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RetroZilla: An updated version of Mozilla for Windows 95 and NT4 [2.2 RELEASED]


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Well.... hmmm Not really, not yet at least...

I had a severe hardware crash loosing my nicely working 98... ohh I have backups but... I just thought to be a real 98 expert, I mean I install and uninstalled them on a weakly basis in the days...

but now?... No f* way.  I have spent two days (that is like 20 working hours) trying to reinstall that sucker... I finally did it, and all drivers to. Then I thought I would install XP on Fat32, and I choose XP because after that FAT32 is gone. Now I have the same errors trying to install that, freezing on HW detection.....

But as I am writing this, it "seems" to install correctly at last. (changed everything in BIOS to default)

Anyway, back to the browser, give me a day or two and I will try it out.

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Ok!

Thank you for that, WoW what an improvement...

On my newly freshly installed W98, with no IE6sp1, no KernelEx and no other browsers installed, not even the earlier RZilla ... The tests where very impressive...

I tested to go to youtube, and I can see the video lists, for obviously reasons (maybe) I can't watch videos, but who cares about that? We have (I am sure) other OS for that, if not Windows so Linux or OSX or something, after that I tested to go to gmail, google and I even tested www.microsoft.com. There is issues with the rendering on some pages, but at least it will allow to load and be viewed.


Then I tested some gopher... and it is supported, very nice. A couple of pictures on my gopher session below.


rz_gopher_news.gif

rz_gopher_hack.gif


And a sidenote...
do not go to mozdev.org and click on the project link, tried it (again) with RetroZilla and it started a recursive loop (I managed to break out though), then I tried it on W10 & Chrome, same issue there, so that site is broken and could possibly hang your machine or browser.
 

Edited by Azvareth
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  • 5 weeks later...

Every time I start this ssl 2.1 retrozilla version I get an error:

Could not initialize the applications security component

After that every site I enter tells me to add an exception to the security certificate.

 Anyone gets the same error?

thank you

Edited by mindingulove
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Finally got around to update!
retrozilla 2.2 from this link on the previous page:
http://o.rthost.cf/gpc/files1.rt/rz-suite-v2.2-bin-20180708.7z

roytam1 said:


some further development:
- SSL/TLS version is shown in Page Info now



Don't see it in above version yet. Is there already an even newer version? Where?

But 2.2 really surprised me mighty now! Had thought it's just some minor internal update and now notice: It's not even a fork of Firefox, but a full Seamonkey suite, complete with Mail and Chatzilla and Composer and all! Looks like my previous one (Retro 2.0) was much older than assumed. And had thought it were a clone of Firefox. Also finally discovered, slightly belated, that extremely useful page info tool etc. And the config sheets are very nice and handy too. Also like that RetroZilla now has its own orange icon, the previous blue botch was quite ugly.
Another surprise, the menus have a link to Retrozilla's own extensions page?
Tried it, but loads nothing, page empty...
And the themes link to Mozilla does nothing anymore either, guess they deleted them long since :(

Also noticed suprised, that the profiles are elsewhere now, and they get that ancient ".slt" structure again.
OLD / NEW path:
c:/windows/anwdat/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/xxxx.default/(profile content)
c:/windows/anwdat/RetroZilla/Profiles/default/xxxxx.slt/(profile content)
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At first the installation of RetroZilla2.2 was quite a hassle and struggle. Various probs: that infamous security component error popped up, indicating that key3.db can't be created, and RZ kept freezing at startup already, several times. Almost thought it wouldn't run at all.
Finally learned 2 things:

1) On win98 with KernelEx-17 the compat mode must be set to "disabled", not to "windows 98"! (In the old Basic KernelEx it was the other way around, there "disabled" was buggy and "98" better)
=> that fixed the security components bug, now key3.db gets created and works fine, as in previous version :-) Not immediately, but when first opening a https site.
side-effect:
Despite KernelEx17, but now Kex-Mode "disabled", the native 98 app K-Meleon154 can create new profiles with key3.db again too! Then tried yet another old tool that Kex17 has broken, but that one still doesn't work. Just no way to disable Kex really completely.

2) Retro2.2 is not really frozen when creating the first profile - it just needs forever, about a minute! Because it automatically imports all 5000 IE-Favorites and writes them into bookmarks.html...

And of course the 2 dat files in the components folder must be deleted when something seems buggy.

