Mathwiz

I would probably phrase it as, a developer un-crippling newer versions of Flash. It's still Adobe releasing them, but they're region-restricted to only run in China, and of course they have all the China-mandated spyware. Darktohka is stripping all that out so the rest of the world can use the updated (and presumably more secure, although who really knows) versions. But it's still Adobe's copyrighted product, and legally, they have the right to say "no" to what darktohka is doing. You'd think they wouldn't care - if folks are that determined to keep using their free product, why not let them - but maybe they made an agreement with the other members of the "Anti-Flash" consortium (chiefly Google, I suspect) to do everything they can to keep this old, not particularly secure, but popular browser plug-in dead & buried outside of China.

Now that the two of you mention it, that makes sense. Flash v34 is targeted at China, and 360EE is a Chinese browser, so it's reasonable that it allows Flash to run without nags! And of course it's the only remotely recent Chromium-based browser that runs on XP. As some of you are aware, I also use Win 7, which can run "straight" Chromium 87 (but which unfortunately contains the aforementioned nags). I'll check the Win 7 forum for answers, but for some reason, it's not as well-populated with experts as the XP forum.

Thanks @VistaLover. I was out of the loop for a while and just saw that Adobe filed a DMCA take-down against Darktohka. I suspect (s)he will have to find a non-US host to escape the DMCA and keep this project available long-term. Evidently Adobe really doesn't want users outside of China running Flash any more! (cf. my rant at the end of this post): Get 34.0.0.192 from the Wayback Machine while you can; it may become the last Flash version you can get! Link for github-wc-polyfill: https://github.com/JustOff/github-wc-polyfill/releases. Important notes: Version 1.2.8 is now required to access GitLab! Heed @VistaLover's mention of UXP. This is only compatible with modern UXP-based browsers: Pale Moon/New Moon/MyPal 28, Basilisk/Serpent/IceApe 52.9, and SeaMonkey 2.53 (which doesn't work on Win XP). I'm unsure if it can be modified to work on FF 52.9 or Serpent 55, but it doesn't work OOTB. Pretty sure it won't work on other FF-based browsers (e.g. PM/NM 27; FF 45). For New Moon or IceApe, you need to go into the .xpi archive with 7-Zip and modify install.rdf. For New Moon you can just change the existing <em:minVersion> for Pale Moon from 28.14 to 28.10. It will then look like the first code snippet below. For IceApe you can just insert the second code snippet below in its entirety: <!-- New Moon --> <em:targetApplication> <Description> <em:id>{8de7fcbb-c55c-4fbe-bfc5-fc555c87dbc4}</em:id> <em:minVersion>28.10.0</em:minVersion> <em:maxVersion>29.*</em:maxVersion> </Description> </em:targetApplication> <!-- Iceape-UXP --> <em:targetApplication> <Description> <em:id>{9184b6fe-4a5c-484d-8b4b-efbfccbfb514}</em:id> <em:minVersion>52.0</em:minVersion> <em:maxVersion>52.*</em:maxVersion> </Description> </em:targetApplication> I tried Flash with the last compatible version of Chromium (87, on Win 7). It works, but Chromium really doesn't want you running it! You have to manually enable the extension (and it won't save your preference if you exit the browser), then click the icon of each Flash component on the Web page, then again tell it you're sure you want to run that Flash component! Luckily, the Chromium-based 360EE browser runs Flash without excessive nags, as noted below. Makes sense, as both Flash 34 and 360EE target users in China. I'm unsure of the latest (vanilla) Chromium version that allows "hassle-free" Flash, nor do I know if that version is new enough to be usable on the modern Web. If anyone knows, please educate the rest of us!

Are @mixit still around? They always seemed to come up with fixes for these sorts of issues....

