not defined" in PlacesDBUtils.jsm.
  • Bug #822425 - Expose a few simple compartment assertions in jsfriendapi.
  • Bug #932906 - Observer no longer called when using overlay
Security fixes:
  • Update of the NSS library to 3.15.4 RTM
  • Bug #936808 - Serialize calls to PK11 routines in SSLServerCertVerification.
  • Bug #945939 - Use the pre-split value when numbering values.
  • Bug #911864 - Fix several XBL issues
  • Bug #921470 - Remove hasFallbackStub_ check in resetMonitorStubChain.
  • Bug #950590 - Use nsRefPtr for gfxFontGroup's reference to the user font set, and support changing it from canvas context.
  • Bug #937697 - Simplify some BoundsCheckRange code.
  • Bug #936056 - Be consistent about the thisobj we pass to getters.
  • Bug #953114 - Fix GetElementIC typed array issue.
  • Bug #937132 - SpiderMonkey: Check for overflows in LifoAlloc.
  • Bug #932162 - Dispatch IndexedDB FileInfo releases to the main thread.
  • Bug #951366 - Use AutoDetectInvalidation for disabled GetElement caches.
  • Bug #950438 - IonMonkey: The intersection of two ranges that both contain NaN is not empty.
  • Bug #950268 - Fix leak in nsCertTree::GetDispInfoAtIndex.
  • Bug #932906 - Exempt Remote XUL from CanCreateWrapper checks.
  • Bug #882933 - Copy treatAsRunOnce bit when cloning scripts, don't clone scripts unnecessarily for arrow lambdas.
  • Bug #901348 - Duplicate symbol errors building --with-intl-api.
  • Bug #925896 - Properly reference session data
  • Bug #943803 - Use monitor instead of mutex locking for raster images
  • Bug #942164 - Use weak references to imgRequest consumers
  • Bug #947592 - Streamline ReportLoadError.

24.2.2 (2013-12-11)

Mainly a security update:
  • Implementation of all remaining applicable security fixes from Firefox 26.0 that were not implemented yet in previous versions.
  • Update of the Security library (NSS) to 3.15.3.1.
  • Fix of new js zone writes/zone barrier bugs.
  • The Sync configuration allows users to input their own recovery key again. Please note that letting the browser generate its own secure recovery key is still strongly recommended, as this recovery key should be impossible to guess and of sufficient length and complexity to keep your data safely encrypted.

24.2.1 (2013-12-04)

A minor bugfix update:
  • Fix for some status bar localizations not working and giving an error.
  • Implementation of an optimized QuickFind routine.
  • Implementation of per-zone user data handling.
  • Security fix in the JPEG library.
  • Security fix in web workers.

24.2.0 (2013-11-26)

This update implements the following changes:
  • Update of the new-tab routine: When opening a new tab, focus will now only be on the address bar if you open a blank tab or the Quick Dial page, and focus will be on the page content otherwise (Pale Moon start page or custom URL).
  • Compatibility issues between QuickFind/Find-as-you-Type and HTML5 input fields in forms fixed.
  • New advanced feature: Later versions of the Firefox code will automatically place the browser window fully on a visible portion of the screen. If you prefer having the browser window positioned partially off-screen and want to prevent this automatic resizing and repositioning when starting a new session, create a new boolean preference in about:config called browser.sessionstore.exactPos and set it to true.
  • Updated the localization of the status bar code with the following locales: en-GB, es-MX, es-AR, it, pl.
  • Fix for a security issue with script event handlers.

24.1.2 (2013-11-19)

This update implements the following changes:
  • Update of the NSPR library to 4.10.2 RTM.
  • Update of the Security library (NSS) to 3.15.3 (alternative branch) to pick up a number of fixes.
  • Fix (finally) of the menu list of tabs when browser.allTabs.previews is set to false. It would stick the top entry, not properly highlight the selected tab, and would generally be unpleasant and stubborn when tabs were moved or closed. This should all be corrected now.
  • Additional feature: Previously, tabs would immediately resize to fill the tab bar when you would close them. Mozilla changed this a (long) while back to cater to "rapidly closing multiple tabs without moving the mouse" and to resize you have to move the mouse out of the tab bar. A good number of Firefox/Pale Moon users don't like this behavior, but the fix to make this configurable was in the end rejected by the Mozilla UX team, so I opted for my own implementation in Pale Moon. New pref: browser.tabs.resize_immediately - set this preference to true to immediately resize other tabs when closing a tab.
    Many thanks to David for doing the required research for this feature!
  • Rework of the multi-core routine and removal of OpenMP code and the related library (Microsoft's implementation is old, limited, and won't be updated/improved; in addition it prevented some compiler optimizations that could now be used again).
  • The accessibility back-end for automatically starting "Find as you type" (an accessibility feature) has been disabled completely to prevent this setting from breaking websites with HTML5 input fields (not compatible with autostarting FAYT).

