Pale Moon: 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)
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How different is this browser from Firefox?
The differences are small, but significant.
First off: the source code used for actual program functions to build Pale Moon is completely unmodified, this means that whatever functionality there is in the Firefox code, will also exist in Pale Moon, with the exception of the parts of Firefox that aren't included in Pale Moon.
Secondly: The C runtime library used for core functions like memory management has been custom-compiled and optimized for speed. Initially, a stock set of libraries was used for Pale Moon (and for Mozilla Firefox). With the later versions, Mozilla started to make custom compilations of the runtime for memory management ("jemalloc"), and Pale Moon followed suit, and went one step further by extending its CPU optimizations also to this library.
Thirdly: Some functions have been completely disabled to cut down on input complexity (accessibility, for one), unnecessary/unused code (multiple additional modules) and to remove ActiveX functionality, a technology that is specific to Internet Explorer only (ActiveX controls don't work in a stock Firefox). This also improves stability and speed.
Fourth: Pale Moon comes with a number of different default configuration settings than Firefox. These basic "tweaks" are done to provide you with the smoothest browsing experience as well as to be considerate towards website/service providers (e.g. by reducing the number of http and dns requests needed when browsing).
Fifth: Some configuration changes were made to the user interface in later versions, to incorporate functionality and visual elements in different locations than what was chosen by the Mozilla team. In addition, the status bar has been retained, as well as a few other user-feedback related defaults. All of these changes are still user-configurable.
Homepage:
This post has been edited by super macgyver: Nov 24 2011, 04:17 PM
Pale Moon, Custom-built and optimized Firefox-based