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Backporting newer browsers to Win9X with KernelEx


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since forum is rolled back to February, this thread is lost. And I tried to repost it from my memory.

I  backported Palemoon-26.5 to vanilla Win2000, and binaries may or may not work on Win9X with KernelEx installed, test binaries here:

 

And discussions in KM forum:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?19,146040,page=1

Edited by roytam1
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Backed up the files working on 9x on my blog :)
https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/05/k-meleon-74-windows-9x-edition.html

Using the W2k-friendly version of K-Meleon will only work on Windows 98SE/ME if the KernelEx updates by jumper are implemented too.

When you first made the mention of K-Meleon working on Win98, you also mentioned .db files from another browser to fix accessing certain protocols or certificates (although I had no issue accessing sites). Also, files required to be replaced in order to have it work on Win9x are missing on this post. I'm not sure if those files were critical for Win9x compatibility or if they were just to fix https.

Few things that helped the browser:
Disabling hardware acceleration
Disabling javascript (severely limits visit-able websites)

Edited by ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~
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i wanted to mention that backporting newer web browsers to work on 98SE with kernelex or even 95 / NT4 would help but the problem is that websites and content keep changing, what may work now may not work later and no one seems to really give an explanation for this, a general explanation is that the web browsers aren't supported anymore but this doesn't explain why some thing stop working altogether.  

for example, i was just testing some web browsers just now on my windows 10 system and noticed that youtube worked on opera 12.10, but it just so happens that opera 12.10 appears to not run on 98SE with kernelex, and of course the playback only allows 360p settings. from 12.10 - 12.18 and all the way to 17, the browsers are slow, have rendering issues and do not play videos more than 360p. i noticed that opera 18.0.1284.49 was the last / first version to support 480p, 720p and 1080p youtube playback. 

firefox 9.01 ran youtube with only 360p playback option, not clear if it would do so in 98SE with kernelex, firefox 4.0 and older do not support any playback as i noticed on my windows 10 system, i didn't test 4.01 - 7.0, but it doesn't really matter because one would just use either 3.5.19 ( in my opinion since it still supports java classic ) or firefox 9.01 in this case ( if it support youtube playback in 98SE ). 

firefox 21.0 was the first / last version to support 720p playback option along with 360p, but no other option, firefox 20.0 and older only had the 360p option. firefox 31.8.0 esr only had 360p/720p option, and i find that odd because i think it had 480p / 1080p also on my windows 2000 system i tested just a little while back, but i am not sure. 45.8.0 esr as mentioned by sdfox was the version he used on windows 2000 and although it did support up to 1080p youtube, it never worked properly on my windows 2000 tested system, and caused instability, scripting errors, not loading youtube content properly, freezed constantly, and i couldn't get it to work properly, regardless of whether i even had windows script host 5.7 manually installed or not. 

although testing 45.8.0 esr just now on my windows 10 did work fine, no issues, with 1080p playback, but of course, two very different systems ( 2k vs w10 ). 

it appears that NT4 will have some good news ahead for the extended kernel project being worked on which allows newer web browsers which i would assume opera 18.0.1284.49 would be compatible, but unfortunately 98SE and windows 95 are limited so far for youtube playback at least. 

 

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Has anyone tried changing the user agent string to a mobile phone? Youtube does not work using the W2K-friendly version of K-Meleon. I've tested K-Meleon on both a W2K and 98SE installation to find W2K loads pages fine, but youtube videos don't play despite loading. On Windows 98SE, youtube's video playback is blank and crashes the browser unless javascript is disabled.

Edited by ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~
fingers forgot "don't"
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3 hours ago, ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~ said:

Has anyone tried changing the user agent string to a mobile phone? Youtube does not work using the W2K-friendly version of K-Meleon. I've tested K-Meleon on both a W2K and 98SE installation to find W2K loads pages fine, but youtube videos play despite loading. On Windows 98SE, youtube's video playback is blank and crashes the browser unless javascript is disabled.

i am sorry i can't answer your initial questions, i am also not familiar with kmeleon web browser nor have i tested that specific version you linked to but judging at a first glance, it seems that it's pretty counter intuitive to have a browser that can't work properly ( at least for youtube ) without having javascript disabled, even if it's said to be more "modern". 

i know this may derail from your questions but referring from what i said in my earlier post, it would probably be better to get a later firefox or opera version to work properly on 98SE such as opera 12.10 or firefox 21, rather than a mess of the other "custom" compiled browsers that are being distributed, i am not trying to exclude kmeleon, but there are some things unclear on it. 

i was gonna even bring up windows 95 in this as it seems that not many people do much experimenting on windows 95, i have not tested what appears to be the latest retrozilla / firefox version? it's confusing enough, there are so many different types of web browsers, kmeleon, firezilla, retrozilla, seamonkey, etc, and distribution of them seems to be somewhat unclear / disorganized. 

