Browsing the web on 98/ME in 2019 and beyond

[loblo]

Checkout this topic for an Opera skin I made years ago that fixes the black borders issue (due to Opera using windows transparency which isn't available in 9x systems). It's for Opera 11 but works with 12.02 too although it's not overall quite as sleek as the original Opera 12 skin (as it's based on the Opera 11 skin). Link for most recent (and best) skin is on page 3. I use it myself (obviously).

 

 

 

Edited March 11, 2020 by loblo

[siria]

Bruninho said:
> Menus on SeaMonkey 2.6.1 are displayed and working as usual, what I am saying is
> that the font family used by the menus are wrong and different from the System wide
> font family used by Windows. I can read and use them normally, just the font family is wrong

My guess would be it's probably just a normal XUL css font-setting, like everything else in Firefox&Co GUI. Am definitely no expert for this, but to my knowledge most Mozilla browsers (except K-Meleon) use XUL for the GUI. That's by default completely independant from the system GUI, although it's possible to make the browser GUI inherit looks from the system GUI, for every single element (with {-moz-appearance: xxx}).
Styling xul elements with CSS works very much like styling html elements with CSS.

Somewhere inside the browser are the default styles defined (my guess would be: a file search for *.css inside the program folder, and if nothing found unzip omni.ja(r) and search again. Did this, just for curiosity, and files like browser.css or global.css look interesting, lots of definitions inside. I don't mean to change those, just could be helpful to get an overall idea and for figuring out element names)
And those default styles are overruled by styles in the active skin (theme?)
And those skin styles are overruled again when a user changes chrome styles in the profile.

_Howto_ customize the menu font: this file must exist and be edited manually:
../currentprofile/chrome/userChrome.css

By default gecko browsers come with a userChrome_example.css (just rename it), with such examples:
menupopup > * {
font-size: 15pt !important;
}
#urlbar {font-family: monospace !important;}

THIS is probably exactly what you need!
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Pane_and_menu_fonts
/* Global UI font */
* { font-size: 11pt !important;
font-family: Verdana !important;
}

Name of some main Firefox UI elements:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Chrome_element_names_and_IDs

How to inherit SYSTEM styles:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/appearance
wild guess on my part, only for 1 element type, not tested:
menupopup > * {-moz-appearance: menuitem;}

More examples with screenshots:
https://www.userchrome.org/what-is-userchrome-css.html

Yet more example links...
https://www.howtogeek.com/334716/how-to-customize-firefoxs-user-interface-with-userchrome.css/

[Bruninho]

I had to lower the image quality, but there you go, @siria: SeaMonkey's different UI font family and Opera's full black shadow.

I'll test @loblo's Opera suggestions as well as check how I can do yours for SeaMonkey. But first, I need to get Opera loading some sites without the required cipher suites (I heard something about 12.18 with 12.02 files?) and SeaMonkey to load the HTTPS sites.

[Bruninho]

Opera 12.02 has got another problem: When I try to load the main brazilian news site (https://www.globo.com) after it loads most of the site, Opera crashes and shows an error report dialog. I guess that it won't handle more modern sites, unlike SeaMonkey 2.49.5 does handle well on Windows 2000 Professional.

I'd check the font on SeaMonkey but since the browser is actually pretty useless without https sites, I will not try it out. I decided to remove both browsers and try to look elsewhere for other options. Let's see K-Meleon... although unfortunately the most stable option today is RetroZilla (and Netscape 9.0.0.6 with the NSS updates).

Edited March 12, 2020 by Bruninho

[siria]

Whoa... nice font! ;-) Wonder if perhaps it's looking for a non-existing one.

You can save the time of struggling with an Opera12.02+18 mix, it had turned out a dead end and misunderstanding a few months later.

Bruninho said:
> When I try to load the main brazilian news site (https://www.globo.com) after it
> loads most of the site, Opera crashes and shows an error report

Aargh, what's that stupid new fashion lately of all the time crashing instead of simply showing a cipher-error?! That's an absolute killer bug.

