Bruninho

I'm just done with the (bad) browsing options available for Windows 98 even with KernelEx (and its attempts to update). I've tried many, many times the same things. I'll just keep the Windows 98 VM around for a while with standard KernelEx 4.5.2 and Netscape 9, in case there is something new to try out, and I will just stick with the Windows 2000 VM for now.

Yeah, even with 12.02 it does show quite fine, with a few things not well rendered here and there. The most confusing thing are the icons - they are not rendered because we know why. It can't render the font used for these icons.

Just a small "useless" update. I'm finally working from home remotely as of today for the next 3 days before my vacations start. I will have some time to fiddle with these things with my VM soon. I was in the process of updating KernelEx when I was told to do so.

there is no apilog.dll or .exe, but there is apihook.dll on install folder

I unzipped the download and checked the files... there is no "ApiLog.dll" and "Verify.dll" in it. Does the update.bat typo affects the install? It does say 4.5.2015 btw...

Yikes. Thanks for the advice. I have some "free time" at work recently since I finished the current project - now on standby waiting for the testing group to return with the bugs they may find in it... meanwhile I fired up my VM to try some things again. Let's see Firefox...

@siria: Thanks for the tips about the userContent.css! I will check it out with RetroZilla. I’ve tried many things with both KernelEx 4.5.2 and the KernelEx updated with this. I’ve tried Opera 10.70, Opera 12.02, Opera 12.02 was the closest thing to what I wanted, except it was missing some ciphers for forums. I tried 12.10 beta 1 (since it was the last supported by Win 2000) but it didn’t even install. So the best Opera is indeed 12.02. I’ve tried many, many Firefox versions. Best ones? 3.6.28 and 10.0.12 esr. I can try to tweak them, but honestly, if they cant render youtube videos nor render properly some websites I like to check (like, my own website) then what’s the point? Thinking in backwards compatibility, it’s better to let them be rendered almost without CSS instead of broken. Then it would be more readable. It’s like going back to the basics, when the www started. K-Meleon needs more work to be stable. I’d rather stick with Mozilla or Opera. I don’t know if the VM is SSE, I use VMware Fusion. Is there any setting in my vmx file where I can check it? As for the db files, no, I didn’t... EDIT: Luckily Netscape 9 (since its based on Fx 2.x) has an userContent.css file too. I can use it. I'll save another snapshot because I am resigned with the current status (Netscape 9 as main browser) and I might want to try and update KernelEx again to test one more time SeaMonkey, Opera and Firefox newer versions again. I really don't expect improvements though. First I'll check if VMware Fusion can make VMs with or without SSE.

I'm almost accepting defeat and resorting to RetroZilla and Netscape 9.0.0.6 with NSS updates. I have to accept that most sites won't be viewable and no youtube either. I'd go with a higher Firefox version but they all have issues. Highest I've tried was Fx 10.0.12 (ESR), yet was unstable and renders most sites badly. Thinking of backwards compatibility, the fact that RetroZilla does not render much CSS at all makes it easier to read, for example. It's like a site was rendered in plain text with no formatting. Same happens in Netscape. I wonder if I can write custom CSS locally for some sites so I can make it a bit nicer? Is there any extension for these browsers? Netscape with updated NSS by Roytam1 can, for example, access a 2nd gmail account I had created for retro machines testing. I just had to make this account render in low bandwidth mode so I can use the webmail. Pretty neat. Search engines work. A few sites like the lite CNN version (http://lite.cnn.io) works. even http://isp.netscape.com works. OK, Not bad at all. Youtube? Page renders with errors, but well... no video. Okay. It's enough for a search and then get the video link for VLC streaming (if possible) or download to view on WMP. No browser for Win 98 is capable to render my current personal web site properly, lol. Anyway, I was planning a total redesign for 2021 of my website and one of my plans was to make it backwards compatible. IMHO a very good web designer should take it in account when designing a new site (backwards compatibility) but not so extreme to a point where you have more than one version or give up on some feature you'd like to use because it wouldn't work here.

Opera 12.15 source code was leaked in the wild around 2017. I wonder if it would be of any use for those that can compile it... There you go. Opera 12.15 source code was leaked there by someone apparently. https://git.teknik.io/Zero3K/presto

Thanks. I have so many missing information about these things, it’s good to know. I never knew they were for IE only. Damn...

