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looking4awayout

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Everything posted by looking4awayout

  1. As you all know, the motherboard of my RDD has bit the dust. So, I have replaced it with an interim one, an Asus TUV4X, which unfortunately is defective as well (extremely long boot times, most likely capacitor issues). While I am waiting for the arrival of the new one (which boots XP in normal times, just 18 seconds on an old clunky 30GB hard drive), I am in the process of setting up the OS (this time the RDD is going to be a more powerful Tualatin system in terms of processing power and RAM) and so, I have installed a genuine copy of XP Pro SP3 including an original product key I stored long ago. Well, when it came to activation, I did the good old online process, and interestingly enough, Windows activated itself without any issue... Either it was luck or I just don't know.
  2. Is it possible to develop an IA32/SSE version of Arctic Fox? I am in the process of rebuilding my RDD (because as you might have read, my motherboard committed suicide a couple of days ago..) and I'm curious about it.
  3. No, I'm not replacing XP. Yes, I had exactly the issues you have described. Sorry for the double post. No, I won't switch to Windows Server 2003. My machine is having hardware issues. Not software ones. I will have to switch the graphics card and see if the culprit is the X1950 Pro.
  4. The new motherboard is not stable. I cannot enable AGP Fast Writes and as soon as I do anything involving hardware acceleration, I get BSODs. The development of the UOC Patch has been shelved until I stabilize the machine.
  5. I had to reinstall everything, XP does not boot on the new motherboard. I have formatted, but I have issues with boot process itself taking way too long (2 minutes and half) so I might either have to replace the SATA controller or get a new motherboard altogether.... And it's pretty much impossible to find the motherboard with the specs I need at a good price. It will take time. For now, development is stopped.
  6. Bad news, guys. The development of the UOC Patch is stopped until further updates, because the RDD's motherboard died today, the chipset most likely burned out. I am in the process of replacing the old motherboard (a QDI Advance 10T) with an Asus TUV4X, so I need to reinstall everything from the ground up and reapply all the tweaks I set up on the A10T, and that is going to take a lot of time, which prevents me to continue the development of the UOC Patch in the short and mid term. I also suspect the motherboard might be either faulty or have incompatibilities with my SATA controller (Promise SATA300 TX2 Plus), so I also have to troubleshoot the system and locate the potential issue, hoping it's just a software one, rather than an hardware one. The current version of the Patch and the Enforcer, N2M, are stable enough anyway so it can be fine for now. Wish me luck.
  7. I'm all for your brands. Hope the others agree as well! ☺
  8. Looks nice! Simple and effective. I like it.
  9. I agree with all the line. A fruitful collaboration can be spawned out of this, and I hope @roytam1 will agree.
  10. I have never posted about this so far, but Matt is right. A unique brand for the browsers is the best way to make them stand out and finally get this issue sorted out for good. I have been in this forum for around a year, previously as a lurker and since this spring as a member, and I do believe that a tense atmosphere between the PM team and Roytam1 doesn't help at making things better (maybe he can also help you improve the shortcomings of some browsers, such as the infamous stuttering of 45 ESR SSE, that is a pet peeve of mine, you know 😛). Why not burying the axe of war for good? I know that between you and Matt there seems to be a non idyllic relationship, but in my opinion, Matt is offering a precious help @Roytam1 and his in-depth knowledge of the browser can help you further along the way. You know I use your browsers regularly on my RDD, and everything I want for those is to be even more excellent than they already are. In my opinion you should not ignore his offer.
