cmccaff1

It's quite possible...honestly, I don't use any extensions, with one exception: the last fully working build of QuickJava (2.0.4.1). As the PM website doesn't host this version, I'll be happy to share a direct link: http://web-old.archive.org/web/20191029202435/https://legacycollector.org/firefox-addons/1237/quickjava-2.0.4.1-signed.xpi

@nicolaasjan - Wow! Thank you for the tip! @roytam1 - No worries! I'll do my best to stay on top of the latest releases, even if we have to use a little ingenuity to get the links (in the event of any confusion or uncertainty, I'm sure good samaritans will do their best to help). Thank you for all of your efforts over the years...I've said it before, but I can't say it enough, because you've been at this for a long time and I appreciate all that you do.

I remember when YouTube still served up a mobile version of their site that would work even on older Win95-compatible browsers (like Firefox 2 and Opera 9/10). You could stream videos in .3gp format through VLC, directly from the YT servers. Sadly, as most if not all of us already know they discontinued the legacy compatibility, and their current mobile site is now geared more towards smartphones (though it will function well in sufficiently modern browsers, like New Moon, Serpent, and 360). Speaking of which, the mobile site hasn't crashed for me in New Moon, but I have yet to test it in 360v12 (regular YouTube works fine). Back on NM28 and loving it...thank you for the links, @kwisomialbert! (And thank you, @ArcticFoxie, for your fantastic 360 builds--rebuild 2 of 12.0.1247 is running like a champ! If you release any more 12 rebuilds I'll be glad to try them!)

It all comes down to your personal preferences--I have experience with both NM27 and NM28. If your focus is on compatibility and you want more sites to work well, NM28 is your best bet. NM27 is faster overall (and will in some cases, including YouTube, serve 'mobile' sites that run better on the older engine), but not all sites work well in it. However, there are optimized NM27 versions for every use case (Win32/Win64/SSE/IA-32), so it can run on anything that can run XP (which makes it the safest choice). You would have to download LAV DLLs for audio/video playback and extract them to the NM27 file folder (refer back to the first page of this thread), and again Roy offers versions for all use cases. Based on your specs NM28 should run fine, but NM27 would offer a performance boost.

For what it's worth and if I'm not mistaken NM27 is the only browser for which Roy offers 4 optimized versions (Win32/SSE/IA-32/Win64) That makes it a safe choice for all XP-compatible hardware because it works on anything that can run XP (including pre-MMX Pentium). I'm considering going back to NM27 myself because it does run a bit faster than NM28 on all of the machines I've tried, works flawlessly with mobile YouTube, and still supports most websites to this day. By the way, everyone, I apologize if I've made a bad impression with anything I've done or said. I wanted to stay quiet and simply remain a silent but appreciative observer, but after seeing the situation with Feodor I had to speak up. Hopefully I won't be too much of a nuisance from now on...I'm interested in and passionate about XP just like everyone else here, but I don't want to waste anyone's time (especially as I can't contribute much on the programming front, since coding isn't my strongsuit). I'm grateful to Roy and everyone else here for their efforts. I just don't want to seem like a parasite...please rest assured, I NEVER take your hard work for granted.

Oh, wow! Thank you for pointing that out! It's been so long since I last used the Mycroft site, and it's definitely more efficient than going through the Pale Moon or Basilisk websites (they've got a LOT more engines you can add, too).

I did and was unsuccessful. Thank you very much for your help anyway.

Not sure if this is happening to anyone else, or if anybody will be able to replicate this, but I'm currently unable to add search engines to Serpent (52 or 55) or New Moon (27 or 28). I'm sure this was an intentional move on MCP's part, breaking certain things to ensure that more people use the 'genuine articles'.

Yes, indeed...my apologies. Thank you for a very nice discussion! We can definitely talk more through DM if you want.

That's great! Thank you for your response! I have noticed the audit takes a long time myself, but I personally don't use the audit feature in newer versions (it gradually got slower after 0.106, and now goes at a snail's pace [at least on older hardware])--as long as you have properly directed MAME to recognize your 'roms' folder, and you know what you've got in it, it isn't really necessary to do any auditing. By the way, for what it's worth (and on another side note), I did some testing and found that 0.37b16 is the first version of MAME32 to properly support DirectDraw for rendering (or at least the first that would properly use my GTX750Ti & take a load off of the CPU). 0.37 was basically MAME's 'ESR' release...it got supported for a long time, and while emulation has come a long way this should still be a safe bet to run very well on ancient machines. A strange quirk I did notice with it is that once you direct it to see your 'roms' folder you have to access games from the command line (open a command prompt in the folder and enter 'mame32 tmnt2po', for example). I can't get it to open games in the typical way, but it does work fine with this method.

