Pale Moon: Release notes

v29.1.1 (2021-03-30)

• 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)

• 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.

• 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)

• 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)

• 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.
  

• 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.

• 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.
  

v28.17.0 (2020-12-18)

• 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.

• 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)

• 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.

• 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)

• 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)

• 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)

v28.14.0 (2020-09-29)

• 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.

Release notes for older versions than those listed here