Pale Moon Project Rolls Out The Basilisk Browser Project

[Michael_S]

Ok, yeah the plugin api is pointless now. But XUL plugins are great. Yes they aren't sandboxed or anything, that's the goddamn point. They have the full power of the browser. As good as jumping in and modifying the browser source code, except you don't have to know C++ and they can be distributed in a more convenient form than patches/git pulls or whatever than you then have to build. And yeah that means you have to be careful which ones you use... no different than you have to be careful what rando windows app you download and use.

My understanding is that the XUL plugin API is inherently singlethreaded and single process. So even if the Firefox developers wanted to keep XUL extensions, it would mean keeping Firefox slow relative to Chrome. And speed is probably the biggest reason Firefox has been losing so many users to Chrome on the desktop.

So the switch to WebExtensions API for plugins was more about speed than it was about security.

If Pale Moon can match Firefox for speed and support XUL, awesome. But I'm too lazy to run my own benchmarks to check. Firefox 57 blows Firefox 56, 55, 54 and on back to hell for speed.

[haagch]

often native code plugins like Unity3D and flash, that only ran on a few OSs and were turning the Internet into a propreitary content platform where you needed closed source OSs and plugins to be able to access content. By eliminating Unity3D and Flash and replacing them with internal browser 3D and video APIs, running in an isolated sandbox, (absolutely necessary to cover the Youtube and online gaming use cases) we increased security and we made all content on the internet available by open source code on virtually all operating systems.

And yet you need to install a proprietary operating system (or android I guess) to view any WebVR content in a HMD with Firefox.
Not that chromium is any better, what they are currently integrating into their chromium codebase only runs on windows too.

edit: And even then, Firefox seems only interested in proprietary VR runtimes like the oculus runtime or steamvr. I know, there is some OSVR support in Firefox but it was never complete enough to be useful for any purpose and it doesn't look like anyone is going to continue it anytime soon.

[KellyClowers]

My understanding is that the XUL plugin API is inherently singlethreaded and single process. So even if the Firefox developers wanted to keep XUL extensions, it would mean keeping Firefox slow relative to Chrome. And speed is probably the biggest reason Firefox has been losing so many users to Chrome on the desktop.

So the switch to WebExtensions API for plugins was more about speed than it was about security.

If Pale Moon can match Firefox for speed and support XUL, awesome. But I'm too lazy to run my own benchmarks to check. Firefox 57 blows Firefox 56, 55, 54 and on back to hell for speed.

XUL and XPCOM could be made multithread/multiprocess, just as the core can be. Might take breaking API changes, but it had those anyway. It would be a lot of work, but it is still the most correct answer (the other somewhat less correct answer would be get rid of XUL, but not until you have a full replacement ready, not just WE)

Also, people who think FF/gecko are slow are insane.

[Spazturtle]

Anyway, back to this announcement, what exactly is this? "UXP" sounds a bit like the old XULRunner initiative... but how is Basilisk any different from PaleMoon? It almost sounds like it is just the equivalent of FF's beta or nightly channel....

Basilisk is a fork of a newer version of FF, which is basically an admission that the direction Pale Moon went in was the wrong one (no multithreading, no sandboxing, ect).

Ok, yeah the plugin api is pointless now. But XUL plugins are great. Yes they aren't sandboxed or anything, that's the goddamn point. They have the full power of the browser. As good as jumping in and modifying the browser source code, except you don't have to know C++ and they can be distributed in a more convenient form than patches/git pulls or whatever than you then have to build. And yeah that means you have to be careful which ones you use... no different than you have to be careful what rando windows app you download and use.

Guess what? You can still do all that in Nightly and Dev Edition.

[ssokolow]

I've come to terms with my anger at their shrinking their loudly promised "native.js" solution down to "WebExtensions Experiments" with little more than a single comment on a single Bugzilla bug for announcement, but I still might switch to Pale Moon temporarily if, come ESR52 sunset, I haven't finished finding/writing external-app-based replacements for things like DownThemAll, TiddlyFox, and Scroll Wheel Tab-Switching.

(There are no plans for WebExtensions to support read/write of specific filesystem paths without relying on the existing upload/download APIs which rely on a single preference to control whether a Save dialog is opened. As for the scroll-wheel switching, I just can't wait for them to hash it out and I know how to write an app which uses X11-level clickjacking to translate mouse wheel events into Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab.)

It'd be better than turning off browser updates.

Guess what? You can still do all that in Nightly and Dev Edition.

Last I asked, I was told that you can turn off signing enforcement in Dev Edition without a recompile (one of the big reasons I target only dev edition, unbranded builds, and ESR on principle), but you can only install non-WebExtensions in Nightly.

[Anvil]

why would you keep using Australis Curved Tabs when people hated that ,

[starshipeleven]

Eeek!!!! Malware!!! Malware!!!! Exterminate!!!!

[grok]

why would you keep using Australis Curved Tabs when people hated that ,

Can be worse. Firefox 4 GUI is fugly and not the classic one still.

[onicsis]

Firefox (pre 5x versions) design as whole is simply to old, not only gecko rendering engine from for the WorldWideWeb from '90 and '00. Firefox is no longer suited for modern Web. Wondering why they kept NPAPI, for java or flash plugins?

[Awesomeness]

Basically for those not liking the direction of Firefox with v57 rolling out the Quantum changes, etc.

Yeah, fuck performance! Who would want performance!?!