The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

Before condemning Basilisk for not being natively portable, one should take care to test some of the well documented Firefox portability remedies -- which I haven't done but would certainly do if I had the the leisure and will to test this Firefox clone...

Please try either one of the following:

• Basilisk.exe -P [PathToProfileFolder]
• Placing a 'profile[s?].ini' with the content below alongside 'Basilisk.exe'

  Code: Select all

  [profile]
  path=profiles
  isRelative=1

Another suggestion I have seen around was to download the PortableApps.com Pale Moon package and just replace everything inside the 'App\Pale Moon' folder with the un-zipped Basilisk files.

I suspect Basilisk will be prone to the same stealth shortcomings as its Pale Moon ancestor (see the corresponding database entry for details: https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1978).

Having said that, here's a list of related portability pointers to jumpstart further research...

Midas wrote: ↑Thu May 23, 2019 5:07 am Before condemning Basilisk for not being natively portable, one should take care to test some of the well documented Firefox portability remedies -- which I haven't done, but would certainly do, if I had the the leisure and the will to test this Firefox browser clone...

Please try either one of the following:

• Basilisk.exe -P [PathToProfileFolder]
• Placing a 'profile.ini' with the content below alongside 'Basilisk.exe'

  Code: Select all

  [profile]
  path=profiles
  isRelative=1

I suspect Basilisk will be prone to the same stealth shortcomings as its Pale Moon ancestor (see the database entry for details: https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1978).

i tried the profile.ini file next to basilisk.exe fwiw and it doesn't seem to work

Basilisk does support several add-ons that i like, including TabMixPlus, uBlock Origin and a fork of uMatrix called nMatrix

Cyberfox has been running very high CPU cycles lately and the project appears dead for almost a year so i'll be replacing it with Basilisk for now

there's a thread over at the Pale Moon forum with a few suggestions but they are beyond my knowledge on how to implement, like making a 7-zip self extracting file. maybe others would benefit though:

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=17518

edit: oops, i see you got there already, Midas

What about 'profiles.ini'? If I remember correctly, at some point in the past some browser needed this...

Basilisk v2019.06.08 released (changelog at http://www.basilisk-browser.org/releasenotes.shtml).

Here's an interesting forum topic started by the developer about a change made a few releases back:

Topic update: Basilisk v2023.12.09 released 2023-12-08 (changes at https://www.basilisk-browser.org/releasenotes.shtml).

Basilisk is no longer developed by the Pale Moon team. It is now developed by a team of developers independent from the Pale Moon project. [...] Basilisk is intended to be a potential replacement for pre-Servo versions of Firefox. It can also be considered a reference implementation for building a browser on top of the UXP platform. Basilisk is considered to be a stable piece of software at this time. This means that it does not change for the sake of change. We only make changes if we actually feel they are beneficial for users, unlike Mozilla who treats Firefox's interface as if it is a fashion show with new designs every week.

[Basilisk] 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.

IMPORTANT! The vendor name for Basilisk has changed. If you recently updated you may notice that none of your bookmarks or extensions transferred. See the instructions below.

On Windows: Copy '%appdata%\Moonchild Productions\Basilisk' to '%appdata%\Basilisk-Dev\Basilisk'

For details on Basilisk development changes, see https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=28657.

There's also a fairly recent thread about Basilisk's portability (or lack of, really) at https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=30480.

Midas wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 10:15 amBasilisk is no longer developed by the Pale Moon team. It is now developed by a team of developers independent from the Pale Moon project.

Here's the announcement from the new Basilisk dev - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=28657.

I used to follow all these weird Firefox offshoots, but they just took up unnecessary time that I could dedicate elsewhere. I just stick with the latest version of Firefox and call it a day.

Yep, that link was in the penultimate paragraph of my post...

Who could've told after Internet Explorer's dominance protracted demise that we'd be in the same conundrum regarding Chrome/Chromium derivatives after all these years?


From https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

That being so, diversity is excellent in my book.

EDIT: For details on the many hurdles of browser building see these excellent posts by Andreas Kling, the main Ladybird developer, which is a browser being built from scratch for SerenityOS:

• https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/
• https://awesomekling.substack.com/p/how-were-building-a-browser-when

As posted previously in K-Meleon's topic, there's even a couple of Goanna-based forks tended by its current developer Roytam, chiefly a XP compatible build under the name of Serpent -- weekly binaries are at http://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/ (see also https://msfn.org/board/topic/185966-my-browser-builds-part-5/).

Midas wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 2:53 am Yep, that link was in the penultimate paragraph of my post...

Oops, sorry Midas! I missed the last part of your post!