Mathwiz
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My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Noticed a couple of things there: first, But later: So I guess you were one of the "lucky" ones that got "selected" well before the end of 2023. Second, here's the excuse they gave: I don't think for a minute that Micro$oft cares one bit about "protecting developers." If that were the case, they could've made this optional, perhaps with a banner on your page so visitors would know whether you'd enabled 2FA. No, I think this has to be about protecting Micro$oft. I think they're worried that someone will upload bad software (buggy, or conceivably even malware) to GitHub, the guilty party will claim that their account was hacked, and Micro$oft will get sued for lax security. Making 2FA mandatory is intended to remove the "my account was hacked" excuse. Which, I suppose, is fine; if that's what they feel they have to do to protect themselves from legal liability, so be it. I just wish they'd drop the "we're trying to protect you" malarkey. Third, I see they do support 2FA via SMS, but.... I don't know why it doesn't provide "the same level" of protection, but that makes me worry that other sites requiring 2FA will soon stop supporting SMS as well, so even non-GitHub users may soon find themselves in the same boat. So thank you for the advice on KeePass. XP/Vista users may soon need it, GitHub or no GitHub! Seriously? I couldn't possibly care less how Mozilla prefers I abbreviate the name of their product. It's clear what "FF" means in context! But at least they didn't suggest "F5x".... -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Well, that didn't last long! Built-in SSUAO pretends to be FF 102; guess that's no longer good enough! Edit: FF 113 is the minimum to avoid the warning, but I wonder what new Googlisms (or conceivably Mozilla-isms, but I'm still betting on the former) will be needed in order to access chase.com, once "soon" arrives? -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Well, there's 2FA, and there's intentionally annoying 2FA. Only form of 2FA I've ever used is the kind where you log in and they send you a OTP, via either text (so you need the cell phone it gets sent to - doesn't have to be a smart phone though) or email (so you need to prove you have access to your email account). Those aren't too bad, and a lot of sites will set a browser cookie so you don't have to do it again, at least for a while. No "special app" needed! But from what you're saying, it sounds like GitHub will require a special app just to generate the OTP. I can't see any reason for such a requirement, other than to discourage folks from logging into GitHub unless they have to! 30 seconds to key the darn thing in sounds awfully tight too. (That may be the reason you need a special app - text or email would often take longer than that.) GitHub isn't a banking or financial site - or even your email account! Why are they doing this? -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
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My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
We seem to have drifted a bit off topic with all this discussion about who's a "real" XP user. If you need a browser that runs on XP, you're welcome here, regardless of how "real" your XP use may seem to others. Thanks for the clarification, although I'm surprised that anything on bugzilla is still relevant to UXP! (Considering how much FF has diverged from UXP in the last several years.) Thank you! A couple of simple prefs make a lot more sense than jumping through hoops to get the necessary code off userstyles.org! (Seriously - they actually look for the word "Chrome" in the browser user agent? Sounds to me like a good reason to avoid them altogether!) -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Maybe this has been going on for a while, but I just now noticed the links: Is MCP using BugZilla to track UXP bugs now? -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
You're probably right, but Serpent gobbles CPU on that page even under Win 7. I should say that I don't know enough about GPU programming to know what it would take to bring down the CPU usage on an XP- (or even a Vista-) compatible browser. Even if it's possible, though, it's probably not worth doing since it's so easy to just kill these animations. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
I see it. It's sort of like clouds or smoke or the like slowly drifting left over a grey background. (But if you scroll down the page too far, it goes away.) Serpent uses 37-38% of my CPU (an old 2-core AMD A4) when I switch to the tab with that page. That seems like an awful lot for a purely cosmetic effect. I'm guessing the more modern browsers use the computer's GPU vs. its CPU for this effect. While that's a drawback of our browsers, the page is fully functional without the animation, so I'd say just kill it as @Ben Markson suggested. -