Nor should you...you haven't done anything wrong in this or any other case, and your health and well-being should always come first. Thank you for all of your great work over the years! Rest assured--it is never in vain, and never taken for granted!

@mixit - Thank you for the warmth of your welcome! I'm not much of a coding expert, so it is very difficult for me to help on the programming front. If I had to propose something (and this is assuming all else fails), I actually thought someone in the Github discussion had a decent idea with forking from 52ESR and then pulling applicable patches from Waterfox. There should be plenty of applicable patches, not only from Waterfox but other Mozilla/Gecko-compatible projects, that could be used to enhance and extend 52ESR (such as the recent cubeb_winmm.c overflow fix [THANK YOU, SIR!!!] that fixed the infamous '23:18' bug with audio/video playback). If I'm not mistaken (and anyone who has more knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong), 55.0a1 is the last Gecko codebase with a possibility of being forked for XP, as it came very shortly before the Rust requirement was introduced. So 52ESR and 55.0a1 might both be good starting points...it's all a matter of whether we want the older, longer-supported 52ESR which has more security patches and a variety of other updates, or 55.0a1 which should be a little bit more compatible with the modern web. Just something to consider...I hope this helps, and again this is assuming the worst case scenario happens (but it ain't over 'til it's over!)

@Montana Slim - Very happy to confirm that progetto-SNAPS now has a 32-bit build of the latest MAMEUI32 (0.235) available, and that from my testing it works fine! It should still be compatible with non-SSE2 processors (I can't confirm that as I'm using a Pentium D), so hopefully @RainyShadow will get to test it soon on his Athlon XP.

I can't say I blame you! I still remember when 0.107 came out, and how stunned I was when I saw games that always ran at full speed with no frameskip starting to have issues...I went back to 0.106 and all of those problems disappeared. I'm glad you're holding onto your backups of 0.106! What's funny is, I stopped following MAME development myself around the time 0.148 came out, so I had no idea that the devs had started using a compiler that broke XP compatibility. I had to get 'up to date' as far as what was going on, and that's how I found out (through Reddit) about 0.204 being the last known version to work properly in XP (at the time). It's wonderful to be able to use a much more recent version now! On my main PC (an old GX620 with a 2.8GHz Pentium D and a 2GB GTX750Ti [which really helps]), 0.106 still flies, and I can also run 0.234 with no problems (as long as you stick to uncomplicated titles [basically, nothing that is too 3D-heavy]). 0.106 (and earlier) are definitely the best MAME versions for computers with 512MB of RAM or less and/or a single core processor. However, 0.67 and earlier might arguably be the best option for ancient (pre-SSE) machines.

@ArcticFoxie - I had a chance to try rebuild #2 of 12.0.1247 and both the original AND reupload of rebuild #4 of 13.0.2206. I can confirm that in both cases, v13 crashed on YouTube. However, v12 is solid. No crashes, and definitely using CPU/RAM better than v13. Now there is no doubt in my mind that v13 is just more unstable overall...I'm sure you have done everything you could, and it's still not performing as well as v12 does. Even so, the fact that the v13 devs were able to port Chromium 86 to XP is an incredible feat, and I hope they or someone else will find a way to surpass it in forking a later Chromium version than 87, though it would surprise me if they could do so AND achieve better performance than/equal stability to what I get with v12--THAT would be a miracle to rival the U.S. beating the Soviet Union in 1980. I have tried the MiniBrowser forked from Chromium 87, but it also runs slow and is even more unstable than 360 v13 (I've been able to make it crash simply by inserting a USB flash drive). It also has horrible tab behavior that I've never been able to figure out how to solve. That's why I wanted to hopefully use v13 on a daily basis, but given its instability I'm sticking with the older but more reliable v12, in whatever form it may take (and so far yours is the best I've tried, though Humming Owl's v12 builds are also excellent). Thank you for your efforts! I'm definitely going to keep a track of any future v12 builds from you, Humming Owl, and hopefully others.