More surprises:
Out-of-box it could not load the K-Meleon forum, got that stupid old forum-bug with error403. Either Phorum-SW or sourceforge don't like the default useragent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows 98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.24) Gecko/20180708 RetroZilla/2.2 SeaMonkey/1.1.19 Firefox/2.0.20
That bug simply blocks all useragents containing "Win98" or "Windows 98", incredible.
Couldn't find a useragent switcher in the menu (?), so changed it manually on about:config
"general.useragent.override" (STRING) "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)"

Edited by siria
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32 minutes ago, siria said:

At first the installation of RetroZilla2.2 was quite a hassle and struggle. Various probs: that infamous security component error popped up, indicating that key3.db can't be created, and RZ kept freezing at startup already, several times. Almost thought it wouldn't run at all.
Finally learned 2 things:

1) On win98 with KernelEx-17 the compat mode must be set to "disabled", not to "windows 98"! (In the old Basic KernelEx it was the other way around, there "disabled" was buggy and "98" better)
 => that fixed the security components bug, now key3.db gets created and works fine, as in previous version :-) Not immediately, but when first opening a https site.
side-effect:
Despite KernelEx17, but now Kex-Mode "disabled", the native 98 app K-Meleon154 can create new profiles with key3.db again too! Then tried yet another old tool that Kex17 has broken, but that one still doesn't work. Just no way to disable Kex really completely.

2) Retro2.2 is not really frozen when creating the first profile - it just needs forever, about a minute! Because it automatically imports all 5000 IE-Favorites and writes them into bookmarks.html...

And of course the 2 dat files in the components folder must be deleted when something seems buggy.

More surprises:
Out-of-box it could not load the K-Meleon forum, got that stupid old forum-bug with error403. Either Phorum-SW or sourceforge don't like the default useragent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows 98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.24) Gecko/20180708 RetroZilla/2.2 SeaMonkey/1.1.19 Firefox/2.0.20
That bug simply blocks all useragents containing "Win98" or "Windows 98", incredible.
Couldn't find a useragent switcher in the menu (?), so changed it manually on about:config
"general.useragent.override" (STRING) "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)"

first I tried disabling kernelEX in the compatibility tab, but still gives the same error. uninstalled kernel EX and nothing. Im using windows 98. Just by disabling compatibility yours worked fine? 

Edited by mindingulove
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mindingulove said:


first I tried disabling kernelEX in the compatibility tab, but still gives the same error. uninstalled kernel EX and nothing. Im using windows 98. Just by disabling compatibility yours worked fine?



And I created a complete new profile.
It's also necessary to delete the 2 dat files in the components folder. Those are often the culprit for bugs after something important in the browser was changed (new addons, or in this case another compat setting) Those files still 'remember' the previous configuration.
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On 8/14/2018 at 2:18 AM, siria said:

Finally got around to update!
retrozilla 2.2 from this link on the previous page:
http://o.rthost.cf/gpc/files1.rt/rz-suite-v2.2-bin-20180708.7z
 

 

 


Don't see it in above version yet. Is there already an even newer version? Where?

But 2.2 really surprised me mighty now! Had thought it's just some minor internal update and now notice: It's not even a fork of Firefox, but a full Seamonkey suite, complete with Mail and Chatzilla and Composer and all! Looks like my previous one (Retro 2.0) was much older than assumed. And had thought it were a clone of Firefox. Also finally discovered, slightly belated, that extremely useful page info tool etc. And the config sheets are very nice and handy too. Also like that RetroZilla now has its own orange icon, the previous blue botch was quite ugly.
Another surprise, the menus have a link to Retrozilla's own extensions page?
Tried it, but loads nothing, page empty...
And the themes link to Mozilla does nothing anymore either, guess they deleted them long since :(

Also noticed suprised, that the profiles are elsewhere now, and they get that ancient ".slt" structure again.
OLD / NEW path:
c:/windows/anwdat/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/xxxx.default/(profile content)
c:/windows/anwdat/RetroZilla/Profiles/default/xxxxx.slt/(profile content)

rz-suite-v2.2-bin-20180708.7z is just a trial build of v2.2 branch (and patches are landed in trunk)

and normally I don't build suite(retrozilla), just build browzer(rzbrowser). this build is just for checking makefile error(s) and correction is merged: https://github.com/rn10950/RetroZilla/pull/21