  11. I think another important thing to do is to find out what exactly causes the lag in Firefox 45 ESR SSE. Regular 45 ESR does not exhibit this issue, so instead of being an issue caused by Mozilla devs (which are the Devil, usually, but not in this case), it is a fault of the Tenfourfox developers, who have introduced something that causes a strain either on the CPU or the graphics card. As for investigating the reason behind tiled compositing in FF52, I remember I have read somewhere that on 52, it has been tied with E10S. So you want tiled compositing? You must enable E10S. While developing the new version of the Patch for SSErpent, I wanted to test it both with and without E10S enabled, and in either cases, it was a disaster: without E10S, scrolling gets laggy to the point it will stop often, and black rectangles appear on the screen. With E10S enabled, on the other hand, scrolling is still laggy, but no black rectangles appear. Instead, if you scroll, the canvas doesn't redraw itself correctly, leaving a "smudged" effect on the screen. This is the reason that led me to abandon E10S support altogether and withdraw the NM28 specific version. SeaMonkey 2.48 appears to be working fine with the 45 ESR version of the Patch, but I'm not sure if the browser ignores some of the entries or not. I will have to delve in the about:config to find out. My lack of free time doesn't help me. Surely, it is not running as smooth as the other patched browsers, scrolling is fluid but seems kind of choppy, as if the maximum FPS have been capped to 30, while the patch sets the software rendering FPS to 120 and the hardware accelerated ones to 240. The same things happen on my Compaq Deskpro DC7800 Convertible Minitower at work, which has a Core2 Duo E8300 and a GeForce GT430, so it's not an incompatibility issue.
  12. Yes they are not broken and do work, although the framerate is slightly lower than the other browsers, probably there is a framerate cap in SM 2.48.
  13. Try using the UOC Patch, it might improve scrolling on your browser, but you must use Serpent 52/New Moon 28, Firefox 45 ESR SSE, K-Meleon Goanna or New Moon 27, as I don't support codebases newer than 52 ESR.
  14. UPDATE! All the versions of the UOC Patch, including the Enforcer, have been rewritten from scratch. This time, I have extensively reworked the tweaks used for the rendering engine, which allowed me to double the scrolling speed of the patched browsers, increasing the general responsiveness. Loading times have also been shortened, thanks to some tweaks backported from K-Meleon Goanna. The New Moon 28-specific version of the UOC Patch has been withdrawn, since now the Patch no longer comes with E10S enabled, due to compatibility issues on some machines with some video cards (especially ATI ones). Users of the SeaMonkey browser, especially version 2.48, can use the 45 ESR version of the Patch once again. As all the changes are too many to be listed in a single post, I will limit myself to say that all the versions of the Patch have been extensively remade and tailored upon the peculiarities of each codebase, and this has required me to write thirteen different revisions, before coming out with the final version, which might be subjected to minor updates in future, as usual. I have successfully managed to mitigate the occasional stuttering issue that affects Mozilla based browsers, especially Firefox 45 ESR SSE, and thanks to the backporting of some parameters from K-Meleon Goanna and Serpent 52, I have managed to dramatically improve the overall speed of the browser and reduce the page loading times. This, at least on the machines where the pre-release versions have been tested, proved to be a real game changer, turning old computers, no longer usable on the web, into decent web browsing machines. I also have reintroduced favicons, since some people complained about the lack of those in the previous versions of the Patch. The Awesome Bar has been disabled, keeping only the autocomplete feature active. Please update to the newest version of the UOC Patch and the Enforcer, and start with a new, clean profile, as a "dirty" profile might hamper the performance of the patched browser. The new build number is N2M. Happy RDDin'!
  15. For Firefox 45 ESR SSE users, if you use the Vacuum Places Improved extension, please remove it. I found out that in the latest version, the extension causes the CPU to idle at around 52/68% in every single page, even at the Google home page! I will investigate if I get the same issue with the other browsers as well and if so, I'll uninstall the extension, searching for another one that cleans the places.sqlite file automatically when the browser is started. Speaking of complete themes... Is there a complete theme for FF45 ESR SSE that makes it look like K-Meleon/Seamonkey? I hate Australis and CTR is a little bit too bloated.