I wonder if Instagram is using a new video codec now (perhaps h.265/hevc/av1)

Yes, that's what he'd have to do: create a new key pair, publish his new public key, and start signing his builds with his new key. Probably not practical to recover the old private key from a crashed SSD; data recovery services are expensive, and there'd be no guarantee of getting it back anyway. And I'm not sure how HK's new government would react to one of its citizens publishing a public key, since it could be used to send him encrypted messages. May not be worth the potential trouble.

Thanks for that! That annoying warning banner comes up almost every time I visit my bank's (Chase) web site, and I've long wanted to get rid of it! Clicking "wait" makes it go away for a few seconds, but it usually comes back before the script is finished. You don't actually have to click on "wait;" once their Javascript finishes downloading whatever info I asked for (e.g., checking account transactions), the banner goes away on its own. It's just annoying to have it pop up every time! Edit: Unfortunately, it didn't work! After a restart, the banner no longer comes up; but a dialog box pops up with the same options. There's a "don't show this again" checkbox, but it doesn't work either. However, I believe I discovered the correct pref to get rid of it for good: set dom.max_script_run_time to 0. That seems to have banished the dialog box for good.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a batch file to download & install @roytam1's browser builds. Surprisingly, it still works - the only thing I had to change was the set domain= line because he had to change his hosting domain name again. One of its features was to verify the signature of the downloaded file using gpg. Needless to say, this throws a big monkey wrench into that feature - there's a lot more to do after verifying the signature than just pausing so you can see the results! I'll give the cmd /c trick a try. Hopefully it will crash just the second invocation of cmd.exe, allowing the first (the one running the batch file) to continue. Might look a bit ugly, but as long as it works.... Edit: Well, looks like it's a moot point anyway; Roytam1 stopped uploading gpg signatures about a year ago. Edit 2: Here's what happened: His SSD crashed.

As of today, latest Flash version at both links is 34.0.0.184. Confirmed to install and run on Windows XP.

Yes, same story for Windows 7 (including IE 11 on Win 7 systems), as you are probably aware. So Windows 8 and 8.1 users (and Win 7 users with an ESU key) are the ones most likely to encounter this IE annoyance. Of course, there are more usable Flash-compatible browsers than IE for all Windows versions from 2000 through 8.1, but a Web site old enough to still have Flash content is probably still compatible with IE 11 too. I can see arguments both ways on these workarounds, so I'll limit my comments to merely note that Win 7 (and probably Vista) users employing them will also encounter the Flash warning, if they use IE for Flash content and apply the March 2021 or later IE update rollup. IE8 is even more worthless. About the only site that works better under IE is Microsoft's Update Catalog, since you can select multiple updates with IE then download them all with a single click (other browsers require separate clicks to download each update). But even the catalog now needs a local proxy for IE8 to connect, since it switched to modern security protocols. Switching topics slightly, I find this whole Flash imbroglio striking. The entire PC software industry, including Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, (and probably other big players like Apple too) collaborated in a multi-year effort to render a commonly-deployed Web technology useless. Given Flash's frequent security and privacy issues, I can understand the decision, but AFAIK it's pretty much unprecedented. The closest thing that comes to mind was Mozilla's switch to "Web Extension" browser add-ons, destroying about a googol of Firefox apps in one fell swoop, but that was just one company's unilateral decision - and it didn't entirely work, due to Firefox being open source. At least the Flash phaseout was handled fairly well - there's little need for Flash anymore - but if you're one of those who still needs it, you weren't given much official recourse. Sort of a scary precedent.

I suspect very few folks use Internet Explorer with Flash anymore, but for those few, last March Microsoft added a "security feature" to IE 11 (and I think IE 9 for Server 2008; perhaps a Vista user can confirm or refute that. IE 8 for XP hasn't been updated since PosReady '09 EOS, so no change for XP users). It's not a time bomb; just a warning bar that pops up if you browse to a site that uses Flash content, reminding you (once again) that Flash is EOL. You can dismiss the warning, and at least as of the July update roll-ups, if you have a working ActiveX Flash version installed, Flash content still works. Since it was added after Flash EOL, my guess is that it was intended to tell users why these Web pages don't work any more. But of course, if you do have a working Flash version installed, the Web pages do work, so the warning bar is just a nuisance. Knowing Microsoft, it's likely there's a registry entry somewhere to turn the bloody thing off, but I don't know that for sure. If any of you know of one, please share!

