Possible to get Skype 8 up and running on XP?

[luweitest]

I can confirm that in Serpent 20190809, https://web.skype.com/en/ works when added general.useragent.override.skype.com; But in Firefox 52ESR, that value has no effect (addon Live HTTP headers shows useragent not overrided). Then I use addon User Agent Switcher to modify UserAgent, and web skype works.

[Dave-H]

Well that's good so it obviously can still work in Firefox 52.9.
I use an extension called "Custom UserAgent String", not "User Agent Switcher", but I've no reason to think that it's not doing the same thing.

[VistaLover]

3 hours ago, Dave-H said:

Can anyone else definitely confirm that web.skype.com is working OK for them with Firefox 52.9 ESR?
If it is working for other people, then it obviously should be working for me.

... At the risk of sounding repetitive and/or tiring, I can confirm, once more, that Web Skype works as expected in my FirefoxESR 52.9.1 32-bit copy, under Vista SP2 32-bit:

The date/time at the tray area reads Friday Aug 16th 2019, 17:39 EEST (= UTC+0300, BST+0200)

No UA modifying extension used, but the two ".js file" method and the SSUAO reported here

@Dave-H: As advised, please test either Serpent 55.0.0 or Serpent 52.9.0 (both by @roytam1) with a SSUAO (either mine or the one proposed by @Mathwiz), so you/we could gather additional info; if you experience the same Skype failures in Serpent (while for others, including myself, Serpent does work for web.skype.com), then we can safely assume the issue is not specific to FxESR 52; FWIW, the fact Google Chrome 49 does work (I suspect with a UA changing extension, no doubt!) excludes ISP/IP address related issues...

 

[Dave-H]

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure that nothing had recently changed with Skype for Web, as I was puzzled that my clean Firefox profile did work a few days ago, but now won't for some reason.

I am running a shortcut for Chrome 49, thanks to @Bersaglio's pointers, with the following switches.

chrome.exe --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.86 Safari/537.36" https://web.skype.com/ --disable-infobars

Works perfectly with no extensions or modification to Chrome at all.
It doesn't work if running ProxHTTPSProxy unless the site is added to the exclusions in the Windows Internet Settings (there seems to be no way of over-riding the proxy in Chrome itself, unlike in Firefox.)

I will try installing probably Serpent 52.9.0 over the weekend, and repost back on whether that works.
Cheers, Dave.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Dave-H
Addition

[VistaLover]

1 hour ago, VistaLover said:

the fact Google Chrome 49 does work (I suspect with a UA changing extension, no doubt!) excludes ISP/IP address related issues...

21 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

I am running a shortcut for Chrome 49, thanks to @Bersaglio's pointers, with the following switches.

chrome.exe --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.86 Safari/537.36" https://web.skype.com/ --disable-infobars

Works perfectly with no extensions or modification to Chrome at all.

Thanks; it is essentially a SSUAO (UA the same as the one I'm using, for URL[site] https://web.skype.com/) issued via command line switches...

27 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

there seems to be no way of over-riding the proxy in Chrome itself

Yes, Chrome and forks, without specialised extensions, rely on the proxy management wizard provided by the OS (the one under IE's Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections tab); the same is true, as I'm sure you're aware, about the certificate store/management... Never a Chromium fan myself, TBH...

 

[Mathwiz]

5 hours ago, luweitest said:

I can confirm that in Serpent 20190809, https://web.skype.com/en/ works when added general.useragent.override.skype.com; But in Firefox 52ESR, that value has no effect (addon Live HTTP headers shows useragent not overrided). Then I use addon User Agent Switcher to modify UserAgent, and web skype works.

That matches @VistaLover's results. (SSUAOs don't work in FF 52ESR unless you install some funky JavaScript to run at startup, or use an add-on like User Agent Switcher.)

I wonder if @Dave-H's results are a kind of "runs once" situation? Dave, if you have the time, try creating another clean FF 52 profile (don't forget to turn off the proxy); see if Skype works once, then fails after you exit and restart the browser?

[Dave-H]

I've downloaded the latest version of New Moon, but I haven't had a chance to deploy it as yet.

I have tried making another Firefox 52 profile, and Skype works fine in that, and so far continues to work with repeated logins and logouts.

I have deleted the original test profile, and will continue to monitor this new one for any failure.

 

[VistaLover]

19 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

I've downloaded the latest version of New Moon

... Skype for Web doesn't work in New Moon 28, even with a SSUAO; as advised previously, test either Serpent 52.9.0 or 55.0.0 

25 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

I have tried making another Firefox 52 profile, and Skype works fine in that, and so far continues to work with repeated logins and logouts.

Good to know!

Cheers

[Dave-H]

Oops, sorry yes!

