Ben Markson

Okay, I'm way down a very strange rabbit hole now. I use an ancient copy of AdBlock Plus (v2.9.1). Using the latest Serpent, if I go to to https://forums.digitalspy.com with this filter active: ||fonts.googleapis.com^ it crashes. Inactive it doesn't crash. The older Serpent is unaffected. Ben.

I've given up and gone back to basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20250712-3219d2d-uxp-b9ebe5b259-xpmod.7z I've now encountered an insta-crash visiting https://forums.digitalspy.com so I'm thinking something's just not right. Ben.

Nice idea... :where is working fine, so it's not that. My gut says that hidden="" makes no sense and that it should be hidden="true" but everything is so javascript driven and dynamic that it's hard to tell if what the inspector shows is reliable. Ben.

I'm observing this for a FRITZ!Box 7530 running FRITZ!OS: 8.02 – which is insanely difficult to debug as it comprises screens that are constantly being rendered using javascript in real time. I'm not sure how to properly explain this but here goes... using Serpent v52.9.0 (2025-07-09) (32-bit) this works: <article class="page-blocks"> <div class="page-blocks__block" :hide="isMeshClient || isIpClient" hidden=""> <----- <div class="text-block"> <div class="text-block__container"> <p :show="hwf.isBox"> The table shows all of the network devices connected with the FRITZ!Box via LAN or Wi-Fi, as well as VPN connections to the home network that were established by FRITZ!Box users and apps (such as MyFRITZ!App, FRITZ!VPN). All of the devices in the home network are connected in a computer network and can exchange data, images, music, and videos with each other. Network devices in the home network can also be reached from the internet through port sharing.</p> </div> </div> </div> : </article> -----> :where([hidden], [print-only]) { display: none !important; } After (2025-07-09) the display: none is not being applied. This causes page areas to be shown that should be hidden. As this is all javascript driven it's very difficult to assign a specific cause to any effect. Obviously, it's not the display: none itself but maybe something to do with the :where() pseudo-class? Or is it the :hide="isMeshClient || isIpClient" hidden="" stuff? Or <article>? As Serpent's inspector doesn't seem to like javascript driven html and only displays the initial state of the web page, I've gained this much insight using an up-to-date version of Firefox, this means I can only inspect the display: none being applied when it's working. There are no errors being logged. Would anyone like to hazard an explanation. Ben.

I have a lot more run-ins with Cloudflare than I do Anubis. Both of them can get stuck in an infinite validation loop. Cloudflare can get insanely aggressive, it will quite happily lock your browser into an irretrievable Loop of Death (who would write code like that?). At least Anubis can easily be stopped. I think the thing I object to the most is that they focus on the way a browser looks rather than what it is actually doing. In civil society this is characterised as profiling rather than being intelligence led. All that will happen is that the bots will better disguise themselves and their behaviour will go unchecked. Ben.

It's Cloudflare, Jim, but not as we know it. Anubis is another clunky piece of software developed by people who believe that only selected browsers are allowed to use the internet. It seems to be predicated on the idea that any non-conformant browser must be evil. Ironically, https://forums.mozillazine.org/ are using the exact same thing. Ben.

If I go anywhere near this website ... instant crash. https://www.theweatheroutlook.com Same happens in safe mode. Ben.

Thanks for the links. I'm afraid my choices are mainly down to a lack of skill. Creating a VM for XP wasn't my first objective. I wanted an OS that when necessity demands can run a truly up to date browser. I'm not a particular fan of Linux (I find its UI both incomplete and inconsistent) but I hate the newer incarnations of Windows. I think Linux Mint is probably the path of least resistance. It runs the latest Firefox browser. It also runs legacy browsers such as Basilisk and Firefox 52. As an after thought I wondered if it could run Windows XP. VirtualBox 7 is the default install under Mint's Software Manager (again, path of least resistance when you don't really know what you're doing). Outside running games (not a great concern for me) I'm really pleased. I have Office XP (including Outlook) running, I have an ancient version of Coral running. All things that run fine under XP but have become some kind of insane, cloud-based, mess under today's Windows. Ben.

I went around in circles with VHD too. To get started I needed to get the Macrium Reflect image into a VHD file to do the restore. In the end I used Windows 7, which has good support for VHD files, to create and populate the VHD. I'm doing this on what was a W7 machine, now dual booting with Linus Mint 22. Ben.

Thanks for the suggestion but I was interested in people's opinions about VMs. To be honest I'm surprised that there are not more people interested in using a VM for running XP. Oh well, Ben.

All to aware that my, circa 2008, machine running Windows XP must eventually die I decided to have a play with VirtualBox 7 running under Linux Mint. While its not been a wholly trivial experience I was amazed that I was eventually able to restore a Macrium Reflect image of my current machine into a VM. To all intents and purposes it looks and works identically to the original. The main difficulties I encountered were with the set up of USB and VHD storage devices which I still find a bit clunky (this is using the Guest Additions add-on). There is a single shortcoming. VirtualBox 7 doesn't support 3D Acceleration for XP. So, for example, flash works fine but WebGL is hopelessly slow. What VM software are others using for XP? Ben.

Surely it simply leads to the same MILE LONG script? turbo_launcher.gcc.url = "https://vorapis.pages.dev/product/v3/game_service/patcher/get_latest_client"; ...https://vorapis.pages.dev/product/v3/game_service/client/online_instance/1727286007541/Vorapis.user.js Ben.

Is there any documentation on what they all do? For example, content.cors.disable;true, seems to cause CORS to always fail. I'm not sure when that would be useful. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS/Errors/CORSDisabled I can't find a description for the other two are preferences. Ben.

This? Changes to the display driver installation process under Microsoft Windows 7 Ben.

Works for me – thank you for fixing the XP time zone anomaly. Ben.