@RainyShadow - That's absolutely amazing! A while back I tried to download the newest 32-bit build of MAMEUI available at the time, and got a GetTickCount64 error. I ended up downgrading to 0.204 (which was apparently the last known version to date which didn't trigger that error), and it was working fine. I tried the latest build available from progetto-SNAPS (the 32-bit 0.234 you mentioned) and it is ALSO working fine! No glitches or errors to report--it's truly incredible to be able to use such a recent MAME version in XP, and even more incredible that it apparently doesn't require SSE2 (as evidenced by it working on your Athlon XP). Apparently a 32-bit build of 0.235 is now in the works...I'll definitely be testing it once it's available, as I'm sure you will too. I'm not sure if you have tried this version, but on a side note the last version of MAME to use the classic rendering engine (before the developers rewrote MAME to use a Direct3D engine, which has remained the standard since then) was 0.106. Feel free to give it a try on your Athlon XP...it should run brilliantly, and if you know where to look (and if you're crafty enough) you can find many variants of 0.106, and even older versions.

I'm glad VLC is working well for you! And yes, it is truly amazing that the VideoLAN team is still supporting it, through security updates if little else...the 3.0.x series is solid, especially if you're running a more modern machine that can take full advantage of its capabilities. If you want to try either of them out, 2.2.8 or 1.1.11 (my favorite version) are also worth a look. 1.1.11 still does everything I need it to do, and runs VERY well on older machines...it also has experimental GPU acceleration (which really helps if your video card supports it). Both versions should offer improved performance in your VM, and run especially well in native XP...I recommend 1.1.11, but 2.2.8 is a bit more modern and has some more features. @roytam1 - Thank you for sharing the new binaries! I'm sure PM27/KM76 fans will enjoy them very much.

@XP2003 - Having tried all of the browsers that you mentioned, I believe they are all good for different things. You just have to be aware of the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses of their respective engines. For example, NM27 can't do everything that 28 can, but NM27 is still a fantastic browser, and more than enough for surfing most sites to this day (it helps if you turn JavaScript off when & where possible, because a lot of modern sites can tax its aging JS engine [which was solid back in the day and is STILL good if you visit sites with well-coded JS, though those are now few and far between]). What's important is having something that works for your needs, and experimentation is not only useful but encouraged. Roy's SSE builds are optimized for processors that support SSE but which do not have SSE2 (for example, Pentium III, PIII-derived Celeron, and Athlon XP). Of course, you can still run an SSE build on a modern processor and it will work absolutely fine, but unless an SSE build is as high as you can go (I think it's the upper limit for his periodic Firefox 45ESR builds), you're better off using the Win32 builds because those are better optimized for SSE2+ capable processors. The IA32 builds should be able to run theoretically on anything as low as a 386, but for XP the minimum is a pre-MMX Pentium (so that is as low as you can go for testing purposes). @ArcticFoxie - I am typing this from your 360v12 build...I'm VERY impressed with your efforts here. You've clearly put a lot of effort into tweaking this for the best possible performance. I only had to change a few things in the main settings (I didn't touch the deeper stuff), more out of personal preference (nitpicks) than anything else. This is running like a champ, and is incredibly stable. Not one crash so far, and it's quite a bit faster than v13 (the speed difference is especially noticeable on my old GX620 with a 2.8GHz Pentium D and 2GB GTX 750 Ti [which REALLY helps]). In fact, I'm now pairing it with the latest NM28 build (as it uses pretty much the same engine as Serpent52 with a more old-school interface, and because I don't really use WebRTC or any of the other 'modern' features in Serpent). Kudos to you--this is absolutely solid! For now, your v12 has dethroned any version of v13 as my secondary browser. @roytam1 - Thank you for the update! Even when there are no UXP updates, I'm always happy to see all of the binaries you share.

Thank you very much for your kind words, @Humming Owl! I hope it was not bothersome or inconvenient to mention you here...I'm not sure if there's any kind of competition (if there is, hopefully it's in the healthiest sense) between you and others creating browsers. The reason I mentioned you is because I've also been following your thread, and in fact I use your latest build of 360Chrome v13 as a secondary browser (for all of the things that Serpent52 can't quite handle). For me, it's a nearly flawless one-two punch: each picks up the other's slack, and the unique features of both make for an amazing user experience. Serpent's an all-in-one browser that can do Java/Flash/Silverlight/Shockwave (essential for me as I still enjoy Homestar Runner shorts in their original .swf form [those HTML5 conversions aren't doing it for me] and going to the Andkon Arcade to get my online game fix, among a myriad of other things), and 360Chrome works great for Twitter and other sites that are really optimized more for Chromium. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens going forward with all of the different XP related projects being shared here on MSFN--I'm never the type to pledge allegiance or swear loyalty to any particular program or any particular programmer, but I am always the type to give credit where it's due. Though it is becoming clearer with time which programs work best for my personal needs, I am always happy to try something new...if it works, it works, but in general I tend to take older versions of software because they are lighter on CPU/RAM usage than the latest ones (for example, I'm still rocking Office 97 to this day). However, I always strive to keep my browsers up to date, so any developments on that front are of particular interest to me. I am very excited to follow all of the latest news and see what people will hopefully continue to do with this legendary OS! -cmccaff1 P.S. @feodor2 - I could not reliably shoulder the responsibilities involved, so I would not be a good owner, but I am very happy you have found what appears to be a good resolution to the situation for now. Please keep your head up and don't let anyone's negativity get you down...you are doing great work!

