Mathwiz

Specifically, the DevEd Theme GUI breakages are due to: [Basilisk] Remove Dev Edition theme. Like you, I also happen to like the Dev Edition Theme over the default Australis one The man has no imagination. At least the F12 key still works.... And the DevEd Theme isn't limited to developers! I'd think lots of folks are like us and prefer it even for day-to-day use. Edit: I guess it does fit with his philosophy though: make the browser itself as minimal as possible and move everything else to add-ons. Except, by that logic MCP should have put the removed theme at addons.basilisk-browser.org. Needless to say, they didn't. Would you please? It's just a theme, for crying out loud....

Glad you got SM working. The same thing happened to me: I installed Primetime, but it won't show up in the plug-ins list, but it seems to work anyway. BNav, of course doesn't need Primetime since it has @roytam1's modded .dll's. Which is good, because AFAICS, Primetime will not install in BNav. If you install Primetime and set media.ffvpx.enabled to "false," Instagram videos will still play in Serpent and SM via Primetime, but won't play in BNav even if you install Primetime and create all the same prefs as in SM. BTW, I find BNav's Edit / Preferences dialogs to be woefully inadequate compared to SM. There's no way to set proxy preferences; all the "advanced" dialogs are missing! I had to copy my proxy prefs from SM to BNav manually just to test Instagram in BNav here at work.

True; this was just for testing. I wanted to see if I could get it to install, but I couldn't. I've since tried on XP (where either it or @roytam1's modded .DLLs are actually needed) but I'm running into the same problem. Edit: OK, just for kicks, I just tried your Instagram video without copying over modded .DLLs and it ... worked? Yet it's not showing the Primetime plug-in on about:addons/Plug-ins.... Now I'm starting to question my sanity. Edit 2: OK, it's definitely using Primetime to play the video. If I rename the "17" folder, it doesn't play; if I rename it back to "17" (and reinstall the media.gmp-eme-adobe.version pref and set it to 17) it works again! So the problem isn't that Primetime won't run; apparently it works just fine! The problem is simply that it won't show up in about:addons!

So, I installed SM 2.49.5 on my Win 7 system at home for testing, and try as I might, I could not get the Adobe Primetime CDM to install! I have no idea what's wrong. All the prefs are there; the "17" subdirectory is there, but it just won't show up in about:addons/Plug-ins. At one point it even deleted some of the prefs and the "17" subdirectory! I restored it again and flagged the files read-only, and it hasn't deleted them again, but it still won't show up. Primetime works fine in Serpent on the same system. I know it should work with SM too since I see it in the screen shots above. So, I fell back to method 2, which works fine. The Instagram test video plays just fine. But this has me baffled. I'll try again on my XP VM tomorrow and see if my luck is any better there.

With SM, if you jump through the necessary hoops to enable the "Developer Edition" theme (same instructions as for FF or Serpent) you also get a "SeaMonkey Modern" theme, which has a lighter color for the active tab. Edit: Correction - SeaMonkey Modern is available without enabling the Developer Edition theme. (BTW, I just discovered that only the 32-bit edition of SM 2.49.5 contains the Developer Edition theme. Of course the 64-bit edition requires Win 7 anyway, but I found that surprising.) Unfortunately, for BNav, that trick requires the UserChrome.js add-on, which won't install (well, it could probably be fixed the same way you fixed the themes, but if you're going to that much trouble, you might as well just modify and install a theme!)