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2 hours ago, cov3rt said:

i am sorry i can't answer your initial questions, i am also not familiar with kmeleon web browser nor have i tested that specific version you linked to but judging at a first glance, it seems that it's pretty counter intuitive to have a browser that can't work properly ( at least for youtube ) without having javascript disabled, even if it's said to be more "modern". 

i know this may derail from your questions but referring from what i said in my earlier post, it would probably be better to get a later firefox or opera version to work properly on 98SE such as opera 12.10 or firefox 21, rather than a mess of the other "custom" compiled browsers that are being distributed, i am not trying to exclude kmeleon, but there are some things unclear on it. 

i was gonna even bring up windows 95 in this as it seems that not many people do much experimenting on windows 95, i have not tested what appears to be the latest retrozilla / firefox version? it's confusing enough, there are so many different types of web browsers, kmeleon, firezilla, retrozilla, seamonkey, etc, and distribution of them seems to be somewhat unclear / disorganized. 

Unless any of us besides roytam1 know how to code browsers or update KernelEx like jumper, I doubt we could get Firefox 21 working. Keep in mind roytam1 backported Firefox 3.6.28 (with a couple things that aren't working) to Windows NT 4.0 and (unsuccessfully) NT 3.51. It would probably be much more difficult with 9x, since the system doesn't function the same as NT.

Retrozilla 2.1 is based off Firefox 2.0.0.2, I believe. There is also Opera 10.63 available on Win95, Firefox 2.0.0.22pre, and Seamonkey 1.1.20pre.
Capture.JPG

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@cov3rt:
> The distribution of them seems to be somewhat unclear / disorganized
Disorganized? Oh yeah, absolutely :D
Just glad that at least KM74-Goanna has an own thread over in the K-Meleon forum.

Just my 2 cents, considering Firefox versus all those non-FF versions. If you're using those backported browsers not "just for fun" on a modern system, but as main browser on your actual old system, there are additional aspects which start mattering too.
For example when all those "cypher errors" started to become epidemic on old browsers for 98SE last year, because more and more harmless, public sites now insist to get TLS1.2 or they won't show you anything at all, I knew only Opera12.02 as single fallback browser for awhile. At the time didn't know any other browser to overcome those darn cypher errors yet, and shortly before had not even known a single one.
Now since many years I'm happily using old K-Meleon 1.6 (beta2.6, sibling of FF3.5) and am well used to self-help long since. That is, if possible, only if a site-prob is not too complicated. Am not a developer, only a normal user who has learned macrolanguage and bits of css and a teeny bit of javascript (nightmare) here and there. But this combination can go a long way, for stuff like getting MSFN posting titles and dates visible again, tweak prefs and useragents all the time with mostly 1-click buttons, or extract and redirect URLs etc. But then came the "cypher" tsunami and was forced to use Opera12.02 for those sites. Of course glad to have access to github etc. again, but shocked that I could tweak absolutely nothing in Opera anymore! Not even something as essential and basic as the useragent strings. No way, no chance, couldn't believe it. Yes it has an integrated UA-toggle, but the ancient STRINGS in it cannot be updated anymore. Pretty useless. And yes in Opera you can fake the global UA string on opera:config, but for every single change you must type it in there again. No chance for better handling without addons - but those are all deleted and gone! The sad thing is, in the past Opera Presto was highly customizable too, but Opera has extinguished all that stuff from the web. ALL ADDONS are gone! None can be found anymore, and no tutorials either, for user buttons etc. Newbies to Opera have no chance.

And in some weeks Mozilla will do the same crime with addons for older Firefox versions :-( As old as one year. ALL xul-addons which work in them will be DELETED from the web too.

Having no addons is a giant drawback. And FF-addons are so complicated, even for just toggling a simple pref, it's incredible.

And that's where K-Meleons macrolanguage comes in very handy. Even if you have no clue, but for simple tasks it's still 10x easier as writing FF-addons. Users who are able to compare and look closely even may succeed just by trial and error, by copying other macros and comparing, as long as a task isn't too complicated. Or they can tweak skins etc.

So my personal preference for browser backporting is clearly K-Meleon, because it allows a lot more self-help. Even if only a bit here and there, not the wealth of current Firefox addons - but what do those help if they are deleted and not found anymore? And also the big prob that users cannot tweak FF-addons themselves, but they'll have to, that's almost their only chance in 'modern' times.

At the moment a main prob for KM74Goanna is related to KernelEx probs. To get it running at all in 98SE, I was forced to update KernelEx from basic 4.5.2 to version 2017.16, but something doesn't work right with that. Not only KM74G, but since that update also all my other browsers cannot create a key3.db anymore, except FF2/retrozilla. And although my KernelEx was always set "off" by default, since that update some native Win98 apps got messed too, and compatibility settings don't help. Just hope anyone can figure that out.