In every example you cited except the last two, there were more than "one process for each tab of each window," by a minimum of four processes! That is not a "middle ground" between one process, total (FF w/o e10s); and one process for each tab of each window - it actually means Chrome is more of a process hog than I thought (at least until you hit the apparent cap of 86(!) processes). If Chrome were "intelligently" sharing processes as the total number of tabs increased, we would expect to have fewer processes than tabs, not more processes than tabs. But you didn't see that until you got up to 90+ tabs!

Repeating myself:

The good news is, there should be a solution for Flash. Seems Adobe is still updating it for the China market. The bad news is, Adobe cripples the Chinese version to only run in China. Plus it has all the government-mandated spyware.... But the other good news is, there's a GitHub project called Clean Flash that removes the region restrictions and spyware! It's all discussed in this thread (at the XP forum, but it applies to newer Windows versions too; I'm running Flash 34.0.0.164 under Win 7): Runs just fine in IE 11, as well as Chrome & Firefox (prior to the most recent few versions; see post for details). Edge appears to be hopeless though.

As @VistaLover noted, Basilisk 55 (aka Moebius) was forked from an alpha version of FF 53. My understanding is that the "55" came from the fact that some changes were back-ported from FF 54 and FF 55 before MCP gave up on Moebius and re-forked Basilisk from FF 52.6. (Sort of like what ArcticFox and @roytam1 have been doing with NM 27 lately ) Anyway, as an (albeit early) FF 53 fork, Serpent 55 is probably the best XP platform for e10s multi-process mode, although memory usage does get pretty large pretty quickly! (The second-best XP platform for e10s would likely be "stock" FF 52.9.) I've been using e10s with St55 for a couple of years now, without noticeable ill effects (other than memory usage), although I keep a "single-process mode" profile available, in case I need to use those incompatible browser extensions (notably Classic Add-Ons Archive). I can't speak for @XPerceniol, but speaking for myself, one advantage of multi-process mode in the FF platform is the ability to limit the number of processes to something reasonable. In "straight" FF, you get one process, period. That obviously isn't enough for many modern sites. But in Chrome, AIUI, you get a separate process for each tab of each window - overkill IMO. E10s lets you choose a reasonable "middle ground" based on how you use your browser and how much RAM your system has.

That may be it. My version of Office 2010 (which came as an unexpected bonus CD when I bought a copy of Office XP on eBay) is different: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010. Looks like several users on the linked thread have that version as well. From linked thread: No problem for XP users, of course, but it looks like Win 10 users unlucky enough to have this nag will still get nagged monthly after each update.

Sorry to hear that. Is a CPU upgrade possible? I guess not or you would've done that too. IIRC the Pentium III was sold on a separate user-replaceable card, but I don't know if the max. clock speed is set by the CPU card itself or by the motherboard. About the only remaining improvement possible would be an SSD. I think it would help, especially with such limited RAM, but it's up to you. @roytam1 is your best bet on how to recompile FF browsers. You don't need a decompiler - source code is on the Web - but it looks overwhelming to me! It also takes a substantial PC to do it; I doubt you can do it on the Asus, but just maybe another PC can create a build that will run on it. I was actually surprised he was able to build Serpent (based on FF 52) so that it works on pre-SSE2 machines. IIRC, starting with FF 49, the Javascript engine uses a just-in-time compiler that can output SSE2 code, so I thought a build avoiding SSE2 instructions would be useless, since any Web page using Javascript (all but the simplest pages these days) would still need it. Yet somehow he pulled it off, so what he did should work for FF 49-51 too.

There may not have been any hassle in 2010. There certainly was at the end of 2019 though. Spam wouldn't necessarily come from them. That said, they may have impeccable privacy practices, but it doesn't matter - I've long since lost interest.

