General Discussion • Re: Goanna article in EN Wikipedia has been nominated for deletion

Here's some more. Some of them miss the mark a bit technically, but they are generally positive.

1. “Pale Moon – Independent Windows and Linux Browser”, Mojeek Official Blog, June 29, 2022, https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/06/pale-mo ... owser.html.

Back in 2009, the lead developer of what is now known as the Pale Moon browser forked Firefox. Originally leveraging the Gecko rendering engine, the browser gradually moved in its own direction, with this fork of Gecko becoming Goanna in 2015.

The work put into Goanna has turned it into something which has diverged considerably from the original fork. This engine has become a true alternative to Gecko, not bound to developments undertaken by Mozilla. It instead reflects the choices and wishes of an enthusiastic community and tightly-knit team of developers.

It is difficult to overstate the ambition behind the tech stack that forms the backbone of Pale Moon; going their own way when much larger technology companies have decided to rely on Big Tech projects. Does this remind you of anyone, I wonder?

1. "Pale Moon Browser Review: Incredibly Lightweight And Secure", Windows Report, Sept 30, 2025, https://windowsreport.com/pale-moon-browser-review/

There have been other Firefox forks, but Pale Moon opted for a separate custom Goanna browser engine, a fork of the Gecko engine.

Goanna is built on an independent Unified XL Platform, a derivative of Mozilla’s dead XUL language.

Despite being cloned from ancient Gecko and Firefox code, Pale Moon’s use of the Goanna engine distinguishes it as more than simply an obsolete version of Firefox. This also makes it a very safe and secure choice.

1. "Pale Moon – Goanna-based web browser", LinuxLinks, Feb 21, 2024, https://www.linuxlinks.com/pale-moon-go ... b-browser/

Pale Moon is a Goanna-based web browser available for various operating systems.

Pale Moon originated as a fork of Firefox, but has subsequently diverged. The main differences are the user interface, add-on support, and running in single-process mode

This is free and open source software.

1. "7 Open Source Chrome Alternative Web Browsers for Linux", It's Foss, Mar 27, 2023, https://itsfoss.com/open-source-browsers-linux/

While it may look like a slightly older version of Firefox, Pale Moon is much more. Pale Moon is a fork of Firefox maintained by Dutch developer M.C. Straver, also known as Moonchild. Pale Moon's goal is to “create a full-featured, optimized browser derived from the code behind the popular Firefox browser”.

This is accomplished by removing support for older hardware and operating systems. Like NetSurf, Pale Moon has its own layout engine named Goanna, which is a fork of Gecko. Pale Moon is built with C and C++.

1. "Basilisk: A Firefox Fork For The Classic Looks and Classic Extensions", It's Foss, Mar 10, 2020, https://itsfoss.com/basilisk-browser/

Basilisk works out of the box. However, here are some features you might want to take a look before considering to use it: XUL-based web browser It features the ‘Australis’ Firefox interface, which was quite popular back in the time of v29 – v56 Firefox version. NPAPI plugins supported (Flash, Unity, Java, etc.) Support for XUL/Overlay Mozilla-style extensions. Uses Goanna open-source browser engine which is a fork of Mozilla’s Gecko Does not use Rust or the Photon user interface Supports 64-bit systems only

1. "Mobile Ecosystems Market Study interim report, Appendix F: understanding the role of browser engines 2021 (CMA)", Competition and Markets Authority, Government of UK. Main page - https://www.gov.uk/find-digital-market- ... s-2021-cma Appendix F page - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ngines.pdf

There have been a limited number of entrants over the past decade, including: • The open-source browser engine Goanna, a fork of Gecko which is stewarded by Moonchild Productions. Officially launched in 2015, Goanna powers both of Moonchild Productions’ open-source web browsers, PaleMoon and Basilisk.25 The browser engine has also been adopted by K-Meleon and Mypal

1. "Pale Moon Project Rolls Out The Basilisk Browser Project", Phoronix, Nov 17, 2017, https://www.phoronix.com/news/Basilisk-Web-Browser

The developers behind the Pale Moon web-browser that's been a long standing fork of Firefox have rolled out their first public beta release of their new "Basilisk" browser technology.