360 Extreme Explorer Modified Version
Mathwiz replied to Humming Owl's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Oh, come on. You cannot even enable e10s in New Moon. But you can enable it in Serpent (both 52 and 55). Did you try that? If not, you did an "apples to oranges" comparison: FF with e10s is faster than Serpent without e10s. Well, duh; FF with e10s is faster than FF without e10s too - that's why we have a whole thread on enabling it! (To be fair, FF/Serpent with e10s is quite the memory hog - and still slow - compared to Chrome 86/87 ports. So I wouldn't recommend it unless you've beefed up the RAM in your PC, preferably with 64-bit XP or later so you can get more than 4GB, or at least with an SSD for the swap file.) Technically, you're right about that. Multiprocessing is mostly a convenience for developers. But that said, it does have its advantages for us end users. Beyond the obvious (letting a 32-bit app use more RAM), if your tab crashes in FF/Serpent, and you're running in the default single-process mode, your whole browser crashes! But if that happens in multiprocess mode, you just reload the tab. <rant> And why shouldn't she be? The original idea behind HTML was supposed to be that any browser, no matter how primitive, would render a "usable" Web page, merely ignoring the tags it didn't understand. If you use a browser from 2001, it may look like a Web site from 2001, but you're still supposed to be able to use it, at least. But that's long gone, thanks largely to Google (but also others including Mozilla). Nowadays, if your browser doesn't understand the latest bullish snarkifying operator added to JavaScript in the latest Chromium release, you're likely to just get a totally blank page (or if you're "lucky," a curt message telling you to "upgrade" your browser, even if that means "upgrading" your OS to the latest monstrosity from Micro$oft, and in turn buying a new PC capable of running that monstrosity) because the Web designer used JavaScript with that bullish snarkifying operator to build the entire Web page from scratch! HTML? Who needs it? (With the side effect being you can't disable JavaScript any more, and have to rely on other, more complex means to block the spyware embedded within.) So yeah, we're angry. Not (for the most part) because we intend to use a PC that old, but because we shouldn't have to keep buying newer, more expensive PCs every few years just to keep doing the same exact things we've always done, just because some Web framework developer couldn't resist using that shiny new bullish snarkifying operator (for "security")! </rant>- 2,340 replies
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My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Well, it could be, yes. I'm just going on past experience: so far, Google has been behind far more UXP-breaking changes than Mozilla, so I figured the odds are pretty good that the next one will be Google again. (And my usual disclaimer: Not all UXP-breaking changes are "egregious;" i.e., serving little purpose other than to break older browsers. Some are quite useful to Web designers. Many do strike me as quite egregious, but I don't know enough about all this new CSS stuff to have an informed opinion yet.) -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
So until MCP implements the "revert" CSS feature, the "best" workaround is far from ideal: toggling pref layout.css.is-where-pseudo.enabled to false, thus restoring the CSS behavior of previous UXP browser versions. Of course, by the time MCP does implement "revert," it's nearly certain Google will have come up with something else, and MCP will have to run even faster to stay in the same place. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
A little bold text would probably help: "New New Moon 27 Build!" Otherwise it does look kind of silly. For the beginner, I'd recommend starting with New Moon 28. If you find NM28 impossibly slow on your PC, try New Moon 27; it's less resource-intensive, but it's based on an older Firefox version so it won't work with as many Web sites. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
*sigh* More "features" to implement. The Red Queen's race continues.... -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Yes, same idea. The add-on I linked to only changes the fingerprint after a user-specified amount of time has elapsed. The idea is to guard against (say) Cloudflare gathering the fingerprint twice to see if it changes. With the add-on, it will most likely be the same, so Cloudflare won't block you - but tomorrow the fingerprint will be different, and Cloudflare will start from scratch, tracking what it thinks is a whole new browser. -
360 Extreme Explorer Modified Version
Mathwiz replied to Humming Owl's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Folks, this post was asking how to solve a specific problem with Kafan MiniBrowser - not to start an argument over which XP service pack is fastest. I have the same question. Anyone have an answer?- 2,340 replies
