Dactyloidae Browser (Basilisk fork)

[ownedbywuigi]

Nice job, a Linux release before that would be cool tho.

With the recent Python 3 introduction, I should give Linux compilation another shot in 13.2

[Mæstro]

Is this fork experimental, as a vision into a world where Mozilla thought WebExtensions should be yet another extension type beside XUL, NPAPI and Jetpack, or do you actually intend this for users who wish a browser with flat design and WebExtensions, yet favour the Goanna engine? What has been your motivation in this?

[ownedbywuigi]

Is this fork experimental, as a vision into a world where Mozilla thought WebExtensions should be yet another extension type beside XUL, NPAPI and Jetpack, or do you actually intend this for users who wish a browser with flat design and WebExtensions, yet favour the Goanna engine? What has been your motivation in this?

To answer your questions:
1. There isn’t a single vision for my fork, I just fuck around and find out I guess.
2. My motivation mainly is to increase the speed and responsiveness of the Goanna engine, at first it was just an ‘experiment’ fork but since my optimisations have gotten popular, I decided to make speed my main motivator for this fork. The theme was just a nice bonus since I am fond of the early Metro design (probably coming from me growing up with early Windows 10)

[ownedbywuigi]

Can now confirm (?) that Dactyloidae has the same speed as LibreWolf (latest) in real world testing (loading YouTube, and other "real world" sites)

[ownedbywuigi]

Will be taking a short break from development to upstream the notable changes into UXP.

Expect some cool stuff

[walmar]

Hello everybody.

WebExtensions support comparable to Firefox ESR 78

- UXP/README.md in main - UXP - Dactyloidae Repos

Pardon, based on my own observations: The tested Dactyloidae version 13.1 pre-release 2 seems to be missing some basic WebExtensions features.

The Redirector extension is supposed to work with FF 42+, for example.

In my main browser Waterfox/56.6.2022.11 from 2022 it works just fine – this also supports overlay, bootstrapped and add-on SDK extensions.

With Dactyloidae, the buttons in the popup do not work and the console returns, among other things, the following lines.

tabs is undefined popup.js:27
WebRequest is not defined ext-webRequest.js:120

Similar results occur with popups from other extensions such as uBlock Origin, Violentmonkey or Polly/Polly+.
It seems to me that WebExtensions with a user interface do not function as intended without the missing functionality.

As much as I would like a new browser with a similar range of functions to the discontinued FF 56 and its fork, I would like more clarity.

Please reply, ownedbywuigi, whether you are still working on the aforementioned missing functionality or plan to work on it in the near future, or whether the limitation will be accepted for an indefinite period.

Thanks for your efforts.

[ownedbywuigi]

Hello everybody.

WebExtensions support comparable to Firefox ESR 78

- UXP/README.md in main - UXP - Dactyloidae Repos

Pardon, based on my own observations: The tested Dactyloidae version 13.1 pre-release 2 seems to be missing some basic WebExtensions features.

The Redirector extension is supposed to work with FF 42+, for example.

In my main browser Waterfox/56.6.2022.11 from 2022 it works just fine – this also supports overlay, bootstrapped and add-on SDK extensions.

With Dactyloidae, the buttons in the popup do not work and the console returns, among other things, the following lines.

tabs is undefined popup.js:27
WebRequest is not defined ext-webRequest.js:120

Similar results occur with popups from other extensions such as uBlock Origin, Violentmonkey or Polly/Polly+.
It seems to me that WebExtensions with a user interface do not function as intended without the missing functionality.

As much as I would like a new browser with a similar range of functions to the discontinued FF 56 and its fork, I would like more clarity.

Please reply, ownedbywuigi, whether you are still working on the aforementioned missing functionality or plan to work on it in the near future, or whether the limitation will be accepted for an indefinite period.

Thanks for your efforts.

I have not ported EVERYTHING from Waterfox Classic, these aforementioned issues with WebExtensions and other features from Waterfox Classic will be addressed in 13.2.

Again, apologies for the WebExtension issues, I did not know which extensions to test properly during 13.1 development, aside from the ones I use on the daily.

It seems like my porting of WebRequest from MyPal68 didn't work as well as I thought, will also fix in 13.2. Thanks for your feedback.