24.1.1 (2013-11-05)

This is a minor update to 24.1.0 to revert the change of disabling 2 specific SSL ciphers by default, since it broke more web sites than anticipated (including external elements pulled in from third-party sites using SSL). No other changes were made.

24.1.0 (2013-11-04)

This update fixes a number of security and user interface issues, and adds the feed icon in the address bar.

Fixes:
  • MFSA 2013-102 Use-after-free in HTML document templates.
  • MFSA 2013-101 Memory corruption in workers.
  • MFSA 2013-100 Miscellaneous use-after-free issues found through ASAN fuzzing.
  • MFSA 2013-99 Security bypass of PDF.js checks using iframes.
  • MFSA 2013-98 Use-after-free when updating offline cache.
  • MFSA 2013-97 Writing to cycle collected object during image decoding.
  • MFSA 2013-96 Improperly initialized memory and overflows in some JavaScript functions.
  • MFSA 2013-95 Access violation with XSLT and uninitialized data.
  • MFSA 2013-94 Spoofing addressbar though SELECT element.
  • MFSA 2013-93 Miscellaneous memory safety hazards.
  • Security + cleanup fix: No longer store empty event handlers.
  • User interface: Fix for the classic downloads window having a blank title with no running downloads.
  • User interface: Fix of the drop-down menu "double entry" in the all-tabs list as-a-menu setup.
Changes:
  • Extensions are now set to automatically update by default. Because many users fail to do the occasional check to see if there are updates available to their extensions, the default is to automatically check and install available updates to extensions from this version forward to give the best possible browsing experience. If you prefer to check manually, make sure to change the setting accordingly in your add-on manager.
  • Two SSL ciphers that are considered weak are disabled by default (RSA-RC4-128-MD5 and RSA-RC4-128-SHA). If you are having trouble reaching certain encrypted sites that exclusively use these encryption methods, you should ask the site owners to update their SSL configuration to allow stronger encryption. As a workaround, you can enable the ciphers by installing the Pale Moon Commander add-on and changing the available ciphers there, or by setting security.ssl3.rsa_rc4_128_md5 and security.ssl3.rsa_rc4_128_sha to true in about:config
    (Note: this change was reverted in 24.1.1)
New Features:
  • When there is a web feed available on a website, Pale Moon will now display a feed indicator on the right side of the address bar to indicate that feeds are available. You can click this icon to subscribe to feeds.
    If you don't want this indicator, set browser.urlbar.rss to false in about:config
    Note: more technical information on the forum!

24.0.2 (2013-09-27)

This is a small update to address a few issues with standalone images:
  • In some cases when having an image open, the User Interface would not properly redraw resulting in blank controls and tab headers.
  • In some cases, having an image open would cause 100% processor use on one core.
  • Drawing thumbnails of standalone images in the tab headers would often be slow and processor-intensive.

24.0.1 (2013-09-18)

This is a small update to address some small issues with the new major version:
  • Fix for unreadable address bar text when visiting a broken or mixed-mode SSL site.
  • Fix for an incorrect browser cache size default when first starting the browser. (regression)
    Note: If you have used version 24.0, then please check your Options -> Advanced -> Network tab, and if the cache size is set to "1024", change it back to its default "250" to prevent unnecessary use of disk space and potential slowing of the browser.
  • Fix for themes not applying to Private Browsing windows. (regression)
  • A small update to the new icon to fix some visual issues with it.
  • Reduction of visual friction and CPU usage on some operations by disabling smooth scrolling on it by default (e.g. Home/End keys).

24.0 (2013-09-13)

