Pale Moon is the work of a single individual, using contributed Open Source code to create a full-featured, speed optimized version of the popular Firefox browser. Having seen the advantages on other systems (e.g. Linux) with regards to programs being compiled specifically for the capabilities of the machine it is installed on, it became obviously clear that Windows users were at a disadvantage: Mozilla only releases windows executables with maximum compatibility in mind, meaning that Firefox is made to run on as many different systems as possible, sacrificing efficiency and speed in the process to be compatible with, by current standards, absolutely ancient hardware. Pale Moon is a middle road, cutting away support for ancient systems to achieve a significant speed and efficiency increase, but not trying to squeeze the last few percent more out of it by limiting the range of systems it will run on even more. It aims to not waste computer resources and power on inefficient programs, while at the same time serving a wide range of systems that are currently in use around the world.
Rated 50/50 by Tallpaultn at Apr 9, 2010
I highly recommend that users who like Mozilla Firefox, give Pale Moon a try.
Rated 40/50 by Sativarg at Apr 9, 2010
Be careful with this one. read read read... I have an older processor so my instillation of Pale Moon doesn't start (error message when starting) . There is a Troubleshooting section at the home page and I found Pale Moon for Athlon XP. This is not a "childproof" app It will use your existing profile and, if allowed to, delete some important items when uninstalled, So... copy/backup your C:\Documents and Settings\*Your account*\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla and C:\Documents and Settings\*Your account*\Application Data\Mozilla folders before installing. I am rating this 3 because The uninstall link is not in the start-up folder and the checkbox to remove my "vital" Firefox profile on uninstall was not clearly marked as such in the uninstaller UPDATE: Latest news: http://www.palemoon.org/ The Firefox 3.6.6 code base has been released. Pale Moon will follow suit when there has been sufficient time for building and testing it, but development is halted for a few weeks due to relocation. Please be patient, folks!
Rated 30/50 by anomoly at Apr 9, 2010
I could not play a vid in firefox portable that wanted me to install quicktime. I ran qt-lite and that did not help. Anyways, this is EXACTLY like ff. Only problem was after blocking dns checks, adding no script, and importing bookmarks it refuses to connect. While portable ff with dns blocking works the same only it does connect. Could be my firewall, who knows. Speed and or optimization wise, other than a rare quicktime snafu (who cares), FF portable works quite well enough for now.
Rated 40/50 by asaenz at Apr 9, 2010
Works well (on my system) and uses slightly less memory than regular FF. Will try to update in a month or so and give a higher rating if no problems. I'll point out that I used Sandboxie to try it out and don't know how well it works alongside a normal FF installation. I believe there have been some modifications to about:config and that is responsible for most of the performance changes.
Rated 10/50 by Pkshadow at Apr 9, 2010
Do Not Install this program if you have Firefox installed. The Pale Moon icon will launch Firefox when clicked. Do Not uninstall this if have Firefox installed and choose delete profile and bookmarks as it is not referring to Blue Moon but to Firefox and so it will delete your Profile, bookmarks, passwords, custom stuff as well as break all plug-ins. Rates a low one for incompatible, lack of info re incompatible with Firefox installed as well as the time spent putting myself back together again.
Rated 30/50 by friendinme at Aug 17, 2010
I found Palemoon to be stable in performance. However, I did not notice that it was significantly quicker than my standard Firefox installation. Some other considerations: Palemoon appears to be the project of a single individual (or very small group), not an organization that is accountable in any way. Although this does not appear to be spyware, I am reluctant to entrust my browser security to an unknown entity. Palemoon does not consult with Mozilla or have any apparent approval by that organization. Third party security (or privacy) software will not automatically locate and secure Palemoon. The program author, Moonchild, gave very quick and useful tech support. IMHO: Palemoon is what it claims to be-- a stripped-for-Windows version of Firefox. If you find that Palemoon is a significant improvement to Firefox, you might want to consider NOT using it for browsing that must be secure. I have no particular reason to distrust PaleMoon or MoonChild. I am just cautious of this sort of software. Upon uninstalling PaleMoon, the only problem I had was getting Firefox to set itself as the default browser again. I ran the Firefox install program again to fix the problem.
