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My Browser Builds (Part 1)


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1 hour ago, VistaLover said:

AFAICT, the last Firefox ESR that would run on XP x86 SP1 is v10.x.x (10.0.12esr the last to be released); the last stable release to run on that configuration was v12.0:

and my NM26 oldvc build should work on XP SP1.

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19 hours ago, Sampei.Nihira said:

The Legacy version is on the second page of the link you entered.

Yes, didn't noticed the second page. Thank You.

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I personally avoid Facebook :angry: like the plague, but, via e-mail, I was recently given a link to a specific facebook video (two orphaned bear cubs being given milk):

https://www.facebook.com/arcturosgr/videos/2355323964725837/UzpfSTU2MzI1NjMwNjoxMDE1NTgyNzQ4OTUzNjMwNw/

I had latest Serpent 52.9.0 32-bit open at the time I received the e-mail but when I tried to watch the linked video (without loggin' in to facebook - I have no account with them, thank God! ;)), the page and the embedded player would load OK, however, as soon as I pressed the play button, I would only get sound but no video (player turns to black :realmad:).

I decided to investigate and the other UXP-based browser (latest New Moon 28.6.0a1 32-bit) as well as Serpent 55.0.0/moebius and Firefox ESR 52.9.1 all three exhibit the exact same behaviour, i.e. the video stream isn't displayed!

Browser Console in St52 gets populated with many Type, Syntax and Reference Errors...

To my great surprise, New Moon 27.9.6/Tycho would play that specific facebook video fine! Both New Moon 27/Tycho and New Moon 28/UXP have by default the same SSUAO for facebook:

general.useragent.override.facebook.com;Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:99.9) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/99.9 (Pale Moon)

so the difference between them should not be UA related... :dubbio:

What did not come as a surprise, of course, was the fact that Google Chrome (49.0.2623.112, 50.0.2661.102, 51.0.2679.0) also played that facebook video fine (it's no secret that, in recent years, the web is tailored to suit mainly Chrome and not the other way round; especially when Google's own devs dictate themselves how the web should be; but this is a discussion for another forum... :whistle:).

The person who sent me the video link was using Firefox Quantum 67.0 on Win7 SP1 and she could watch the video on her setup without issue; so, this appears to be a bug afflicting pre-Quantum Firefox versions and, to what concerns us XP+Vista users, the UXP platform...

I took the extra step of creating a new clean St52 profile and even trying Safe Mode there, but the issue persists :realmad:; @roytam1 can you replicate and if yes, any insight/solution offered?

In the meantime, I used youtube-dl to fetch the clip to disk, the resulting MP4 file has a Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) of 9:16, which is non-standard; perhaps this is somehow relevant?

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@VistaLover Just clicked on the link furnished above and was able to watch said video without any problems whatsoever

NM 28.6.0a1 32 bit 2019-05-24

 

Shortly I'll be tying serpent 52 and ff52. Keep you posted.

Just to let you know , Serpent 52 latest as well as firefox 52.9.1 work fine.

Cheers

PS: Forgot to mention that on serpent I use user agent string : Mozilla/5.0(windowsNT6.1;rv:61.0)Gecko/200100101 Firefox/61.0 through user-agent switcher and manager 0.2.6 add on

Edited by Tangy
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1 hour ago, VistaLover said:

the video stream isn't displayed!

tested with NM 28.6.0a1 20190525 in win10 1703 32bit at $workplace without issue(besides laggy facebook experience), will test on XP when I am off from work.

Edited by roytam1
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No idea if UA is the culprit or the browser version, but the page loads elements from various sites, not just facebook.com. The video itself comes from "fbcdn.net", but then again, the scripts which load it probably matter more. Not sure where those are located in that endless code jungle, but lots of stuff is also loaded from "akamaihd.net". And of course a list of some 20 other domains, which look like ad providers.
Sometimes a general UA override instead of single sites makes testing easier. But the few FF-addons I've looked at closer didn't allow this, and they overrule the native engine's UA handling.

Edited by siria
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OK, follow-up :) :

@Tangy: Many thanks indeed for your tests on NM28, St52 and FxESR52; the fact the clip played back fine in these browsers on XP provided additional clues for me :thumbup (see below...).

I am on Windows Vista SP2 32-bit myself, with Platform Update Supplement installed correctly; this means I have a working implementation of Windows Media Foundation (WMF) media framework, which, in layman's terms, means compatible browsers (Firefox and forks) have access to system (OS) decoders for patented formats (h264 for video, aac & heaac for audio); to be more precise, h264 decoding in HTML5 videos is delegated under Vista SP2 to system file mfh264dec.dll (file version on my setup is 7.0.6002.18392, "7" indicates this was a Win7 feature backported via PUS to Vista SP2).

In Firefox ESR 52.9.0 under Vista SP2 (with PUS) I don't have to install and enable the Adobe PrimetimeCDM to achieve h264 decoding in HTML5 video (which is the case for WinXP), because the browser, as explained above, has direct access to OS decoders; this works 99% of the time, but, apparently, NOT for this specific video :realmad:.

In Media Source Extensions (MSE) capable browsers, Facebook serves the video via MPEG-DASH streams (fragmented .mp4 files); it is my conviction, after extended testing, that the default system h264 decoder can't cope with this video's unorthodox dimensions (being in "portrait" rather than "landscape" form, 9:16 instead of 16:9).