This is a new major release with many changes and improvements. A concise summary of the changes follows. There are too many changes and updates (both resulting from the code base update and from the additional Pale Moon development on top) to list all of them in detail.
  • Switch to a new Mozilla code base (Gecko 24.0).
  • Update of the Pale Moon icon/logo. Special thanks go to Roger Gómez del Casal for providing me with an interesting concept design image to use as a base for it!
  • Fixes for all relevant security vulnerabilities.
  • Many changes and updates in the rendering, scripting and parsing back-end to provide significant improvements in overall browser performance (including benchmark scores).
  • Addition of a number of HTML5 elements, improving overall HTML5 standards compliance.
  • Implementation of the webaudio API (most features that are no longer draft).
  • Removal of Tab Groups (Panorama). If you actively used this functionality, I have also made an add-on (Mozilla dev sourced) available to restore this feature to the browser. If you have issues with the supplied add-on or want to give other tab grouping methods a try, you can use alternatives found on AMO.
  • Removal of a few additional Accessibility options.
  • Inclusion of an updated version of the Add-on SDK and loader to solve recent issues with SDK/Jetpack add-ons.
  • Adjustment of the Quickdial "new tab" feature to have better layout.
  • Extension of the address bar shading functionality to more clearly indicate when there is a problem with a secure site (red shading on broken SSL/mixed content).
  • New way of handling plugins with control on a per-site basis. An extensive description can be found on the forum.
  • Restored/maintained a number of features that were removed from recent Firefox versions:
    • Graphical tab switching feature with quick search (Ctrl+Shift+Tab).
    • Removing the tab bar if there is only one tab present.
    • Options for the loading of images.
    • More recovery options in the Safe Mode startup dialog box than just nuking your profile.
    • Send Link/E-mail Link mail client integration functionality.
  • Unification of version numbers. x86 and x64 will from this point forward use the same version number (and icon) without an architecture designation. This will solve potential compatibility issues on new major versions, as well as the superfluous compatibility check when switching between x86 and x64 on the same profile.

Release notes for version 20

20.3 (2013-08-13)

This update addresses performance/resource use and also tackles some security vulnerabilities.

Changes:
  • A change to how tab histories are cached to improve the overall memory footprint and make browsing smoother, especially when using a large number of tabs with extensive active use.
  • A change to the networking pipelining back-end to use a more aggressive fallback if there are issues with pipelining requests, to minimize delays when loading pages and prevent time-outs.
  • Update of the compiler to Visual Studio 2012 Update 3, to fix a few compiler issues.
  • Removed the double entry for smooth scrolling selection in preferences (leaving just the one in the scrolling tab)
Fixes:
  • (CVE-2013-1704) ASAN heap-use-after-free in nsINode::GetParentNode
  • (CVE-2013-1708) Non-null crash at nsCString::CharAt
  • (CVE-2013-1712) Code injection through internal updater
  • (CVE-2013-1713) InstallTrigger can use the wrong principal when validating URI loads
  • (CVE-2013-1714) Cross Domain Policy override using webworkers
  • Fix for Updater crash
  • Fix for XSS vulnerability/URI spoofing
  • Fix for newly allocated WebGL array buffers (prevent the use of uninitialized memory)
  • Several fixes for the SSL crypto library (CVE-2013-1705 and others)
  • Fix for do_QueryFrame support
  • x64: Fix for Yarr error
  • Update to the installer's 7zsfx module to prevent dll hijacking
Portable version:
Important note for updating the portable version: it's recommended you make a fresh install of the portable and copy over your user profile to the new install with this update. Do not use the internal updater. Remember to check your user.ini if you have created one or changed .ini entries, and re-implement your changes in the 20.3 palemoon-portable.ini (don't just copy it over!)
  • Fix for safebrowsing
  • Enabled the XUL cache to improve startup times

20.2.1 (2013-07-08)

A small update to address issues with the new Aero glass theme, e.g. Tab Groups not showing.

20.2 (2013-07-01)

This is a maintenance update, focusing on visual improvements and security.

Changes:
  • Implementation of some conservative additional multi-core support (mainly in graphics/media) using OpenMP. I'm taking baby steps here and will remain conservative in the use of multiple cores so stability of the browser isn't needlessly endangered.
  • Update of the navigation button icons (again). Users have clearly indicated that the inverted color icons on glass and dark themes were less desirable. I've listened, and changed the icons for glass back to the pre-20 style but with added contrast, and made a distinction for dark personas (themes) where the icons are now simply inverted white (like in Firefox).
  • Change for the color management system (CMS) so that Pale Moon now supports more types of embedded ICC profiles (including the already decade-old version 4 spec) and in the process fixing potential color issues on screens with images that embed such profiles.
  • Update of the browser padlock code. You can now choose both a "modern" look (as introduced in version 19) and a "classic" look (as introduced in version 15, when this padlock feature was first added). It also removes some phantom spacing in locations where the padlock isn't used (thanks for the pointer, Sowmoots!).
Fixes:
  • (CVE-2013-1692) Fix for the inclusion of body data in an XMLHttpRequest HEAD request, making cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks via a crafted web site more difficult.
  • (CVE-2013-1697) Fix to restrict use of DefaultValue for method calls, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary JavaScript code with chrome privileges.
  • (CVE-2013-1694) Fix to properly handle the lack of a wrapper, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code.
  • (CVE-2013-1690) Crash fix (MFSA 2013-53) used to crash Tor users on certain Tor sites.
  • Fix to prevent arbitrary code execution from the profiler developer tool.
  • Fix for a crash when rapidly reloading pages.
  • Fix for cross-document selections.
  • Fixes for several crashes in JavaScript.
  • Fixes for several memory safety hazards and uncommon memory leaks.