I’m starting to think that for Windows 98 web browsing, the focus should switch to Opera, not Mozilla based browsers. There is no mozilla browser for Win98, not even roytam1’s versions, capable of rendering HTML5 / CSS2 (CSS3 came after 2010), and play embedded videos without crashing, freezing/hanging up, or GUI issues. Pale/New Moon don’t help in this matter too. Netscape 5 source code is out there, but its engine is too old and Netscape 9.0.0.6 has no source code leaked plus it’s based on Fx 2.x, so it’s another dead end. Fx 3.6.28 needs more love, but cannot play embedded videos or properly render YouTube to search for videos to play straight on VLC. K-Meleon is too unstable and often crashes on me too. Opera 12.x is the closest thing to that we have today, was an advanced browser for its era with HTML5 capabilities, but without the right KernelEx updates, we cannot “open this door” without problems or fiddling with it. I’m not a fan of Opera. I prefer Safari on macOS (been trying and liking Edge Chromium lately), and Mozilla Firefox on Windows (also Edge Chromium on Windows). Just for reference, last officially supported versions for each old Windows version: Windows 95/98/Me: Opera 10.10 Windows 2000: Opera 12.10 (Beta 1) Windows XP/Vista: Opera 28.0 Build 1750.48

Try this and tell me how it went for you: http://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/01/opera-1063-for-windows-95.html?m=1

Indeed. I remember when I had Windows 98 in the past, I didn't watch videos on my browser at all (just rarely, I remember watching a racing video accident in a browser as a kid, but I dunno if it was in 1998, 1999 or 2002), but I expected to at least be able to have a decent web browsing experience and be able to play them straight to VLC in some way. This is not what exactly I am experiencing after having tried numerous browser versions and coming to the conclusion that Retrozilla is the only decent experience. Even VLC versions installed fails to load the video URLs. RetroZilla can't render well most pages anyway, but is better than all browsers that I have tried (except Opera 12.02). If only Opera had updated cipher suites, then I'd not need RetroZilla at all, just Opera with a script to load videos on VLC. I'll definitely destroy the VM and stick with Windows 2000, since the browsing experience with SeaMonkey 2.49.5 is excellent (as of now. I can imagine Youtube's current moves will kill it too in the future). BTW I've tried KM74 and it crashed on me trying to load Youtube page. At least your trick for skin change worked.

Yes, skin. I'll try that with KM74, it's the last shot before giving up. No matter which browser I use, when I go to html5test.com, they all report to me that there is no MPEG-4, H.264, H.265 and WebM with VP9 support codecs. Even though I had installed K-Lite Codec Pack 6.90 Full. When I go to w3schools HTML5 video test, every browser plays the video. I have only Ogg Theora and VP8 support. I'm amazingly p***ed at how hard it is to get codecs right on Windows 98. Frankly, codec detection is buggy on Windows 98. Even HTML5test.com says so. Let's see how KM goes before I shut down the VM for good and move back to my successfull Windows 2000 VM.

I've moved back to the 4.5.2 KernelEx and installed NET 2.0, VC6, VC2005, VC2008. Now I am going to try and find damn working browser... again. And a good VLC version to install. And codecs. Let's start all over again and see if I am not missing something. IMO KernelEx updates are useless without a proper tutorial on how to update properly it by yourself, and I don't see anything higher than Windows 2000 apps working for the foreseeable future on Windows 98. Even vanilla Windows 2000 cannot browse the web or youtube without issues. But When BWC Kex enters the game, Windows 2000 comes back to life again.

Here: https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1EknJjtNIrj75HpJL5mKR_jEtc2xY6aYH he replied to me, his method doesn’t work anymore since Youtube started with that yellow banner, I suspect its the same problem that affected browsers in XP, related to polymer versions. I told him to try out user agent switchers.

I saw this video. Unfortunately, it's in brazilian portuguese, I hope the youtube auto-generated captions can help you guys. I tried what he did and I failed too. I don't know if the video is true or false, or if it's missing something. I am trying to contact him to find out more. He installls older KernelEx (?!?!), Java 2 SE Runtimes, Qt OpenSource, and some strange files for an unknown Opera 12.00 distribution. I followed his steps for my Win 98SE virtual machine, and it didn't work. If he doesn't return my messages, hopefully you guys can help to investigate this. It's 3:20AM right now here, and I need some well deserved sleep. Good night!

Right now I am saving a snapshot of my Win 2k VM to test a newly released version of SeaMonkey on it. Edit: It did install. But the browser refuses to run no matter the compatiblity setting I choose. So no, the newest SeaMonkey won't work with Win 2k + BlackWingCat, with 2.49.5 being the last supported one.

