NotHereToPlayGames

Disabled Skia in chrome://flags - ie, ORIGINAL SETUP. Score went to 2375. HIGHEST score so far! So all of this is simply "margin of error". Abandoning and keeping my ORIGINAL SETUP.

No flag changes in loader.ini. Enabled Skia API for compositing in chrome://flags. Score went from 2249 to 2302.

For now, I will limit this test to my XP x64 machine. I rarely use my Win10 installs because I can "still" get EVERYTHING done (that I need to do!) in XP. Original setup flags: --disable-logging --no-default-browser-check --disable-component-update --disable-background-networking --allow-outdated-plugins --kiosk-printing --disable-print-preview --cipher-suite-blacklist=0xcc14,0xe013 --ignore-certificate-errors --disable-webgl --js-flags=--noexpose_wasm --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/86.0.4240.198 Safari/537.36"

Also note that none of my Win10 install's have Chrome v97's hardware acceleration enabled. I have much MUCH better performance with hardware acceleration DISABLED. Nothing infuriates me more than having three to five monitors on all of my computers and running background window on one of those monitors for YouTube and all three to five other monitors will "blip" occasionally whenever "hardware acceleration" is enabled. I have never had any luck with "acceleration" enabled - it SOUNDS LIKE a nice "feature", but it ALWAYS has NEGATIVE side effects on my computers.

I applied those flags to v97 and, um, didn't notice any difference in performance so I've reverted to my original setup. Coupled with other members citing dropped frames (which I did not test myself). I guess I didn't see the need in using "too many" flags without any noticeable performance boost.

I only use v97 on my Win10 installs. And I highly prefer uMatrix over uBlock.

I kind of learned long ago to keep my nose to the grindstone. https://www.bookbrowse.com/expressions/detail/index.cfm/expression_number/444/keep-your-nose-to-the-grindstone When working with a couple dozen coworkers per project, a different couple dozen coworkers on a different project, et cetera, there's "one in every crowd" that WILL take "jokes" or "sarcasm" OUT OF CONTEXT and turn an "ant hill into a mountain". So I've learned to STAY OUT OF THE FRAY and just keep doing MY JOB instead. I have coworkers that INSIST upon reading political news OUT LOUD and try to ENGAGE others in POLITICS at work! I just put the earbuds in or noise-cancelling headphones and YouTube to the Rescue - I do not engage in those topics at work, no matter how hard they try to reel me in. One of my funnest YouTube clips is this one and then leave the web browser on top of all other windows so that my coworkers can READ the lyrics -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfJhMfOPWdE I just remind them that I am "task-oriented" and non-work "tasks" on company time wastes too much of my time.

Ignoring everything else in this thread! But regarding uninstalling Edge - try this -- https://winaero.com/how-to-uninstall-and-remove-edge-browser-in-windows-10/ or https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/uninstall_edge.html or https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-uninstall-microsoft-edge

It IS "extreme" for XP Users. But no, it's "nothing special" for non-XP. And I don't even put it on my Win10 installs.

In Win10, Ungoogled Chromium v86 (ie, same as 360Chrome v13 and v13.5) and Ungoogled Chromium v87 (ie, DCBrowser [correction, DCBrowser is v75!] Kafan MiniBrowser) both can NOT render Popular Mechanics web site correctly. I need to use Ungoogled Chromium v89 to render Popular Mechanics correctly (do not have v88 and didn't go fetching it for this test). Bottom line is that since v86 and v87 both do NOT work, then there is ZERO chance of getting Popular Mechanics web site to work in XP without jumping through some hoops within Dev Tools, uBlock, uMatrix, userstyle sheet, etc.

I actually almost never need dev tools. Mainly because my Proxomitron config already "fixes" the gigantic issues on XP only with msfntor's https://www.popularmechanics.com/ web site. When I visit a web site like https://www.popularmechanics.com/ and if it doesn't work, I close that tab and move on to a different web site But for a frame of reference, THIS is what https://www.popularmechanics.com/ "looks like" in XP without any attempted "fixes". LARGE areas of EMPTY SPACE between all articles making the web page THREE MILES in "height". GIGANTIC images and a hidden horizontal scrollbar so that you cannot scroll to the right. The images are also "distorted" where all circles render as ovals. Et cetera. That page is something I would personally never visit on XP if it looked that way for me. But my Proxomitron does make the site usable - but Proxomitron is not really for the average MSFN Member.

