We've had a few requests over the years to make Pale Moon available. Pale Moon attempts to achieve speed by sacrificing some important bits like accessibility, but fails to achieve this goal by pinning to the outdated ESR branch of Firefox. The result is that Pale Moon is slower than Firefox.
As an example, here is a comparison of the current releases of each, Pale Moon Portable 24.4 vs Firefox Portable 28.0. It's a fresh install of each before each test is run. Here are the results for three popular browser benchmarks:
PeaceKeeper (Higher is better)
FF 28.0: 2017
PM 24.4: 1461
CF 28.0: 1894
Sunspider (Lower is better)
FF 28.0: 267.8ms +/- 1.7%
PM 24.4: 301.3ms +/- 1.2%
CF 28.0: 291.1ms
Dromaeo (Higher is better)
FF 28.0: 481.78runs/s (Total)
PM 24.4: 429.33runs/s (Total)
CF 28.0: 482.44runs/s (Total)
HTML5 Benchmark (Higher is better)
FF 31.0: 7295, Total CPU Time: 14.46s, Total Lag: 168ms
PM 24.7.1: 7003, Total CPU Time: 14.84s, Total Lag: 210ms
Browsermark (Higher is better)
FF 31.0: 2481
PM 24.7.1: 2326
So, Pale Moon doesn't seem to offer anything that Firefox doesn't already have. And you sacrifice accessibility, compatibility, Firefox Sync, and quite a few languages in the process. I figured I'd post the comparison in case anyone wanted to see it side by side.
UPDATE: I added CyberFox 28.0 (CF) as well.
UPDATE (2014-07-24): To see if the above still holds, I tested PM 24.6.2 and FF 31.0 on the same hardware as the above with PeaceKeeper. PM scored 1575 while FF hit 2139 (higher is better).
UPDATE (2014-07-28): Since someone asked, PM x64 24.6.2 scored 1560 on PeaceKeeper. Firefox's x64 branch (which is what PM is) is not ready for prime time and will often score lower on some benchmarks.
UPDATE (2014-08-07): Someone asked about HTML5 Benchmark and Browsermark, so I added them in but with the current versions of the browsers. IE's Chalkboard test was also requested but doesn't make much sense to test since PM24 (and FF ESR 24) will be significantly faster than FF31 since they're based on an earlier version of the Gecko rendering engine and don't support all the CSS3 abilities the test is trying to run on them.
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On the note of Pale Moon Portable, I have been trying to figure out how to install Flash portably in the same way that can be done with Firefox and its derivatives. Does anyone know how to do this?
In response to the topic of this thread, before it appears I've hijacked it for my own purposes, I don't think it would harm the PortableApps collection to have a few more web browsers to choose from. I certainly hope that down the line we will have a lot more than our decent, but rather limited selection of browsers at present.
If you wish to use Flash with Pale Moon, you'd need to ask in their forums.
There's not much point adding a Chrome or Firefox-derived browser when it doesn't add anything. There are dozens and dozens of Chrome and Firefox-based browsers that basically just change the name or add an extension or two... often losing important bits like accessibility or sync to mobile in the process. Adding them to the directory means more work to keep them up to date and more confusion for the end user.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Sorry to bump a dead thread, but I just wanted to mention that PaleMoon seems to be more memory-efficient. For systems that have 6GB of RAM or more (which seems to be the rule, these days), this obviously isn't a problem. However, I have 2GB on an old system, and where Firefox uses upwards of 600 MB (private working set), Palemoon uses less than 400MB for literally the same setup: same extensions, plugins, and the same loaded, pinned and grouped tabs. Also, there's less wild variation. I've had Firefox balloon up to 1GB usage, just sitting there doing nothing. The stability of the two browsers seems to be about the same.
I have not experienced the same benefits with Cyberfox or any other Firefox-based browser. However, one benefit of multiple Firefox-based browsers is that you can run them simultaneously, which, last I checked, was impossible with Firefox and Portable Firefox.
Some folks requested HTML5 Benchmark and Browsermark, so I added them both but with the current (as of today) versions of FF and PM. IE's Chalkboard test was also requested but doesn't make much sense to test since PM24 (and FF ESR 24) will be significantly faster than FF31 since they're based on an earlier version of the Gecko rendering engine and don't support all the CSS3 abilities the test is trying to run on them.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Note: Benchmarks are more just a guide as they are critically flawed as they are affect by hardware performance (Results will vary from computer to computer).
Cyberfox 32: Peacekeeper 6425
http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/results?key=9XWa&resultId=5040267
Chrome 38.0.2125.58 x64: Peacekeeper 6399
Chrome 37.0.2062.120 x86: Peacekeeper 5991
http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/results?key=9XzZ&resultId=5045976
Without similar Firefox and Pale Moon numbers, these numbers are pretty meaningless. Benchmarks are useful to compare browsers running on the same hardware to each other as I did above.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Out of curiousity, I revisited this. As most of the older tests are no longer and I have a much better PC. I did two tests so far:
BrowserMark: http://web.basemark.com/
FF 41: 6567
PM 25.7.1: 4626
PM 25.7.1 x64: 4352
JetStream: http://browserbench.org/JetStream/
FF 41: 203.39 ± 2.7897
PM 25.7.1: Did not finish (stuck at cdjs)
PM 25.7.1 x64: Did not finish (stuck at cdjs)
As Pale Moon is mostly the older Firefox 31-ish tech at this point, it makes sense to see it lagging further behind.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
i couldn't help but notice that cyberfox had beaten firefox in a test and pale moon in another, and that it wasn't included in some of the tests.
from my experience, for webcam-streaming, cyberfox is the hands-down winner... waterfox being a close second, but there are no optimizations for amd cpus on waterfox.
do you feel like running a fresh batch of tests for a "final quarter of 2016" roundup?
it also might be helpful if you list your hardware, so we can do a comparison of architectures.
PA thinks security first for browsers
Wm