bearstart: port the native shell's branded start page into the Gecko build#79
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…build The WKWebView shim had a real identity — bear wordmark, trust pills, sovereign search with inline federated results, shortcut tiles, green token system. The production Gecko build opened on an anonymous gutted about:newtab. This ports that page in as the new-tab + home page on all three platforms: - settings/start/bearbrowser-start.html: the page, with DM Sans self-hosted (variable woff2, zero network fetches) instead of the mac-only SF Pro stack - packaged into browser omni.ja at browser/bearstart/ via FINAL_TARGET_FILES (same mechanism as bearblocker) -> resource:///bearstart/... works identically on Linux/Windows/macOS, no package-manifest entries needed - new tab: AboutNewTab.newTabURL override via autoconfig JS (there is no pref for this) — appended to bearbrowser.cfg on Linux/Windows by the overlay script; injected as a minimal cfg post-package on macOS. Requires general.config.sandbox_enabled=false (our own baked-in file, same trust as the binary; LibreWolf ships its cfg the same way) - homepage: fixed the DEAD pref value — it pointed at the old native shell's absolute /Applications path (macOS-only, gone). Now the resource URL. Also dropped browser.newtab.url, removed from Firefox years ago - search: sovereign endpoints only (search-api JSON inline w/ receipt line, SearXNG HTML fallback), straight from the shim
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Closes the identity gap: the WKWebView shim opened on a branded page (bear wordmark, trust pills, sovereign search, shortcut tiles, green tokens) while the production Gecko build opened on an anonymous gutted
about:newtab. This ports that page into the real build as new-tab + homepage on all three platforms.Mechanism
settings/start/;bearbrowser-patches.pypackages them into browser omni.ja atbrowser/bearstart/viaFINAL_TARGET_FILES— the proven bearblocker mechanism, soresource:///bearstart/bearbrowser-start.htmlresolves identically everywhere with no package-manifest entries.AboutNewTab.newTabURLfrom privileged autoconfig JS. Appended to the generatedbearbrowser.cfgon Linux/Windows (overlay script); injected as a minimal cfg post-package on macOS (which doesn't emit the cfg — see the nightly-dmg manifest-relax step). Needsgeneral.config.sandbox_enabled=false; the cfg is our own baked-in file, same trust level as the binary (LibreWolf ships identically). Override is try/caught so it can never break startup./Applicationsfile path (macOS-only, no longer exists). Now the resource URL. Also removedbrowser.newtab.url, which Firefox deleted years ago.Verification
Not buildable in PR CI (nightly lanes trigger on main / dispatch). After merge: dispatch nightly-linux or nightly-dmg and check (1) new tab opens the bear page, (2) homepage same, (3) DM Sans renders (no network fetch), (4) search falls back to searx.socioprophet.ai.
Known follow-up (found during this audit)
apply-bearbrowser-branding.shonly copiesbranding/bearbrowser.svgover librewolf SVGs — no .icns/.ico/.png generation — so the packaged apps still wear default LibreWolf/Firefox raster icons. Separate PR.