For continuing I'd recommand to first try roytam's fx36 (FF3.6) instead of KM, since Fx is already a complete build. KM will need some fiddling first. And it's engine is older too (FF3.5/3.6)

But hope you'll somehow manage to get current modern kernelex running younger browsers again.

[Bruninho]

27 minutes ago, siria said:

For continuing I'd recommand to first try roytam's fx36 (FF3.6) instead of KM, since Fx is already a complete build. KM will need some fiddling first. And it's engine is older too (FF3.5/3.6)

But hope you'll somehow manage to get current modern kernelex running younger browsers again.

Thanks. I am testing fx36. It's somewhat better but far from where I'd like to be. KM74 seems to be the most promising one but like you said it needs some tweaks first... Does KM have a dedicated forum topic for these tweaks? I don't like the theme anyway, but it seems to work better than other browsers that I've tried. Fx36 does have the correct system UI font but it still shows in some parts the "black cursor" thing as seen in SeaMonkey.

And I'm in the snapshot with KernelEx updates (without the post install enhancements though, I just installed the updates from the blog I mentioned before).

Meanwhile, I'm satisfied with the progress on my Windows 2000 VM. It runs SeaMonkey 2.49.5 modded to look like Netscape Navigator 4x. There's a new SeaMonkey release to try out there later.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Bruninho

[Goodmaneuver]

Opera should fix itself in the user profile see here https://msfn.org/board/topic/178283-how-you-really-browse-the-web-on-98me-in-2019/?do=findComment&comment=1177591. Once you have Opera running again then reboot and then revisit the news site. The fonts can be changed in Mozilla in Tools Options Content and you may need to update some fonts. I am using Cambria and also in View Character Encoding I am using Unicode (UTF-8).

 

[siria]

Bruninho said:
> Fx36 does have the correct system UI font but it still shows in
> some parts the "black cursor" thing as seen in SeaMonkey.

Do you think that could be the 3dot sign "..." ?
Guess this single-character is missing in older fonts.

[Bruninho]

38 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

Opera should fix itself in the user profile see here https://msfn.org/board/topic/178283-how-you-really-browse-the-web-on-98me-in-2019/?do=findComment&comment=1177591. Once you have Opera running again then reboot and then revisit the news site. The fonts can be changed in Mozilla in Tools Options Content and you may need to update some fonts. I am using Cambria and also in View Character Encoding I am using Unicode (UTF-8).

 

Hi, thanks! I will try again next night.

Although I am a spanish citizen, I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Covid-19 arrived here in Rio a few weeks earlier, causing some havoc and the country is about to take some measures against it. Brazil will probably block flights from and to Europe too. If the things in Rio gets worse, I may have to work from home if the boss tells us to. I’m currently still safe, but we never know. Stay safe, guys. Let’s hope we all can go through this incredible situation without any problem. Good night!

[Goodmaneuver]

On Thursday, 5 March 2020 at 1:17 AM, siria said:

There's only a bunch of new files to drop into windows/kernelex Folder? Is that really all, no registry mess to fear or anything landing in the normal Windows system folders (neither manually nor automagically)? Which hopefully means if anything goes wrong or doesn't work, I could simply copy back the previous files again in DOS?

Yes, if you have 4.5.2 installed all is needed is to replace the files. No need to use DOS, safe mode will do.

I have discovered that Opera when viewed in window mode then the view of MSFN forum is like 2019 when the window is 1024 pixels wide & 100% Opera page setting. If the window is increased a little then the posts widths 1/2. If Opera page is zoomed a little then the max window width can increase proportionately without the shrinking of posts.

Loblo, I have mentioned posting which is full width I did not answer as expected with this, posts on my system are as in this 1920 wide screen shot. As you can see I was not using your Opera skin I think yours might have an issue when Opera is used as a email client. I am using the 12.18 files in this build. The speed dial worked as expected with your skinning. Transparency can work you know. I have removed the program that this worked on and KEX had to be set to XP mode. I will find again and show you.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[loblo]

I don't use Opera Mail so didn't tweak this part of the skin. You should probably use my skin from the profile folder  if you use Opera Mail so it falls back to the default skin for the Mail elements.