20.1 (2013-05-23)

This is a security and stability update with a few additional changes and improvements.

Changes:
  • Update of the libpixman graphics library to improve performance for SSE2 CPUs
  • Change to the "Clear download history" setting for use with the panel-based download manager (classic UI unaffected)
Fixes:
  • (CVE-2013-1674) Fix for UAF with video and onresize event (crash fix)
  • (CVE-2013-1675) Fix for parameters being used uninitialized
  • (CVE-2013-1676) Fix for out-of-bounds read in SelectionIterator::GetNextSegment
  • (CVE-2013-1679) Fix for heap use-after-free in mozilla::plugins::child::_geturlnotify
  • (CVE-2013-1680) Fix for heap-use-after-free in nsFrameList::FirstChild (crash fix)
  • (CVE-2013-1681) Fix for heap-use-after-free in nsContentUtils::RemoveScriptBlocker (crash fix)
  • Fix for out-of-bounds read crash in PropertyProvider::GetSpacingInternal (crash fix)
  • Fix for out-of-bounds read in gfxSkipCharsIterator::SetOffsets
  • Fix for assertion failure in nsUnicharStreamLoader::WriteSegmentFun with ISO-2022-JP
  • Fix for crash with inline script in an XML doc (crash fix)
  • Fix for "ASSERTION: Out of flow frame doesn't have the expected parent" and crash  (crash fix)
  • Fix for nsScriptSecurityManager::CheckLoadURIWithPrincipal being broken
  • Fix for a problem where the IPC Channel could overwrite the stack
  • Fix for Crash in MediaDecoder::UpdatePlaybackOffset (crash fix)
  • Fix for Crash [@ nsTextFrame::HasTerminalNewline()] with splitText (crash fix)
  • Fix for FTP use-after-free crash  (crash fix)
More details can be found in the release announcement post on the forum.

20.0.1 (2013-04-11)

This is mostly a bugfix, security and performance update, but with a number of new features as well, based on the Firefox 20 code base:

New/updated/changed major features:
  • Per-window Private Browsing. Learn more.
  • Panel-based download manager. See the detailed changelog for more information.
  • Ability to close hanging plugins, without the browser hanging.
  • Performance improvements related to common browser tasks.
  • Pale Moon specific Cairo performance fix for scaling/panning/zooming of HTML5 drawing surfaces.
  • Pale Moon specific fixes for performance of drawing elements (gradients, etc.).
  • HTML5 canvas now supports blend modes.
  • Various HTML5 audio and video improvements.
  • Update of the Status Bar code to work with the new code base.
  • ECMAScript for XML (E4X) is kept available for add-ons. Note that this will be removed in future versions as E4X is obsolete.
  • Developer tools have been enabled by default, considering the code is practically impactless unless actually used.
  • Theming has been worked on to provide better contrast on glass/dark themes and to work around styling issues present in v19.
  • Updated fallback character sets to Windows-1252.
  • Restored legacy function key handling (uplifted from Firefox 22).
  • Fixed UNC path handling (Chemspill Firefox 20.0.1).
  • Always enable the use of personas, also in Private Browsing mode.
  • Experimental: support for H.264 videos (disabled by default)
Security fixes relevant to Pale Moon:
Detailed descriptions for these changes and fixes can be found in the detailed changelog/announcement post on the forum.


20.0 -- Internal testing release, unpublished.

Release notes for version 19

19.0.2 (2013-03-09)

A minor update prompted by a security update @Mozilla:
  • Fixes a critical security vulnerability in the browser (MFSA 2013-29)
  • Slightly improves HTTP pipelining
  • Update to the integrated status bar feature (German localization updated)

19.0.1 (2013-02-24)

A minor update to address a few issues with the initial major release:
  • Fix for bookmarks giving an "XML parsing error" when set to "load in the sidebar"
  • Fix for a double padlock display if a secure site would not supply a favicon
  • Redone the mixed content https padlock image in 32bpp to prevent potential UI rendering issues
  • Fixed a setting so no unnecessary code walking is done for the otherwise disabled accessibility features
  • Fix (inherent) for add-ons and themes being marked as incompatible in Pale Moon x64 when they have a minimum version of 19.0

19.0 (2013-02-22)

This is a new major release with a lot of changes and improvements:

Changes in this version:
  • Update of the underlying Firefox (gecko) code to v19. This has a number of consequences:
    • Add-ons and themes may need to be updated since the UI code has changed.
    • HTML5-implementation is more complete
    • A number of CSS statements have their prefix removed (-moz*)
    • Javascript now uses the IonMonkey engine by default, which is a new (faster) engine
    • Improvements to the layout and rendering engines
    • If you are using a language pack, you need to update it to the new version
  • Update of the browser style. Main browser controls and the padlock look slightly different.
  • Several Pale Moon specific improvements to the rendering engine, noticeable in general use and certain benchmarks, to prevent browser stalls or high CPU usage on certain pages.
  • The builds no longer use PGO (Profile Guided Optimization) but are globally speed-optimized.
For details about each of these points, see the detailed changelog post on the forum.

