The Pale Moon project is the work of a single individual, using contributed Open Source code to create a full-featured, speed optimized version of the popular Firefox browser. Having seen the advantages on other systems (e.g. Linux) with regards to programs being compiled specifically for the capabilities of the machine it is installed on, it became obviously clear that Windows users were at a disadvantage: Mozilla only releases windows executables with maximum compatibility in mind, meaning that Firefox is made to run on as many different systems as possible, sacrificing efficiency and speed in the process to be compatible with, by current standards, absolutely ancient hardware (backwards compatible to the first Pentium processors from 1993).

This is a brand new release!

Built on Gecko 2.0, the browser has the following new features:

Hardware acceleration of browser windows using Direct3D
Direct2D rendering on operating systems and hardware that support it
DirectWrite font rendering on systems that support it
WebGL 3D graphics, either using native OpenGL (default) or DirectX (via ANGLE)
HTML5 support
New Jaegermonkey javascript engine
Blazingly fast DOM handling

Of course, the well known features from version 3.x are still present, as well:

Graphical tab previews (on a nice glass pane if you have Windows 7) with search
Dynamic/downloadable fonts (including WOFF)
Support for personas and Firefox themes
Support for Firefox 4 compatible add-ons
Support for OOPP (Out-of-process plug-ins)
Able to use existing Firefox profiles, bookmarks and settings (either using the migration tool or using Sync)

Since this is a new release, it may be a little less stable than the tried-and-tested 3.x releases, but no major issues have been found thus far.

Program Information Category: Tools and Utilities Type: Free Version: 4.0 Size: 10.9MB Works on: Windows Product page: here