HowToGeek noticed us!

[Mæstro]

The article was released a week ago, but nobody here seems to have yet mentioned it. It is a welcome view of how mainstream technology journalists, as distinguished from the SNS hive mind, think of us. The article does not discourage users from trying. The only awkward bit is thus:

Pale Moon is still regularly updated and maintained, but it is worth noting that the older code can pose a security risk. Browsers are particularly susceptible to attacks, so despite their privacy features, their overall safety as a web browser is uncertain.

Because the antecedent of ‘their’ would appear to be ‘browsers’, that is, browsers in general and not Pale Moon in particular, this statement would not appear to be echoing the common myth that Pale Moon is somehow insecure, but repeating a general statement that applies to Chrome, Firefox and the others. Perhaps a stochastic parrot was responsible for that bit. On the whole, I should count this as another favourable mention.

[Gemmaugr]

Not so sure about that. It's still aping the tired old mantra of "Pale Moon is a Firefox fork, but it is largely based on pre-Quantum Firefox, the major overhaul Mozilla introduced in 2017, so it is quite an old fork.". Which has absolutely no relevance to.. anything. Like it has stood still and not updated or changed in any way or form. It's as relevant as saying that "chromium is a Safari fork, and launched in 2010, so it's quite an old fork".

The same "old" is repeated yet again in the very next sentence. "While it is not as fast as modern browsers due to its older codebase". Not an old codebase, since it's regularly updated. It's just that google throws out established standards and replaces them with new that does more or less the same thing, on top of introducing their newest shiny thing with their rapid update cycle.

It then goes on to say that it looks old.. sorry, "classic". And doesn't mention anything about being highly customizable, and even able to look modern. Nor that "vintage" (how many ways can you say old?) XUL addons are more powerful than googles watered down WebExtensions.

[Moonchild]

Unfortunately Gemmaugr is right: the whole article just repeats the same misconception that we're somehow insecure despite me taking Mozilla Security bugs (in close cooperation with the MozSec team!) under the loupe every Firefox release and porting what applies to us. And that because we're a fork, we're "actually" just an "older Firefox" with all the caveats of running a poorly maintained rebuild .
It would indeed have served better if they also highlighted the positives Pale Moon exists in the first place, which they didn't really do.
I'd give it a 4/10; they could do a lot better, but I'm happy to see at least someone in the mainstream media acknowledging we exist in something other than an outright bashing piece.

[Falna]

the whole article just repeats the same misconception that we're somehow insecure despite me taking Mozilla Security bugs (in close cooperation with the MozSec team!) under the loupe every Firefox release and porting what applies to us.

As this is one of the two most common misconceptions, it might be worth updating the text on the website home page to address this in the first sentence (or at least the first paragraph). At the moment it's bullet point 3 and the text isn't as clear and explicit as your sentence above.

The only place I could spot similar wording, via a link from the main page, is on the FAQ page under How are security vulnerabilities handled?

Of course there's be no guarantee that it would get picked up by a reviewer, but it may increase the odds.


BTW I seem to recall a forum post (maybe from a few years ago) where you enumerated the number of Firefox patches that haven't applied to Pale Moon; perhaps worth keeping a score and mentioning that too?

[frostknight]

The webpage I had found a month or so ago, had better reviews if I recall correctly.

Here:

viewtopic.php?f=66&t=32695&p=265305&hil ... ew#p265305

This thread is the one I was thinking of.

[Falna]

BTW I seem to recall a forum post (maybe from a few years ago) where you enumerated the number of Firefox patches that haven't applied to Pale Moon; perhaps worth keeping a score and mentioning that too?

Found it here (Jan 13, 2020):

Mozilla has had to patch over 75 electrolysis-specific security vulnerabilities (marked as such and only insofar I have marked them when auditing sec bugs) since they introduced it, most of which were high or critical security rating.