The release of the Pale Moon 30.0 web browser has been published, which forked from the Firefox codebase to provide higher performance, preserve the classic interface, minimize memory consumption and provide additional customization options. Pale Moon builds are generated for Windows and Linux (x86 and x86_64). The project code is distributed under the MPLv2 (Mozilla Public License).
The project adheres to the classic organization of the interface, without switching to the Australis interface integrated in Firefox 29, and with the provision of extensive customization options. Removed components include DRM, Social API, WebRTC, PDF viewer, Crash Reporter, statistics collection code, parental controls, and people with disabilities. Compared to Firefox, the browser retains support for XUL technology and retains the ability to use both full-fledged and lightweight themes.
In the new version:
- Returned support for old unmodified Firefox add-ons. Moved away from using the browser's own global identifier (GUID) in favor of the Firefox identifier, which will allow maximum compatibility with all old and unmaintained add-ons developed at one time for Firefox (previously, in order for the add-on to work in Pale Moon, it needed to be specially adapted, which created difficulties with the use of add-ons left without maintainers). The add-ons site developed by the project will support both XUL add-ons specially adapted for Pale Moon and XUL add-ons distributed for Firefox.
- The use of the UXP (Unified XUL Platform) platform has been discontinued, which developed a branch of Firefox components from the Mozilla Central repository, freed from bindings to Rust code and not including the developments of the Quantum project. Instead of UXP, the browser will now be built on the basis of the GRE (Goanna Runtime Environment) environment, based on the more up-to-date Gecko engine code, cleaned from the code of unsupported components and platforms.
- The GPC (Global Privacy Control) mechanism has been implemented, which replaced the heading βDNTβ (Do Not Track) and allows you to inform sites about the prohibition of the sale of personal data and their use to track preferences or movements between sites.
- The setting for choosing Pale Moon as the default browser has been moved to the "General" section.
- The emoji collection now supports Twemoji 13.1.
- To improve compatibility with sites, the Selection.setBaseAndExtent() and queueMicroTask() methods have been added.
- Improved customization of the appearance of scrollbars through themes.
- Changed package structure for internationalization and language support. Due to work being done to cross-check translations, there has been a decrease in the coverage of items in language packs.
- Changed the profile format - after upgrading to Pale Moon 30.0, the profile will not be able to be used with the previous branch of Pale Moon 29.x.
Source: opennet.ru