Release notes for version 15

15.4.1 (2013-01-28)

This is a bugfix and security release. Changes in this version:
  • Updated the C runtime library included to a later version for security/stability purposes.
  • Updated the Windows SDK version to 8.0 for better Windows 8 compatibility and slight overall improvements.
  • Implemented a fix to prevent unwanted automatic opening of the plugin check window on startup on some systems.
  • Corrected the milestone marker from 15.4pre to 15.4.
In addition, this version was built on a fresh build environment to prevent possible code pollution and improve profiling efficiency.

15.4 (2013-01-16)

Several security and stability issues have been fixed in this update:
  • Deal with bogus Turktrust certs MFSA 2013-20
  • Several memory security hazards fixed MFSA 2013-01
  • Updated OTS library to r95 to fix potential font-related exploits
  • Security fix for libpixman stack buffer overflow
  • Fix for certain types of input lag on Twitter/Facebook & other sites with unnecessary DOM invalidations
  • Fix for HTTP pipelining re-use (improve pipelining logic)
  • Performance&stability updates to cairo and direct2d back-end
  • Improved performance for repeat gradients

15.3.2 (2012-12-05)

This update fixes an important issue in the JavaScript engine (MethodJIT) that would make particularly large/complex pieces of JavaScript (e.g. Mandreel) fail. (Thanks, Ryan, for catching this one!)

15.3.1 (2012-11-30)

This update is a bugfix and performance release with a number of security, stability and efficiency fixes:

Bugfixes:
  • Fix for font rendering issues on Windows 8 (cairo+azure)
  • Status bar options: Russian locale fixed
  • Fix for status bar address bar linkover ghosting
  • Fix for browser hang in some WebM video content
  • Don't allow alert/confirm/prompt in onbeforeunload, onunload and onpagehide (bug# 391834)
Improvements:
  • Reduce non-incremental GC occurrences (reduce lag in Javascript)
  • More efficient CPU usage for JS and Canvas
  • Pale Moon x64: Performance improvements
Security fixes:
  • Security fixes for CVE-2012-5840, CVE-2012-5839, CVE-2012-4210, CVE-2012-4207 and CVE-2012-4214.
  • Fix for methodjit assertion issue (bug #781859)
  • Fix for potentially exploitable crash in XPConnect (bug #809674)
  • Fix for potentially exploitable crash in layout engine (bug #791601)
  • Fix for potentially exploitable crash in JS string handling (bug #778603)
  • Fix for potentially exploitable crash in GIF decoder (bug #789046)
  • Fix for potentially exploitable crash in image decoder (bug #802168)
  • Fix for use-after-free in editor lib (bug #795708)
  • Fix for potentially exploitable crash in SVG (bug #793848)
  • Fix for out-of-bounds read when blurring (bug #783041)
  • Fix for potentially exploitable crash in text editor (bug #798677)
  • Prevent URL spoofing through prompts (bug #700080)

15.3

This is an important update that sees a number of under-the-hood changes. The are no functional changes in this update.

Changes:
  • The compiler has been changed to a newer version (Visual Studio 2012). This has a few consequences:
    • Better handling of the browser overall: things like smooth scrolling, the user interface and page loading should be noticeably smoother on the vast majority of computers.
    • Automatic vectorization: If your hardware supports it, more advanced processor instructions are used.
    • Support for multiple cores.
    • The 64-bit version of Pale Moon will no longer support Windows XP. More details in this post.
  • Incremental garbage collection for Javascript.
Bugfixes:
  • Minimize intermediate surface size in Azure to mitigate performance regression.
  • Fix SVG clip paths in Azure.
  • Fix drawing artifacts in Azure.
  • Fix fuzzy equal function.
  • Some fixes for the Windows Aero user interface that popped up with the new compiler.
A slightly more detailed description can be found in the changelog on the forum.

15.2.1

This update incorporates critical security fixes back-ported from Firefox 16.0.2 (MFSA 2012-90)

15.2

This is an update to address a number of performance, stability and security issues, as well as some added features.

