Browsing the web on 98/ME in 2019 and beyond

[Bruninho]

5 minutes ago, siria said:

Bruninho said:
> Thanks for the tips about the userContent.css! I will check it out with RetroZilla.

And here you're already running into absolutely crucial css features MISSING in Firefox2.

1) "domain" probably OK?
@-moz-document domain(bleepingcomputer.com) {
header {position: relative !important;}
body div {background-color: yellow !important;}
}

2) but "url-prefix" needs min FF3:
@-moz-document url-prefix(http://example.com/zzzz/yyy) {

3) and "regexp" needs min FF6 acc moz-dev:
@-moz-document regexp("https:.*") {

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@document
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/At-rule

also stuff like css selector ":not()", needs min FF3.5

Yikes. Thanks for the advice.

I have some "free time" at work recently since I finished the current project - now on standby waiting for the testing group to return with the bugs they may find in it... meanwhile I fired up my VM to try some things again. Let's see Firefox...

[siria]

@Bruninho
...and if using advanced KernelEx from that blog you linked, still with the typo in update.bat (since 2015?)
compare the files in the downloaded zip with those in your c:/windows/KernelEx

- If you find "ApiLog.dll" and "Verify.dll", delete those
- Check if properly copied "ApiLog.exe" and "Verify.exe", with latest dates

Edited March 17, 2020 by siria

[Bruninho]

1 hour ago, siria said:

@Bruninho
...and if using advanced KernelEx from that blog you linked, still with the typo in update.bat (since 2015?)
compare the files in the downloaded zip with those in your c:/windows/KernelEx

- If you find "ApiLog.dll" and "Verify.dll", delete those
- Check if properly copied "ApiLog.exe" and "Verify.exe", with latest dates

I unzipped the download and checked the files... there is no "ApiLog.dll" and "Verify.dll" in it.

Does the update.bat typo affects the install? It does say 4.5.2015 btw...

 

[siria]

No the zip does not contain those files, but if you run update. bat (if I read it correctly?) it copies the 2 exe files from the zip to your c:/Windows/KernelEx folder renamed to dll. That's why I meant to check inside this folder. This renaming is probably just a typo. Except if that was really done intentionally, but doesn't seem so since the blog maintainer replied something like 'oops' ;-)

Edited March 17, 2020 by siria

[Bruninho]

there is no apilog.dll or .exe, but there is apihook.dll on install folder

Edited March 17, 2020 by Bruninho

[jumper]

Logged in and posting this with Opera 9.26, no JS. Most MSFN.org pages look pretty good in Author mode, but some pages (including page 17 of this topic) don't display all the way to the bottom (and reply box) unless in User mode (page style sheet disabled)....

[Bruninho]

Just a small "useless" update. I'm finally working from home remotely as of today for the next 3 days before my vacations start. I will have some time to fiddle with these things with my VM soon. I was in the process of updating KernelEx when I was told to do so.

[Bruninho]

21 minutes ago, jumper said:

Logged in and posting this with Opera 9.26, no JS. Most MSFN.org pages look pretty good in Author mode, but some pages (including page 17 of this topic) don't display all the way to the bottom (and reply box) unless in User mode (page style sheet disabled)....

Yeah, even with 12.02 it does show quite fine, with a few things not well rendered here and there.

The most confusing thing are the icons - they are not rendered because we know why. It can't render the font used for these icons.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Bruninho

[loblo]

For MSFN icons issues with Opera:

Disable webfonts in opera:config and download these font: https://msfn.org/board/applications/core/interface/font/fontawesome-webfont.ttf and https://msfn.org/board/applications/core/interface/font/icomoon.ttf and put them in your font folder. Restart Opera.

A relevant old topic: https://msfn.org/board/topic/173621-strange-fonts-or-characters-opera-1202/#comments

[Goodmaneuver]

Loblo, It looks like you probably correct about transparency. The program was nVienna Sidebar which looked transparent on a black background but was only blackish. The strange gliphs are Marlett fonts. Like Jaclaz said, if you copy the symbols into notepad or the like it will display correct gliphs/text.

Jumper is there a need for Opera 9.26 and why have JavaScript turned off.
Destro's topic that was lost topic/178280-youtube-with-vlc/

Edited March 18, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[loblo]

Check this out Goodmaneuver: https://www.cylog.org/sourcecode/transparent.jsp

[Goodmaneuver]

Double confirms your statement before; transparency alpha channel not built into Win98/ME.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[siria]

(slightly offtopic)
Speaking of transparency, there's an amazing tiny image editor named Pixelformer, which can show bitmaps with partial transparency in Win98. For example the toolbar buttons of the Privacy Bar in K-Meleon, in default skin AuraAlpha, look out-of-box just black-on-black in Win98. That's due to the way partial transparency was stored in privcold+privhot.bmp. Even in other image editors it's near impossible to see readable text on transparent background, only Pixelformer can do it!
At first look it blew me away, an image editor with a download size of 0.9MB, unzipped still just 2.6MB, superfast - but with layers and all sorts of other advanced features! At second and third look, sadly, found it's only (??) silver not gold, too many important features still missing. But nonetheless, highly recommand to grab it while still available. Have downloaded it 2009, now checked and luckily the homepage is still there. And still last version 0963RC3, stable free beta version.
It's a setup file, but the exe can simply be unzipped manually, no installation needed.
And the page claims it needs min XP, but seems to work just as well in Win98 (my KernelEx compat is "Windows 98 SE")
http://www.qualibyte.com/pixelformer/

[loblo]

It's true that not many image editors support RGBA in bitmaps whereas it's more widely supported in PNG but Pixelformer isn't the only one to run on 9X OSes as, for example, Pixbuilder Studio and Greenfish Icon Editor Pro support alpha channels in bitmap files too.

[Bruninho]

I'm just done with the (bad) browsing options available for Windows 98 even with KernelEx (and its attempts to update). I've tried many, many times the same things. I'll just keep the Windows 98 VM around for a while with standard KernelEx 4.5.2 and Netscape 9, in case there is something new to try out, and I will just stick with the Windows 2000 VM for now.