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My Browser Builds (Part 2)


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On 11/17/2019 at 1:18 AM, roytam1 said:

merged, thanks.

@roytam1, @Mathwiz : How is that guaranteed to only touch Serpent 52's AOM (WebExtAM) but NOT NM28's AOM (TychoAM) ? On GitHub, in the PR's description, it says

Quote

New pref will be for both Serpent and New Moon.

But NM does not need that pref, OR the functionality of that PR :no: ... Also,

Quote

This is a more complex change than usual; please review my work for errors before merging!

Was that actually carefully examined (... I mean, the impact it has on the rest of the UXP-based apps) ? :dubbio:

If I am to voice my personal humble opinion, this whole issue was rushed... Also, I'm a firm believer in the adage: "Don't fix it if it ain't broken!" and, as of this writing, NOTHING IS BROKEN (yet) ...

To re-emphasise what I wrote in my previous posts:

1. Serpent 52.9.0/UXP and Serpent 55.0/Moebius both have a WebExAM type of AOM (St52 one derived from FxESR52, St55 one derived from Fx53.0a1 - probably not identical, but with very few differences between them...)
2. CTR v1.7.8 serves both above browsers perfectly, and AVN is offered as an option (OFF by default); also, CTR is incompatible with NM, so this leaves NM totally out of this discussion. 
3. CTR v1.7.8 won't break in St52 in the future, unless @roytam1 explicitly touches Serpent's AOM code (not likely)
4. The upstream team have implemented the TychoAM on both Pale Moon and Basilisk; I'd speculate that they are unlikely to change TychoAM any further, but you can never really be sure with them... In the event they do change it, it's probable (from my viewpoint) that those changes won't be applicable to St52's WebExAM and would have to be reverted by Roy (but somehow applied selectively to NM28?)...

The CTR v1.7.8.2019 branch was created by Aris with only classic Waterfox (Firefox 56 derived, but heavily forked...) and official Basilisk in mind, but after official Basilisk had changed to the TychoAM; if upstream implement changes to TychoAM, then CTR v1.7.8.2019 will have to accommodate, of course, but with code not relevant to Serpent's AOM... There's absolutely no compelling reason to install CTR v1.7.8.2019 on Serpent 52 currently (... just because you can is not a valid argument in my book ;) )...
5. If, despite all the above, one insists on installing CTR v1.7.8.2019 in St52, then, as posted, to get the AVN feature back (present in CTR 1.7.8) just co-install either of

Version Number in Add-ons Manager 1.10 (by magicp)
caa:addon/addonvernumber/versions?page=1#version-1.10

Add-ons Manager - Version Number 1.4 (by Aris)
caa:addon/amversionnumber/versions?page=1#version-1.4
NB: Latest v1.5 not compatible with Serpent (it installs, but BREAKS the AOM!)

Of course, you can install either one without any version of CTR, if you JUST want the feature of AVN in St52's AOM... Thus, no need at present to touch the UXP platform code...
In all fairness, MCP might in the future do something more radical in Basilisk's GUI, outside its TychoAM; if that big change lands in Serpent 52, then CTR 1.7.8 might get (partially) broken, and an update to a future version of 1.7.8.20xx might be needed; even then, CTR 1.7.8.20xx + one of the above extensions should suffice (but let's cross that bridge when we get to it...).

In closing, I thought I'd detail my personal, lukewarm, view on that PR, since it was I that instigated this chain of events (after pointing out to @Mathwiz the existence of CTR versions past 1.7.7.2 and providing a link to the Wf PR that implemented AVN natively in its - Fx56 based - AOM) ; and to clear out  any trace of a possible misunderstanding, this has nothing to do with the author of the PR; I highly appreciate all his efforts (coding and otherwise) and contributions offered to this great community here, not to mention the outstanding quality of his posts; plus, I sort of think of him as a good friend (especially since we've conversed in the past over PMs); so, @Mathwiz, nothing personal here :)

Best regards!

