Starting version 25.0, Pale Moon no longer by default includes the "Firefox compatibility" portion in it's UserAgent identification string.
Some websites, even very large well-known ones like Google, Netflix and Flickr, no longer recognize Pale Moon as a result, and will present a limited version of the site layout, or even refuse to serve you altogether!
Other sites try to be "helpful" in telling you that your browser is "too old" or something similar, but often being very limited in detecting new, changed or updated browsers, and running into the same problems of not recognizing Pale Moon and as a result providing you with incorrect information - not to mention the resulting annoyance of additional popups or slide-ins or information bars that are really not needed. Even though the intention may be good, what a user decides to run is, in the end, their own free choice. it is not the responsibility of the website to "advise" any and every visitor of the website of not running a recommended version. They can choose not to provide support in case of issues, but simply visiting a website should be pleasant for a user, without nagging about not using the "latest" version of "supported" browsers.
If you don't know what's going on, then you may think that Pale Moon is somehow broken, but instead it is actually the website you are visiting that is in need of fixing up. So, in these cases, you need to do the following to get back to a usable or preferred/modern state of things:
- EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Contact the website owners and tell them about the issue you have with Pale Moon visiting their site, and ask them to support your free choice of browser to visit them. Especially in the case of sites simply refusing to serve you, this can be considered a form of software discrimination.
- Implement a workaround in Pale Moon while the website owners take their (often sweet) time to address this issue:
- In your address bar, type about:config and press enter
This opens up the advanced preferences editor - In the list you see, right-click and select "New" and then "String" to create a new preference value
- For the new preference name, use general.useragent.override.domain.com where the domain.com part is the domain of the website you are having trouble with.
For example for Netflix: general.useragent.override.netflix.com - As value, use a known acceptable UserAgent value for a mainstream browser. If the same site worked fine in Pale Moon 24.7 and stopped working well in Pale Moon 25, you can use, for example:
Although you can try any other mainstream browser UserAgent in its place, of course.
Code: Select all
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/33.0 PaleMoon/25.0
- In your address bar, type about:config and press enter
As an alternative to the workaround above, you can also make Pale Moon pretend it's Mozilla Firefox to all websites in one go by doing the following:
- In the address bar, type about:config and press enter
- In the list, find general.useragent.compatMode.firefox
- Double-click this entry to set it to "true"
I will add an option in the Options dialog box in the next release to make this global "switch" more convenient to use for people short on time or not comfortable with handling advanced preferences. As of 25.0.2, this option will be checked by default due to continued issues with websites and the resulting complaints simply taking too much time to address. The above warning still applies, and will have to be kept in mind.
You will find this switch under Advanced in the Options dialog: