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


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dencorso said:
> For those users there's the latest iPhone. For the other users who need video tutorials spoon-feeding them in baby steps, the latest iPhone is also a good bet
< Now, for those who love to experiment and find out thingas for themselves, for those who are game for reinstalling a zillion times with minor variations,

And what about the 90% ordinary people in between those 2 extremes? Those who need a minimum of human rights and freedom and privacy, but have neither enough skills nor enough time to waste thousand hours, like a hobbyist can play with a "zillion times" experiments, just for fun? Time wasted completely unnecessarily for normal people, just because experts who could make things a lot easier with just a fingersnip often, a tiny bit effort (sometimes even just a minute), simply want to keep looking down on them? What if such ordinary people can neither get help from third persons?
Yeah, they're just forced to give up - who cares. Let's laugh about them and mock them, they don't deserve better if they can't help themselves. But sometimes there will come situations where the roles are inversed.

Edited by siria
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No disrespect, @dencorso, but like @Wunderbar98, I also agree that it seems that @siriaMIGHT have a point. It is always nice when the developer does what he can to make things easier for the user, especially when that includes adding things that were not included in the original release, or improving things that were.

However, also like @Wunderbar98, and you, I agree that "Developers can do what they want" and I also very much appreciate @roytam1's work. So I guess a question might be whether there is any reason NOT to implement the suggestions of @siriaand @Wunderbar98, is it practical to do so, and does @roytam1have the time and resources necessary to do so? ( I realize that there are very valid reasons a developer should not, or might not want to, modify a release beyond a certain point. ) If there is a technical or other practical reason not to implement a requested feature, then that should be that, or if it is just the developer's choice, then we all have to accept that decision as well. But if @roytam1 just hadn't thought about an issue, or hadn't realized how many users might use a particular feature, or lack of one, then he might want to consider implementing it.

Now that the requests have been made, we should wait to hear @roytam1's thoughts on the matter. Whatever @roytam1decides, it is definitely up to him and we all MUST accept that, and, hopefully, not complain, at least too much. :)

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@bphlpt

If I may, both sides of the arguments have some good reasons backing their stance, but it is not unheard of developers that just develop (and in the process create a mess of mostly unreplicable *whatevers* that need hours of reading and experiments, that only the most dedicated and knowledgeable users can actually get to work properly), and as well there are a number of (clueless) wannabee users that simply fail at that, due to lack of previous knowledge, lack of time, lack of dedication.

So we have a population made of - say (to remain in Siria's example) 5% that know where their towel is and succeed, 5% that won't ever make it (and have anyway their nice shiny iPhones according to deocorso) and between these two extremes the 90%.

But this 90% is not a "monolith", there are many "levels" composing this category, tentatively, let's say:

8% near the top - bordering the successful ones - lacking only some dedication or some marginal piece of knowledge
12% right below - lacking both some knowledge but also some dedication
70% even below - lacking knowledge, dedication and interest/motivation (and - still according to dencorso - happy with their Windows 7 SP1 / Android / TrueOS / Ubuntu )

There is nothing to do for the 70% with Windows 7, etc. + 5% with iPhones.

What can be done is only about the 8% and - maybe - part of the 12%.

The nice twist (that you were probably  waiting for ;)) is that part of the population is not necessarily to be taken care of by the developer, there could well be some of the top 5% that succeeded that wish to share their knowledge and create sum ups, tutorials, etc. and assist those in the 8%+12% that need help.

In other words, siria may well start writing down in one place all the issues he found with the files (missing or needing to be modified), where to get them from, how to install them, etc., etc. and more generally make the contents produced by the developer(s) more accessible or accessible to a larger part of the population [1].

The time that the developers have at their hands is limited and they already gifted us with the products of countless hours of their time, it is perfectly fine to disagree with this or that aspect of these products, but as opposed to the armchair expert attitude, maybe one could be more proactive.

This approach has worked fine for a number of similar (similar in the sense of projects being dedicated to old OS's or very "niche").

The project in itself may be a mess or being difficult to find or missing documentation or having it in another (complex) language like (for us westerners) Chinese or Japanese, think - only to make an example - of all the nice things by BlackWingCat, or grub4dos, still through the dedication of a few people on boards like msfn.org or reboot.pro they were made accessible to a larger part of the population.

jaclaz

 

[1] as opposed to making snarky comments on how the developer should have managed this or that issue

 

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Just to avoid possible misunderstandings, my rant above wasn't meant to push the browser issue further, since my hope for it was at best 50/50 anyway. Based on lots of experiences with today's people in power positions not caring to waste even a single or five minutes of their own time just in exchange to save hundreds or sometimes thousands hours of useless time waste and struggle for other people (same goes for money issues in today's society). So my pre-previous post directed at RT was just normal discussion mode and I would have kept silent if declined (as expected, business as usual).
A completely different thing of course was my previous reply above, that was not caused by a probable decline of RT, only prompted by the additional display of glee on top of not caring at all, which is completely unnecessary.

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/ Start Rant

I for one do have an iPhone, and I felt quite insulted by that comment.

The iPhone is not for "dumb id***", but yes, for people who want things that "just works" quickly. They're far from being "dumb". I don't want an Android and will never use one, simply because I don't want to waste my time configuring something to my liking nor use something that is much more unsafe and easier to hack than the iOS. I am an UI/UX designer, and I find the Android UI/UX too cluttered, ugly and not easy for people. A good UI is like a joke; if you have to explain, then the joke is not that good.