I decided to give another go with Opera 12.02. Something tells me that it's HTML5 support makes it a very good candidate. So far in my tests I have 3 things missing: - Youtube support. Of course I doubt there will be any workaround to play them - unless I manage to set Opera to open the videos in VLC; - Newer cipher suites. It's needed to visit forums like Vogons.org, I haven't tried to log in to MSFN forums yet. If only roytam1 worked his magic to update it, then Opera 12.02 could be a very, very good candidate for Windows 98 as of now, running on unmodified KernelEx 4.5.2. - It does not support font icons like FontAwesome, instead it shows a small white box. EDIT: I've installed three browsers: Opera 12.02, Retrozilla 2.2, Netscape Navigator 9 (with roytam1's NSS updates) to test and see how far I can improve them. I had to go back because newer versions of Firefox and SeaMonkey are very, very unstable and buggy no matter what version of KernelEx I am using. I have done so much testing on browsers for Win98 since december '19, and I've come down to these three options, not exactly very good options as of now. K-Meleon 74 Goanna could also be an option, if it was a very stable browser without UI issues. Actually, I could install K-Meleon and try more, if only the UI wasn't THAT ugly. I can't understand why K-Meleon 1.6 (or 1.5.4?) has no UI problems but 74 does?

Hi, thanks! I will try again next night. Although I am a spanish citizen, I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Covid-19 arrived here in Rio a few weeks earlier, causing some havoc and the country is about to take some measures against it. Brazil will probably block flights from and to Europe too. If the things in Rio gets worse, I may have to work from home if the boss tells us to. I’m currently still safe, but we never know. Stay safe, guys. Let’s hope we all can go through this incredible situation without any problem. Good night!

Thanks. I am testing fx36. It's somewhat better but far from where I'd like to be. KM74 seems to be the most promising one but like you said it needs some tweaks first... Does KM have a dedicated forum topic for these tweaks? I don't like the theme anyway, but it seems to work better than other browsers that I've tried. Fx36 does have the correct system UI font but it still shows in some parts the "black cursor" thing as seen in SeaMonkey. And I'm in the snapshot with KernelEx updates (without the post install enhancements though, I just installed the updates from the blog I mentioned before). Meanwhile, I'm satisfied with the progress on my Windows 2000 VM. It runs SeaMonkey 2.49.5 modded to look like Netscape Navigator 4x. There's a new SeaMonkey release to try out there later.

Opera 12.02 has got another problem: When I try to load the main brazilian news site (https://www.globo.com) after it loads most of the site, Opera crashes and shows an error report dialog. I guess that it won't handle more modern sites, unlike SeaMonkey 2.49.5 does handle well on Windows 2000 Professional. I'd check the font on SeaMonkey but since the browser is actually pretty useless without https sites, I will not try it out. I decided to remove both browsers and try to look elsewhere for other options. Let's see K-Meleon... although unfortunately the most stable option today is RetroZilla (and Netscape 9.0.0.6 with the NSS updates).

I had to lower the image quality, but there you go, @siria: SeaMonkey's different UI font family and Opera's full black shadow. I'll test @loblo's Opera suggestions as well as check how I can do yours for SeaMonkey. But first, I need to get Opera loading some sites without the required cipher suites (I heard something about 12.18 with 12.02 files?) and SeaMonkey to load the HTTPS sites.

I think that there is probably a misunderstanding. Menus on SeaMonkey 2.6.1 are displayed and working as usual, what I am saying is that the font family used by the menus are wrong and different from the System wide font family used by Windows. I can read and use them normally, just the font family is wrong - plus some options have a little bar similar to a cursor at the end of their text. Meanwhile HTTPS browsing is not working (only in Opera 12.02, all but except some forums). I've had the same font issue with Fx 9 and Fx 10. For comparison, other apps like WinZip and 7-Zip display the correct System font. Probably if I decide to use the last version of SeaMonkey officially supported and listed on KernelEx Wiki page, the font family would be correct. In Opera 12.02 the font family is correct too. In a few hours I'll be at home to take the screenshots and everything will be explained.

@siria: Sure, I can do a screenshot later of both Opera and SeaMonkey issues. I have Visual C++ redist installed too. I'll try next Fx3.6, and K-Meleon 1.6. Fx9 might work - I haven't tried that one, just browsers based on it (SeaMonkey 2.6.1). @Goodmaneuver: Thanks, I'll check tonight my Opera KEX settings. As for the HTTPS errors: I believe it is related to any https website not just Google. But I'll try Bing and Yahoo too. @DosFreak at vogons forums pointed out that this version of Opera does not have the ciphers that vogons forums requires, and the only way would be getting the leaked source and add the ciphers, or use a proxy.