The release of the Pale Moon 31.3 web browser has been announced, which is a fork of the Firefox codebase designed to enhance performance, maintain a classic interface, minimize memory usage, and provide additional customization options. Pale Moon builds are available for Windows and Linux (x86 and x86_64). The project's code is distributed under the MPLv2 (Mozilla Public License).
The project adheres to the classic interface organization, avoiding the transition to the integrated interface Australis introduced in Firefox 29, and provides extensive customization options. Notable removed components include DRM, Social API, WebRTC, PDF viewer, Crash Reporter, code for statistics collection, parental control tools, and accessibility features. Compared to Firefox, support for XUL technology is retained, along with the option to use both full-featured and lightweight themes.
In the new version:
- In JavaScript objects Array, String, and TypedArray, the at() method has been implemented, allowing for relative indexing (where the index is specified as a relative position), including the use of negative values relative to the end.
- Support for the EventSource API has been implemented in web workers.
- Requests now include the "Origin:" header.
- Optimizations have been made to the build system to speed up assembly. The Visual Studio 2022 compiler is used in the creation of builds for the Windows platform.
- The handling of individual sound files in wav format has been changed; instead of calling the system player, a built-in handler is now used. To revert to the old behavior, a setting called media.wave.play-stand-alone is available in about:config.
- The code for normalizing strings has been improved.
- The code for handling flex containers has been updated, but this change was quickly disabled in the subsequent release of Pale Moon 31.3.1 due to issues identified with some websites.
- Build issues in atypical environments such as SunOS and Linux have been resolved.
- The code for blocking IPC threads has been redesigned.
- The "-moz" prefix has been removed from the CSS properties min-content and max-content.
- Bug fixes related to vulnerability mitigation have been transferred.
Additionally, the release of the SeaMonkey 2.53.14 application suite can be noted, which combines a web browser, an email client, a news feed aggregator (RSS/Atom), and a WYSIWYG HTML page editor called Composer into one product. Pre-installed add-ons include the IRC client Chatzilla, the DOM Inspector for web developers, and the Lightning calendar-scheduler. This release incorporates fixes and changes from the current Firefox codebase (SeaMonkey 2.53 is based on the Firefox 60.8 rendering engine with security fixes and some improvements from the latest Firefox branches ported).
In the new version:
- DOM interfaces for HTML elements Embed, Object, Anchor, Area, Button, Frame, Canvas, IFrame, Link, Image, MenuItem, TextArea, Source, Select, Option, Script, and Html have been updated.
- Translation of the build system has been continued from Python 2 to Python 3.
- The dialog with information about plugins (About plugins) has been removed from the Help menu.
- The URL whitelist has been removed.
- Outdated chat services have been removed from the address book.
- Compatibility with the Rust compiler version 1.63 has been ensured.
Source: opennet.ru