Fixes:
  • Important performance regression fix. Both javascript and the layout engine should now have the speed and stability that is to be expected from an optimized browser.
  • Fix for the "tabs on top" menu entry not showing when tabs are already set on top, making it very difficult to switch them back to bottom.
  • Crash: Fix for a browser crash with certain types of invalid gradients. (bug #792903)
  • Security: Prevent private browsing data leakage through popup windows (bug #795015)
  • Security: Detect IC purging (bug #794025)
  • Security: Prevent mRules from dying in DoInsertHTMLWithContext (bug #788950)
  • Security: Drain the parent frame's overflow list before insert/append (bug #765621)
Features:
  • Redesigned the identity panel and the way secure sites are handled in the UI
    You will now always get the favicon in the address bar, and on secure sites you will have an added padlock (indicating ssl, extended verification or a broken/insecure/mixed-content site) to the identity panel and colored shading around the URL to indicate the status. (see detailed changelog)
  • After evaluating the new address bar autocomplete algorithm, it is now switched on by default.
  • Added an option to easily switch address autocompletion on or off (see detailed changelog)
  • Partial implementation of Japanese "status bar" preferences text
More details can be found in the detailed changelog on the Pale Moon forum.

15.1.1

This is a minor update to address some important performance (high CPU usage) and stability (browser hang) issues in Pale Moon 15.1. Specifically, some of Tete009's patches were backed out.
Azure acceleration with his patches is still in place, but the multi-threaded box blur and cairo patches were removed to fix the CPU and browser hang issues, respectively.

15.1

This is a major update to the new v15.0 release, to address a fairly large number of issues with the initial version.

Important note:
  • From this release onwards, the system requirements for your operating system have changed: If you are still running Windows XP, you are required to have Service Pack 3 installed on it, or the browser will not start.
Bugfixes:
  • Restore Windows XP Professional x64 compatibility in the installer.
  • Fix the mouse wheel smooth scrolling preferences in the preferences dialog box (did not work in v15.0)
  • Prevent memory inflation on some integrated graphics drivers in canvas games
  • Fix for private browsing mode (Firefox 15.0.1 top fix)
  • Fix for Javascript stability issues on 32-bit versions
Regression fixes:
  • Restore the favicon in the URL bar. (Behavior change: new logic)
  • Fix for top level images with transparency (white background)
  • Remove noise from top level image background
  • Undo the redesign of the Safe Mode dialog box
  • Restore Alt-Click save dialog box
  • Restore proper identity panel for domain-verified sites (blue panel)
  • Restore support for the browser.identity.ssl_domain_display setting
  • Restore address bar autofill preference to its desired default state (no autofill)
Added features:
  • Add control for a custom top level image background color
  • Implement Direct2D brush caching (performance win)
  • Implement multi-threaded box blur (performance win for multi-core systems)
  • Add a Profile Reset feature (from Help -> Troubleshooting information)
  • Build with a faster floating point method
To keep these release notes concise, this is just a plain list of changes. You are encouraged to read the extended changelog post on the Pale Moon forum if you have any questions or want clarification about any of the items mentioned.

15.0

This is a new release based on the Gecko 15.0 code base with additional branch development. It incorporates many changes under the hood that go far beyond the scope of this document.

A few highlights, in addition to security fixes:
  • Performance improvements for the rendering engine
  • More HTML 5 implemented
  • Better handling of memory, resulting in smoother operation of the browser
  • More responsive user interface when the browser is busy
  • Prevention of memory leaks through add-ons
  • Better implementation of the Quickdial page
  • Localization of Pale Moon specific preferences and options (work in progress)
  • Reinstatement of the previous user interface, keeping it in line with version 12 (Firefox 15 has UI changes that makes the controls flat, monochrome and borderless, which isn't desired for Pale Moon)
  • The padlock has returned for secure pages! It can be found in front of the URL when you browse to a secure page, with optionally company information if supplied by the server
Some things new to the Firefox code base that are excluded or disabled by default:
  • Built-in PDF reader in javascript - use a standalone, dedicated reader
    (this is both a security and functionality consideration)
  • Additional advanced web development tools - the average user never needs these
  • Web apps on the desktop - Pale Moon is a browser, not a pseudo-OS
  • Windows Metro UI

Release notes for version 12

12.3 r2

This is a rebuild of Pale Moon 12.3 to address some performance regression in the 32-bit version of Pale Moon 12.3. No functional changes have been implemented in this release, and updating the browser is completely optional, but recommended if you experience lesser performance in Pale Moon 12.3 than you are used to.
This build should give overall smoother operation of the browser and better HTML5 video playback (WebM/Theora) than the original release.

Note: once again, this is to address a regression that was only present in the 32-bit (x86) version of Pale Moon 12.3 and does not affect Pale Moon x64. Pale Moon 12.3r2 is an update for the 32-bit version only and completely optional if you are already on v12.3.

