Browsing the web on 98/ME in 2019 and beyond

[Bruninho]

@Goodmaneuver:  The problem with Opera 12.02 is the TLS and ciphers, they don't let me open certain websites or forums so this one is a no-no for me. Cometbird 9 is similar to Firefox 9.0.1, so the HTML5 support and things like CSS3, for example Flexbox (widely used in many sites today) is not present there. They are on SM 2.32. Plus, Fx higher than 3.6.28 crashes a lot more often for me and with JS on.

I cannot load dailymotion and neither Vimeo, on both JS and non-JS scenarios with my browsers (SM 2.32 and KM75RC3).

All these sites work on SM 2.49.5 and Windows 2000 SP4  + BWC, with JS enabled, so I know they can render somehow. Even Youtube is working for me there.

K-Meleon 75RC3 has the same problems and crashes a lot more often than SM. Actually, the annoying problem I have with the profiles not allowing me to use the address bar when I re-run the browsers, happens on all mozilla-based browsers except Netscape 9.0.0.6 and Firefox 3.6.28 - which is nothing actually amazing to use for me, compared to Netscape 9.0.0.6 (yes, I know this one is based on Fx 2.x).

At the moment, I'd stick with Netscape 9.0.0.6 and roytam1's NSS update, since I can load both forums and a few sites on it although without correct rendering and without videos. At least it can see the gmail with the low bandwidth layout selected.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Bruninho

[loblo]

@Goodmaneuver: I use the default theme I think (not sure what this IPS is and where to set it) and have no width issue but have these blue bars between posts indeed. Sometimes the reply widget works and sometimes it doesn't, I have no clue why and have to use Firefox instead of Opera to make/answer posts when it doesn't.
 

[Goodmaneuver]

@Bruninho:

SM 2.49.5 will have the later HTML support and YouTube will send the info for the later HTML style. CSS3 is not a problem as it has been around for a long time. See DailyMotion or Veoh.com does not work as it it sending the later HTML info. I do not worry about accessing all sites that much if you want you could use a proxy. Often they are not using high encryption but are using TLS3.

@Loblo:

I wanted to confirm as Siria thought you might be using IPS - Theme. There is no need to change to IPS but if you enter your MSFN profile right down the bottom there is Theme with a down arrow. Click on the arrow - default or IPS. If you can use FireFox to post then you are doing real good in that regard as well.

@cc333:

Transparency effects work in browser pages and games it's just ME/98 has not got the transparency bit function in GDI32.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Bruninho]

But my problem is not TLS. I do not visit dailymotion and neither Veoh frequently, so pardon for my honesty, but I don’t actually care about these; I care about the pages rendering perfectly, cuz I am a web designer and my OCD would fire to big figures when I see a badly rendered page. When I saw the pages almost perfect in SM 2.32 and W98, I could say I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Some required JS to render the images (called lazy loading method). But nonetheless, its rendering ok.

The only pages giving me a TLS problem are both forums (MSFN and VOGONS). I can work around these with tweaks, except for Opera 12 where it does not have the necessary cipher suites.

All others are either HTML/CSS rendering or Javascript issues. I understand what youtube does. I don’t think its a TLS problem for the two sites you mentioned, they seem to rely on jQuery or other JS framework to render their pages (like Vue.js or React, for example). Actually, you can write an entire site just with one of these JS frameworks and I must admit its a technique I do not master and neither want to, because I do not see the future for it & I am more into design than programming. For example, I am one of those who want jQuery dead, because it was created to give unsupported features to browsers when they didn’t support them. Now that they all support, jQuery shouldn’t be used anymore but some devs are too lazy to (re)learn vanilla JS or find it easier to use a framework to build an entire portal instead of well written, semantic HTML code.

If it were a TLS problem I’d get a message from the browser saying that.

Plus, TLS3 is still not an official thing yet - just a beta compulsory use. Most sites still support TLS1.2, if not all of them.