I'm back! Had a pretty bad year and a half; check my profile for details.... Well, this thread didn't age well, did it? Sure, you can go to the M$ Update Catalog and download Win 7 POSReady updates, but it looks like they're the same updates as for plain ol' Win 7, so they won't install unless you pony up.... Nor will the Windows Server 2008 R2 updates; same story. Apparently each update has a time-bomb in it, with different detonation dates depending on the exact version. (Not that it matters, but I'd guess they put the time-bomb code in the SHA-2 updates, without which Windows Update won't work at all, so there's no getting around it....) But it's not so bad, right? Just pony up and M$ will sell you a key that pushes the detonation date out a year. And the first year, at least, is reasonable. The second year is more, but still not too bad. But here's the kicker: that's only for business "enterprise" versions! I can buy a key for my Win 7 Pro machine at work, but not for my Win 7 Home Premium machine at home! Heck, at this point I'd settle for a hack that makes my system look like Win 7 Pro, just so M$ would sell me a key.... Meanwhile @Jody Thornton is laughing his @$$ off at all of us, because he can just keep installing Windows Server 2012 updates on Win 8 until 2023. M$ didn't time-bomb Win 8, evidently.

It was in a post by @VistaLover. Apparently it's been causing some issues with more recent NM 27 updates:

DVD quality (at least in the US but probably most places) is 720x480p. I've sometimes heard that referred to as "ED" ("Enhanced" Definition) as opposed to 704x480i, or SD (Standard Definition). 720p (actually 1280x720) is noticeably sharper, but it is pretty much the lower bound of what folks would consider HD.

The problems with older browsers are probably due to the DeviantArt web site using new JavaScript features that weren't supported in those old browsers. It probably isn't practical to backport a JavaScript engine from, say, FF 45 to NM 27, so for full functionality you probably need to stick with a newer browser and try to speed things up somehow. I've heard the "new" NM 27 will be based on FF 41 instead of 38. Maybe that will be enough to get it working; if not, FF 45 is probably your best bet. To speed things up, do consider more RAM or a faster CPU if at all possible. You might also consider replacing the HDD with a SSD; that will really speed up paging! But also consider a content blocker like uBlock Origin version 1.16.4.29. If you can block enough bloat from loading, your browser will probably run faster and it won't be as painful to use.

HD inflation! Officially, 720 lines is "HD," 1080 lines is "FHD" ("Full" HD), 1440 lines is "QHD" ("Quad" HD), and 2160 lines is "UHD" ("Ultra" HD). The latter is often referred to as "4K" due to 3840 pixels/line. (True 4K is 4096 pixels/line, but I guess the marketers decided it's OK to "round up" a bit ). But with everyone wanting (or at least thinking that they want) UHD resolution, and some even clamoring for 8K , I guess Google decided calling 720p "HD," with only 1/9th the number of pixels of UHD, just didn't seem right. It's like soft drink sizes at American fast food restaurants. I'm of an age where a "small" drink was 12 oz. (355 ml), a "medium" was 16 oz., and a "large" was 20 oz. But it wasn't long before the 12 oz. became "child size," 16 became "small," 20 became "medium," and a new 32 oz. "large" size was introduced. And some have even moved on to 16 oz. being "value size," 20 oz. being "small," etc.!

Strangely, WinUpdatesList doesn't show me the Office 2010 updates, but WinUpdatesView does.... Also, WinUpdatesView only shows me the updates installed via Microsoft Update or Automatic Updates, so it ends Sept. 2020. Add/Remove Programs (in Control Panel) shows all updates, even the ones I downloaded from the catalog and installed manually. Unfortunately Add/Remove Programs seems to list the updates in no particular order, and cannot be searched or sorted.

Excellent work everyone! I already had Office 2010 updated through Sept. 2020 via Microsoft Update; with your help I think I'm now completely updated! There is one small annoyance left though. Anyone know of a way to kill this?