My Browser Builds (Part 3)

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Have you tried any of the 360Chrome releases?

 

Here is the download link to my v12  --  https://www.dropbox.com/s/2r7r53j4i55iuyw/360Chrome%2012.0.1247.zip

Here is the download link to my v13rev3  --  https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyyimm3h58r3963/360Chrome%202206%20rebuild%203%20-%20unran%20-%20MSFN.zip

 

Humming Owl's releases  --  https://msfn.org/board/topic/182876-360-extreme-explorer-modified-version/

 

 

 

My v12 has been rock-solid for YouTube.

I have TRIED to crash it by loading twenty YouTube videos with all twenty playing 720 and with all twenty having audio on.

I have not been able to crash v12 no matter how hard I try.

Most tests are performed in XP x64 with 16MB RAM but I have also tested in XP x86 with 4MB RAM with twelve YouTube videos.

[XP2003]

360Chrome v12 seem to have the best performance so far, probably also due to YouTube being fully optimized for Chromium-based browsers . I think a big bottleneck is my CPU which is not powerful at all. I have a secondhand i5 (from 2010-2011ish) laptop laying around, but for some reason I can't seem to get virtualization working. It's activated in the BIOS but Windows 10 keeps saying it isn't. Probably since Windows 10 is great at making my life difficult, which triggered my nostalgia to Windows XP to begin with. Every single time I booted up there were updates, and after that, more updates. Most of them with 'so called useful' functionality which I think is just more bloat. I just love things that work, and stay the same unless there is actual useful functionality added, which seems to be rarely the case

I will be switching between the Humming Owl and ArcticFoxie releases, curious to see what the differences are!

[j7n]

8 hours ago, XP2003 said:

Which browser is the best option to view YouTube (480p or lower resolution) within a VM?

Intel Celeron N3350 (870MB RAM available for VM)

 

With a very limited system you can't play video in a browser. The HTML and JavaScript take too much processing power.

You need to use a video player which can extract the video, and then switch to a blank tab in the browser. Use SMPlayer+Youtube-DL+old-MPV or use 3DYD Youtube Source with a DirectShow player. The startup times are long with these programs because they will download the video beforehand. And you need to update or reconfigure them when YouTube changes its formats. Add the browser extension Open With by Geoff Lankow to Firefox, to quickly call up a media player for a link.

In a virtual machine you probably don't have hardware access for output like OpenGL or Overlay Mixer, which further decreases performance. Players may outright crash if they don't see a normal GPU. In SMPlayer there are several output options possible.

[roytam1]

Advance Notice: due to lack of updates in upstream, there will be no UXP based builds tomorrow.

[cmccaff1]

@XP2003 - Having tried all of the browsers that you mentioned, I believe they are all good for different things.
You just have to be aware of the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses of their respective engines.
For example, NM27 can't do everything that 28 can, but NM27 is still a fantastic browser, and more than enough for surfing most sites to this day (it helps if you turn JavaScript off when & where possible, because a lot of modern sites can tax its aging JS engine [which was solid back in the day and is STILL good if you visit sites with well-coded JS, though those are now few and far between]).
What's important is having something that works for your needs, and experimentation is not only useful but encouraged.

Roy's SSE builds are optimized for processors that support SSE but which do not have SSE2 (for example, Pentium III, PIII-derived Celeron, and Athlon XP).
Of course, you can still run an SSE build on a modern processor and it will work absolutely fine, but unless an SSE build is as high as you can go (I think it's the upper limit for his periodic Firefox 45ESR builds), you're better off using the Win32 builds because those are better optimized for SSE2+ capable processors.
The IA32 builds should be able to run theoretically on anything as low as a 386, but for XP the minimum is a pre-MMX Pentium (so that is as low as you can go for testing purposes).

@ArcticFoxie - I am typing this from your 360v12 build...I'm VERY impressed with your efforts here. You've clearly put a lot of effort into tweaking this for the best possible performance. I only had to change a few things in the main settings (I didn't touch the deeper stuff), more out of personal preference (nitpicks) than anything else. This is running like a champ, and is incredibly stable. Not one crash so far, and it's quite a bit faster than v13 (the speed difference is especially noticeable on my old GX620 with a 2.8GHz Pentium D and 2GB GTX 750 Ti [which REALLY helps]). In fact, I'm now pairing it with the latest NM28 build (as it uses pretty much the same engine as Serpent52 with a more old-school interface, and because I don't really use WebRTC or any of the other 'modern' features in Serpent). Kudos to you--this is absolutely solid! For now, your v12 has dethroned any version of v13 as my secondary browser.

@roytam1 - Thank you for the update! Even when there are no UXP updates, I'm always happy to see all of the binaries you share.

[nicolaasjan]

13 hours ago, j7n said:

You need to use a video player which can extract the video, and then switch to a blank tab in the browser. Use SMPlayer+Youtube-DL+old-MPV or use 3DYD Youtube Source with a DirectShow player. The startup times are long with these programs because they will download the video beforehand. And you need to update or reconfigure them when YouTube changes its formats. Add the browser extension Open With by Geoff Lankow to Firefox, to quickly call up a media player for a link.

+1

I play video's through MPV as well (also with the help of "Open With"), but haven't been able to find a version of MPV that works in my XP Virtual Machine...