I think XP is still OK for day-to-day use, as long as you have a good AV and an up-to-date Web browser, such as one of @roytam1's builds. If you use browser plug-ins like Flash and/or Java, keep them up-to-date also: For AV recommendations you should check out this thread: ... especially the discussion toward the end of the thread, since XP MSE no longer receives usable updates. If you have Office 2010 installed on XP, make sure it's up to date too, or at least as up-to-date as possible without breaking XP compatibility: So, still plenty of updating to do, even without updates to the OS. One last thing: there was a recent kerfuffle over vulnerabilities in CTF. But you may not need CTF; if not, you can disable it:

I did my usual update of Adobe Flash today, and since I now have the Edge beta I decided to update the PPAPI Flash version. It worked, but I discovered that Edge really doesn't like Flash very much. First, it defaults to disabled. If you visit a Flash page (like, say, the Check Adobe Flash Player Version), nothing works. But there's a tiny icon in the address bar; if you click it, it tells you "Flash was blocked on this page" and gives you the option to "Manage." If you click Manage you can turn Flash on. Then, you get a nag telling you "Flash will no longer be supported 15 months from now" or words to that effect, with a button to "turn off" Flash again. You can dismiss the nag, (Edit:) but it will come back every time you restart Edge! Then, if you try again, it still doesn't work! But if you click on a Flash control, at least now it gives you the option to "Allow". (Edit:) And once again, you must redo this every time you restart Edge! Pages you've told Edge to "allow" Flash on are only remembered until you close it. So does it finally work then? No, of course not! You have to explicitly click on each Flash control again (in this example, the one telling you which Flash version you have) in order to run that control. Google/M$ really don't want you running Flash! What a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through! In Firefox, I generally leave Flash disabled, but I have an add-on that lets me enable it with one click if I run across a site that needs it. I think Firefox and its forks (at least, the older ones that still run it) have it about right. I don't want it on by default (as is the case with IE), but if I do want it, I don't expect to have to answer a ton of "are you sure?", "are you really sure?", and "are you ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY sure?" dialogs first!

"Langpack" vs "langpacks:" computers are so literal-minded! Interesting that win32 builds of SM run on XP/Vista, while win64 builds don't. But the source code is available, so 64-bit SM for XP/Vista could be a nice addition to @roytam1's "stock." It would probably just be a one-time build, since 2.49.5 is stable, but still worthwhile if there's demand. BTW, any chance of a 2.49.6? Seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Edit: Answering my own question, (from https://www.seamonkey-project.org). Pretty much what I expected; oh, well....

Thanks, but I didn't read your post closely. I just used the links at https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/#langpacks, where I reasonably (I thought) expected them to be; but they're all broken there! Your links will take care of @AndreasB. if he decides to use Seamonkey vs. New Moon, but I'm still giving up on BNav. Looks like the folder structure of its omni.ja file is just too volatile, and language packs would have to be redone every time it gets changed. Back when this issue first came up, @roytam1 hinted that similar "surgery" might let FF language packs work on Serpent, but said he hadn't really looked into it. If there's demand for Serpent language packs, the folder structure of Serpent's omni.ja is stable, so that could be a crowd-sourced project many of us could contribute to.

Wow - adding a SM theme to BNav is pretty easy, but adding a language pack requires a LOT more "surgery" than I remembered I'm going to review those instructions and see if there's a way to automate that mess with a batch file or something.... Edit: Downloaded a couple of SM language packs to experiment with, and ... really? 7-Zip won't even open the .xpi files as archives! OK, I figured it out, but it's not good news: all I downloaded were 404 Not Found pages! Apparently all the SM language packs are gone! Luckily SM is available in many languages including German, but I guess you just have to download copies of the browser in each desired language now. Edit 2: There are language packs for version 2.49.4. I'm thinking the best option for Seamonkey 2.49.5 is just to install the browser in the language(s) you need; for BNav, SM 2.49.4 language packs will have to do. (Perhaps the version difference is one reason so much surgery is required.) Edit 3: It gets worse; the folder structure of BNav's omni.ja doesn't match the instructions! I'm guessing it was changed sometime between January and now. I'm giving up. BTW, 7-Zip works great on themes - I just double-click the .xpi (I have Windows set to open .xpi's with 7-Zip), click install.rdf, press F4 (set to run WordPad), paste the needed code in the right place, close WordPad, tell it to save, tell 7-Zip to update, close 7-Zip, drag the the .xpi to about:addons in BNav, and follow the prompts. Not trivial but not that tough either.

