Pale Moon is a LICENSE licensed fork of [[Firefox]] written in LANG.
- [Website](https://www.palemoon.org/)
- Source
- Documentation
- AlternativeTo
> QUOTE
# Notability
A truly independently operated browser with a long history.
# Philosophy
## Origin
Pale Moon is a hard-fork of [[Firefox]] prior to "Quantum" in 2017 and retains features lost by the mainline from that earlier era.
This includes hard-forking [[Gecko Browser Engine]] into [[Goanna Browser Engine]].
## Mission Statement
> Pale Moon will continue to provide grouped navigation buttons of a decent size, a bookmarks toolbar that is enabled by default, tabs next to page content by default (easily switchable) and not in the least a functional status bar and more freedom in customization, to name a few things. Its support for classic XUL extensions and full themes also provides users with powerful tools and options to change, extend and control the browser and its user interface.
## Monetization
Pale Moon does not accept contributions via cryptocurrency.
## Redistribution
Pale Moon has a huge page dedicated to the do's and don't of redistributing the software.
It is an incredible mess and I feel like a lawyer has never once seen it. I think this is somewhat inspired by Mozilla's branding guidelines, which have also been noted for their ridiculousness.
- https://www.palemoon.org/redist.shtml
# Platform Support
- Linux
- FreeBSD
- MacOS
- Windows
# Features
## Customization
Firefox removed most of its customization options in years past. Pale Moon retains this high level of customizability.
# Issues
## Restart
Installing or enabling/disabling themes and extensions requires a full restart. Tres retro.
## Missing Extensions
Because Pale Moon uses an older extension API, there are very few new extensions available.
The biggest missing one for me is [[Dark Reader]]. But also things like [[MarkDownload]] or [[Obsidian Editor]]'s own web clipper.
# Tips
## Compatibility Hacks
Some sites will reject browsers they don't recognize and so the browser might need to lie to them.
- https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=29327&start=80#p238599
## uBlock Origin
It seems that Pale Moon doesn't support Manifest v2 and/or more modern APIs and so mainline uBlock cannot be loaded. However, older versions of uBlock do work, and there are some people still maintaining forks of these compatible versions since [[gorhill]] spun it off.
- https://github.com/UCyborg/uBlock-for-firefox-legacy/releases
Potential improvement for ad blockers on some sites? Not sure if still needed.
- https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?p=183822#p183822
# References