I would like to introduce you to Pale Moon; versus other browsers (Win32)

For socialists, it's always great to support open source software as much as possible. Not only that, but unique and independent projects. More choice and diversity is almost always better. True, sometimes independent projects are short lived niches that die out, but other times they end up being truly noteworthy.

Pale Moon is a fork of Firefox optimized for Windows operating systems and is now available for Linux, OS X and Android as well. It's been around now since 2009; this is no fly by night browser.

Basically it's Firefox trimmed of the fat and things not normally needed as features for most users. You can still pretty much use all of the Add-ons, Plugins and Extensions you would with normally want with Firefox.

I tested several browsers on my laptop and found PM to be the best choice for me. It may not be the same experience for everyone, so I would suggest going through the same process as I did and try out various browsers to see which one is the right one for you.

Pale Moon is available for Windows in both 32 and 64bit versions.

 Pale Moon with the White Moon theme and Omnibar plugin on Windows 7 (32bit)

One of the first things you will probably notice about PM is it's interface is a little bit different from the latest FF releases and it looks like an older version. That's because the PM developers chose not to go with Australis, a user interface (UI) first implemented to the Nightly version of FF in November of 2013 and later to the official release of v.29 around April, 2014; though many people did not like the changes.

I tested various browsers using each for two weeks (unless it became intolerable) looking for:

• Ad-blocking
• Speed
• Stability
• Memory and CPU usage
• Handling of YouTube / video streaming
• Social Media (Facebook and Twitter)
• Extensions

Browsers I tested: K-Meleon, Chrome Canary, SeaMonkey, Avant Browser, Maxthon, Lunascape, Midori, Sleipnir, Torch Browser, QupZilla and of course Pale Moon.

Machine: Acer Aspire 7720-6335
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit

 

Ad-blocking

Adblock has always seemed to work just perfect in FF and Pale Moon is no exception, with it's very own Adblock Latitude. While some of the browsers had no ad block available at all, I just couldn't seem to get it to work with K-Meleon. Many of the other browsers came with it pre-installed or built in. Ad-blocking works well in Chrome, but every now and then it seems to slip through in some YouTube videos or stop working on Facebook; a problem I never have gotten in any FF based browsers.

Speed and Stability

I find that Chrome Canary is a bit faster when searching / typing URLs because the autocomplete feature is built right in while with Pale Moon I use the Omnibar plugin for the same effect, which is noticeably slower. Overall browsing the web was not much different on any of the browsers though.

 

Memory and CPU

I found PM to use less memory than all of the browsers, even the so called "light" ones. SeaMonkey and K-Meleon came in second with CC (Chrome Canary) 3rd.

Many of the other browsers were lighter on the CPU usage, with CC and Torch being the heaviest. Though the light weight of the other browsers didn't make up for other shortcomings. 

Another downside to FF (and thus PM) is the old memory leak; this happens when you have several tabs open, but when you close tabs the memory usage is still present. This is usually solved by closing the browser and reopening it, but still this has been around for a very long time (a decade?) and it really should have been taken care of by now. I only ever experience it on rare occasions with PM, however.

Chrome, on the other hand, doesn't do this because each tab runs as a separate process. In theory it would also enable you to simply end that one process if one tab locks up, however in practice my experience is that one process will lock up your entire system anyways.

 

YT / FB / Twitter

I don't recall having any issues with any of the browsers doing my day to day shit, but Torch does come with stuff like "share to Facebook" and tweet buttons, which can be found as extensions for FF (and thus Pale Moon) anyways. Torch comes with too many things you just don't need; I prefer to add things as needed as opposed to installing bloat. I also found Torch's torrent client useless and would recommend μTorrent separately, it's lighter and more versatile.

 

Other Extensions

Aside from adblock, an extension I find extremely useful is MultiFox which allows you to have different accounts open in different tabs. So for example, you could be logged into different Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, etc. accounts on different tabs at the same time without having to log out. The downside is that it has reacted a bit buggy in my experience depending on what FF you use it in. Currently I'm not using it, but in the past have tested it in Nightly, Waterfox and Pale Moon with various degrees of success. As far as I know nothing like this plugin exists with any other browser. 

You can get Pale Moon Commander, PM's version of Midnight Commander as well as many other Add-ons at the Pale Moon website.

 

Multi engine browsers

Avant and Lunascape both come with the ability to use to use either the Gecko (FF), WebKit (Safari/Chrome) or Trident (Internet Explorer) rendering engines. You can also replicate this with Chrome using IE Tab and Mozilla Gecko Tab.

I personally don't find this useful anymore as I have not come across any websites that Gecko couldn't handle properly in well over a decade, but if you are a developer and want to test out your website it could be useful to have this ability in one browser rather than having to test it in three different browsers. There is versions of IE tab for FF (such as this one) but I have not tested them. You can get extensions such as Open in IE, Open in Chrome and Open in Opera; these require those browsers to be installed and simply will ad a button and/or menu option that will open the page your are viewing in one of those browsers.

 

Conclusion: try out PM!

If you are looking to try a nice optimized browser for Windows give it a shot. You get the advantage of having a Gecko based browser that's compatible with most FF Add-ons. If you prefer the Australis UI and are running a 64bit OS you may prefer Waterfox; if you are still in 32bit (like me) you can always go for Nightly. If you are someone who is used to Chrome and want to try FF you would probably prefer Australis. I personally don't have a huge preference over the UI, I can get used to using either. But there is something both nostalgic and practical I like about the older interface and I like using a browser that has been optimized for my OS.