And considering (from my own experience) it's nearly impossible to get a nontrivial Windows batch script to work right the first time! I really wish Microsoft had just bought 4NT from JP Software and made that their batch language; it was also DOS compatible but much saner. But I guess M$'s NIH syndrome was acting up.... That said, I've written a new version of my Browser Downloader batch file - but this time, it's in a .7z archive along with some other stuff: myuseragents.js: my list of SSUAOs, mostly derived from PM 28, with a few updates @looking4awayout's UOC browser optimization files A couple of alternative background images and word-marks for the Serpent browsers by @dencorso (unfortunately there's a really nice one I couldn't include, but these aren't bad) And Info-zip's freeware zip.exe, needed to install the aforementioned background images and word-marks I consider this a "test bed" for new features; it's not intended to replace @i430VX's installer. It downloads to different folders than his, doesn't create desktop or Start menu shortcuts, and probably has some bugs! One known bug is that it won't preserve KM profiles when updating. I'll work on that; meanwhile you'll have to copy KM profiles back from the old folder manually. But if you don't mind creating your own shortcuts the first time you download one of @roytam1's browsers with it, it will take some of the drudgery out of your weekly updates: It will back up a previous download before downloading the current version It will offer to install myuseragents.js (except for mailnews, of course) It will offer to install the proper UOC file for FF 45, NM 27, or KM For Serpent 52 or 55, it will offer to replace the background for the Help / About dialog with your preferred alternative Also for Serpent 52/55, it will offer to replace the word-mark for the Help / About dialog as well. Edit: I had the .7z moved to @i430VX's server. You can download it here: http://i430vx.net/files/mathwiz/Browser Installer.7z To install, simply extract the .7z into a folder, (if desired) create a shortcut to the "Download Latest Browser.bat" file, review the .png files (they're both derived from the one already included in Serpent 52), choose the one you prefer (or create your own), and rename it about-background.png. BTW, in addition to the two custom word-marks in the .7z, @dencorso just gave me a couple more that are gold instead of light green. I'm attaching them to this post. You can add them to the same folder you extract the .7z to. All four word-marks now included in the download! To use, just launch, and follow the prompts. Edit 2: Time for some bug fixes. When I was adding the code to replace Serpent's Help / About backgrounds & word-marks, I introduced a bug with installing myuseragents.js (it got installed to the wrong directory) and the UOC Patch (same, unless you tried to install myuseragents.js - in which case myuseragents.js would not install correctly but the UOC Patch would). Also, none of those would even be offered by merely clicking the batch file - you had to run it from the command line while in the directory containing those .js files. All that's been corrected in the attached version of the batch file. I'll also let @i430VX know to update the .7z with this version. Edit 3: One more fix, to switch to @roytam1's newest domain (rths.ml). Edit 4: Two more changes: one to download @roytam1's new Arctic Fox builds for XP; the other to deal with a subtle name change in @looking4awayout's UOC Patch files (he added an underscore). This new batch file will work with either the old or new file names. Download Latest Browser.bat

OK, let's try this again, with corrections/additions: I believe somewhere back in the bowels of this thread is a post explaining how to modify SeaMonkey language packs for Navigator. the query was for @roytam1-only maintained browsers I was responding to the post quoted at the top of this post, which said "is there," not "do you have".

This is from memory, so correct me if I'm wrong, but: Serpent 52 should be able to use Basilisk language packs Seamonkey 2.49.5 IIRC, @roytam1's build of Navigator can also use Seamonkey's language packs, but they require some "surgery" first

Ah - I see; if it's set to "Show my windows and tabs from last time," the browser.showQuitWarning setting is ignored. At the risk of being overly pedantic, the superuser.com page you linked to asked about a different dialog: ... and the answer you quoted referenced FF 57 (though the page title does say FF 50+). So it wasn't clear to me that it applied to @AndreasB.'s situation.

