

While it won’t be to everyone’s taste, the more conservative approach to browser design can be interpreted as reflective of a desire among some users to abandon the controversial changes Mozilla made. Pale Moon could be described as “traditional,” given that it uses the older Strata theme which appeared in Firefox 4 and in a layout more reminiscent of Firefox 2 and 3 builds. Those who use these features will no doubt feel the loss in Pale Moon, though for the average consumer, it may come as a surprise that such a feature even existed. Therefore, Pale Moon does not include such features as Sync, and some technical components are absent.

The aim behind the Pale Moon project is to cut back what the developer sees as bloat. Pale Moon is one of the most well-known variants using the familiar Firefox platform. With both downsides already mentioned, it could be tempting to ponder why anyone would use the Nightly browser – in truth, there is an element of excitement to being on the cutting edge, whether due to changes the general public will not see for months or due to the potential for new and enticing features. Unlike Chrome, updating is not performed as a background operation, meaning that the browser has to be restarted for each and every update. The Nightly builds of Firefox also have another downside in their daily updates. However, being on the cutting edge does not make it totally perfect, given that there may be bugs and issues that manifest themselves in newer, untested code. Nightly‘s version number is significantly higher than the mainstream browser release, and it is generally seen as the cutting-edge browser. Mozilla’s own testing version, released to the public on a daily basis as code, is revised and tweaks are made. Thus, the precise figures may differ due to system architecture. In our testing, all browsers were 64-bit versions running on a 64-bit operating system.

The question is, which variant should you use? Even Mozilla has proven themselves adept at creating variations on the Firefox browser, with the ESL release amongst others. There are quite a few twists on the familiar Firefox platform, and some have become more easily identified than others, with Pale Moon being a good example.
