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Mathwiz

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Everything posted by Mathwiz

  1. Mathwiz
    Including signing onto Micro$oft 365.com to authorize OEClassic to access my emails! @Sampei.Nihira mentioned having trouble doing that with IE 8, but with Serpent 55 (technically not UXP but pretty close thanks to @roytam1's work) I had no trouble setting up OEClassic to access my 365 account. I agree, and it's actually worse: if it's a long message, the ads aren't necessarily added to the end as a kind of mandatory signature, but instead are inserted a few lines down from the top, interrupting the flow of the text! That's completely unacceptable for anything beyond the most casual correspondence, so paying up is really mandatory. I had to laugh at one of the limitations: The spelling checker checks the first word only! What's the point of that? Might as well have just left the spelling checker disabled in the free version, if it has to be that crippled. That said, it does work, and appears to be the only option for using 365 with Windows XP. For Windows 7 and up, I'd probably stick with Mozilla Thunderbird, which is both free and full-featured. I don't know if that was intentional (and a warning would've been nice so NM 27 users could move their profile folders beforehand), but it's definitely useful if one wants to use both NM 27 and NM 28 on their PC. Otherwise both NMs would try to share the same profile, which is not likely to work out well! Serpent 55 also uses "Moonchild" so those of us with both Serpent 52 and 55 have benefited from separate profiles since the beginning.
  2. Mathwiz
    Well, the thing is, for all of Moonchild's programming talent, MCP just isn't up to the task of putting into UXP every new Javascript feature that someone (usually Google) thinks up, gets approved, and works into every Web framework they can get their greedy hands on. A deeper "bench" of programmers would help. Too bad MCP spent much of the past few years alienating would-be allies rather than welcoming them into the fold. And while the main cause of that alienation is now gone, it's probably too late now. All that said, UXP is still an impressive browser platform. I'm often surprised how many Web sites do still work with it!
  3. Mathwiz
    I don't think they'll mind if I repost it here, at least temporarily: This isn't the full list, but gives you the idea. Any of those could be reasonable in isolation, but they do add up! In particular, it seems like a bit of overkill to add ads to outgoing messages and impose all the other restrictions! Is it adware or is it feature-limited? Shouldn't be both, IMO. Guess I'll pony up for the paid version.
  4. Mathwiz
    I will give OE Classic a try; thanks. Looks like it supports everything I need. The only thing I couldn't find at the link was, which features are only available in the paid version? Guess I'll have to download it and try it to find that out. But to be fair, the paid version isn't very expensive. Well, that was completely wrong. When I got back to the office last Monday, on a lark I decided to try my old email client, Windows Live Mail 2009, which does not support OAuth at all. Surprisingly, it worked! This showed me that, despite what I had read, "legacy" authentication was still working, and I concluded that IceDove/IceApe wasn't using OAuth at all. It's just sending my ID and password to the O365 servers, then those servers contact my workplace servers to validate my password the "old fashioned" way. M$ was supposed to disable all authentication methods besides OAuth as of Oct. 1, but I learned that organizations using O365 can get a short "reprieve," allowing old authentication to work until Jan. 1. My workplace must have done this. So I have a couple more weeks before I need to find a new email client; time I'm using to upload my old emails to Micro$oft's servers so they won't be "trapped" in Windows Live Mail when it stops working with O365. That still leaves the question of why OAuth in MailNews didn't work. I think the link above provides a clue: BOC removed OAuth support from Interlink because the "big boys," particularly Google and Micro$oft, started requiring that apps be registered with their services in order to use OAuth, and he felt Google's registration requirement, at least, was too onerous. (His post didn't mention Micro$oft.) Without registration, OAuth support won't work. I don't know how far he got before he pulled the plug, though. If he got as far as obtaining an application ID and "secret," those are presumably still present in MailNews and in theory could be registered with O365, allowing MailNews to work. (Personally, I think a better approach than taking his ball and going home would have been to make the ID and "secret" user preferences that could be set, say, to Mozilla Thunderbird's ID and "secret." Then the user could just pretend to be using Thunderbird. This is the approach used by an OAuth "proxy" I found at GitHub.)
  5. Mathwiz
    Can anyone explain what "websocket" is and whether the rest of us should care?
  6. Mathwiz
    It appears MCP is working on adding it to UXP (New Moon 28, Serpent 52). It's partially implemented and @roytam1 has been adding the fixes to Serpent 55 too. This was from just two months ago: So CustomElements may get finished. That said, it's a big job and there's no guarantee it'll be complete anytime soon. In the meantime, you can turn to the Palefill add-on to fill in some of what's missing for some Web sites. On your Win 7 system(s) you have more options: in addition to Edge, you have Chrome, modern Firefox, official Pale Moon, official Basilisk (now under new ownership), Waterfox and Waterfox Classic, etc. I assume Chrome and Edge are both going EOL but the last Win 7 version will still work with modern web sites for some time.