I'm confused. It worked for me:

I have a theory that OS-level programmers only have nine fingers. Why else would they always start counting at zero? Right. One could, of course, fill up the first cluster of the root directory then add a volume label, but I guess in the thread, the unstated assumption was that the volume label would be applied during formatting; hence the reference to the 8-sector-long "volume name entry" that got me so mixed up. I like that idea: having "extra" sectors in the FAT rather than (or in addition to) tweaking the number of reserved sectors. I don't think there's as much advantage in aligning the FATs as in aligning the clusters, but it can't hurt, and if you left the reserved sectors at the default 32, but then rounded up the FAT size to the next multiple of 32, then everything (both FATs and all the clusters) would be aligned on 16K boundaries, which would be good enough for just about every flash drive. I'm dubious about the advantage of 1 MB alignment, but if you wanted to do 1 MB alignment, with clusters 2 & 3 "split" between 1 MB pages, you could do it like this: Make the number of reserved sectors equal to the cluster size (which in turn is at least the drive physical sector size; usually 4K) Make the FAT size a multiple of 2048 sectors (1 MB) minus the size of one cluster Now the reserved sectors plus the first FAT fit in a whole number of 1 MB pages, the second FAT plus cluster 2 fit in the same number of 1 MB pages, cluster 3 is at the start of the next 1 MB page, and of course every structure is aligned on a cluster size (4/8/16/32/64K) boundary. For smaller volumes (e.g., 512 MB up to 4 GB or so), you could make the FAT size 1024 sectors minus the size of one cluster, saving 1 MB. Then everything through and including cluster 2 would be on the first 1 MB page, and again cluster 3 would be at the start of the next 1 MB page. Has something like this been tried and compared to, say, RMPrepUSB's FAT32 format? (I doubt it would make much difference, but at least it's elegant!)

To make things even more confusing, the thread I was reading, at http://reboot.pro/topic/16783-rmprepusb-faster-fat32-write-access-on-flash-memory-drives/ sometimes refers to cluster 3 as the "first data cluster" and cluster 2 as simply the root directory, as if we were back in the FAT16 days! I guess that terminology makes some sense: root directories don't often get very large, so most FAT32 volumes probably do have a relatively static, one-cluster-long root directory at cluster 2, everything else being files and subdirectories. But it sure got me confused. Incidentally, I was surprised there was any speed difference at all between the poster's F1 and F3 formats (even though the difference is small), but as I said, YMMV; it could be the specific flash drive he tested with, or even a quirk of where the FATs ended up in the two variations and not related to the 1 MB alignment at all. At any rate, if you need to use FAT32 I do recommend the RMPrepUSB program; it's free and will give your USB flash or AF drive a well-performing, aligned FAT32 format, without making you do any math!

I can help a little with the root directory: in FAT32 it's just like any other directory or file - a linked list of clusters - except there's a pointer to the first cluster in the BPB. See offset 0x2C at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system#FAT32_Extended_BIOS_Parameter_Block. FAT32 format utilities generally set this pointer to 2, the first cluster that actually exists on the volume, but strictly speaking, you're right; they don't have to. The volume label reference I made above is apparently wrong. There was some misleading discussion at reboot.pro that implied Cluster 1 exists: they kept referring to the "first" cluster, which I misread as meaning cluster 1, but actually cluster doesn't exist at all and the "first" cluster they were referring to is cluster 2. I'll edit my last post to fix that mistake. I think what threw me off was this sentence: (emphasis added), which I read as referring to an 8-sector "cluster 1" with only the volume name (and a whole lot of wasted space), but now I think it refers to cluster 2, with the volume name and the first several root directory entries. Anyway, the discussion was whether to put that "first" cluster at the end of a 1 MB page or the start of the next one. The thinking appeared to be: since it only holds the volume label and the first several root directory entries, it wouldn't change often and so shouldn't be placed in the same 1 MB page as the presumably more "dynamic" data clusters that followed it. But, since 1 MB alignment doesn't seem to matter (at least with the drive I tried) the whole discussion is moot AFAIAC.

