BlinkGTK 1.2.3-build4 Release Notes

Release date: 2026-09-28 / Chromium: 154.0.8037.57 / Language: 日本語 | English

The rendering engine is updated to Chromium 154.

What build4 makes faster

• Software rendering no longer copies the pixels of every frame before handing them to GTK.
  The captured pixels are passed to the GTK texture as they are. On an Intel UHD Graphics 620
  machine (weston headless, GPU compositing) showing an animated page, the page's animation
  (requestAnimationFrame) ran about 24% more often at scale 2 (35-36 to 44 per second), and about
  9% more frames reached the screen at scale 1 (41.9 to 45.7 per second). CPU use stays the same
  or goes down slightly. BLINKGTK_FRAME_COPY=1 restores the previous behavior

What build4 fixes

• The base_uri of blink_web_view_load_html() was not applied to the document.
  The page's document.baseURI and blink_web_view_get_uri() now return base_uri.
  HTML containing #, %, tabs, or newlines was also cut off or altered at that point; this is
  fixed as well
• When the assistive technology bus (AT-SPI) did not respond, the first paint was delayed by
  about 25 seconds. The check for a running screen reader no longer waits for the reply on the
  UI thread (32.8 s to 6.0 s in a test with an unresponsive bus)
• The stored permissions (BlinkGTK Permissions.json) were read on the UI thread.
  They are now read off the UI thread. Values the application sets or clears before the read
  finishes take precedence over the file
• With ibus as the input method, GTK printed warnings when a view was closed
  (gtk_widget_compute_point and similar assertions, ibus#2905). Input method focus is no longer
  given to widgets that are not attached to a window. ibus 1.5.35 and later also fix this on the
  ibus side
• Switching the render path (blink_web_view_switch_render_path()) did not complete after
  navigating to another site. The request was accepted, but the completion signal never came.
  The switch now happens on the new view created by the navigation

What build4 removes from the packages

• Two Vulkan development libraries (libVkLayer_khronos_validation.so and
  libVkICD_mock_icd.so, about 30 MB together). The configuration files needed to load them were
  not shipped, so nothing used them. SwiftShader's Vulkan is still included

What build3 fixes

• Opening audio of 5 MB or more served over a custom scheme (such as ebook://) with <audio> made the
  whole application window stop responding. The body was written to the data pipe to the end on the
  UI thread, so when <audio> stopped reading partway, the UI thread kept waiting. It happened both while
  paused and while playing (2.5 MB worked; 5, 10 and 151 MB stopped). The body is now written in the
  background as fast as the reader consumes it. With 151 MB (60 minutes) of audio, loading reaches the
  point where playback can start in about one second, and seeking works. The public API is unchanged and
  no extra memory is used
• <audio> over a custom scheme sends a single range request, Range: bytes=0-, and no further request
  when seeking. Supporting range requests would not change how <audio> loads, so this build does not add
  it (a Range header set on fetch() reaches the loader, but the whole body is returned)

What you can do with build2

Write pages to PDF files

blink_web_view_print_to_pdf_with_options() writes a PDF with the paper, margins, background
and page range you choose. The callback runs after the PDF has been written, and gets the
reason when it fails. Vertical text, ruby, emphasis marks and tate-chu-yoko come out in the PDF.

BlinkPdfOptions* o = blink_pdf_options_new();
blink_pdf_options_set_paper_size(o, 8.27, 11.69);   /* A4, in inches */
blink_web_view_print_to_pdf_with_options(view, "/tmp/page.pdf", o, on_pdf, NULL);
blink_pdf_options_free(o);

Text inside a scrolling container (overflow: auto and the like) is not split into pages:
only what is visible in the container goes onto one page (see "PDF output" in the C API reference).

Save downloads

When the handler set with blink_web_view_set_download_handler() returns a path, the file is
saved there (NULL means the XDG Download directory, "" means do not save). The
download-started signal hands you a BlinkDownload for progress, completion and failure, and
blink_download_cancel() cancels it. A view without a handler does not save downloads.