  16. Yes, delete the "official" Firefox altogether and just leave Roytam1's version. In order to delete the profile, you will need to make a shortcut to the Firefox executable, go in the properties, and add the key "-p" to the end of the path in the properties. This will let you open the Profile Manager, where you can delete and create a new profile, and set it as default. Once done, just delete the shortcut or rename it to "Profile Manager" and make a new shortcut without the "-p" key.
  17. Sorry for the double post. Since you have installed all the browsers, you must use the 45 ESR version of the Patch + Enforcer with Firefox 45 ESR SSE and SeaMonkey. With Basilisk/Serpent/New Moon 28, you must use the 52 ESR/New Moon 28 version of the Patch + the 45 ESR Enforcer. The next version of the patch, of which the release is imminent, will eliminate the New Moon 28 version as I am going to release the 52 ESR version without E10S. With New Moon 27 and K-Meleon Goanna, you must use the 38 ESR version of the Patch + Enforcer. Could an IA-32 version be possible, much like how you are doing with SSErpent?
  18. Just delete everything related to the "official" Firefox. You can even delete the entire folder altogether (in my experience, you don't need to install the "official" Firefox to use Roytam1's 45 ESR SSE) just extract the 7z archive wherever you want and you can use the browser. Never mix the folders or else you'll end up with the same issue you are facing now. On my RDD, instead of installing the official one, I just have extracted the 7z, placed the new browser's folder in C:\Program Files\ and presto, runs without issues.
  19. The N2M version of the UOC Patch has been cancelled. I have to rework the 45 ESR version and due to this I most likely won't be able to release them anytime soon. Due to structural limits of FF45 ESR SSE, I have to develop a workaround to reduce the excessive strain on the CPU, but I also need collaboration from developers. Not only Roytam1, but anyone who knows the innards of Firefox and knows how to program, please, help this browser run better on old hardware. There is an issue either in the rendering engine or in the browser itself that causes an excessive strain on the CPU and causing severe stuttering when a page is scrolled, and it happens even without hardware acceleration. I am doing my best with the UOC Patch to mitigate this, but I am limited by the code itself and until the issues (that you all know) are fixed for good, I will never be able to fully optimize 45 ESR as much as I want. Meanwhile, I do my best, to the point I am not sleeping since almost a week in order to improve the 45 ESR version of the patch as much as possible, and in case of updates, I will post accordingly. Stick to N2L for the time being, until there's an update, which will come, but I cannot give a deadline. Could be today, could be tomorrow, the next week, the next year, I don't know.
  20. Interesting to see a K-Meleon based FF45 ESR SSE... I like the simple UI of K-Meleon and porting it to FF45 would definitely reduce the strain on the CPU. Australis sucks.
  21. What about FF45 ESR with Goanna? Or even replacing the UI of FF45 ESR with the UI of K-Meleon? If you manage to reduce the overhead on FF45 ESR SSE it would be great. I noticed that FF45 ESR SSE, more so the latest versions, is much more slow than the 38 ESR based browsers on my computer. The UOC Patch speeds it up as it should but loading webpages takes a toll on the CPU, something I do not see on New Moon 27. NM27 starts instantly when you load it and the "search" word in the box appears immediately. I also noticed another bug. When you start the browser, as it loads the home page, it will freeze for some seconds and the "Search" word in the search box does not appear. Once the word appears the browser becomes operable. I cannot use the browser until that word appears. My computer has no viri nor malwares. Firefox Sync is disabled. This also happens if I set about:blank as home page. This does not happen on New Moon 27. I tested FF45 ESR SSE without add-ons and without the Patch and I have the same issues, even on more powerful hardware. If you can sort that out, or at least find the culprit behind this increased CPU overhead, that would be fab. Ironically, the fastest browsers in terms of CPU overhead on my RDD are New Moon 27 and K-Meleon Goanna, but unfortunately I cannot use them (especially the latter) as K-Meleon doesn't support the add-ons I use.
  22. I am not a programmer, can't do that unfortunately. I wish I could...
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