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Ben Markson

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Everything posted by Ben Markson

  1. Ben Markson
    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.
  2. Ben Markson
    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.
  3. Ben Markson
    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.
  4. Ben Markson
    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.
  5. Ben Markson
    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.
  6. Ben Markson
    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.
  7. Ben Markson
    This? Changes to the display driver installation process under Microsoft Windows 7 Ben.
  8. Ben Markson
    Works for me – thank you for fixing the XP time zone anomaly. Ben.
  9. Ben Markson
    The tantalising question remains: why does my and @UCyborg's Firefox ESR 52.9 always return the correct answer? And could that be applied to the forks? Clutching as straws, but did you review your XP Regional and Time settings, and your Firefox language settings? Does that mean the forks have been tailored for later OS's such that they no longer properly interpret XP? Ben.
  10. Ben Markson
    But I think you are getting us closer to understanding what's going on... I think the default values for .toLocaleString() are based on your various system settings: I have English (United Kingdom) as my XP regional country... . (GMT +00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London with Automatically adjust clock for daylight savings changes as my XP Date and Time Properties... And English/United Kingdom [en-gb] as my Firefox and Serpent language setting... This should default to: new Date().toLocaleString('en-gb', {timeZone: 'Europe/London'}); And I think that's the problem... it's all about the defaults values. Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone; ...will tell you your default time zone. For me, under original Firefox this reports: "Europe/London" which is correct. But under Serpent it reports: "UTC" which is plain, unadjusted, time. So now the question is, where is Serpent getting the "UTC" string from and why doesn't it get "Europe/London"? Ben.
  11. Ben Markson
    Just to summarise. Under the original Firefox ESR 52.9 new Date().toLocaleString(); always returns the correct time as shown on the system clock. It would appear that various forks, I am currently using Serpent v52.9.0 (2024-04-19) (32-bit), sometimes return the wrong time. · It is only wrong under Windows XP. · It is only wrong if XP is configured to automatically apply daylight saving AND there is a DST adjustment in force (e.g. British Summer Time). · The console's timestsamp is correct, it is only javascript that seems to return the wrong time. Incidently, something like: new Date().getHours() + ':' + new Date().getMinutes(); always returns the system time correctly, so it seems to be specifically toLocaleString() that has the problem. If the wrong time happened under both the original Firefox and the forks I would put it down to some Microsoft XP Api quirkiness but as the time is correct under the original Firefox this suggests that the forks have picked up some broken code – although it is perverse that it only seems to effect XP. I did, somewhat optimistically, try swapping out api-ms-win-core-timezone-l1-1-0.dll for the original Firefox version but it made no difference. Ben.
  12. Ben Markson
    That is curious. At my end Firefox ESR 52.9.0 definitely does not exhibit the problem. Does that mean I have a setting that fixes the problem? Ben.
  13. Ben Markson
    That may have something to do with it. If I change XP's Date and Time Properties not to automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes then toLocaleTimeString() reports the system time correctly under Serpent. With the automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes in force Serpent reports the system time incorrectly. The original Firefox ESR works properly in both cases. It would seem that Serpent is adjusting the system time for DST from the system time that is already adjusted. Ben.
  14. Ben Markson
    This has me stumped. If I execute this code on the console: new Date().toLocaleTimeString(); I get a 1 hour discrepancy between Serpent v52.9.0 (2024-04-19) (32-bit) and Firefox ESR 52.9.0 (32-bit). Under Windows XP Serpent shows a 1 hour difference compared to the system clock. Doing the same thing (using the same profiles) under Windows 7 there is no discrepancy. I noticed this when using this site: https://www.tv-films.co.uk/top-film-premieres-this-week/ where Serpent (under XP) shows the wrong times. My default time zone is en-GB. I get the same discrepancy using something like: new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US'); Any clue what could cause this? Ben.
  15. Ben Markson
    Good news, Fritz!Box now works with St52. I see several changes with respect to Promise so this suggest that Promise.allSettled is now being properly honoured. Ben.
  16. Ben Markson
    You seem to be using a different Serpent to me... Ben.
  17. Ben Markson
    Okay, so that's curious, under Serpent, my example only runs if webgl.disable-angle = true otherwise, like you, I get a black screen and a console error: failed to acquire a renderer - check WebGL or WebGPU is supported. I've long decided that WebGL and XP just don't play well together – flash was vastly superior. Ben.
  18. Ben Markson
    Here is a simple game that uses WEbGL. It's a nice example because it's quick to load and the website gives proper diagnostics for any missing browser features. https://play.ninjadoodle.com/clickplaypics/ Now, can someone tell me how to have it run under XP without maxing out the CPU? For me it idles at 75%. I'd always assumed it's down to limitations of XP – with the same browser under W7 the CPU is negligible. Ben.