Decide where links and new windows open

The decide-navigation signal lets you choose: open in this view, stop, open in the external
browser, open in another view, or open in a new view. A page opened with window.open() and
taken into a new view keeps window.opener.

Use the camera and microphone

getUserMedia() now goes through permission-request; once allowed, the devices work
(up to 1.2.3-build1 it always failed with NotSupportedError).

Answer permissions later, see who asks, and remember decisions

Keep a request with blink_permission_request_ref() and allow / deny it later.
blink_permission_request_get_origin() gives the requesting origin and get_embedding_origin()
the embedding one. After blink_permission_request_set_remember(), the same request is not
asked again.

Answer HTTP authentication (Basic and others)

Requests arrive at the handler set with blink_web_view_set_auth_handler(); answer with
blink_web_view_auth_response(). Further requests arrive one at a time.

Choose default fonts and a minimum font size

blink_web_view_set_font_family() sets the default serif, sans-serif, monospace and other
families, and blink_web_view_set_minimum_font_size() a minimum size. The minimum also applies
to ruby (with 16px text and a 12px minimum, ruby grows from 8px to 12px).

Register custom schemes before initialization

Call blink_gtk_register_scheme() before blink_gtk_init() to register a scheme without the
BLINKGTK_EXTRA_SCHEMES environment variable. Pages on that scheme get an origin and can use fetch().

Use window.blinkgtk from the page's first script

Up to 1.2.3-build1 it was added after loading finished.

Take screenshots while presentation is stopped

While the presentation policy keeps the view off screen, blink_web_view_capture_screenshot_async()
now presents one frame and captures it (up to 1.2.3-build1 it failed after 2 seconds).

What build2 fixes

• swiftshader mode showed nothing on screen. The rule that stops capture and
  display now applies to EGL only. WebGL output is shown too
• Notes on freeing results. Free the result of blink_handoff_meta_serialize() with
  g_free() (the header and documentation read as the C library function). The free function is
  now also stated for blink_web_view_get_devtools_url(), blink_web_view_get_url() and others
• Default encoding. blink_web_view_set_default_encoding() was already applied
  as of 1.2.3-build1 (the "Not yet" in the build1 table below came from measuring with an ASCII-only
  page). The default is used only for pages that declare no encoding and for which automatic
  detection gives no answer
• The note on blink_gtk_sandbox_init() now says it is provided by lib/blinkgtk_sandbox.lib in
  the Windows devel ZIP, and is not in the Linux shared library (use blink_gtk_init() on Linux)
• Remembering two kinds of permission from one request could lose one of them

What changes in behaviour with build2

• blink_web_view_print_to_pdf() now writes the PDF. Up to 1.2.3-build1 it called
  window.print() and reported success without writing a file
• PDF output needs the CUPS library (libcups.so.2) at run time. The RPM and DEB packages
  pull it in; with the tarball, install cups-libs (Fedora) or libcups2 (Debian, Ubuntu)
• In the RPM / DEB packages, /usr/bin/blinkgtk-simple-browser is now /usr/bin/blinkgtk-browser.
  The old link name is not kept. It still points to
  /usr/libexec/blinkgtk-0.1/blinkgtk_browser
• A view without a download handler does not save downloads

What you can do with build1

Turning JavaScript, images and localStorage off now takes effect

Settings such as blink_web_view_set_javascript_enabled() are now applied to the page.
Up to 1.2.2 the value was only stored: page scripts still ran after passing FALSE.

If your application must keep scripts from running on some pages, update to this release.
set_default_encoding() will be investigated and handled in a later release.