  7. Mathwiz
    Quite by accident, I got it to work! I went back to IceDove and suddenly, it started working. I had the protocol just set to "Normal Password," so there must be something about the interaction with the Office 365 mail server that automatically triggers OAuth2. Then I went back to IceApe, set it up there, and it worked there too! I haven't gone back and tried MailNews again, but I bet the trick is simply to select "Normal Password" rather than explicitly selecting "OAuth2," which I assume is only needed for things like Yahoo Mail. Here are the settings I used in IceApe/IceDove that worked: The user name needs to be the full email address, including the domain, so Office 365 knows which server to direct the client to in order to validate my password. At the moment, neither do I. My XP system is at work, so I've been downloading and testing these email clients on my Windows 7 home system. Obviously the "acid test" will come Monday when I return to work and try to set it up on IceApe on Windows XP.
  8. Mathwiz
    (Note: Consecutive posts due to different subjects of each.) I have a somewhat odd request. In fact I'm not even sure if this is the right forum, let alone the right thread, but here goes: I need an XP email client that supports this newfangled "OAuth 2.0" authorization protocol. I checked @roytam1's IceApe, but it doesn't appear to support what I need. Reason: today my employer forcibly "updated" my company email account to Micro$oft Office 365 (a glorified Exchange server), which (as of a couple of months ago) no longer supports "legacy" email authorization protocols like STARTTLS for (turn up the volume now) SECURITY!!!!!! Naturally, this renders my beloved Windows Live Mail useless; I'm forced to use Outlook (ugh) on my Windows 11 (ugh) laptop (ugh). A Web search revealed that Thunderbird 78 and newer would support OAuth 2.0 and let me connect to my email account, but I'm pretty sure that's well past the last XP version of T-Bird. IceApe or IceDove was my last, best hope, but it doesn't look like it'll do the job (unless I'm missing something). Edit: Looks like I was missing something after all. Found an old thread regarding Yahoo Mail that claims IceDove does support OAuth 2.0 after all. Problem is, on the Server Settings page, OAuth2 isn't one of the listed authentication protocols. Edit 2: In desperation I downloaded MailNews and found it does list OAuth2 as one of the supported protocols, but I haven't figured out how to configure it yet. Keep getting the pop-up "Could not connect to mail server outlook.office365.com; the connection was refused." That is the correct server for Office 365 so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Anyone have any guidance on how to set this up?
  9. Mathwiz
    Nice! I always felt like the red-headed stepchild, being one of the few who had to edit install.rdf to use his extension
  10. Mathwiz
    Thanks, Ben; this gave me another chance to try out Violentmonkey - and I was surprised when Violentmonkey refused to open an editor to let me add a new script! Turned out I'd been automatically updated to v2.13.3, which claims to be compatible with FF 52+, but is no longer compatible even with St 55 (FF 53-based) and thus, I presume, no longer compatible with St 52 either. I'm guessing ViolentMonkey's author Googlized some of his JavaScript in v2.13.3 and, uh, forgot to update the MinVersion. Had to go to AMO and download v2.13.2. This version still works with St 55. Not tested with St 52; try it and see. If it doesn't work, just try v2.13.1 and then v2.13.0 if that doesn't work either. Also remember to disable automatic updates of this extension.
  11. Mathwiz
    Apologies for the late response, but I think you'd have better luck posting your LinkedIn question at @roytam1's thread. Lots of smart folks there who are familiar with New Moon and can tell you why LinkedIn doesn't work, if it can be fixed, and how to fix it. As for banking, if a browser will connect to your bank's site and work properly, it should be safe. All these browsers support TLS 1.2, so nobody will intercept your password or gain access to your account. Just follow normal security procedures: choose a password that can't be guessed. Write it down if you must, but if you do, keep it in a secure place like your wallet. Beware of "phishing" emails that try to trick you into logging into a fake banking site. And run some kind of anti-malware program on your system. Roytam's browsers are updated more often, so they're probably "safest," but the Chromium-based browsers are compatible with more sites, and should be plenty safe too. At least, we have no reason to think otherwise.
  12. Mathwiz
    Thanks, @soggi. From earlier posts, it does appear that change to UXP was causing the buggy backspace/delete behavior that others complained about. Luckily, upstream added a hidden pref to revert to the old behavior, which @luweitest found: But from the description of the change, it sounds like it really should have been website-specific, not just a browser-wide true/false pref, so it could be set to false for those websites that malfunction when the pref is set to true. But we only have the browser-wide pref. So what if you find a website that won't work unless you set it to false? If that happens. I'd suggest modifying @AstroSkipper's latest "custom button" to toggle the above pref; then you can just switch the pref between true and false as needed.
