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It's such a common question, they actually have a thread on this: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18801 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.ph

by arayh 8y ago

It's such a common question, they actually have a thread on this: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18801 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18801

severine 8y ago
Thanks for the link, quote: > by adesh » Fri, 06 Apr 2018, 17:23 Okay. You know what Pale Moon is, right? It is a browser built from some old (how old? scour forum) Mozilla platform code which does not have latest shinies built-in. Note that old does not mean useless and insecure, you know that. It's because Moonchild makes sure important security fixes released by Mozilla are ported timely. Also, Pale Moon has many extra modifications done on top of Mozilla codebase, most notable of which is its classic UI. Now, Basilisk. Well, Basilisk is also a browser, just like Pale Moon (and Firefox), built from relatively newer (something around FF 52) Mozilla codebase. Again, this is built after making some substantial modifications to the codebase - e.g. after removing devilish pieces of code and putting in some necessary optimizations. However, Moonchild decided not to change the "look and feel" of this browser, so it is very similar to Firefox in look and feel (and feature set too). That means most of the changes are made under the hood.
- Yoric 8y ago
  "putting in some necessary optimizations"? That sounds suspicious. If it's an optimization, it should be contributed upstream to benefit all the users of Gecko/Firefox. Or are these optimizations to XUL-only codepaths that are not present/executed in Firefox anymore?
  - dictum 8y ago
    The maintainer(s?) have some peculiar opinions: "We already have CSS table layouts... Why is this suddenly needed? why would sites switch to it? It makes no sense. It wasn't important enough to implement in any browser for the past 6 years so there's no real reason why websites would suddenly want to swap to it." (on the CSS Grid spec) https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=15196 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=15196
    - extra88 8y ago
      Yikes. At least Basilisk is a fork of Firefox after it made CSS Grid support public (I don't know how how long it was behind a flag or how much the code changed in that time). It doesn't bode well for support for other, newer standards, like variable fonts.
    - mrnhmath 8y ago
      Maintainers. It isn't a one-man show. Their approach to development is to implement things when there's enough user demand e.g CSS Masking, which someone from the community is working in.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    When one of these projects came out several years ago, what they touted as optimizations were a) releasing an x86-64 build instead of x86 build on Windows (at a time when the x86-64 JIT actually performed worse than x86, and this was known to the Mozilla team), and b) using manual compiler optimization flags a la Gentoo's -funroll-loops options.

by arayh 8y ago

It's such a common question, they actually have a thread on this: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18801 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18801

severine 8y ago

Thanks for the link, quote: > by adesh » Fri, 06 Apr 2018, 17:23 Okay. You know what Pale Moon is, right? It is a browser built from some old (how old? scour forum) Mozilla platform code which does not have latest shinies built-in. Note that old does not mean useless and insecure, you know that. It's because Moonchild makes sure important security fixes released by Mozilla are ported timely. Also, Pale Moon has many extra modifications done on top of Mozilla codebase, most notable of which is its classic UI. Now, Basilisk. Well, Basilisk is also a browser, just like Pale Moon (and Firefox), built from relatively newer (something around FF 52) Mozilla codebase. Again, this is built after making some substantial modifications to the codebase - e.g. after removing devilish pieces of code and putting in some necessary optimizations. However, Moonchild decided not to change the "look and feel" of this browser, so it is very similar to Firefox in look and feel (and feature set too). That means most of the changes are made under the hood.

Yoric 8y ago
"putting in some necessary optimizations"? That sounds suspicious. If it's an optimization, it should be contributed upstream to benefit all the users of Gecko/Firefox. Or are these optimizations to XUL-only codepaths that are not present/executed in Firefox anymore?
- dictum 8y ago
  The maintainer(s?) have some peculiar opinions: "We already have CSS table layouts... Why is this suddenly needed? why would sites switch to it? It makes no sense. It wasn't important enough to implement in any browser for the past 6 years so there's no real reason why websites would suddenly want to swap to it." (on the CSS Grid spec) https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=15196 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=15196
  - extra88 8y ago
    Yikes. At least Basilisk is a fork of Firefox after it made CSS Grid support public (I don't know how how long it was behind a flag or how much the code changed in that time). It doesn't bode well for support for other, newer standards, like variable fonts.
  - mrnhmath 8y ago
    Maintainers. It isn't a one-man show. Their approach to development is to implement things when there's enough user demand e.g CSS Masking, which someone from the community is working in.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  When one of these projects came out several years ago, what they touted as optimizations were a) releasing an x86-64 build instead of x86 build on Windows (at a time when the x86-64 JIT actually performed worse than x86, and this was known to the Mozilla team), and b) using manual compiler optimization flags a la Gentoo's -funroll-loops options.