Basilisk is a free and Open Source XUL-based web browser created by the developers of the Pale Moon browser. It is based on the Goanna layout and rendering engine (a fork of Gecko) and builds on the Unified XUL Platform (UXP), which in turn is a fork of the Mozilla code base without Servo or Rust.
Basilisk as an application is primarily a vessel for development of the XUL platform it builds upon, and additionally a potential replacement for Firefox to retain the use of Firefox Extensions. It aims to retain useful technologies that its sibling Firefox has removed.
Requires Windows 7 or later. Windows XP or Windows Vista are not supported.
Main features:
- Full support for JavaScript"s ECMAscript 6 standard for modern web browsing.
- Support for all NPAPI plugins (Unity, Silverlight, Flash, Java, authentication plugins, etc.).
- Support for XUL/Overlay Mozilla-style extensions.
- Experimental support for WebExtensions (in gecko-target mode). Please note that some Mozilla-specific WebExtension APIs are not yet available.
- Support for ALSA on Linux.
- Support for WebAssembly (WASM).
- Support for advanced Graphite font shaping features.
- Support for modern web cryptography: up to TLS 1.3, modern ciphers, HSTS, etc.
Important differences with Mozilla Firefox:
- Uses Goanna as a layout and rendering engine. Goanna behaves slightly differently than Gecko in certain respects and may result in different display of web pages. e.g.: Goanna renders gradients in a more accurate color space (non-premultiplied).
- Builds on UXP, our XUL platform in development. As such XUL is alive and well in this browser and will not be deprecated.
- Has some long-standing known issues with the Mozilla code-base fixed (e.g. CVE-2009-1232).
- Does not use Rust or the Photon user interface. You can expect a familiar interface as-carried by Firefox between v29 and v56.
- Does not use Electrolysis (e10s, multi-process browsing).
- Does not require walled-garden extension signing.
Basilisk 2020.04.15 release notes:
This is a major development update. Important: It is possible that since 2020.03.04 your browser is no longer checking automatically for updates, due to an oversight in keeping a pre-release preference. You may have to check for updates manually from the About box. Please verify after updating that your updating preferences are set correctly for your use!
Basilisk 2020.05.08 changelog:
- On-going work for implementing ShadowDOM v1, aligning the way DOM works as-needed.
- On-going work for solving dependency issues in C++ throughout the entire tree.
- Removed unused Contextual Identity Service.
- Implemented URLSearchParams sort().
- Enabled DOM High resolution timestamps.
- Removed support for obsolete NV 3DVision stereoscopic hardware.
- Fixed a potential vulnerability in the zip file reader. DiD
- Fixed a potential vulnerability in the JavaScript JIT compiler related to aliases. DiD
- Ported several upstream devtools fixes (addresses CVE-2020-12392 and CVE-2020-12393).
- Ported upstream sctp fix (addresses CVE-2020-6831).
- Improved memory safety of come WebAudio calls.
- Improved memory safety in the XUL window destructor. DiD
- Unified XUL Platform Mozilla Security Patch Summary: 4 fixed, 3 DiD (Defense-in-depth), 15 not applicable.
Download: Basilisk 2020.05.08 (32-bit) | Portable | ~50.0 MB (Open Source)
Download: Basilisk 2020.05.08 (64-bit) | Portable
View: Basilisk Website