With SM 2.94.5 and Windows 2000 SP4 “on steroids”, I have perfectly rendered sites, all the whistles and bells of modern web. So it is my benchmark for what I believe we can achieve on W98, and I now believe because we now managed to have perfectly rendered pages on it, although without JS. Now all we need is someone to step on it and help us fixing these issues.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Bruninho

[Goodmaneuver]

There is no encryption method problem with DailyMotion or Veoh the pages download fully. If you try them with SM 2.32 they will look the same as Mozilla 9. If you use a user agent of FireFox 45 in Mozilla 9 then YouTube will send back the shorthand version of data and the page will render like DailyMotion or Veoh. There should not be a TLS error with MSFN nor Vogans but Vogans used PHP which is a bit different though is said to be easier to learn/program. No PHP embedded in HTML is popular. Python is said to be easier to learn/program. If not setup properly Vogans can throw an error in Opera 12.02. My Opera actually throws a error message accusing kernl386.exe but I do not think that would be the problem. It works OK in Mozilla 9. If there is an encryption problem including wrong version of TLS there would be no handshaking, no displaying of page but there would be an encryption error message. If the browser does not know TLS 1.3 then more than likely there would be no talk of it in the message. 2K had service packs which updated the kernel and many other modules. It is not like 98/ME. The servers had a fairly easy conversion of HTML5 to HTML4 for older browsers, (things may have progressed beyond this though now) if there is a way to display websites like Veoh for example with an older browser then that would be great.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Goodmaneuver
Was thinking the wrong language see strikethrough

[Bruninho]

Truth be told, I've tried several versions of Firefox on Windows 98. None rendered the forums any close to the real thing. I'll make some screenshots with Safari 13.1 under macOS Catalina VS SeaMonkey 2.32 under Windows 98 and side by side (which is possible thanks to vmware) so you can see how well they render most websites I visit and dump them into a compressed zip file for easier sharing. I could even add Firefox 9 but I know it will not render my favorite websites any better, the rendering is terrible to be good enough.

The zip file will contain the following battles:

Safari 13.1 vs CometBird 9.0.1
Safari 13.1 vs Netscape 9.0.0.6 (plus roytam1's cipher and TLS updates)
Safari 13.1 vs K-Meleon 75 RC3 (roytam1's)
Safari 13.1 vs SeaMonkey 2.32

EDIT: Here it is:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/v5ygl4nxx1ciqm2/BrowserBattle.zip/file

Edited April 10, 2020 by Bruninho

[Wunderbar98]

Hi Bruninho. Everyone can do as they like, personally i don't see the point in downloading a YouTube video via MAC, then playing the MP4 in a Windows 98 VM. As far as i know, my 9xweb script is presently the only way to download YouTube content natively in Windows 98. It doesn't fetch all videos, such as Vevo music videos, but works for most videos to research old OS and games.

[Goodmaneuver]

@Bruninho:

You have a good point about this. It is surprising how Netscape performs but can the page be zoomed out or is it just cut away. Did you try the Veoh or DailyMotion sites with the comparison as this might be the future for sites that are updated? I think MSN has at least 4 levels of browser compatibility. IE6 style, FireFox 16 style, FireFox 31 and FireFox 49 style (as examples only). Web pages displayed differently in the past with different browsers, as long as they were fully functional and displayed what was supposed to then that was OK. There is something about certain sites like yours that is intriguing. It is to remember though SeaMonkey 2.32 is the latest browser technology in the test, FF35, next was K-Meleon 75, FF31.

Edited April 13, 2020 by Goodmaneuver
MSN has more browser campatibity styles

[Bruninho]

1 hour ago, Goodmaneuver said:

@Bruninho:

You have a good point about this. It is surprising how Netscape performs but can the page be zoomed out or is it just cut away. Did you try the Veoh or DailyMotion sites with the comparison as this might be the future for sites that are updated? I think MSN has three levels of browser compatibility. IE6 style, FireFox 31 style and FireFox 45 style (as examples only). Web pages displayed differently in the past with different browsers, as long as they were fully functional and displayed what was supposed to then that was OK. There is something about certain sites like yours that is intriguing though as you have shown.

I did not zoomed them. They are shown as they were straight after page load. None of them were cut really - Itau (the orange one) was the only one I scrolled down on both competing browsers because currently they probably have a problem with loading the front page background.

Dailymotion and Veoh or Vimeo, I did not want to try out because last night I tried them, and they were blank, completely white to me with no content. Like I said, they can’t be the future because they seem to be using JS frameworks (remember, JS was disabled) such as Vue or React to draw the site, hence why I think they render nothing to me when JS is disabled.