 

As for your MSFN width issue, a CSS issue IMO, perhaps originating  from mixing 12.18 files if you did that.
 

[Goodmaneuver]

 

The skinning in the email works good except the section above the email is not working, black after reloading Opera. This header section is a general information section about the open email.

The MSFN width issue is a CSS mod done on the server I think done for older browsers. See here https://msfn.org/board/topic/179074-page-is-narrower-on-large-screen/?do=findComment&comment=1165897 Xper fixed it for Jody next few posts. Xper gave him an up-vote when Jody asked "Oh Yeah! Thanks Xper....lol. So it was an actual issue then?"

>>As for your MSFN width issue, a CSS issue IMO, perhaps originating from mixing 12.18 files if you did that.

I did not report here about it at first because I was using 12.02 - no 12.18 files when I first came across this width issue. When I went back to the 12.18 build then the same thing was happening. I do regret posting about a vertical shearing affect that only occurred on one build and only with ATI cards.
 

[Bruninho]

I decided to give another go with Opera 12.02. Something tells me that it's HTML5 support makes it a very good candidate. So far in my tests I have 3 things missing:

- Youtube support. Of course I doubt there will be any workaround to play them - unless I manage to set Opera to open the videos in VLC;
- Newer cipher suites. It's needed to visit forums like Vogons.org, I haven't tried to log in to MSFN forums yet. If only roytam1 worked his magic to update it, then Opera 12.02 could be a very, very good candidate for Windows 98 as of now, running on unmodified KernelEx 4.5.2.
- It does not support font icons like FontAwesome, instead it shows a small white box.

EDIT: I've installed three browsers: Opera 12.02, Retrozilla 2.2, Netscape Navigator 9 (with roytam1's NSS updates) to test and see how far I can improve them. I had to go back because newer versions of Firefox and SeaMonkey are very, very unstable and buggy no matter what version of KernelEx I am using. I have done so much testing on browsers for Win98 since december '19, and I've come down to these three options, not exactly very good options as of now.

K-Meleon 74 Goanna could also be an option, if it was a very stable browser without UI issues. Actually, I could install K-Meleon and try more, if only the UI wasn't THAT ugly. I can't understand why K-Meleon 1.6 (or 1.5.4?) has no UI problems but 74 does?

Edited March 14, 2020 by Bruninho

[siria]

YOUTUBE Win98:

Bruninho said:
> Youtube support. Of course I doubt there will be any workaround to play them -
> unless I manage to set Opera to open the videos in VLC

No idea about Opera, but in KM (or other browsers which can inject scripts) I'm just taking the easy way out:
first download the whole video, then play it from local disk with a mediaplayer (MPClassic). What I usually like better anyway in most cases, except if first wanting to take a peak inside without needing to downloading the whole giant file first. So far this live-streaming is a prob on my system. In general certainly possible too, tried it once with VLC and a mobile rtsp-link for a teeny 144px file, but all other attemps so far only ended with crashing my whole system! Am sure other people can do it, but for the time being have postponed all further own experiments, and just keep downloading the whole files.
And another catch of course:
downloading only works if the individual video and youtube allow it. Luckily so far almost all allow it, at least of those I'm interested in.

For downloading there are several options, either 3rd party websites creating the download links, example:
https://bitdownloader.com/download?video=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTbiedguhyvM
(scroll down to get all formats)
or using userscripts or addons or bookmarklets to create download links on the youtube page itself In newer browsers everyone seems crazy about ViewTube script, no idea if it works here too. Am just using smaller scripts in KM1.6, like this one here:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?9,142050
(attached in 2nd post, the zip contains a KM-macro but also a normal javascript file)
(Win98 visitors: if forum refuses access, just remove "Win98" from your useragent string)

[loblo]

Latest youtube-dl (not the exe but the bundle of python scripts) works fine with the Python 2.7 runtime for me. I made an entry for it in the StartMenuInternet  registry key so I have it in the Opera Open With menu. This lets me download pretty much any video from most sites from within Opera in just a couple of clicks.


 

Edited March 14, 2020 by loblo