I do things with my iPhone or iPad that not a casual user or your "dumb user" would do. I like to push it to its limits. I'm not even the usual "apple fanboy", I give Apple credit where it is due and I also criticize them for some of their decisions or implementations. Just like I do with Microsoft as well.

End Rant /

That said, the comparison with retro computing stuff (to make fun of people who can't do something and tell them to use the iPhone) is unfair. Because this is a different scenario, a completely different thing.

When we play with our retro things, this is a community, we like to share our experiences, what we've found, and grow with it together, share the nostalgia, things like that. We help each other, just so we can have fun with our nostalgia - some of us are too old to waste a lot of time with that and time is a very precious resource. I'm 37, and I for one want to use some of my time with that PC nostalgia thing and another good part of my time with my family, work, karting stuff, do you know what I mean? I don't want to waste an entire night trying to figure out how I used to make these things work 25 years ago.

But, Ok, that's fine. Keep telling people "for those there's the iPhone".

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In my experiences with guiding less knowledgeable users, I discovered numerous bugs and workarounds that improved the functionality of Windows 2000 with regards to Office 2007/2010.

And some of the most unlikely things have been known to break things in the heavily modded OS, as I've reported here and in other places. Yes, most people are going to remain glued to their modern devices and have no use for 9x or win2k, but there are others who wonder why they can't view SHA-2 encrypted documents in Office 2007 after installing it in Windows 2000. No documentation existed about this issue prior to recently.

And finding the solution took several hours of replicating the decryption process in XP, reviewing it using dependency walker, then replacing some system files with those from POSReady, hex editing mso.dll to point to a renamed XP file because completely replacing it broke Outlook, and then posting the instructions for all to see, since very few people are going to go to my lengths to fix an issue that can otherwise be rectified by changing the OS. And that is perfectly understandable.

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5 hours ago, Bruninho said:

/ Start Rant

I for one do have an iPhone, and I felt quite insulted by that comment.

The iPhone is not for "dumb id***", but yes, for people who want things that "just works" quickly.

Look :), noone said that.

What was said was that the iPhone is good for BOTH those users that "do not have unlimited time or ninja search skills to figure out what works"[1] AND for those "users who need video tutorials spoon-feeding them in baby steps", EXACTLY BECAUSE it "just works".

Before feeling insulted, please make sure that someone actually insulted you (if you want I can insult you so that you can appreciate the difference ;)).

jaclaz

[1] short definition: busy people
[2] short definition: inexperienced people

 

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On 2/3/2020 at 11:26 AM, Bruninho said:

That said, the comparison with retro computing stuff (to make fun of people who can't do something and tell them to use the iPhone) is unfair. Because this is a different scenario, a completely different thing.

It's not! If it's a hobby, part of it includes spending zillion hours spelunking obscure places or reverse engineering modules to get things done, then maybe sharing the facts/solutions found (if complete), or inviting others to help make issues become solutions (if not complete). Now, if it's *not* a hobby, then one can require it to just work. While I still believed 9x/ME were the best (maybe 2nd best... hurm... maybe even 3rd best) option for @jaclaz's 70%, I spent numerous hours documenting things for everybody and even helping users in stoned-snail steps. Anyone who searched the forum minimally or maybe even followed those (mostly useless, alas!) links in my signature might perhaps have realized that much. Now, however, I'm convinced 9x/ME is solely for hobbyists or real ultrahyperüberhardcore users that enjoy using them as day-to-day OSes (most of those are actually members here), and even I have moved over, because I consider my ultrahyperüberhardcore stubborness is better employed keeping XP alive, and I firmly believe one has to limit how many minorities one belongs to, besides those one cannot forfeit regardless of one's volition (like old age, for instance). In the old days, when someone wanted something to just work, is was usual to suggest they get a fridge, but nowadays, thanks to the IoT, it may not be that easy anymore, and the fridge may even be actually eavesdropping on one, after being turned on (although real spelunking may still perhaps yield one a still working true dumb ammonia-based one). No offense meant at all, just my 2¢!

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Back on topic.

 

There's no Home Button in this browser? Actually, if it's similar to SeaMonkey, it shouldn't have the custom toolbar feature?

Edit: Actually, is there any extension that lets me use a custom user CSS script for each site?

Edited by Bruninho
Another request
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  • 1 month later...

Thank you to the creator of Retrozilla, in times of deprecating TLS 1.0 and 1.1 (also affects old smartphone browsers)this is an indispensable resource.

If there are pages not opening and its just for the text the googles cache (javascript must be enabled)or a webproxy might do the trick. Just my two cents.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/2/2020 at 8:03 PM, roytam1 said:

you need to get a working msimg32.dll

I have this problem too.I am using msimg32.dll from windowsme.I also tried msimg.dll from windows98.But background picture and some other html elements are still not rendered.

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7 hours ago, winnt5 said:

I have this problem too.I am using msimg32.dll from windowsme.I also tried msimg.dll from windows98.But background picture and some other html elements are still not rendered.

msimg32.dll from win9x system is incompatible in NT4. for NT4, you need msimg32.dll from win2000.

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3 minutes ago, roytam1 said:

msimg32.dll from win9x system is incompatible in NT4. for NT4, you need msimg32.dll from win2000.

It's strange.When I use msimg32.dll from windows2k.The browser doesn't even run.I recieve an error can't find GdiGradientFill on gdi32.dll.

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