12.3

This is a maintenance release to address a number of potential security vulnerabilities.

Most notably among them:
  • Use-after-free while replacing/inserting a node in a document
  • Content Security Policy inline-script bypass
  • A few additional memory safety hazards and crashes that could theoretically be exploited
Additional note: the initial binaries as-published had a missing component that caused saving of a session to malfunction and not properly restore. If you have downloaded 12.3 x86 between 12:00 and 17:00 Central European Summer Time (Z+2) on 17/7/2012, or x64 on the same day between 12:00 and 19:00, you may have a faulty browser and you should download and re-install the browser. Apologies for the inconvenience!

12.2.1

A minor update to fix stability issues:
  • Fix for Flash 11.3 crashing the plugin container or browser upon shutdown.
    Note: Flash 11.3 introduces "protected mode", an internal plugin sandbox, that can still cause other issues, e.g. for full-screen video playback. Please check the forum announcement for more information, workarounds and advice if you experience issues.
  • Fix for double entries for "recent tags" and "recently bookmarked" in the bookmarks menu on a new profile.
  • Fix for build instability issues in javascript due to the Microsoft compiler producing incorrect machine code in some cases. This fix will cause a slight performance loss on 32-bit builds to prevent crashes and scripting problems in the GUI and on web pages. Pale Moon x64 is not affected.

12.2

A minor update but introducing some new features.

Most important changes:
  • Privacy issue: clear the QuickDial page when history is cleared
  • Better, neutral background color for raw image viewing
  • Smooth scrolling improved; also disabled smooth scrolling for page-by-page by default
  • Smooth scrolling can now be configured/tuned in detail in Advanced Options
  • Some changes to the build method for x64 for potentially better performance on some systems

12.1

A major update to the browser, implementing a number of visual and under-the-hood changes.

Security fixes:
  • Bug #745580 Thebes: handle bad results from Core Text shaping more robustly.
  • Bug #744541 XPCOM i/o: Charset conversion issue.
  • Bug #748613 Javascript: Scope vulnerability
  • Bug #747688 Layout engine: Drop references for all destroyed frames
  • Security update of the included MSVC runtime libraries
Enhancements and fixes:
  • Dynamic smooth scrolling algorithm for mouse/keyboard implemented. Smooth scrolling is now also enabled by default.
  • Update to the status bar code to fix pop-up status not switching sides on mouse-over, as well as using a safer allocation/destruction mechanism for controls (potentially preventing memory leaks).
  • Fixed: cache size override on new profiles (would be set to 1GB instead of the application default of 200MB). Bug 20120512-GN.
  • Addition of a number of preferences in the Tabs category of the options dialog box:
    • A checkbox for inserting related tabs next to the current tab when opening a link;
    • A checkbox for closing the browser window when the last tab is closed;
    • A selection for new tabs: Choose from a blank page, the Pale Moon start page or the Quickdial page.
  • Some slight color has been re-introduced in the navigation elements to improve clarity of the UI.
  • Disabled an image decoding library with hazardous code. This has no impact on the browser's image decoding capabilities or performance as alternative methods for decoding are used by default.
  • Some changes to memory handling which potentially keep memory use better within bounds.
  • A change to the build environment to improve stability of Javascript. Note that this is a trade-off and may result in a slight drop in synthetic benchmarking performance of the browser compared to the previous version of Pale Moon. The impact of this on overall real-world performance of the browser is negligible.

12.0

A new release built on the Firefox 12 code base. This is mostly a maintenance release.
Of special interest is that Pale Moon, unlike Mozilla Firefox in its version 12, does not move to a silent install method.

Fixes and changes in all versions:
  • A number of security and stability fixes imported from Firefox 12
  • Update to the status bar code and a finalization of the integration of this functionality
  • Localization of the status bar preferences and messages into 3 additional common languages: German, French and Spanish. This will automatically follow your locale setting
  • Update to the HTML5 media controls
  • Some under-the-hood changes that will further improve performance of Pale Moon on some systems
Pale Moon Portable:
  • An update to the launcher and script. More information on the Pale Moon Portable page. It is recommended for everyone using the portable to make a fresh install (with a copy over of your profile files if desired) and not use an in-place upgrade.
  • A fix for backups not being properly created and stored
This version marks the start of a different release schedule for Pale Moon.

Instead of following the rapid release schedule of Mozilla, the browser will use version 12, a properly matured build with essential functionality, as a base to make incremental updates upon.