Well, if there's only one FAT, then they just renamed "reserved sectors" to "FAT offset," but it means the same thing: the number of sectors between the start of the partition and the first/only FAT. Then they added the cluster heap offset so both the FAT and clusters could be properly aligned. In FAT32 the cluster heap offset doesn't exist, and the reserved sectors defaults to 32, which aligns the first FAT, but usually misaligns the second FAT and the clusters. By tweaking the reserved sectors, you can choose instead to align the second FAT, or the clusters, but usually at most one of the three. In theory you could achieve a triple alignment in FAT32 by choosing the partition size nicely, so that each FAT contained a multiple of 8, 16, etc. sectors. But short of that, experimentation with a "tweakable" FAT32 formatter like mkdosfs shows that aligning the clusters is by far the best choice. So I suspect there's little performance difference between exFAT filesystems (with both FAT and clusters aligned) and cluster-aligned FAT32 filesystems. Getting rid of the redundant second FAT may help exFAT a little, and the new bitmap probably speeds things up a little more, but they're not going to make a huge difference. I noticed that RMPrepUSB does this "hanging" alignment, aligning cluster 2 on a 1 MB boundary. (Thus, cluster 1, with the volume label, hangs off the start of the 1 MB page and is located at the end of the previous page, along with the tail end of the second FAT. That 1 MB page would be rarely updated as long as the drive doesn't get too full.) That may help with some older flash drives, but it didn't make any noticeable difference with mine compared to a simple cluster-aligned format done manually with mkdosfs. I think it's because newer flash drives have "smart" controllers that remap the 4K physical sectors to different 4K internal sectors, so 1 MB alignments don't really matter: with all the mapping, there's no way to predict which 4K sectors belong to the same 1 MB page. (Besides, unless the flash drive has been nearly filled up, most of the slow read-erase-rewrite operations are done by a garbage collection algorithm when the flash drive is idle, so they don't degrade performance as long as the drive has plenty of zeroed sectors for the garbage collector to work with.) So I doubt 1 MB alignments are worth the trouble, at least with newer flash drives. Edit: Ignore the struck-through references to "cluster 1" containing a volume label above. Cluster 1 does not actually exist on a FAT volume. The rest of the paragraph is OK, AFAIK. Still, with years of flash drives out there, with all their different technologies, there are probably a few somewhere that are helped by 1 MB alignment. So as usual, YMMV.

Strange they even bothered with this, since FAT32's "reserved sectors" effectively served the same purpose. It would've made more sense to add a way to align the Second FAT - and of course the cluster heap, which they did add and which is the most important thing to align by far. As for the overall value of exFAT, I haven't seen much. It does allow files >= 4GB, and it seems to be correctly aligned; aside from that, the only benefit I can find is to Microsoft, who patented exFAT so they could charge royalties for using it. But the net effect was only to ensure that manufacturers of cheap electronic devices often don't support exFAT, requiring FAT32 or NTFS instead; yet, most large USB flash drives now come formatted with exFAT, and have to be reformatted for use with said cheap electronics.

I did notice one cosmetic change with the latest Serpent 52 version: When enabling and using the hidden "Developer Edition" theme, the "Classic Theme Restorer" add-on can no longer "square" the browser tabs! The Tab Appearance selection is greyed out, and there are new messages on the Classic Theme Restorer Tabs settings (Page 1) that say "Tab appearance is controlled by the current theme." and "Third party theme detected! Some options do not work with third party themes!" Apparently CTR now considers the Developer Edition theme a "third party" theme, but didn't in earlier Serpent 52 versions. I don't know if that's a new bug or a fix for a bug (i.e., square tabs were never supposed to work with the Developer Edition theme, but did anyway until now). That's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but I did happen to like the Developer Edition theme with squared tabs. I guess you can't have everything though.