That web site is POORLY CODED. It's easy to "fix" using Dev Tools. But that doesn't mean that the "fix" can be 'taught' via a forum thread "KISS Principle" reply. WAY too much "work" to get that forum to "work" on XP. It's not "one" thing that needs done within Dev Tools, it's about a DOZEN things that need done within Dev Tools. POORLY CODED? Or the work of a GENIUS MASTERMIND? Guess it depends on your paradigm.

For Win7 this doesn't seem to be sufficient. But for Win10, all I needed to do was disable the OS's "Segoe" font using a registry "font substitute" and replace Segoe with Tahoma. Then use uMatrix to not allow third-party fonts.

They're using an overlay so that only "members" can read the articles. I was able to get the site to work by opening 360Chrome's Dev Tools and deleting the "journey-blocker" element. On some of the articles, they had GIGANTIC image sizes and they "hid" the scrollbars. Best fix there was a user-style to "unset" ALL img tag height and width settings.

I'm not sure if I've asked in the past, have you shared your full command-line startup switches for "skia only"?

@D.Draker - I guess this KIND OF sounds like "we" were promoting Firefox.

That's enough to get you "started". Heading off to work and will report back once you've digested this much.

360Chrome v11 and 360Chrome v12 both do perform regex unicode property escapes. But these will require "polyfill" addons to PARTIALLY resolve the other TWO of THREE categories mentioned earlier. Those same TWO of THREE can also be PARTIALLY resolved or have been built-in-resolved in Serpent 52, Serpent 55, and NM28 - but not in K-Meleon, NM27, ArcticFox. Unsure on BNavigator (I opt to not update my BNav). But that ONE of the THREE (regex unicode property escapes) is the "modern" javascript function that will break your XP browser and has NO FIX if that browser does not handle it on its own.

Without screencaps (not enough storage space to save them all) - BNavigator, ArcticFox, NM27, NM28, and K-Meleon -- none of these will perform regex unicode property escapes. Some will show the error, others just show a blank white screen. You must decide for yourself if this is important to you or not.

This is Serpent 52 (despite having a lower version number, it's actually "newer and more modern" then Serpent 55). Also has a very large MSFN Following. Does not perform regex unicode property escapes. Also uses a lot of RAM. Only one "process" but many users opt to enable multi-process.

This is Serpent 55. Has a very large MSFN Following. Does not perform regex unicode property escapes. You should record how much RAM this uses on your system. Only one "process" but many users opt to enable multi-process.

In-process - I was taking the time to screencap several first. Had to delete some other screencaps in profile attachments just so I could post more screencaps.

Here are two example browsers that "work" on XP and also can perform regex unicode property escapes. One is based on Chromium 86. One is based on Chromium 75. You should decide for yourself if you want 75 or 86. Open Task Manager and sort your columns by "Mem Usage". One will use more RAM then the other. You should decide for yourself if this is important to you.

You basically MUST take the TIME to try them YOURSELF, to be perfectly honest. Browser choice is, and always has been, a PERSONAL PREFERENCE. There are Firefox Folks that cannot be UNBIASED regarding Chromium Forks. And there are Chromium Folks that cannot be UNBIASED regarding Firefox Forks. It's been that way for twenty years (in my opinion, the very essence of that opinion alone can be debated by those standing in their respective "corners"). My only suggestion can actually be isolated to ONE web site as a "test". There are a lot of "modern" javascript 'functions' that older browsers simply can not "perform" - this is why the computer that you cite has its browser "holding him back". I can break these "modern" javasctipt functions into THREE categories but let's use only ONE of those three for starters. That "function" is called regex unicode property escapes. You only need ONE website to "test" if your brower can perform this function or not. It's a bank account website and you do not need an account to "test" - either the username/password fields "show up" or they do not. If you opt to use a browser where this web site does NOT work, then you only leave yourself open for OTHER unknown websites that you have NOT ENCOUNTERED YET to also NOT WORK! There are several Google web sites that require regex unicode property escapes and sure, you can "boycott" Google web sites - but Google "code" is used by non-Google web sites "all the time". My ONE "test" is this web site - https://secure.ally.com/ Go to that web site without any extensions installed. If you get an error on that web site, the browser cannot perform regex unicode property escapes - if you cannot perform regex unicode property escapes then you WILL encounter other websites that also do not work on that browser.

Same laptop, same browser. But on work network versus home -