Request: Basilisk support

[FrostKnight]

Basilisk is like the web browser firefox, but it uses XUL instead of Webext. I was wondering if there would be anything, that would convince you to support basilisk indefinitely, even if the addon is on your website, etc...

I absolutely love this addon, and I appreciate your kind work, I only wish more people knew about this addon, in the free software community. It blows privacy badger out of the water, and then some. Privacy badger should be ditched in favor of this addon. :) But anyways, that is my wish. Once ESR switches to webext things get worse for firefox.

I hope this is a good place for my request.

[cowlicks]

Hi @FrostKnight I'd like to support as many browsers as possible, but I need help from regular users of the browsers. These are the steps I'd follow to start supporting basilisk, or any new browser:

• Install the browser
• Install the development version of Privacy Possum from source, instructions for how to do this with Firefox are here (probably a similar process to basilisk) and Chrome are here
• Go to a some sites with known tracking, like twitch.tv, http://valve.github.io/fingerprintjs2/, etc and see if the extension behaves normally.
• If everything is normal, start distributing it on that browser
• if not, start debugging

You probably already have done the first step, so you might be able to get through these steps more quickly than me. If you're able to do this initial testing, it would help me out a lot.

Thank you!

[FrostKnight]

My distro doesn't currently use it, but it is in development of forking it to remove non-libre stuff. But yeah, it works on normal basilisk very well so far.

Anywho though, it is similiar to Firefox esr 52. But yeah, I am very much willing to do so.

You are a kind soul, I have given you a review on mozilla's website. Although you may not know this, but I was using it with firefox esr 52 at the time.

Quick question though, have you reached out to EFF and suggested they ditch privacy badger in favor of privacy possum? If you have, and they said no, then they are foolish.

Quick edit: I used the valve.github.io and it showed this:

Fingerprintjs2

Your browser fingerprint: 873ca8a387dcb5dbce39989bb3fb00ae

Time took to calculate the fingerprint: 132ms

Detailed information:

user_agent = na221v9ezra language = t30s1o2i44r color_depth = 34 pixel_ratio = 1.3555012404329934 hardware_concurrency = 3 resolution = 2525,800 available_resolution = 2910,710 timezone_offset = 122 session_storage = 1 local_storage = 1 indexed_db = 1 open_database = 1 cpu_class = true navigator_platform = nwiqfiaplmm do_not_track = true regular_plugins = so4mprp8s27::9fbm4g2k1mo::,gfv8wljhep6::jiuavdjzb4s::,6bhe7229q3h::cv78thxprok::,qg24t2gh8e::rzvmfzx canvas = canvas winding:no~canvas fp:data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAB9AAAADICAYAAACwGnoBAAAH6E webgl = 8y8k33ktor8~extensions:true~webgl aliased line width range:[true, true]~webgl aliased point size ran adblock = false has_lied_languages = true has_lied_resolution = false has_lied_os = true has_lied_browser = false touch_support = 3,false,false js_fonts =

the above was with firefox esr 52 though. I will let you know about basilisk soon.

[cowlicks]

Hi @FrostKnight I look forward to seeing your tests with Basilisk. You can download privacy possum's source from github by running: git clone https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum.git

[FrostKnight]

(firefox:3643): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library. Using the fallback 'C' locale. 1531099317802 addons.productaddons ERROR Request failed certificate checks: [Exception... "SSL is required and URI scheme is not https." nsresult: "0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)" location: "JS frame :: resource://gre/modules/CertUtils.jsm :: checkCert :: line 145" data: no]

is the error I got when I followed your steps. Might be an error that can be fixed,

I had a thought though, I am going to link your addon to my friends from Hyperbola, maybe they can help me with this and test for you. But yeah, you may need to have an extension ID to be compatible with UXP. Hopefully I am not being annoying by doing this right?

[FrostKnight]

I have a bad feeling that it might need to be rewritten with only legacy code to make it work... I don't really know why.

edit: Actually it works on some forms of basilisk such as windows version, but not all. it needs legacy code to work on my browser though, it is based on basilisk.

This is why it doesn't work, but if you are willing to remake the addon I could always donate to you some money.

https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:project:iceweasel-uxp_addons

If I donate now though, would you be willing? 20$ bounty for this browser's compatiblity.

Although, this may be asking too much, let me know, if it is, I may have other options anyways. But thank you for being open to the idea of support basilisk in general.

My thoughts are simple, keep doing it for those who like basilisk, but if you want to support my browser too, I will happily test when you release the .xpi ;)

[cowlicks]

@FrostKnight I'm afraid rewriting Privacy Possum to use legacy/XUL apis would be a lot of work. I've never written an XUL addon, and the API's are quite different from my understanding. So this is not a priority for me at this time.

If you are interested in trying to do this yourself, here is the approach I would take; All of the WebExtension API's are shimmed in src/js/shim.js if you could write wrappers for the XUL apis to look like WebExtension apis, you could insert those functions there. Then if your wrappers worked well, the extension should work.

[FrostKnight]

Okay, then I guess I can close for the time being or until you find time, or feel like doing it, just know, that I, and other people would love this. I might do this if I could gain enough experience, but I have zero experience. Whatsoever so yeah, thanks for the offer, but for the time being, just keep Firefox esr 52+ support if possible. Basilisk I think might support it, but sadly, I cannot use it. Maybe if someone approaches you or someone you know would be willing, but till then, I guess it won't happen. Thanks though for being willing to at least support firefox esr 52+.
PS, if you at any point you change your mind, I will gladly try it out.

EDIT: almost zero experience, but none with xul or webext for darn sure. aka no mozilla experience and only command line experience...