0.3.3

What's new in vanilla 0.3.3

• A start page, vanilla://start, opens for new tabs and on the first run instead of a
  blank page or google.com. It has a search box with a choice of search engine, the tabs
  you looked at recently as cards (with the directories above each tab, a button to send it
  to the trash), and a Tab history: every tab you opened, by date, with the closed ones
  marked "Trash" and restorable with a click, check boxes to delete closed entries in bulk,
  search, and keyboard navigation. The default size of the trash is now 500. Search
  results on the start page and in the settings show the matching text in bold blue.
• "Translucent window" (formerly "Translucent tab bar") makes the whole window frame
  translucent over a blurred desktop (acrylic) while the pages stay opaque; the start page
  and the settings page show the blur through. "Translucent menus, panels and dialogs" does
  the same for those. Both are off by default.
• "Graphics API (WebEngineView)" now defaults to OpenGL on Windows, so the window stays
  translucent after a Qt WebEngine tab is opened. If the window stays blank or is slow,
  choose Auto (Direct3D 11) there.
• Site permissions (camera, microphone, location, notifications…) are kept in one table
  shared by the Edge and the Qt WebEngine views, and the settings page lists them by site,
  switches and removes them. Permissions granted before this version are not carried over.
• The Edge view gets "Tracking prevention" (Off, Basic, Balanced, Strict) and "Microsoft
  Defender SmartScreen" in the settings.
• Extensions: a setting chooses which tabs extensions see (all tabs, the tabs in the
  current tab's directory, or loaded tabs). Extension names follow the UI language in the Qt WebEngine view, and
  an extension's runtime.onInstalled is delivered again after its registration is
  renewed, so DeepL's context menu appears there too.
• Downloads: the history in the settings has "Open the page it came from" for each entry.
  In the Edge view, a download keeps going when the tab that started it is closed, and the
  history records how it really ended.
• Private directories and profiles keep less on disk: SSL exceptions answered there and
  favicons are not stored, the thumbnails and back/forward history of private tabs stay in
  memory, and private tabs that are closed skip the trash. The address and title of open
  private tabs are still saved with the tree, as before.
• Menus: the font and spacing match the tab bar, a context menu shows the key that runs an
  entry where it was opened, and the menus of the tab list, the trash and the tab bar share
  one order. Moving several nodes to the trash shows a notice. Windows' own window menu (right click on the title bar, Alt+Space) follows the
  colour scheme and carries the application menu.
• Trash: the trash list can delete closed tabs permanently (the × button and the delete
  commands, after a confirmation), and a restore button sits beside the ×.
• The tab list blurs the page behind it ("Blur the page behind the tab list", on by
  default). While it is on, a Qt WebEngine page behind the list is shown as a still
  picture, as the other views already were.
• The settings page was reorganised: settings moved to where one would look for them,
  long sections have subheadings, groups are separated in the list on the left,
  explanations say only what the label does not, settings that do not apply are disabled,
  and changing one that takes effect at the next start offers to restart. Opening and
  updating the page no longer flickers.
• The tab bar and the toolbar have rounded handles; the docks of the inspector and the side
  panel draw their own title bars in the colours of the bars, and the Edge inspector no
  longer leaves a frame inside the dock.
• Edge view: tabs show the site's icon; Ctrl+C / X / V and Paste in the context menu go to
  the page, so files and images can be pasted; link tooltips no longer drift after moving
  the window; the dark blank page shown while a view is recreated matches the background.

Fixes

• Closing a tab selects the most recently used tab again in the Edge view as well.
• In the Qt WebEngine views (widgets and Quick), a new tab's search box has real focus, so
  the caret shows and the IME works; Ctrl+T opens the new tab in front instead of behind.
• Hidden Qt Quick WebEngine tabs are reported as hidden to the page (visibilitychange).
• A directory's "Auto load" can no longer be chosen while "Load tabs ahead in the
  background" is off, since it does nothing then.
• A crash in the tab bar while removing items that were still being drawn.
• Extension toolbar buttons kept working after clicking another extension's button
  (Vimium together with uBlock Origin Lite).
• An extension updated by Chrome no longer leaves its settings behind under the old
  version.
• Tab previews and popups no longer stay on screen after a menu closes or after switching
  to another application.
• With the translucent window, the Qt WebEngine settings page no longer covers the tab list.
• Thumbnails are retaken after loading even when the tree bar is hidden, and the Edge view
  leaves full screen when it is hidden.
• Starting with a large tree and Edge extensions is faster.

Notes

• Windows 10 / 11 x64. Extract the zip and run vanilla.exe; settings and sessions are kept
  in data/ beside the executable, so removing the directory removes everything.
• If vanilla.exe says VCRUNTIME140.dll is missing, run the bundled vc_redist.x64.exe
  once, then start vanilla again.
• The Edge WebView2 runtime is not bundled. Windows 11 has it; without it the Qt WebEngine
  view is used.
• Qt 6.12.0 and Qt WebEngine 6.140.0 (Chromium 140.0.7339.225) are unchanged from 0.3.2.
  The bundled Qt WebEngine is the official build, which carries no proprietary codecs:
  in that view H.264 and AAC do not play, while VP8, VP9, AV1, Opus and MP3 do.
  The Edge view brings its own codecs.
• The bundled Qt WebEngine does not carry vanilla's patches either. The patches are in
  tools/patches/ for those who build Qt WebEngine themselves (web-accessible-resources,
  isolated-world-unsafe-eval, ime-to-active-widget). The Edge view needs none of them.
• The executable is not code-signed, so SmartScreen may warn on the first run
  ("More info" then "Run anyway"). Check the archive against the hash below.

vanilla-0.3.3-x64.zip
SHA-256: F30D1CC8B835A656F8FB32FC698643BB07D45262C282CCAA4E405E19F79D06D7

Credits

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 noreply@anthropic.com
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 noreply@anthropic.com
Co-Authored-By: Codex CLI (gpt-5.6-sol, gpt-6.1-sol) noreply@openai.com
Co-Authored-By: Gemini (gemini-3.8-flash) noreply@google.com