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My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
What if you change your fingerprint periodically: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/no-canvas-fingerprinting/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search They can collect all the fingerprints they like, but they're quickly rendered useless. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
OMG. If you're gonna open 20 f'ing tabs in Serpent, please read: (You do need some "real" RAM in your PC, and an SSD wouldn't hurt....) BTW, my old work PC died this week. Kevin thinks its the HDD, but it won't even boot from a CD/DVD, so I think it's the SATA controller, which means the motherboard. So I'm using my laptop, on (ugh) Win 11. No more XP, for the time being at least.... I've noticed that Serpent (55, at least) is way faster on the laptop! If only I could ditch Win 11! I'd even settle for Win 10 at this point. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Sounds like you just need a theme. Any SeaMonkey theme should work, although you'll probably need to modify the install.rdf file in the .xpi archive. I think instructions on modifying install.rdf are available in one of the earlier "parts" of this thread. Or you could try IceApe, whose default theme resembles the original one. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
Per Wikipedia: So it's an optional mode on "modern" browsers. Also, many sites specify "strict transport security," one effect of which is to automatically upgrade http connections to https on that site, once a successful https connection has been made. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
There should be an option for 2FA, particularly on email sites, but it shouldn't be mandatory. Let the users decide how much security they need. OTOH, 2FA would've saved Hillary Clinton a ton of grief when Podesta got phished back in 2016, so maybe 2FA should be "encouraged," at least on non-personal accounts. The email service could require more frequent password changes if 2FA isn't used, for instance. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
HTTPS Everywhere, perhaps? (After all, that's what it's supposed to do.) That extension is no longer developed. "Modern" browsers don't need it, but I think it's still useful on older browsers (or browsers based on them, like ours). Usually you want the https: version if available. Luckily, it can be disabled for specific sites like this one. And after a couple of reloads, it works! Strangely, though, HTTPS Everywhere didn't force an https: connection when using the IP address; only when using the host name. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
That's interesting. Https has become so ubiquitous I'm surprised there are any sites left that still support plain http. In fact I just tried it on St 55 and it immediately redirects to the (non-working) https: site here. Using just the IP address (http://37.230.96.101/ for me) did the trick though. FWIW, html5test.com's tests aren't always accurate. It says St 55 doesn't support WebP images, for instance, even though it does. -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
That has to be it. Under Bk, html5.com just won't work; under 360Chrome, it does come up with an obvious "not secure" icon where the padlock should be: This was actually under Win 7, but it is one of NHTPG's versions. I couldn't figure out how to find out exactly what was triggering the "not secure" icon in Chrome, but an expired certificate seems like the most plausible cause. I guess since it's under Win 7, I could remove the --ignore-certificate-errors flag; but then html5test.com wouldn't work under Chrome either! -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
I just tried html5test.com for the first time in several months and found it doesn't work any more! It just shows a spinning wheel that never stops. I tried St 55, 52, IceApe, clean profile, and versions as old as May 5 of this year. Nothing worked except 360Chrome. Perhaps they changed something. Maybe I'm not looking at it right but I don't see any JS errors. Wait - I think I see the problem. There's a message: api.whichbrowser.net uses an expired security certificate. Expired on 7/12. But why does 360Chrome work? Surely that certificate is expired on all browsers! -
My Browser Builds (Part 4)
Mathwiz replied to roytam1's topic in Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes
I was going to ask if @roytam1 could do that, but I figured it wasn't worth the trouble - then, it turns out, he had already done so long ago! FYI, under Win 7, Widevine 1.4.8 is recognized and appears in the "plugins" section of about:addons under St 55, but it doesn't seem to work (Bitmovin's test page reports "No DRM" under the Media Source Extensions side of the page). I suppose it's a moot point, though, since 1.4.8 has long been blacklisted anyway.