Custom schemes accept the usual web-development forms

• A handler can return out_mime with parameters, such as "text/html; charset=utf-8",
  and the page is shown as HTML. Up to 1.2.2 it was shown as <pre> text.
  The charset you give is used as is
• Pages can call fetch() on schemes listed in BLINKGTK_EXTRA_SCHEMES. Up to 1.2.2 only
  the five built-in schemes (app / blinkgtk / res / resource / ebook) allowed it

Packaged builds start without naming the resource directory

Without blink_gtk_set_resources_path(), BlinkGTK now also looks for icudtl.dat and the
other resources next to libblinkgtk. Up to 1.2.2 it only looked next to the executable, so
applications built against the rpm / deb packages stopped with an ICU error.
The search order is:

1. The executable's directory
2. <libdir>/blinkgtk-0.1/chromium/ (rpm / deb)
3. <libdir>/chromium/ (tarball)
4. <libdir>/

Applications that set the path keep working as before.

The input method follows GTK's choice

BlinkGTK no longer picks the Japanese input path itself; it leaves the choice to GTK.
On Wayland this is GTK4's default text-input path, which is also what the input method
side (IBus) recommends. On real Fedora 45 / GNOME hardware we confirmed, with this path
selected, that conversion mode works and that closing views repeatedly produces no input
method warnings (measured by selecting the same path through the switch added in 1.2.2).

To get the 1.2.2 behaviour (naming IBus), set BLINKGTK_IM_MODULE=ibus. It affects
BlinkGTK's views only. blink_gtk_get_im_module() returns the value currently applied
(an empty string by default, meaning GTK decides).

Put your own markers on the part you want to measure

blink_gtk_trace_mark("name") puts a marker in the trace. The event is named after the
marker, the same shape as the web's performance.mark().

// Start with: --trace-startup=toplevel,blink.user_timing
blink_gtk_trace_mark("workload_ready");
/* ... the part to measure ... */
blink_gtk_trace_mark("idle_static_ready");

Without the blink.user_timing category the call does nothing.

Features enabled by default in Chromium 154

• CSS text-decoration-inset — pull underlines, overlines and line-throughs in from
  the text edges, or extend them outward. In vertical writing the underline is the side line
• Responsively-sized <iframe> — the embedding page can size an iframe to its content
  (only when requested)
• font-width descriptor in @font-face — an alias of font-stretch

The feature list is Chromium 154's list on chromestatus.com. What we measured ourselves
covers rendering, input and startup, not these typography features.

What build1 fixes

• The workaround added in 1.2.1 (a vertical line breaking half-way when a closing bracket
  falls at the line end) is removed. Chromium 153 fixed the same symptom upstream; we
  kept the workaround in 1.2.2 after measuring that it no longer changed the result

• The header comment of the load-failed signal did not match the implementation. The
  correct handler signature is (the signal itself is unchanged):

  static void on_load_failed (BlinkWebView *web_view, BlinkLoadError error_code,
                              const char *failing_uri, gpointer user_data);

• The header said blink_gtk_init_with_sandbox() was not in the shared library yet, but it
  has been since 1.2.2-build4. On Linux, passing NULL behaves exactly like blink_gtk_init()

What does not change

• No public API is removed. Applications built for the previous release keep working
• The default rendering path (software / EGL) and how to switch it are the same

What behaves differently

• The input method default (above). BLINKGTK_IM_MODULE=ibus restores the old behaviour
• Four settings that had no effect up to 1.2.2 now take effect. Applications that passed
  FALSE will see page scripts or images stop

What we verified

• EGL path: passes the check that judges white screens, shrunken rendering and abnormal
  exit from the logs
• Settings: on the shipped build, set_javascript_enabled(FALSE) stops page scripts
  (the same check fails on 1.2.2). Images, localStorage and the default font size were also
  checked on the shipped build; the default encoding was confirmed not to take effect
• Custom schemes and resource detection: MIME parameters, fetch() and starting without
  a resource path were checked on the shipped build (all three fail on 1.2.2)
• Input method: on real Fedora 45 / GNOME hardware, 40 view closures on each of the two
  paths (measured by selecting the path with the 1.2.2 switch; that 1.2.3's default selects
  that path is confirmed from the startup log)
• Markers: in one trace, markers from both blink_gtk_trace_mark() and
  performance.mark() appear as events named after the marker