Changes:
- The compiler has been changed to a newer version (Visual Studio 2012). This has a few consequences:
- Better handling of the browser overall
Things like smooth scrolling, the user interface and page loading should be noticeably smoother on the vast majority of computers. - Automatic vectorization
If your hardware supports it, more advanced processor instructions are used, up to and including SSE4.1, depending on the specific source code optimized. - Support for multiple cores
Automatic parallelization of the code has been used
Note: this is still done extremely conservatively at this time, but will be expanded upon in future releases to have more parts of the browser use multiple cores. - The 64-bit version of Pale Moon will no longer support Windows XP.
People who are running Windows XP x64 will have to switch to the 32-bit version at this time. The 64-bit run-time libraries no longer support the necessary Windows API calls for Windows XP and are restricted to running on Windows version 6.* (i.e.: Vista (6.0), Windows 7 (6.1) and Windows 8 (6.2)). More information and a FAQ about this in this post.
- Better handling of the browser overall
- Incremental garbage collection for Javascript.
Incremental garbage collection for Javascript spreads out the processor intensive "cleanup cycles" to reclaim previously used memory in multiple chunks to reduce pauses/stutter in the browser. Note: this is still a work in progress so not all pauses are eliminated, but they should be significantly reduced.
- Minimize intermediate surface size in Azure to mitigate performance regression bug #778367
- Fix SVG clip paths in Azure bug #797231
- Fix drawing artifacts in Azure bug #797314
- Fix fuzzy equal function bug #770524
- Some fixes to solve some compatibility issues with the new browser binaries and the Windows Aero user interface. bug #758280 bug #783338