Edited by roytam1
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18 hours ago, roytam1 said:

rz-suite-v2.2-bin-20180708.7z is just a trial build of v2.2 branch (and patches are landed in trunk)

and normally I don't build suite(retrozilla), just build browzer(rzbrowser). this build is just for checking makefile error(s) and correction is merged: https://github.com/rn10950/RetroZilla/pull/21

i don't know the exact version i am using, i have it renamed to retrozilla 2.2 with tls 1.2 support and it worked on my recent testing on windows 95, it works better than kmeleon 1.5 versions and better than firefox 2.0.0.20, as well as better than opera 10.10, and IE 5.5 SP2, i never really tested the unofficial 10.63 on windows 95 that much, half the time it wouldn't work right i think and so i never kept it. 

the retrozilla 2.2 with tls 1.2 package i have is better in that i haven't really noticed it malfunctioning or freezing, it actually loads all or almost all web page content and quicker in doing so than other browsers i tested, this was with a pentium iii, i didn't do as much progression testing, i only used one site to download youtube videos and it worked fine, as well as wikipedia and image searching through google. i suppose with the added sse2 instructions in more modern cpu's like pentium 4 northwood, it would load sites better and offer better functionality. 

there still was some sort of certificate related error of accepting certificates, but i don't know if this was from a older version of retrozilla i tested or if it's a common problem in almost all of these older browsers, including the 2.2 with tls 1.2 support one. hopefully i can test another system and see if the same problem occurs, it's unfortunate the packages of these web browsers are just scattered without one knowing exactly which version to use and / or which is the best for their operating system, etc, it's been trial and error for me. 

Edited by cov3rt
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9 minutes ago, dencorso said:

If that's the case, whatever observations you've made cannot be replicated by anybody else, so reporting them is useless.

well i disagree with your statement entirely, with that being said and relevant to your criticism, the file version for the retrozilla application file in my retrozilla 2.2 with tls 1.2 packaged web browser is 1.8.20180.5282 for those that are experimenting and have the same version file in their package. 

 

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For version identification the "about:" page can help, although not 100% reliable either.
Also opens by menu "Help > About..."

I wasn't aware at all that "retrozilla" is not just "retrozilla", and there are not just different age versions, but there are even completely different packages with that same name! Very confusing if that's not made clearer...

"about:"
My previous RZ 2.0 (solo browser) actually shows an image with a little girl and
"Firefox version 2.0.0.2" and
Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows 98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.24) Gecko/0000000000 RetroZilla/2.0.0.2

This newer RZ 2.2 (seamonkey suite) shows a red-star logo and
"RetroZilla 2.2" and
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows 98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.24) Gecko/20180708 RetroZilla/2.2 SeaMonkey/1.1.19 Firefox/2.0.20

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44 minutes ago, siria said:

"about:"
My previous RZ 2.0 (solo browser) actually shows an image with a little girl and
"Firefox version 2.0.0.2" and
Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows 98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.24) Gecko/0000000000 RetroZilla/2.0.0.2

yeah, that's my build with my old branding 12 years ago (Image copyright @naoto_kusumi at twitter)
(Yes, I build firefox customized edition in old days)

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Anyone else looking for a quick javascript-toggle button for Retrozilla2.x?
Look here :-)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quickjava/

Finally found this one - and it's 100% perfect! All tiny and simple :-)
Better get it while it's there yet, Mozilla has announced to delete all XUL-addons this month, guess tens of thousands. Would even grab this one for newer versions too, looks really nifty.

Searching for this simple JS-Toggle was quite some hassle. Although there's a bunch of addons for this task, but all others were too young, not available for FF2 yet. And frankly some of the others also look quite bloated. There are probably some more, just not easy to find when not knowing their names.

The only pity is, modern versions of this addon have a whole bunch more quicktoggle buttons with very easy configuration, but back in early FF2-times existed only 2 buttons: javascript + java.
Am a huge fan of K-Meleons Toolbar with toggles for javascript, images, cookies, stylesheets, iframes, adblock etc., some of those added myself. So one of my biggest pains with non-KM browsers is to find at least for the most basic toggles some addon. But QuickJava looks so easy, and it's only a bit pref toggling after all, some day may try dabbling with the code myself, to try to add more buttons. When getting around...

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