The reasons for this are multiple, not in the least it will allow Pale Moon to implement things that have been on the "to-do" list for a while but which have been pushed back because of lack of time "keeping up" with the (too) fast releases of new versions by Mozilla. The rapid releases often little more than maintenance updates and one or two new features (sometimes even just partially implemented), but requiring a full development/testing cycle for Pale Moon because of the lumped-together patches. Another reason is that from this point on, Firefox will receive a few user interface overhauls to go off on the "Web OS"/"Metro"/"Desktop integration" tangent that goes against Pale Moon's goals of being and remaining a web browser.

Release notes for version 11

11.0.1

A small maintenance release to address a few annoyances in the original new release of v11.0:
  • Tone down the rather too aggressive network settings that were introduced in Firefox 11:
    1. Maximum concurrent connections opened by Pale Moon lowered to 48 (was 256) to make sure it doesn't easily saturate the networking layer of Windows, to prevent residential NAT gateways from being overloaded and to lower strain on wireless networks
    2. Maximum concurrent connections to a single server lowered to 6 (was 15). In tandem with pipelining this is still plenty, and it actually promotes the proper intended use of pipelining
  • Fix the installer to properly check for the minimum required operating system version: Windows XP for both x86 and x64 versions
  • Switch off OpenGL as preferred engine for WebGL again to fix compatibility problems
  • Switch off DirectWrite font rendering again to fix compatibility issues with certain graphics cards
  • Properly implement the removal/blocking of status bar add-ons when upgrading/installing
In addition, Pale Moon 11 will:
  • Save open session information less often (once a minute)
  • No longer store form data and other entered information in the browser session store when pages are viewed over SSL, to increase security - the data entered in secure pages is no longer committed to disk.

11.0

A new major release building on the Firefox 11.0 code base. This sees many, many bugfixes and a good number of performance improvements that would be too extensive to list in detail.

In summary

All versions:
  • Integration of the Status Bar functionality. You can now access the status bar configuration directly from the Tools or Options menu, and it is no longer a separate add-on[note]
  • Implementation of the SPDY protocol to improve load times on websites that support it
  • Improvements to the rendering engine, and specific improvements to the hardware acceleration of font rendering and WebGL
  • Implementation of more advanced HTML5 (including IndexedDB improvements and support for more HTML5 elements) and CSS features (including CSS 3D transforms)
  • Add-on compatibility: add-ons now default to being compatible
  • Cosmetic updates to the Pale Moon icon and some included artwork
  • The (limited feature) web developer tools as added to Firefox 11.0 have mostly been disabled since they are not intended to be present in future builds of Pale Moon. Web developers are encouraged to make their own choices about which development tools they wish to use at the Mozilla Add-ons repository (Web development section)
Pale Moon Portable:
  • The automatic backup method has been simplified and the resulting backups will take (a lot) less space. Bookmarks and passwords are backed up, but history no longer gets backed up which saves many MB on your stick or other portable medium
  • Additional compression further reduces space requirements for the 32-bit portable

Release notes for version 9

9.2

This update implements security fixes from Firefox up to 10.0.2 in terms of security and stability.
  • Fix for a critical vulnerability in the libpng graphics library
  • Update to the add-ons blocklist and its handling
  • New 64-bit application icon (32-bit icon update in the next version)
  • Minor updates to cache handling settings

9.1

This update implements relevant fixes from Firefox 10 in terms of security and stability. Additional new functionality found in Firefox 10 has not been implemented.
In addition, the following fixes:
  • Update to the status bar component to fix pop-up status and links, as well as a few other small issues
  • Update to the add-on compatibility assistant to no longer display the status bar core add-on as selectable
  • Update to a few default settings based on usage metrics
  • Removed some commercial search engines (e.g. Amazon) and added DuckDuckGo/SSL

9.0.1

An update incorporating the Firefox 9.0.1 code base.
In addition, the following changes:
  • Under the hood changes and improvements to the way memory is handled by the Javascript engine
  • WebGL has been changed to use ANGLE by default instead of using native OpenGL to give better performance on a number of systems that would otherwise suffer from high CPU usage and lower frame rates
  • Change in compiler: from this point on, Visual Studio 2010 will be used for all "next gen" builds
  • Build environment changed to cater to the ever-growing XUL dll size without having to compromize on what modules to optimize. (Prevent running into the 3GB address space limit)
  • DNS prefetching disabled by default to prevent router hangups
  • Changes to timings for UI script execution and content script execution to prevent unnecessary dialog popups about unresponsive scripts
  • Some image decoding tweaks
  • Eye candy: animated preferences dialogs (resize when switching category)

9.0

Development version (unreleased).
This version was not considered acceptable for release due to performance regressions.

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.

Release notes for version 7

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"

Release notes for version 6

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

Release notes for version 5

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

Release notes for version 4

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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