Basilisk is their new development platform based on their (Gecko-forked) Goanna layout engine and the Unified UXL Platform (UXP) that is a fork of the Mozilla code-base pre-Servo/Rust... Basically for those not liking the direction of Firefox with v57 rolling out the Quantum changes, etc.

1. "Pale Moon 28 unveils major under-the-hood changes and improvements", BetaNews, Aug 16, 2018, https://betanews.com/article/pale-moon- ... rovements/

The new build unveils the fourth iteration of its own browser rendering engine, Goanna, which was first adopted back in 2016. There are also major updates to its JavaScript engine, media backend as well as newly introduced support for the WebGL2 standard.

Although based on Firefox, Pale Moon was forked several years ago to focus on its own development. There are virtually no visual or obvious changes in this new major build, but the under-the-hood changes are both extensive and necessary.

The latest iteration of its own browser rendering engine -- Goanna -- remains based on Firefox’s old Gecko engine and promises improved compatibility with what it dubs "trendy" CSS styling techniques such as CSS Grid.

1. "Pale Moon 26.0 has been released", Ghacks.net, Jun 26, 2017, https://www.ghacks.net/2016/01/26/pale- ... -released/

Pale Moon 26.0 has been released. The new version of the web browser is the first in which the switch to Goanna, the new rendering engine that is closely related to Gecko but not the same, is completed.

When it comes to Firefox-based browsers, it is probably Pale Moon that is the most popular in terms of users but also news coverage around the web. While you could argue that SeaMonkey is more popular, it is more than just a browser and at least somewhat pushed by the fact that it is offered on Mozilla's official website.

Pale Moon 26.0 ships with the Goanna rendering engine. While most users may not notice any changes whatsoever after updating to version 26.0 of the web browser, some may notice issues. This is to be expected considering that switching rendering engines is quite the major undertaking in the browser world.

1. "Pale Moon to switch from Gecko to Goanna rendering engine", Ghacks.net, Jun 22, 2015, https://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/22/pale- ... ng-engine/

The Pale Moon team announced yesterday on the official project forum that the next major version of the browser, Pale Moon 26, will use the new layout and rendering engine Goanna instead of Mozilla's Gecko.

The Pale Moon web browser used Mozilla's Gecko engine up until now thanks to its close ties to the Firefox project.

One major issue that the team ran into is that Mozilla linked Gecko's version to that of the Firefox web browser which caused compatibility issues for Pale Moon users on websites that detected the "wrong" version of Gecko thanks to Pale Moon's different version.

Apart from the technical issue described above, using Gecko was also identified as a legal issue by the Pale Moon team as it is a registered trademark licensed to the Mozilla Foundation by Netscape/AOL.

The solution the team came up with was to create its own rendering and layout engine Goanna and use it instead of Gecko in the Pale Moon browser. As is the case with Pale Moon and Firefox, it has close ties to the Gecko rendering engine.

1. "Pale Moon adopts new Goanna browser engine, fine-tunes interface", BetaNews, Jan 26, 2016, https://betanews.com/article/pale-moon- ... interface/

The new build, also available in 64-bit, sees Pale Moon unveil its own browser rendering engine, Goanna, plus further fine-tune the browser user interface as well as introduce a number of other new features, changes and security improvements.

The move to a brand new rendering engine is part of Pale Moon’s fork away from Firefox, the browser it’s based on, that began before v25 was released. Goanna remains closely related to Firefox’s Gecko engine, but is designed to further differentiate Pale Moon from its one-time parent.

Moonchild warns the move could result in potential compatibility issues with certain websites as well as Firefox browser extensions. It urges users to report problems to itself or site owners in the case of an individual website.

The shift to Goanna also sees Pale Moon reduce the number of languages it supports through included language packs -- the total number remains at over 30, however.