  13. Mathwiz
    Flash is up to version 34.0.0.277 now, available at the usual GitLab site, https://gitlab.com/cleanflash/installer/-/releases/, or via direct download from https://bluepload.unstable.life/cleanflash3400277installer1.exe. That link is on the GitLab page but provided here for those who don't want to mess with PaleFill. For the record, to access GitLab I'm using PaleFill version 1.22 (which I don't think is the latest, but GitLab still works fine) with Serpent 52. (Actually PaleFill 1.22 works with Serpent 55 also, as long as you modify install.rdf as noted above.)
  14. Mathwiz
    I wouldn't worry about it too much; Google said no, so as great as JPEG-XL may be, it's going nowhere: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome-banishes-jpeg-xl-photo-format-that-could-save-phone-space/
  15. Mathwiz
    Indeed, it wouldn't seem to make sense to run 360Chrome on Win10 or 11 - or even 7/8/8.1. But folks often do things on their PCs that only make sense to themselves. So if someone wants to run 360Chrome on Win10/11, I say, have at it! But folks may want a Win10 skin for reasons other than making 360Chrome look "natural" when run on Win10! They may just prefer the look. They may want to fool onlookers into thinking they're running Win10 even though they aren't. FWIW, I'm in category 1 and like your Win10 skin as it is. It doesn't have to be exact, as long as it works!
  16. Mathwiz
    Hope you're feeling better, and that there were no after-effects! I've been one of the lucky few not to have had a Covid infection yet (AFAIK; I understand some infections are asymptomatic), but many of the folks I know have had it. Aw, man; I have Spectrum Internet too - and Spectrum Mobile! The mobile account is on auto-pay, and I generally pay the Internet account by mail, so I haven't needed to pay online in a while. I guess if I do need it, I'll go for 360EE....
  17. Mathwiz
    I followed your links and downloaded the Custom Buttons extension. Its install.rdf file tops out at Firefox 48, so to install it in either Serpent version, you need to modify that, since Serpent uses the Firefox app ID. I changed it to 55.* and it installed OK in St 55. I'm presuming the same change will let it install in St 52 as well; I'll test that later if I get some time. The only odd thing I found was that I had to restart Serpent 55 twice before it was ready to go. Next, I went to that link, but this is all I saw: So yes, it appears you've created the necessary custom button, but there's no code, no link, nothing to test in Custom Buttons at that post. Anyway, it's no big deal. I was only "asking for a friend," but can't remember who, because the original question was from My Browser Builds part 3, and now that that thread has been closed, the board doesn't let you quote from it as easily (no "Quote" prompt shows up when selecting text) so I just copied it and pasted into a quote block.
  18. Mathwiz
    Of course! It was so obvious! Why didn't anyone think of that before? But seriously, thanks @luweitest for not only finding the preconditions that trigger this bug, but also digging into the commits to find out what changed and how to reverse it!
  19. Mathwiz
    Yes, and despite all my complaints about the company, Google still has a pretty good search engine (both unnecessary in this case since @dmiranda answered the question almost immediately after it was raised). But a post answering a rhetorical question is usually meant to point out that the answer was not as obvious as the person asking it seemed to think it was! It's not as if we all read @UCyborg's post, slapped our foreheads, and thought, "Of course! Just set browser.backspace-action to 2! It was so obvious! Why didn't anyone think of that before, instead of suggesting all those Greasemonkey scripts?" At any rate, another little browser annoyance gone. No more hitting backspace after an unintended mouse click outside the comment posting window and losing everything! And while we're on the subject, what exactly did "issue 2019" fix? Is it related to the backspace bug, as @luweitest speculated? (And for the uninitiated - i.e., me - how does one search for "issue 2019" upstream so I don't have to keep asking @VistaLover for the answer?)
  20. Mathwiz
    No human-readable checkbox AFAIK, but there is a Boolean setting in about:config. media.autoplay.enabled; defaults to false in St 55 (not sure of the default in St 52). I suspect a good JavaScript programmer (@AstroSkipper?) could rig up a custom button to toggle that setting! Probably because even if one were lucky enough to find it, it's an integer pref and it's not at all clear what 0 does, 1 does, 2 does, etc. Luckily we have @dmiranda: The bug discussed above aside, I too have found the default behavior (backspace=page back) to be worse than useless, so I changed my setting to 2. It's way too easy to have the focus in the wrong place by accident, press that key, and lose everything you typed! If I wanted "page back" assigned to a key at all, it'd probably be F12, or maybe "Previous Track" on "multimedia" keyboards that have that key, but certainly not backspace!