Interesting that a "native" Basilisk user agent works, given that a "native" FF 52.9 UA does not! It implies that Github has chosen to support Basilisk (at least, the official version), which is hopeful for the future. Once Github stops supporting 60.9, it may be best to move to the above (via a SSUAO) vs. trying to spoof FF 68. Why lie if telling the truth works?

I agree with @VistaLover; it seems to work OK for me. But I do use a user-agent override to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:60.9) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.9 ... which can be implemented either by a github.com-specific SSUAO, a general UAO, or by the compatibility prefs @VistaLover mentioned. Without a UAO of some sort, Github.com hasn't worked with FF 52 or Serpent for quite some time. (I agree that before long, we'll need to start spoofing FF 68 to have a chance, and even that may not work, depending on what new Javascript and/or CSS features Github decides to start using.) Also, if you have enabled either dom.webcomponents.enabled or dom.webcomponents.customelements.enabled, you need to disable them for Github.com to work with Serpent. (I have no idea why.) Everything seems to work fine with these disabled, although disabling them costs you a few points on html5test.com....

Getting back to the original topic, I was intrigued by the discussion of FAT32 alignment. So I ran a couple of tests with a 64GB SanDisk Ultra flash drive plugged into a USB 2.0 port. First, I formatted it with GUIFormat.exe, a popular freeware FAT32 disk format utility. Then I ran the CrystalDiskMark6 benchmark on it: Not very impressive, but I was only using a USB 2.0 port. Next, I reformatted with RMPrepUSB, which aligns the clusters with the flash drive's (presumed) 4K sectors, and ran another benchmark (with the same USB 2.0 port): OK, that's only about a 5-10% improvement in random read speed, but a 40% improvement in random write speed, and a whopping 50% improvement in sequential write speed! With this alignment, FAT32 actually out-benchmarks (slightly) NTFS! Pretty impressive and clearly worth doing if you need a FAT32-formatted flash drive or AF hard drive. Edit: Rezeroing the flash drive (easily done with "format i: /p:1" on Windows Vista or later; WinXP unfortunately does not recognize the /p switch) before formatting with RMPrepUSB produced a bit more improvement: ... although the read speeds dropped a bit from last time, so the previously noted improvement may have been a fluke. Of course, the improved write speeds probably won't last as the flash drive fills up again, but if you're formatting, you might as well start with the drive as fast as possible.

I realize uBlock Origin isn't an antivirus product, but it does support several anti-malware filters, so I think a post on uBO is justified in this thread: It's not just you; Mozilla long ago decided (capriciously, IMO) to remove all "legacy" (by which they mean pre-WebExtensions) add-ons from addon.mozilla.org, and won't sign any new "legacy" .xpi's. They weren't specifically picking on uBO, but that did leave FF stuck with WE version 1.17.4. (Our pal VistaLover detailed a way to get 1.18.4 working on FF 52 in another thread, but it required jumping through several hoops.) As for MCP, they've gone the opposite direction and removed all support for WebExtension add-ons from their products! This bifurcation is why JustOff supports a "legacy" version of uBO (leaving GorHill to focus on the WebEx version): the legacy version is for PaleMoon & Basilisk; the WE version for Firefox, Waterfox, etc. As you discovered, the unsigned legacy versions of uBO will work in FF 52 ESR, provided you turn off code-signing enforcement, so FF 52 ESR (and @roytam1's Serpent, which doesn't support code signing but didn't remove WE support) give you the choice of either a legacy or WE version of uBO. As I've posted elsewhere, I personally prefer the legacy version, since on these browsers, a few features are only available with that version. Regardless of which version you choose, uBO comes with four filter lists of malware domains. I enable all four in my browsers.