Edited by VistaLover
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Newmoon 27 SSE backed up prefs only AFTER patching.... was in Newmoon Productions-folder not Newmoon.
FF 45ESR SSE
UOC-Patch and Enforcer installed. Cannot install Browser- apps. running from folder.
Newmoon and FB working much smoother than with Firefox 45ESR. all advised addons installed. More later.
KM Goanna 76.2
Cannot patch /enforce in advised location since in dont see these: have prefs.js at different location. see further down.
"For K-Meleon users, check out Mathwiz's post below: .
One little correction: the UOC Patch for FF 38-based browsers also applies to the K-Meleon browser, but you have to extract it into a different folder. Instead of <browser folder>\defaults\pref, for K-Meleon you should extract the patch into <browser folder>\browser\defaults\preferences."
True for me: ....\browser folder>\browser\profiles\xyz.default\ 

-patching/enforcing done. see image at the end.
user.js backed up will be replaced. prefs.js sitting beside UOC-patch.
Browserinstaller not working. Only palemoon-loader is working. will leave older version alone if stable since have to adjust this or that. in about:config and settings.

1a). Firefox 45.9.17 Nightly: cannot find german languagefile. Installation possible?

1b) KMeleon: Already asked but no answer: How to find out which version is running? From which date?
2. I am about to install all these advised Addons:
NoScript (I recommend v2.6.9.32 or v2.6.9.27 for New Moon, and v2.9.0.9 for Firefox 45 ESR SSE) Using 5.1.8.4. maybe better using the advised ones or checking how they behave? how stable system is?
    Decentraleyes 1.4.2
    Bluhell Firewall 2.5.3
    UAControl 0.1.3.1.1 (To change the user agent on the fly, per website)
    uBlock Origin 1.10.0
    Vacuum Places Improved 1.2.1

- Bluhell Firewall 2.5.3 cannot be found only newer and older.
Can anyone provide it here pls?

will then add direkt-links of the other advised addons.
-------
3. Browserinstallation never worked here: maybe not enough space only 6gb left in systempartition. see image

 

BROWSERINSTALLER NOT WORKING.png

kmgonna_uoc_patch_enforcer.png

Edited by 3dreal
FF 45ESR -45.9.17 Nightly confusion. Which KMeleon version?
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On 11/16/2019 at 7:27 AM, roytam1 said:

- Issue #1259 - Part 1. Remove Adobe Primetime support from tree (0fb5f7a15)
- Issue #1259 - Part 2. Remove Adobe Primetime localization strings (c74e21f18)
- Issue #1259 - Part 3. Remove Adobe EME as a GMP source (0aa805d1f)
- Issue #1259 - Part 4. Remove Adobe EME from GMPUtils (a6441a2a8)
- Issue #1259 - Part 5. Remove migration path for Adobe GMP storage (484200b01)
- Issue #1259 - Part 6. Remobe Adobe EME from Basilisk frontend (400f0e2df)
- Issue #1259 - Part 7. Update tests for Adobe EME removal (c43b770a0)

Will this have some consequence on video playing? I checked my profile and found 3 folders:

gmp\WINNT_x86-msvc, empty;

gmp-eme-adobe, empty;

gmp-gmpopenh264\1.6, gmpopenh264.info, gmpopenh264.dll

Currently I have no problem playing videos I encounter.

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On 11/16/2019 at 10:52 PM, VistaLover said:

How is that guaranteed to only touch Serpent 52's AOM (WebExtAM) but NOT NM28's AOM (TychoAM) ?

Let's get this out of the way right off: I didn't touch the functionality of either AM! All I did was revert the Bugzilla "fix" in Serpent 52, restoring version numbers to its about:addons page. I didn't (and really, can't) turn Tycho into WebEx or vice versa. Serpent will continue to support the same limited WebEx add-ons; NM still will not. Nothing has changed except that one bit of information on about:addons. This is cosmetic surgery, not brain surgery ;)

But it did take me a while to figure out how UXP separates the two browsers. The UXP repo is a bit of a mess, since it has to support PM/NM, Serpent/Basilisk, and XULRunner (used by KM).