  19. Ben Markson
    Many posts ago I suggested blocking certain animation effects: https://msfn.org/board/topic/184051-my-browser-builds-part-4/page/131/#comment-1250502 In particular: animation: none !important; breaks the kind of stuff you are talking about. Because of that I then changed my suggestion: https://msfn.org/board/topic/184051-my-browser-builds-part-4/page/131/#comment-1250506 Since then @roytam1 introduced the prefs: layout.css.animation.enabled layout.css.transition.enabled Which supersede my css tweaks. Is it possible that you have an animation: none in force? Ben.
  20. Ben Markson
    Here's a blast from the past that I'm still using. ZoneAlarm. But not the later bloatware versions but back when it was lean and mean... v2.6 Its use as a firewall is mostly redundant as nowadays that kind of stuff is handled at the router, but as an egress filter I still find it very useful. I'm still routinely disappointed how the first thing some 'legitimate' software wants to do is to phone home. I also think it's a good protection against malware that rides on the back of another program and whose job it is to open the door to the fetching of the real nasty. ZoneAlarm will warn when a program you weren't expecting tries to connect to the internet. Ben.
  21. Ben Markson
    I changed my mind! It breaks too many things (including MSFN) this seems better: * { animation-iteration-count: 0 !important; } ...it gets rid of the 'infinite' setting (I'm going for a global rule, not a per site rule). Ben.
  22. Ben Markson
    I think the main culprit is this: https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/vVqCiuMuYjtIEG4538PA7zjsBOXQi37pmfABOgXoEQY.css ...with its CSS Animations. This interests me as I really hate webpages that gratuitously consume CPU after they've rendered. Fair enough if its essential to the function of what's being displayed but not just to add some pointless effects. I came across this as a panacea to killing all CSS Animations: * { /*CSS transitions*/ -o-transition-property: none !important; -moz-transition-property: none !important; -ms-transition-property: none !important; -webkit-transition-property: none !important; transition-property: none !important; /*CSS transforms*/ -o-transform: none !important; -moz-transform: none !important; -ms-transform: none !important; -webkit-transform: none !important; transform: none !important; /*CSS animations*/ -webkit-animation: none !important; -moz-animation: none !important; -o-animation: none !important; -ms-animation: none !important; animation: none !important; } Which I reduced to this: * { transition-property: none !important; transform: none !important; animation: none !important; } It certainly improves that Reddit page. Ben.
  23. Ben Markson
    I also have a copy of the source code but, like you, couldn't really find anything useful. As stunnel is stupidly light-weight and easy to deploy (no real install needed) I'm hoping it will keep me going for a few years yet. Anyway, thanks for your comprehensive summary which should be useful to anyone else researching this subject. Jose Alf also deserves a little more prominence for his work. Ben.
  24. Ben Markson
    ...time passes... A quick postscript. If using v5.70 there's no need to replace tstunnel.exe, it's only stunnel.exe that causes the system tray bug. The bug was introduced with v5.61 so the v5.60 stunnel.exe is the last working version. The v5.70 stunnel.exe does work but you cannot interact with the running instance, this isn't necessarily a big deal as there's not a huge amount you can do. Stunnel runs and it does its thing without needing to interact with it. If you want to download the exe's from github using just about any browser then you can copy the links from https://github.com/josealf/stunnel-win32 (the left hand column) for example: https://github.com/josealf/stunnel-win32/blob/master/stunnel-win32-5.60-openssl-1.1.1k-installer.exe ...change the 'blob' to 'raw': https://github.com/josealf/stunnel-win32/raw/master/stunnel-win32-5.60-openssl-1.1.1k-installer.exe and it will download. I'd like to find a workaround to the system tray bug but otherwise hopefully this will keep my email working in the face of any 'upgrading' my email provider may perform. Ben.
  25. Ben Markson
    Sorry about that, it's my fault for trying to do a running commentary on something I was still working on – it's what can happen when you get sucked into treating a forum like a chatroom. I removed v5.70, it works (tested with Outlook 2002 email client) but has a weird glitch with not displaying sTunnel's tray icon and no matter what I tried I couldn't get it to appear properly. Went back to v5.60 (there's some indication in the change logs that the system tray code changed with v5.61) and the tray icon is back how it should be. Finally, I took the v5.70 install and replaced just the stunnel.exe and tstunnel.exe files with the v5.60 versions. So, it has the later OpenSSL DLLs but is using an earlier version of stunnel. I'm not sure that this is the best idea but... it works (again tested with Outlook 2002). You can even see the weirdness in the above log (the Compiled versus Running dates). Now, having said all that I use stunnel in a pretty basic way (I am by no means an 'expert' stunnel user) so it is possible that if you want to start creating your own certificates that it won't work. All I'm doing is keeping my ancient version of Outlook working with my email provider who is threatening ever newer TLS standards. Ben.
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