Do I have to look here:

https://www.videohelp.com/software/mpv-media-player/old-versions ?

And if so, which version works?

[Edit]

Version mpv-i686-20151029 is supposed to be the latest working on XP, but did absolutely nothing when attempting to start...

Edited August 27, 2021 by nicolaasjan

[j7n]

The last version of MPV that works  is dated 2015-10-29. I don't remember where I obtained it from.

http://j7n.sytes.net/temp/mpv-i686-20151029.7z

I experienced slow startup with this program. It had something to do with its fonts.conf not existing in the expected directory.

[nicolaasjan]

23 minutes ago, j7n said:

The last version of MPV that works  is dated 2015-10-29. I don't remember where I obtained it from.

Yeah, I got it from:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160610143950/https://mpv.srsfckn.biz/

Didn't work here at all (see edit above).

[Edit]

I could open a mp4 video, but got only sound and no interface.

Are there maybe codecs I need?

Edited August 27, 2021 by nicolaasjan

[j7n]

Maybe it doesn't work inside a virtual machine because there isn't a proper OpenGL video driver. It can be tough to find out the cause. See what files it loads before it fails using FileMon. It should show a black window with a logo and accept files with drag and drop.

On a real (not virtual), slow computer MPC-HC would be better than Linux players because MPC-HC can take advantage of hardware acceleration, and those cannot.

[RainyShadow]

19 minutes ago, j7n said:

Maybe it doesn't work inside a virtual machine because there isn't a proper OpenGL video driver.

https://mpv.io/manual/stable/#video-output-drivers

Maybe direct3d or sdl would work? Or tctc, lol.

[nicolaasjan]

50 minutes ago, j7n said:

Maybe it doesn't work inside a virtual machine because there isn't a proper OpenGL video driver. It can be tough to find out the cause. See what files it loads before it fails using FileMon. It should show a black window with a logo and accept files with drag and drop.

Didn't see anything special in FileMon (only "SUCCESS").

Quote

On a real (not virtual), slow computer MPC-HC would be better than Linux players because MPC-HC can take advantage of hardware acceleration, and those cannot.

MPV has hardware acceleration on Linux as well here (only h264):

mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfhiLIktIzA
 (+) Video --vid=1 (*) (h264 1920x1080 60.000fps)
 (+) Audio --aid=1 --alang=eng (*) (aac 2ch 44100Hz)
     Subs  --sid=1 --slang=en 'vtt' (webvtt) (external)
     Subs  --sid=2 --slang=pt 'vtt' (webvtt) (external)
Cannot load libcuda.so.1
Using hardware decoding (vaapi).
AO: [pulse] 44100Hz stereo 2ch float
VO: [gpu] 1920x1080 vaapi[nv12]

You have to turn on hardware acceleration in the config (hwdec=auto).

 

I think I have to give up trying to get MPV working properly in this VM, haha.

(it's working in a Vista and Windows 7 VM though)
 

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by nicolaasjan

[XP2003]

Thanks all for the great input - much appreciated!

I am having a good experience with VLC, very happy to find out they are still supporting XP as well!

After opening VLC, by clicking Media > Open Network Stream, it is possible to put in a Youtube link. Playback is very smooth

Edit: I am able to run 720p on the Celeron without any big frame drops, within a VM environment. Audio and video both work and jumping to different parts in the video goes quick as well
 

Edited August 27, 2021 by XP2003

[IXOYE]

Hi

1 hour ago, nicolaasjan said:

Yeah, I got it from:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160610143950/https://mpv.srsfckn.biz/

Didn't work here at all (see edit above).

[Edit]

I could open a mp4 video, but got only sound and no interface.

Are there maybe codecs I need?

You can get the latest version of mpv for XP from the mpv server,but the 2015-10-29 version does not show up immediately with "Open with" the previous version of 2015-09-23 starts immediately and works better at this level, but I prefer to use with Newmoon 27-28 and Serpent 52-55 "mpv-youtube-dl-binding" which is much lighter than "Open with". because the xpi only works for MPV and is less heavy for newmoon 27 .

for xp compatible video players the choice is important here
https://codecpack.co/

origin servers

xp 32: http://mpv.srsfckn.biz/mpv-i686-20150923.7z

xp 64: http://mpv.srsfckn.biz/mpv-x86_64-20150923.7z

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by IXOYE

[nicolaasjan]

1 hour ago, IXOYE said:

You can get the latest version of mpv for XP from the mpv server,but the 2015-10-29 version does not show up immediately with "Open with" the previous version of 2015-09-23 starts immediately and works better at this level, but I prefer to use with Newmoon 27-28 and Serpent 52-55 "mpv-youtube-dl-binding" which is much lighter than "Open with". because the xpi only works for MPV and is less heavy for newmoon 27 .

2015-09-23 did absolutely nothing (not even audio played).

Quote

for xp compatible video players the choice is important here
https://codecpack.co/

You mean I have to install a codec pack from there and if so, which one should I install?

[j7n]

I got the opposite experience with the most recent VLC. It crashed when loading regular local files without giving me a reason or a log. I got it in attempt to play MPD (dash) streams from the BBC, but it didn't even do that. That's a common issue with multiplatform software: it doesn't work smooth on windows and you have to research the command-line and cfg files.

Open With is more flexible: you can send a link to multiple media players as well as other browsers when it doesn't work in our primary browser.