Turns out under folder toolkit/mozapps there are two subfolders, extensions and webextensions. Each of those folders has a subfolder named "content," which in turn has a file named "extensions.xml." Under "extensions," that file matches the "before" code in Bugzilla, but under "webextensions," it matches the "after" code (the version number has been moved to a tooltip). Clearly, Serpent uses the code in "webextensions," so I just added back the code that the Bugzilla "fix" stripped out, essentially reverting it. This is the same thing the Waterfox folks did to restore version numbers to that browser (yes, I checked that commit too), except in the Mozilla repo there is only an "extensions" folder, not a "webextensions" one.

Finally, I also added the one-line change from Waterfox that lets you turn the version numbers back off if you don't like them. I did that in both "webextensions" and "extensions," so that's the only change that will affect NM.

On 11/16/2019 at 10:52 PM, VistaLover said:

NM does not need that pref, OR the functionality of that PR

Well, I'm a stickler for consistency, and implementing that pref required only a one-line change, so I implemented it in both browsers. The only thing the new pref does is suppress version numbers if it's created in about:config and set to false. IOW, NM 28 will continue to work exactly as it does now, unless you decide you don't want it to!

On 11/16/2019 at 10:52 PM, VistaLover said:

Also,

Quote

This is a more complex change than usual; please review my work for errors before merging!

Was that actually carefully examined?

Well, I was as careful as I could manage to be in merging the code in. I'm confident I got the one-line change to check the new pref (in both NM and Serpent) right, but there were quite a lot of code that needed to be put back into Serpent's extensions.xml to revert the Bugzilla "fix." And I've done enough coding to know how easy it is to slip up and break something no matter how careful you are.

Unfortunately, I don't have a system capable of building these browsers myself. So I wrote that comment in the hope that @roytam1 will do a test build of both browsers, and revert my changes if there are any problems.

On 11/16/2019 at 10:52 PM, VistaLover said:

I'm a firm believer in the adage: "Don't fix it if it ain't broken!" and, as of this writing, NOTHING IS BROKEN (yet) ...

I don't see it that way. IMO something is broken in FF 40+, and in Serpent; it's just that, as a user of the CTR add-on, I never realized it because the add-on patches the bug! MCP and Waterfox both seem to agree with that assessment, as they both implemented the same fix. Unfortunately, in MCP's case, it was bundled with a much larger "fix" - removing all WE support - that actually did violate your adage, so the "cure" was worse than the disease. (Waterfox fixed it correctly, but of course it requires 64-bit Win 7; otherwise we'd all be using it and @roytam1 would have a lot less work to do every week!)

As for CTR, I think you're blowing the Tycho vs. WebEx thing way out of proportion. Like my own changes, CTR is cosmetic surgery, not brain surgery. Neither of us care what's going on deep inside the browser; we're both just changing how things look to the user. The engine underneath doesn't really matter, because it's not interfacing at that level. If it did, how could you expect CTR to work with browsers as different as Basilisk (Tycho AM) and Waterfox (modified WebEx AM) and yet not work with Serpent 52 (WebEx AM with UI modified as in Waterfox)?

On 11/16/2019 at 10:52 PM, VistaLover said:

If, despite all the above, one insists on installing CTR v1.7.8.2019 in St52, then, as posted, to get the AVN feature back (present in CTR 1.7.8) just co-install either of

Version Number in Add-ons Manager 1.10 (by magicp)
caa:addon/addonvernumber/versions?page=1#version-1.10

I think this is your best point. As it happens, I did look for add-ons besides CTR that would put the version numbers back. After all, not everyone wants to install CTR just to fix that one issue. I didn't have much luck, but then, I didn't look very hard, since it seemed fairly simple and more sensible to just fix the problem at its source.

At the end of the day, though, this is the same argument we've seen over other features that Mozilla or MCP have removed (container tabs come to mind): is it better to have the feature in the browser itself, or as an add-on of some sort? Usually, we've come down on the side of leaving the feature in the browser, and that's what I'm trying to do here.

 

On 11/17/2019 at 5:16 AM, luweitest said:

Will this have some consequence on video playing? I checked my profile and found 3 folders:

gmp\WINNT_x86-msvc, empty;

gmp-eme-adobe, empty;

gmp-gmpopenh264\1.6, gmpopenh264.info, gmpopenh264.dll

Currently I have no problem playing videos I encounter.