Rated 50/50 by anomoly at Sep 13, 2010
I like the icon so I copied the pertinent text using reshacker from the firefox.exe and pasted them to the palemoon.exe and now finally have a different icon from the stupid orange one with the exact same version number that it was originally (8888). But that was the only file I used at first with portable ff. The palemoon portable v3.69, aside from speed improvements, also disables activex scripting by default and so is slightly more secure as well. So far so good. Thanks for the icon. btw the migration tool does not work between ff portable and pm portable. Also the check default browser at startup does not go away until you tell it no AND uncheck the box. minor Weird but it is half the size of ff portable too. I really don't like portable aps .com aps as most of their packages are simply BS and unnecessary. The portable version was created with win pen pack for a change.
Rated 50/50 by anomoly at Oct 27, 2010
I also like the little video grab button when you are viewing one. One less addon and one more great feature of this browser. It uses about half the memory that FF portable does & does everything ff does just with a different icon. I will only run it portably, just like ff. BTW to the devs: muchas gracias http://www.palemoon.org/palemoon-portable.shtml Migration tool does not work for portables. Just copy the palemoon folder from the portable version's bin folder to yours- too easy. Works as a portable ap much better than ff also. It can only update addons as far as I know.
Rated 10/50 by Orbitration at Oct 27, 2010
Didn't work on my XP SP3 Core2 duo, 4 gigs ram. Mega installation errors, then nothing 'worked' on sites. no faster than normal firefox 3.5 no uninstall, track down the profile and program folder and delete it I guess. not ready for prime time, not really seeing a need for it, either
Rated 30/50 by DrTeeth at Mar 30, 2011
I use Pale Moon. It is slightly snappier than the standard FF, but no great shakes. Doubt if I could tell the difference in speed in a double-blind test.
Rated 10/50 by felixml at Apr 7, 2011
Just as Orbitration wrote, bad all the way. messed all my Bookmarks export
Rated 50/50 by azdps at May 9, 2011
I wanted to see if there was noticeable benchmark differences between Palle Moon and the normal Firefox distro. I conducted browser benchmarks at Peacekeeper (http://clients.futuremark.com/peacekeeper) and found that Pale Moon scored better on the benchmarks. I also checked the last release of the normal Firefox distro and Pale Moon scored significantly better. My thanks goes out to the Pale Moon distro maintainer for the time spent optimizing Firefox.
Rated 30/50 by Prospero424 at May 10, 2011
First off, I didn't have the stability and installation problems others have reported. I was easily able to transfer over all of my add-ons, bookmarks (yes, including the toolbar), settings, active tabs, etc. using the profile copying tool they link to right on their main page. The process was fairly seamless, if not ideal (the migration tool really should be built in). Speed seemed slightly faster, but certainly nothing Earth shattering. A couple of content-heavy pages loaded faster. However. It quickly wound up using MASSIVE amounts of physical memory (RAM) after browsing the same pages I usually do. To be sure, I opened up standard Firefox and browsed my usual pages (normally about 15 tabs open at any given time) for about an hour, and wound up using about 400MB of RAM. Then I did the exact same thing with Pale Moon and it was using upwards of 900MB! This was under Win7 x64 on an Athlon X2, and I was able to duplicate the issue any time. I've tried Pale Moon several times under Linux in the past, and it always seems to be something like this that kept me from switching to it. It's ALWAYS something. I guess there's a very good reason that Mozilla compiles for compatibility like they do. Anyway, the almost unnoticeable performance gains just aren't worth the seemingly inevitable bugs (in the case of the Windows version, excessive RAM usage). My advice would be to stick with Firefox.
Rated 50/50 by CyberDoc999 at May 10, 2011
faster is there a way to import my bookmarks toolbar
Rated 50/50 by jamesnewsomed at May 10, 2011
To dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight' is a very old folktale archetype present in British and French folktales. http://colopureadvanced.wikispaces.com/
Rated 40/50 by Blue Joker at May 11, 2011
I give it a 4 . First coz it's great to have browser choices , second coz it's powered by mozilla. However if they post some screenshot could bring more users in a first experience through it .
Rated 50/50 by anomoly at May 12, 2011
By running the portable version and overwriting it with the newer one, all previous settings and bookmarks are left exactly as before. Disable the hd cache and use only memory for best performance. In about:config go to: browser.cache.disk.enable - set to false browser.cache.memory.enable - set to true Right-click & select New > Integer with: browser.cache.memory.capacity set to -1