But of course KM74G itself still has some bugs too. Between KM74gecko-KM77goanna a lot of KM-shell bugs were fixed, but are of course now contained again in KM74Goanna. For example I dimly remember some encoding bug related to utf-16, which crashed the browser in combination with a macro command (iniwrite?) when special characters were used, no idea if the current crashes have a similar prob.

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I can now confirm K-Meleon 74 (2.2 Goanna) works on Windows ME with the KernelEx extensions available :)...but the text can end up looking funny on certain pages. Luckily, text don't always look like this on all pages.
Ws1t4US.jpg

In order to do this, DOS must be enabled on Windows ME before installing the KernelEx updates.
IL7RLd2.jpg

1QKz0sr.jpg

This is the menu you will have, if you install DOSFix 2

WOTQkuC.jpg

Instructions all right here :)
https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/06/dos-for-windows-me.html

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On 6/7/2018 at 9:51 AM, roytam1 said:

since forum is rolled back to February, this thread is lost. And I tried to repost it from my memory.

I  backported Palemoon-26.5 to vanilla Win2000, and binaries may or may not work on Win9X with KernelEx installed, test binaries here:

 

And discussions in KM forum:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?19,146040,page=1

@roytam1 I can confirm your backported Pale Moon 26.5 is working on Windows 2000. Thanks!

pm265w2k.jpg

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20 minutes ago, sdfox7 said:

@roytam1 I can confirm your backported Pale Moon 26.5 is working on Windows 2000. Thanks!

pm265w2k.jpg

Note that youtube video is not working(video frame shows spinner only) and I'm still trying to find root cause.

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On Montag, 11. Juni 2018 at 10:23 AM, siria said:

At the moment a main prob for KM74Goanna is related to KernelEx probs. To get it running at all in 98SE, I was forced to update KernelEx from basic 4.5.2 to version 2017.16, but something doesn't work right with that. Not only KM74G, but since that update also all my other browsers cannot create a key3.db anymore, except FF2/retrozilla. And although my KernelEx was always set "off" by default, since that update some native Win98 apps got messed too, and compatibility settings don't help. Just hope anyone can figure that out.


Yes, I also can run KM 74G usable on two computers. On my other two KM is slow, freezes after a short time or on some pages like this board. I don't know the reason yet. The profile files are created since KernelEX Kexbases.dll update 16, also Key3.db, here. The creation of Key3.db fails after update to Kexbases 17. I hope jumper find the culprit and solve the problem.

KM worked with the db files of FF 9.0.1, 10.0.12 and 17.ESR, too. The Auxiliary DLL Updates, psapi and uxtheme seem to have no effect in this case.

One more problem is that KM crashes when bookmarking: Runtime error - KM caused an error in MSVCR80... after browser restart the bookmark works. Also (some) KM settings on lower button of duckduckgo startpage don't work or stick.

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Thanks for confirmation!

And OOPS - of course I meant KernelEx 2016.17, not 2017.16, that doesn't exist at all!

So it looks like currently Kex16 works best, will have to try restore that again.
Guess I even had tried that version first, after reading about too many scaring "old app stopped working" bugs in the KernelEx thread. But couldn't get KM74Goanna working right, so immediately updated again to Kex17. Now I can't remember for sure anymore, it was a lot of struggling around, also with other broken apps (VLC-086 broken, newer VLC working instead; Scite-editor broken if UPX-version etc). But guess KM didn't work better with Kex17 either, so could only start looking for other workarounds. Meanwhile surfing the web works quite well, if JS is blocked as usual, otherwise quickly run out of RAM with 256MB. Already difficult with old KM16. But the remaining KM-probs seem to me GUI related (especially history, occasional crashes etc.)

And just wish this special KM74-version didn't come with so many preinstalled complicated Addons, especially that they were not so deep-embedded that it's not obvious how to cleanly uninstall them. Like ABP etc. For real use of this browser (not for bug-testing) have just used brute force and removed lots of suspicious files and messed with the settings. The very 'special' Useragent auto-switcher in this version is an old pet-peeve, but at least I understand what it does exactly and even can abuse now its js-file to instead load the NATIVE gecko site-switcher, which works great, just still fiddling a bit further.

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12 hours ago, roytam1 said:

Note that youtube video is not working(video frame shows spinner only) and I'm still trying to find root cause.

I tried a few things like updating DirectX to the the final February 2010 DirectX 9.0c version (directx_feb2010_redist.exe), that didn't work. Also, old tricks that used to work to force YouTube to use Adobe Flash Player no longer work.

By the way, Pale Moon does not shut down properly, it continues running in Task Manager even after exiting.

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