[ownedbywuigi]

13.2 coming in June, as I want to work on some core issues in the browser that have been bugging me for a while.

Off-topic:
Hopefully someone at Yeezy realizes that their way of rendering images is total batshit crazy.

If there are any important fixes from stock UXP (such as Turnstile failing again), I'll make a update to 13.1.
In the meantime, first 13.2 prerelease should be coming sometime this month or early May.

[UCyborg]

TBH, when setting up with most (not even all) usual extensions, the browser feels more sluggish than Pale Moon.

And I think there's more to performance. Have you ever tested any site with simply a lot of content? I remember some pages on developer.android.com being really long. I was recently looking at some logs in Jenkins instance at work that Pale Moon choked on, hanging for at least half-minute.

[ownedbywuigi]

TBH, when setting up with most (not even all) usual extensions, the browser feels more sluggish than Pale Moon.

And I think there's more to performance. Have you ever tested any site with simply a lot of content? I remember some pages on developer.android.com being really long. I was recently looking at some logs in Jenkins instance at work that Pale Moon choked on, hanging for at least half-minute.

What version are you on? I’ll try to fix said issues, never had any issue like that on my end

[UCyborg]

Latest 13.1.

Not much to do with extensions, it's just not particularly more responsive in general (multi-process preventing hanging everything by one site aside). In fact, it's noticeably slower in some cases. The infamous YouTube, Pale Moon takes 8-10 seconds before cookie dialog shows, Dactyloidae tends to take at least 15 seconds here. Multi-process on / off doesn't seem to change much.

Then there's an issue with sites missing images outside of viewport that never seem to load.

[sofrosune]

Please tell me you're not programming this with AI/LLM.

[ownedbywuigi]

Latest 13.1.

Not much to do with extensions, it's just not particularly more responsive in general (multi-process preventing hanging everything by one site aside). In fact, it's noticeably slower in some cases. The infamous YouTube, Pale Moon takes 8-10 seconds before cookie dialog shows, Dactyloidae tends to take at least 15 seconds here. Multi-process on / off doesn't seem to change much.

Then there's an issue with sites missing images outside of viewport that never seem to load.

I’m assuming something between 13.0 and 13.1 caused something with the sites missing images (maybe it’s my lazy loading implementation, I’ll do a test build reverting that commit and see if anything changes)

[ownedbywuigi]

Please tell me you're not programming this with AI/LLM.

Only some bug fixes are AI assisted (such as some issues I had getting the native Windows media control thing working). The rest is not AI assisted at all.

[Keith Moon]

Can you place tabs under the address bar? Also, can transport buttons or other theme elements be changed?
Great work!

[ownedbywuigi]

Can you place tabs under the address bar? Also, can transport buttons or other theme elements be changed?
Great work!

You can theme Dactyloidae just like how you would theme Basilisk or Pale Moon.

I can introduce an alternative theme that places tabs underneath the address bar, but stock will still have them above

[Keith Moon]

Yeah I tried Photonic, and it makes for a nice appearance. Thanks for the heads up.

[ownedbywuigi]

Aside from performance-wise issues (I will fix that in 13.2 trust), what else would you like to see in Dactyloidae 13.2?

[Keith Moon]

Aside from performance-wise issues (I will fix that in 13.2 trust), what else would you like to see in Dactyloidae 13.2?

Minor minor thing, but I would like to be able to move the order of transport buttons. I find when using Pale Moon themes, the refresh button is nested at the right of the address bar. I like placing that near Back/Forward/Home. Again, nitpicky! This really works nicely though. Your native them reminds me of classic edge.

[ownedbywuigi]

Aside from performance-wise issues (I will fix that in 13.2 trust), what else would you like to see in Dactyloidae 13.2?

Minor minor thing, but I would like to be able to move the order of transport buttons. I find when using Pale Moon themes, the refresh button is nested at the right of the address bar. I like placing that near Back/Forward/Home. Again, nitpicky! This really works nicely though. Your native them reminds me of classic edge.

Holy shit you're the first person to notice that my native theme is classic Edge like lol

I'll make the order of transport buttons more customizable in 13.2, I think my CSS hardcodes them rn