Greetings, everyone...I hope my presence here will not be unwelcome. I have been following the happenings on this website with great happiness and excitement for many years. It is wonderful, as a longtime XP user, to see what many of this site's users have been able to accomplish in keeping it a viable OS long after many mainstream companies started leaving it for dead. For me, XP represents Windows' finest hour--while retaining remarkable compatibility with many legacy applications and older hardware, it is still modern enough to be amazingly reliable as a daily-use OS. Hassle-free installation, easy to customize and tweak to your liking, and built on mature, stable code...MS truly outdid themselves. I wasn't planning to say anything, but in light of recent events I felt compelled to speak my piece on the situation at hand, and of course I am speaking strictly as a sideline observer. First of all, I want to say that I have tremendous appreciation and the utmost respect for @roytam1 and @feodor2. Their programming knowledge and dedication to maintaining XP compatible forks of Basilisk and Pale Moon is admirable by any measure (and Roy's other browser projects, past and present, are also commendable). Though I have admittedly been sticking with Roy's Serpent52 weeklies, I have tested some of Feodor's MyPal and Centaury releases and always found them rock-solid...I didn't have a single problem with any of the builds that I tried. I'm not going to comment on Tobin personally, only the way that he and his peers have handled the circumstances involving Feodor. I do not believe they have approached it diplomatically or respectfully--it definitely seemed like there was (and is) malicious intent. From where I stand they are completely in the wrong to attack Feodor the way they have. At the same time it seems they were given a reason and opportunity to attack because (if my understanding is correct, and please forgive/correct me if I'm overlooking anything major) the source code was not available or easily accessible for every Centaury build going back to the earliest (whereas MyPal builds always have the source code for the corresponding build available and accessible). I don't hold it against Feodor at all, because for what it's worth Basilisk builds are not as clearly definable as Pale Moon ones since Basilisk is more of an experimental platform for UXP that also happens to double as a worthy successor to the Australis-era Firefox (whereas Pale Moon is the 'main event', the featured attraction). What's truly ironic to me is that Basilisk was created as a way to maintain the Australis interface and restore features eliminated from Firefox, while the same applies to Pale Moon (except it's the 4-28 interface). You would think that the Moonchild developers' dedication to sustaining all of these different elements after Mozilla deprecated them would translate into great enthusiasm for those who are trying to sustain compatibility with older OSes. I've never seen any of them say anything remotely nice about Roy or Feodor (please correct me if I'm wrong)--I'd think they would actually be quite impressed with how they got their officially 'incompatible' browsers fully functional in an OS they abandoned. Instead of showing respect, honoring their hard work and working with them to get the best out of these browsers and out of each other, they have dismissed them and expressed great disdain not only towards them but those who (like me) prefer XP over later versions of Windows. I will say this, however: I do have tremendous respect for the Moonchild team & the effort they've put into their browsers for so long. There are definitely a lot of talented coders over at MCP, and I wish them all the best for continued success because their browsers have helped to keep alive all of the old features that we appreciated back then, and can thankfully still appreciate and make use of now. But though their browsers are good, when they express toxicity/hatefulness of the sort that I've seen, it makes their character look bad. I realize that this message has gotten very long, so I'm going to wrap things up here. From the bottom of my heart, I offer my most sincere gratitude to Roy, Feodor, and everyone else who is working on XP related browser projects (shouts out to @Humming Owl on the 360Chrome builds, as well as @ArcticFoxie and @Dixel [who I know are also doing their own builds], and everyone else who is helping to keep XP useful for the Internet and anything else you could ever want to use it for!) I hope you'll all keep up the good work, and that you won't lose your passion for this great OS...long live XP, and God bless everyone! -cmccaff1