Basilisk 2018.09.27

Basilisk

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 2018.09.27 changelog:

Added support for local-ref URLs in SVG USE elements.
Reinstated part of the searchplugin API that was removed by Mozilla, improving compatibility with search-engine modifying extensions.
Improved compiler compatibility with GCC 8.
Ported all applicable security patches from Gecko/62.
Fixed wrong SVG sizes with non-integer values for viewBox width/height.
Fixed a performance regression when many workers are in use simultaneously.
Improved browser session restore speed by skipping unnecessary notifications.
Fixed a crash with http authentication.
Fixed a performance issue caused by rapid-fire timers due to value overflow.
Fixed an issue with launching executable files not working.
Fixed an issue where sites allowed to store offline data could not be removed from the permission list.
Fixed an issue with common dialog boxes having incorrect sizes for their content.
Fixed a regression: ICC v4 color profiles would not be honored.
Remove the blocking of binary components in extensions.
Added a preference to enable (experimental!) asynchronous panning and zooming on desktop.
Fixed a potential crash when using SOCKS.
Fixed a potential privacy issue in non-standard environments. (CVE-2017-7797)
Fixed a memory leak when using SHA256 crypto.