I was thrown when I originally downloaded what I thought was Serpent, and it actually appeared to be Basilisk, so I thought I would try New Moon instead, forgetting that it doesn't work there anyway.

Are Serpent and Basilisk actually the same thing (I know they're sort of the same thing mythologically, but what about as browsers)?!

I'll carry on experimenting with Firefox for the time being, if my new profile carries on working then I will try and find out what's different in my normal profile that might be causing the issue.

 

Edited August 18, 2019 by Dave-H
Addition

[VistaLover]

14 hours ago, Dave-H said:

I was thrown when I originally downloaded what I thought was Serpent, and it actually appeared to be Basilisk,
(snipped)
Are Serpent and Basilisk actually the same thing

Basilisk is the upstream official browser application built on the UXP platform, developed and released by Moonchild Productions (supported officially under Win7+); Serpent is the generic name for an unbranded, unofficial, build of a Basilisk fork, in our case the fork (supported under WinXP+) maintained by our dear @roytam1 here in MSFN!

Due to various development decisions made by both parties involved, the fork has started to diverge somewhat from the upstream application; some things/features removed by MCP (Tab Containers, WebExtensions support, etc.) have stayed in Serpent, so I can definitely say they aren't the same thing

Hope it's all clear now!

Edited August 19, 2019 by VistaLover

[Dave-H]

So Serpent is to Basilisk what New Moon is to Pale Moon?

Anyway, I found the problem and fixed it!

The problem actually must have appeared a few weeks ago, although I didn't realise it was there for quite a while.
It must have dated from when I lost all the contents of my Windows XP partition (I won't bore you with the details!) and had to restore it from a backup.
I did the restore when I was in Windows 98, and I have always had Windows 98's file system set to produce eight character DOS 8.3 file names, that is to say it doesn't generate file names ending with ~1, ~2 etc. unless it absolutely has to. I always hated file names with tildes in them, thought them really ugly, so when I found I could prevent them years ago, I did!
What must have happened when I copied the backup across was that some of the files in the Firefox profile which had been generated while I was in Windows XP and therefore had tildes in their names, would have lost them. It was something in the storage>default folder that was the cause, which I determined by experimenting with the clean profile.
Strangely, just deleting and regenerating the <https+++web.skype.com> folder didn't fix the problem on the main profile, but it did on the clean profile (where it was the only entry in the storage>default folder). There must have been another in the main profile folder that was also causing an issue, but rather than trying to track it down (there may have been more than one of course) I simply deleted the default folder completely, and let Firefox rebuild it.
Everything is now fine (fingers crossed!)
I have run across this before occasionally, some programs just don't like their folders' DOS names being changed.
You wouldn't think this would be an issue at all with newer programs, but it does seem to be sometimes.
Anyway, all now OK, thanks everyone as always for their help with this!
Cheers, Dave.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Dave-H

[VistaLover]

20 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

So Serpent is to Basilisk what New Moon is to Pale Moon?

Bingo!

20 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

I found the problem and fixed it!

21 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

It was something in the storage>default folder that was the cause, which I determined by experimenting with the clean profile.
Strangely, just deleting and regenerating the <https+++web.skype.com> folder didn't fix the problem on the main profile, but it did on the clean profile (where it was the only entry in the storage>default folder). There must have been another in the main profile folder that was also causing an issue, but rather than trying to track it down (there may have been more than one of course) I simply deleted the default folder completely, and let Firefox rebuild it.

... Not to toot my own horn, of course, but I think I was the first (only?) person to have suggested the eventual connection of that directory to your reported issue; first here and then repeated here; so I feel slightly vindicated TBH .

Anyhow, all's well that ends well

Cheers

[Dave-H]

You did indeed mention the storage>default folder before (twice), I should have made the connection then with my backup restoration, but I didn't!
Being very pedantic, just deleting the "skype related folders" there would not actually have fixed the problem it seems, I tried that and it didn't work.
It only worked when I deleted the entire folder.
Anyway, as you say, all's well that ends well!
Cheers, Dave.

[Mathwiz]

4 hours ago, Dave-H said:

I have run across this before occasionally, some programs just don't like their folders' DOS names being changed.

Probably a registry thing: more often than I'd like, 8.3 file/path names are stored in the registry, instead of the long file/path name in quotes.

4 hours ago, Dave-H said:

So Serpent is to Basilisk what New Moon is to Pale Moon?

Correct; of course to add to the confusion, the Serpent .exe file is still named basilisk.exe (as the New Moon .exe file is named palemoon.exe). Even more confusing, clicking Help / About opens up a dialog entitled "About Serpent" but containing the text "Basilisk is community software released by the Pale Moon team and Mozilla developers."

[404notfound]

User agent override works, but I can only go as far as "Oops, it looks like something went wrong. Click OK to automatically reload Skype for Web." using v52FF-based Serpent.