I’ve seen projects and portals - I have been involved in one similar project - where all the rendering was made by Angular.js framework so this can be the case here. I see no future for JS frameworks because they bring back the same problems JS and jQuery attempted to solve in the beginning when standards and web browsers weren’t on the same level.

[Bruninho]

2 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

Hi Bruninho. Everyone can do as they like, personally i don't see the point in downloading a YouTube video via MAC, then playing the MP4 in a Windows 98 VM. As far as i know, my 9xweb script is presently the only way to download YouTube content natively in Windows 98. It doesn't fetch all videos, such as Vevo music videos, but works for most videos to research old OS and games.

Yeah, but I didn’t want to prove a point there or something like that. All I wanted to do with this method was check if I was able to play mp4 videos, because browser tests said I wasnt or didnt have the required codec. VLC played the video, so the codecs are there. Probably the correct plugins for the browsers aren’t there.

But before I tried to use some greasemonkey scripts on K-Meleon 75RC3, to see if viewtube would work. No dice.

@Goodmaneuver: I forgot to mention, one of the screenshots show the desktop. That's because the browser in question crashed to the desktop when attempting to load the same page.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Bruninho

[Goodmaneuver]

I realize you had not zoomed the pages but if the web page is only partially displayed then that would be useless unless the page could be zoomed out to see the rest of the web page. For SeaMonkey 2.32 if the profile browser cache was deleted on exit instead of all the profile being deleted would that work? I think as I said those sites like Veoh need FF45 technology for instance. I will try disabling Javascript and try your website later.

[siria]

Have sadly lost track again, so much precious info here but all faaar too much to memorize and over my head anyway, just want to mention
YOUTUBE:
there's also a youtube downloader script that works in K-Meleon, also in Win98:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?9,142050

The old version was the great old userscript by Gantt, for all sorts of browsers. Over time it got a few little update-fixes by John after youtube changed their code, and after their last major rewrite he decided to simplify the whole thing to keep only the most important functions, matching his own needs. And also to get the file size small enough to work easier in old KM-versions too.
This current downloader script also still works nicely in my old KM1.6 (like FF3.5)
The script itself is plain javascript and surely works in other browsers too, just depending on injection methods (addons?) the header stuff may need a check again.

Additionally am experimenting with my very own script, started from scratch, which now downloads from all YT layout versions incl. mobile, showing all available quality links (my impression, not fully sure). Looks like only the initial element IDs are different but the rest of the downloader code can remain the same for all layouts. Downloading works fine, but currently on backburner as unfinished early beta, so no upload planned in the near future (not that anyone would need this anyway)

What I had NOT realized until just recently though, until Grey_rat (IIRC) here posted some useragent examples, was that the MOBILE layout delivers different file versions too, depending on UA! My usual old UA had only delivered rtsp:// links, so was very happy to learn that now tiny 3gp and 144-mp4 versions are available again too, just depending on UA. Thanks :-)

---

What's confusing me a bit now is to read about old K-Meleon75RC3. IIRC that's a rather old dev KM version by Dorian, pure gecko at the time. Did roytam post some update for it too?? Or if not, wondering why using a prelim RC3 version, and not the stable version released a bit later. Well possible this was explained here before, have lost a bit track as mentioned ;-)

[Bruninho]

@Goodmaneuver: Just FYI, Netscape tests were run with JS enabled. FF45esr will not install here.

@siria: I tried these scripts, but they never worked for me on any browser I have installed. The KM75RC3 mentioned here is another version which Roytam1 asked us to test a few pages ago. Apparently he did a modified version.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Bruninho

[Bruninho]

Just did another test, highest Firefox I can run (without JS) was 35.0. Extremely slow, and suffers from the same profile problem as SM.

[Goodmaneuver]

It really makes a difference to use Pncrt as Msvcrt in the CometBird folder so I have made Msvcp60 use Msvcr70 then when a media player is called to open there is no problem with Msvcp60. Msscript.ocx can have an affect on the web page layout slightly.

Siria:

I appreciate your work and it would be great if you shared your YouTube downloader script when ready.

Bruninho:

CometBird 9 says transferring data continuously from your website. Turning of JavaScript did not change anything.