  21. Mathwiz
    That's a good idea, @Dave-H! I always bristled a bit at the "abruptness" of the switchover from one "My Browser Builds" thread to the next. It makes more sense to start the next thread with the next set of builds. To be clear (and fair to Google), it's not so much their Chromium engine (I use Chromium-based browsers - albeit "unGoogled" - when necessary) as it is Google's "predatory innovation" cycle: Google thinks up new "features" that Javascript "needs." (And again to be fair, these "features" often are real improvements that make Javascript programming a bit easier for Web developers - but that's not the point of them.) Google updates Chromium (and Mozilla and Safari update their own Javascript engines) to correctly interpret the new "features," so if you stay current on Safari, Firefox, SeaMonkey, or one of the many Chromium-based browsers, nothing ever seems amiss. Google and "friends" (e.g., Microsoft) then use the new "features" as much as humanly possible, not only on their own Web sites (e.g., GitHub), but also in the "frameworks" used by most Web sites these days. (Nobody codes entire Web sites in raw HTML and CSS anymore; it's too labor-intensive. Everyone uses frameworks.) Web developers update their sites to use the new "frameworks" - often unwittingly, as they may simply link to a CDN that always serves, say, the latest JQuery version. Even if browser developers outside the "Goog collective" (like, say, MCP) are able to add support for the latest Javascript "features," by the time they do, so the cycle begins again, thus preserving the Apple/Google/Microsoft/Mozilla oligopoly.
  22. Mathwiz
    I'm sorry, but that just makes no sense at all. IE was alive and well less than 10 years ago in 2013, when IE 11 was released for Windows 7 and 8.1. Officially, IE was replaced by Edge in 2015 with the release of Windows 10, but if IE had used a "major.minor" version numbering system like most software, Edge would probably have just been the next "major" version of IE. With the "major only" version numbers all the big Web browsers have chosen to curse themselves with, though, "IE 12" just didn't capture the extent of changes from IE 11; hence the new name and logo (which looked much like the old IE logo). BTW, Edge's new UI looked more like Chrome than Firefox. (In 2015, Firefox looked like Pale Moon does now.) So "classic" Edge is really just the final version of IE. Web designers test their designs on all major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and, until recently, IE. What actually killed IE off was the same thing that now bedevils us: IE 11 couldn't handle all the Googlescript showing up in Web site frameworks, and classic Edge took a lot of development to keep up. Microsoft didn't want to spend money chasing Chrome, so in 2019 Microsoft released "New Edge" based on Google's Chromium. (You'll get the references if you were drinking American soft drinks in 1986.) Even the logo changed to some kind of ambiguous e/c blend, to signify the Pepsi - I mean Chromium - in Edge! This was the cause of IE's death, not Mozilla-loving Web designers casting shade on it back in the Bush Administration. And in late 2017, Mozilla switched Firefox to Quantum and the Photon UI, making it a rather obvious Chromium clone. "New Firefox" now lives in name only! Sure, it renders all the latest Googlized Web sites perfectly, but it tastes just like Chrome! So if Mozilla were somehow responsible for IE's death, it took them so long to carry out the murder that their own products died off first! No. The evidence is much stronger that it was Google that drove both Microsoft and Mozilla to abandon their own code bases. IE's code was proprietary, and so is locked away in a Microsoft safe somewhere. But thanks to Mozilla, at least Firefox's abandoned code base lives on in the UXP platform.
  23. Mathwiz
    OK, that makes sense. I've certainly done that myself when copying and modifying code - leaving no-longer-needed chunks in. If they don't do any apparent harm there's no reason for me to hunt them down and take them out!
  24. Mathwiz
    IMO the key date for determining "obsolescence" isn't when the product was first released; it's when the product was last supported/updated. Which, for the POSReady '09 "flavor" of XP, was 2019. Although to be fair, POSReady '09 wasn't intended to be used for Web browsing, so perhaps we should use 2014. So yeah, it's "obsolete," but hardly as ancient as the quoted factoid is trying so hard to make it sound. Yes, I tend to agree. Here, the unwanted behavior is triggered by a CSS property that's "supposed to be" ignored? So why is the Web site sending it in the first place? The only effect of not sending it would be that it would work on older Firefox-based browsers. So this smells like intentional breakage. Although, to be fair, probably not by the Web site designer, but rather by the framework used to build the site.
  25. Mathwiz
    This (regexp groups) is becoming an issue on more and more web sites. Question for those who frequent the upstream forums: Has there been any progress on dealing with this, or is it a "toughie" like Web Components seems to be?
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