Pale Moon Browser for XP

Question

I had hoped to completely disconnect my XP from the internet, but I still find it useful to run it next to Win 7 to troubleshoot problems on occasion. Using IE8 is out of the question for me, now that it is no longer supported. I was using Firefox29.0 with Sandboxie but it is now slow as molasses. And it has developed a new glitch: about half the time when I try to open FF I get an alert that " Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system." I end up killing firefox.exe in task manager or in WinPatrol. Why this process persists after closing FF, I have no idea. It is certainly new behaviour in the past few months, at least in XP.

I Googled the message, and there are a ton of suggestions on how to fix it. None of them are simple, and after trying a few I lost patience. Uninstalling/reinstalling FF does not work.

Which brings us to the free Pale Moon (PM) browser, modeled on Mozilla/Firefox, but using its own code. It has been getting positive reports in a number of security forums, is compatible with XP/sp3, can be run in Sandboxie, and a new version (24.6.0) involving extensive updates was recently released. So I gave it a try on my XP system only. (You don't need to uninstall FF first - they can co-exist). Both 32 and 64 bit versions are available for XP/sp3 and newer Windows systems.

Initial impressions, after using it for a few days:

- Easy download/installation, with no bundled junkware or ads.
- It is definitely faster than FF 29.0 for me.
- I no longer get that annoying alert to terminate the firefox.exe process (it runs a palemoon.exe process, which does not stay in memory when the browser is closed).
- It has de-cluttered a lot of FF, with a more intuitive/simpler interface. Anyone familiar with FF should be able to configure it, since the GUI is similar.
- Its default search engine is DuckDuckGo, which I actually prefer to Google.
- It does not update to new versions automatically, nor does it install FF updates. You can check internally for newer versions, and upgrade manually (Help>About Pale Moon). To me this is a plus, as I do not like any software installing without my explicit permission.

Caveats:

- I have seen some reports that certain security programs object to it (Norton and AVG, possibly others). My resident Panda Cloud AV free, HitmanPro and Emsisoft on-demand AV scanners, and MBAM (PRO) all play well with PM.
- I have not figured out how to install the WOT toolbar yet. I'm a bit reluctant to attempt installing the FF WOT toolbar at this time into PM. In fact, I have installed no add-ons.
- I have not figured out how to delete the browser/history/cookie cache on closing the browser yet. When I run Pale Moon outside of Sandboxie, I see 10s of MBs of these files in CCleaner, recognised as FF files, when running an analyse scan. Cleaning, however, is very rapid. If you run PM sandboxed, all these files are deleted automatically when Sandboxie is closed; CCleaner analysis detects nothing, so perhaps this is not a concern.
- Although I was able to activate the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen, it remains blank. Hovering over links displays nothing, whether or not the browser is sandboxed.
- There is a user support forum, but not a lot of info or posts. Help files are limited to some FAQs.

In short, PM is the most user-friendly browser I've used with XP recently. I've no idea if it is safer than the alternatives, but it gives me no grief. I don't use it for sensitive communications and transactions. In an ideal world, I suppose I would not be using XP at all online these days, and certainly not outside of a sandbox or VM.

I have no plans to switch to PM on my Win 7 systems, as I'm perfectly happy with IE11. But as I gain more experience with PM, I might well replace FF with it as my secondary browser for Win 7.

As always, YMMV. (hat tip to Corrine for the recommendation)

Ref:

- http://www.palemoon.org/info.shtml
- http://securitygarden.blogspot.ca/2014/06/pale-moon-246-update-for-windows-and.html
- http://www.palemoon.org/download-ng.shtml

joe53 · Answer

Update:After a few weeks of using Pale Moon, my opinion of  it has not changed.I've seen a lot of complaints about Firefox 30, which don't seem to apply to Pale Moon. It remains an easily used browser that I have largely mastered. I was able to figure out how to  install WOT, and get the Status Bar to work. It remains quick to load, quick to navigate, and has given me no grief in XP (with or without Sandboxie). I would suggest that any configuration changes of this browser be made outside of  Sandboxie, which seems to cancel any changes made when the browser is closed, and the sandbox emptied (not surprisingly). Otherwise I use it within Sandboxie.I have yet to find any serious negatives to using it, bearing in mind that I only use it for limited online purposes (updating security programs, troubleshooting other Windows systems) using XP. I have updated its version internally (Help>About Pale Moon>Check for Updates) with no problem.I can't claim it is any safer than other browsers available for XP out there. There is just no data available. It is based on Firefox, so I presume it is just as safe. And I presume it (like Firefox) has to be safer than IE8 for XP users. However its code is not identical to FF, and it might well heve 'security through obscurity'. It is not a mainstream browser, and thus might not represent a juicy target for hackers. This is all conjecture on my part. All I really can say is that it is quick, works well, and gives me no problems for my purposes in XP.

Kioes · Answer

I might have a whirl of this browser soon, seem's like a good platform from your posts so far...

However, how would you rate it in comparision to Chrome?

I awlays though Chrome blew FF out of the water myself.

joe53 · Answer

Hi Kioes:

I've not allowed Google software on my PCs for years, so I can't comment on how Chrome compares.

All I can state is that Pale Moon is faster than IE8 and the latest Firefox on XP. My primary concern for an XP browser is security and privacy, not speed. PM seems fast enough for me.

You can however compare your various browser speeds at the following website, and see how they compare to others:
http://www.speed-battle.com/

ky331 · Answer

24.7.0 (2014-07-29)

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.

ky331 · Answer

Hate to be the bearer of bad news... but... End of XP support in Pale Moon : Pale Moon will no longer be built for Windows XP from version 25 onwards.  (With acknowledgment to Corrine at Landzdown)

joe53 · Answer

Ouch!This was was not unexpected.  I'm not willing to abandon XP yet, and I need a browser to keep its security programs updated.Options are limited:1) IE8 (unsupported, and a huge target)2) Google Chrome (still supported - no way will I let its tentacles into my system)3) Firefox (still supported, but bloated, and a big target)4) Opera (not that well protected, but by virtue of its small market share, not a big target)5) Pale Moon (soon to lose support, but a small target).There are other lesser-known browsers that offer security through obscurity. I have some homework to do.

Virus & Spyware

Pale Moon Browser for XP

24.7.0 (2014-07-29)

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