If in FxESR 52.9.x I disable WMF by toggling media.wmf.enabled to false (and with no AP CDM present), then the browser has no way to decode the video stream; fortunately, facebook can still fall back to using the Adobe Flash Player NPAPI plugin (v32.0.0.171) for playback purposes and this does play the clip in question (but in a pop-up, not in-page):

8qBTdM9.jpg

The situation is a bit different in the case of the UXP forks; to cater to WinXP users who, as stated, have no access to OS decoders via WMF, @roytam1 has patched the ffvpx library to include (ffmpeg provided) patented decoders for h264/aac; in Vista+, both following prefs are set to true by default:

media.wmf.enabled;true
media.ffvpx.enabled;true

but priority is given to the WMF decoders; that is why I can't play back properly the mentioned video clip in either NM28/St52 :o (screengrab is with NM28) : 

5dWHXGI.jpg

If I toggle media.wmf.enabled to false, then h264 decoding is being delegated to the native ffvpx (ffmpeg decoders) implementation and, as things stand, can properly decode the "portrait" video (NM28):

BokQDw2.jpg

And, as expected, if I toggle both cited prefs to false, NM28 will use Flash (in a pop-up):

6jvFO5N.jpg

... Before I classify this as an obscure Vista bug (with no hope of ever getting fixed), I need to know the results of some additional tests:

19 hours ago, roytam1 said:

will test on XP when I am off from work.

Many thanks for your time spent, especially during "office hours" ;); but don't bother testing on WinXP, according to my troubleshooting and @Tangy's feedback, it will certainly work when ffvpx is the decoding module ...

19 hours ago, roytam1 said:

tested with NM 28.6.0a1 20190525 in win10 1703 32bit

When given the chance, can you please re-test with media.ffvpx.enabled;false ? If it plays, then Win10's system decoders can handle OK the 9:16 h264 video stream...

Lastly, I need some kind soul to test for me how latest New Moon 28.6.0a1 on Win7 performs on this clip when, again, media.ffvpx.enabled;false and media.wmf.enabled;true ; if it doesn't play, repeat the test with an official Pale Moon binary (ffvpx there doesn't have h264 decoding support); in the small chance the video doesn't play, it's a UXP bug on Win7 (which means it could be reported to the official devs and, down the road, be fixed eventually...); if the clip plays fine with only Win7's system decoders, it's definitive: my case is a fatal Vista bug I'll have to live with :}

Many thanks for the attention and precious time of this forum's fine members :thumbup

PS: As to the mystery why the video plays back fine in NM 27.9.6 on my Vista setup, I think the answer coincides with my findings so far: facebook serves MPEG-DASH, this requires MSE; on Roy's Tycho fork, MSE+h264 decoding is handled by the supplied LAV dlls, not by the system decoder (as proven by a "youtube.com/html5" test without those files...).

Edited by VistaLover
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3 hours ago, VistaLover said:

I need some kind soul to test for me how latest New Moon 28.6.0a1 on Win7 performs on this clip when, again, media.ffvpx.enabled;false and media.wmf.enabled;true

Just gave it a try. (Clean install.) It does play with that combination (NM 28.6.0a1 on Win7 with media.ffvpx.enabled set to false and media.wmf.enabled set (defaulted) to true.

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38 minutes ago, Tangy said:

As you may see media.wmf.enabled true

... Thanks, but as I already explained in detail, this is indeed the default setting, but has no practical effect under Windows XP; wouldn't matter whether it be true (the default) OR false, since XP doesn't have WMF... -_-

41 minutes ago, Mathwiz said:

It does play with that combination (NM 28.6.0a1 on Win7 with media.ffvpx.enabled set to false and media.wmf.enabled set (defaulted) to true.

Many thanks, too :); as feared, this appears to be a limitation/bug in the way Vista's native h264 decoder handles the 9:16 video stream... Such is life :(

 

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Calling all paranoid XPers: I just learned of a sneaky CSS hack that can be used to trick users into revealing their browsing history. And yes, the trick works in NM and Serpent. Check it out and discuss at my post: https://msfn.org/board/topic/178684-clever-hack-can-trick-web-surfers-into-revealing-their-browsing-history/

(Edit: for some reason I couldn't embed the link above; MSFN server kept saying "403 Forbidden".... :huh:)

Edited by Mathwiz
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1 hour ago, Mathwiz said:

(Edit: for some reason I couldn't embed the link above; MSFN server kept saying "403 Forbidden".... :huh:)

Since yesterday, even I am getting those "403 Forbidden"...  :blink:  I guess xper is tweaking the forums...  :angel

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2019.05.24 (32-bit) on windows XP SP3

1. Instagram.com/stories/nick - video not working on this Serpent version

2. Many weeks, three months Serpent not working on change episodes blue button on Player.pl (not clickable), and slides episodes < and > button working only when he clicks nearby not target. Last working fine version on Player.pl is from february.

Sorry for my english

Edited by Seba21
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Weird; Instagram videos seem to be working OK for me with that version (2019.05.24 32-bit on windows XP SP3).

Can you give us links to some of the exact videos that won't play? Instagram.com/stories/nick just leads to a profile page with many images & I have no idea which one to try.

But perhaps there's an obscure problem with its built-in media player. You might try installing the Adobe Primetime player (as described in the following thread) and once that's done, set media.ffvpx.enabled in about:config to "false." (Also disable Flash if it's installed.) That's how I play videos.

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The "advantages" of "more secure" and "signed" WE-API based Firefox Quantum add-ons:

https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/29/another-malware-wave-hit-the-mozilla-firefox-extensions-store/

Relevant discussion in reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/buahte/a_wave_of_malware_addons_hit_the_mozilla_firefox/

Probably of lesser interest to us running still (?) Firefox ESR 52.9.x and/or Serpent 52.9.0/55.0.0, one has to wonder though... :angry:

Edited by VistaLover
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