I'm not sure how I feel about removing Primetime support.

On one hand, @roytam1 already builds in support for playing .mp4 files, so you would think Primetime isn't really needed any more.

But OTOH, there have been reports of badly distorted audio when playing some .mp4 videos. Disabling the built-in support and installing Primetime fixes this issue, but that won't be possible with Primetime support removed.

The distorted audio issue seems to be rare, but it does still seem to exist. Has anyone encountered it lately? If so, could you post a link to a video exhibiting the problem?

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On 11/17/2019 at 5:16 AM, luweitest said:

Will this have some consequence on video playing? I checked my profile and found 3 folders:

gmp\WINNT_x86-msvc, empty;

gmp-eme-adobe, empty;

gmp-gmpopenh264\1.6, gmpopenh264.info, gmpopenh264.dll

Currently I have no problem playing videos I encounter.

can't tell as they're reverted in my tree.

 

On 11/17/2019 at 5:19 AM, Mathwiz said:

The UXP repo is a bit of a mess, since it has to support PM/NM, Serpent/Basilisk, and XULRunner (used by KM).

UXP XULRunner is not used by K-Meleon(I hope I can make changes to make KM use UXP, but for now KM uses Tycho.)

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5 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

The distorted audio issue seems to be rare, but it does still seem to exist. Has anyone encountered it lately? If so, could you post a link to a video exhibiting the problem?

Yes on occasion with UXP, with the most recent being Fox Video.

https://video.foxnews.com/playlist/featured-latest-news/

The problem for me is when the user agent is IE11 but changing it for that specific site resolves it. With Twitter I set it to the latest firefox ua and with Fox Video specifically I had to set static.foxnews.com.  

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@Matzwiz
> Unfortunately, I don't have a system capable of building these browsers myself.
> So I wrote that comment in the hope that @roytam1 will do a test build of both browsers,
> and revert my changes if there are any problems.

If it's only normal xml/html/js files, not CPP, you can most likely find and exchange those inside omni.ja
In K-Meleon works fine, just not sure if those other/newer browsers allow changing omni.ja too or if it breaks some signature or whatever.

 

Quote

Both privacy.resistFingerprinting and canvas.poisondata are not enough to get a good browser setting for privacy.


-----
Totally agree. We could have a whole separate thread on setting up browsers for privacy. The topic goes far beyond those two prefs.
Remember, this topic came up because the UOC Patch sets privacy.resistFingerprinting for performance reasons, but it comes at the cost of compatibility with Flash.


Yeah that's the crux, max privacy and max features are mutually exclusive. One just cannot block at the same time all sorts of privacy related functions and still have all features working, if those require some of those functions. It's a dilemma.
We understand this here but unfortunately, when looking around the web, most users still don't have the slightest clue! They keep thinking they could get a set of "flawless" privacy settings, then after adding some more magical prefs are soon disappointed to discover "bugs". They keep fiddling with new settings, only to fall into another trap shortly after. Never quite understanding it's simply not possible to block lots of stuff and still get everything working at the same time.
And of course by far the best privacy protection is to just block javascript completely (causing a few 'bugs' too as expected 8-)

Privacy settings are such a giant subject, a separate thread wouldn't be nearly enough. At least not for the endless jungle of Mozilla prefs, IIRC current browsers have over 3000 prefs already (yikes!) Makes probably a million possible combinations... many cross-influencing each other, and additionally users have different hardware and browsers, complicating things yet more... Can't imagine there's even just 1 expert left who still understands all of this with all cross-effects too.

There are already lots of projects out there trying to find at least a good compromise of permanent settings for most users, although not really possible, considering everyone has different needs too (needing stuff like facebook and gmail or not etc). But still better than nothing. Like the famous ghacks user.js, or german site privacy-handbuch.de (oh great, which now blocks old browsers too, no TLS1.2)

The only real solution for this dilemma is to toggle some settings only TEMPORARILY when needed. It keeps surprising me how few people even consider doing this. Although admittedly not quite easy, it requires some knowledge what those toggles are doing. Still it's the method that works best, and one of the reasons I absolutely love K-Meleon with my long row of toggle buttons, many self-created (mainly macros Blockeria and priv3buttons). Although I can only toggle a few prefs too, among the 3000, but as mentioned, blocking javascript (completely or partly) goes a very long way towards privacy already, and blocking 3rd party iframes etc. too.

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12 hours ago, roytam1 said:

can't tell as they're reverted in my tree.

Sorry I skimmed too quickly that I did not notice your reversion line!

On 11/16/2019 at 7:27 AM, roytam1 said:

My changes since my last build:

- Reverted commits related to Issue #1259

As to video playing, there is one site that do have problems, which I have filed a bugzilla https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1414792 ,but firefox devs think it's website's fault.

Edit: I rechecked the link in the bug and surprisingly find Serpent has fixed the bug! The site works now.  Thanks roytam!

Edited by luweitest
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Mathwiz wrote:

"The distorted audio issue seems to be rare, but it does still seem to exist. Has anyone encountered it lately? If so, could you post a link to a video exhibiting the problem?"

__________________________

I had these problems, the sound on Twitter videos was distorted as in slow motion.

This solution to this audio bug I've found, works here:

In about:config click New / string to create this user set new Preference name:

general.useragent.override.twitter.com

- then value in New Moon 28 is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:4.2) Goanna/4.0 Firefox/55.0 PaleMoon/28.6.0a1

That's the part that does the trick: "Firefox/55.0" but you can put between Firefox/38.0 to Firefox/69.0 ... or Firefox/99.0 or more...

The value in Serpent52/ Basilisk I have:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.9

The value in Serpent55/ Moebius I have:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.0 Firefox/55.0

...and set Firefox compatibility in Preferences/Advanced/General tab, or in about:config set to default true: general.useragent.compatMode.firefox

Link to test distorted Twitter video: https://twitter.com/josefkenny/status/974587426676117505

So now, the sound on Twitter videos is OK here, no more distorted audio in these browsers, solved.

Thank you!

 

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how can I solve this issue on Serpent 52 ?

the sound is distorted in Gecko mode then I activate the Firefox mode to get it right.

the problem is that in some streaming sites the video miniatures are not displayed with Firefox mode activated.

I can only see the title of videos but the small video miniatures are missing. :angry:

 

screenshot.3.thumb.png.4e3ae7d63ecdd99c5ce99694a5f1e48c.png

Edited by caliber
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Caliber said:
> how can I solve this issue on Serpent 52 ?
> the sound is distorted in Gecko mode then I activate the Firefox mode to get it right.
> the problem is that in some streaming sites the video miniatures are not displayed
> with Firefox mode activated.

Solution: set a DOMAIN-specific override UA for those sites.
The "compatModes" only affect the general, default useragent if I'm not mistaken.

There's an interesting new pref in your pic: "...compatMode.AppleWebKit"
Can't find it by a quick search, is there any info somewhere what it does, and in which browser/version?


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13 minutes ago, siria said:

Solution: set a DOMAIN-specific override UA for those sites.
The "compatModes" only affect the general, default useragent if I'm not mistaken.
 

it has no effect, the problem persists

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Caliber said:
> the problem is that in some streaming sites the video miniatures are not displayed
> with Firefox mode activated.

With site-UA:
> it has no effect, the problem persists

Most likely either:
- the page contains elements from other domains too, which must be tweaked too
- or you have a useragent addon installed which disabled the native UA-system, but this can easily be tested

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the gecko mode is active by default :rolleyes:

now I have both gecko and firefox set to false and have modified the UA individually for different sites and it seems to work.

but it's a pain of having to manually modify every site one by one...

 

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On 11/17/2019 at 9:29 AM, Mathwiz said:

The distorted audio issue seems to be rare, but it does still seem to exist. Has anyone encountered it lately? If so, could you post a link to a video exhibiting the problem?

It still affects all the videos on VOD.TVP.pl. Polish national TV provider, might be geofenced. It was reported first time over a year ago by @kitaro1, so won't likely change...

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