My Browser Builds (Part 3)

[Sparrow]

Hi,

First of all a big thank you to roytam1 for all the hard work. Much appreciated.

I'm still on Windows XP and using Serpent UXP 52.

I've come across a website that makes Serpent UXP crash. It's www.britishgas.co.uk

I also tried a fresh install of Serpent UXP 55 and when I went to that page, my whole computer crashed with a BSOD - not seen in a long time.

The versions I used are

basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20211113-f94c0da-uxp-eedc02ee9-xpmod.7z

and

basilisk55-win32-git-20211106-fc7f3915a-xpmod.7z

So are there any settings I can change to get the website to work, or does Serpent UXP need looking at?

[XPerceniol]

6 hours ago, Sparrow said:

Hi,

First of all a big thank you to roytam1 for all the hard work. Much appreciated.

I'm still on Windows XP and using Serpent UXP 52.

I've come across a website that makes Serpent UXP crash. It's www.britishgas.co.uk

I also tried a fresh install of Serpent UXP 55 and when I went to that page, my whole computer crashed with a BSOD - not seen in a long time.

The versions I used are

basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20211113-f94c0da-uxp-eedc02ee9-xpmod.7z

and

basilisk55-win32-git-20211106-fc7f3915a-xpmod.7z

So are there any settings I can change to get the website to work, or does Serpent UXP need looking at?

Hi there ...

On build: 20211110012942 (I wound up reverting back as I found the newest build a bit slower)

I get 2 crashes [exception breakpoint reached] (basilisk.exe - Application Error ... and .. nsAppShell:EventWindow - Application Error)

The browser doesn't crash completely only that tab and I can continue.

I'm not sure why, but, for me, 55 doesn't crash my computer (just dug it up to test for you) but won't load at all and times out. I no longer use FF52.9.1 or New Moon, I've removed them and only Serpent 52 will remain. Of course, on others browsers, such as chrome 360 - it will load fine.

The fact that you wind up with a BSOD makes me wonder if you have malware.

Hope somebody else has some idea.

Edited December 6, 2021 by XPerceniol

[j7n]

This website causes the browser to allocate huge amount of memory. When it reaches about 1.5 GB, New Moon 28 crashes, Serpent starts to release memory, then allocates it again. The website does not become usable. It shouldn't be possible for an application to to crash the system to a BSOD. Maybe you have some faulty configuration in the OS that manifests when too much RAM is used.

[roytam1]

8 hours ago, Sparrow said:

Hi,

First of all a big thank you to roytam1 for all the hard work. Much appreciated.

I'm still on Windows XP and using Serpent UXP 52.

I've come across a website that makes Serpent UXP crash. It's www.britishgas.co.uk

I also tried a fresh install of Serpent UXP 55 and when I went to that page, my whole computer crashed with a BSOD - not seen in a long time.

The versions I used are

basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20211113-f94c0da-uxp-eedc02ee9-xpmod.7z

and

basilisk55-win32-git-20211106-fc7f3915a-xpmod.7z

So are there any settings I can change to get the website to work, or does Serpent UXP need looking at?

well done, it tries to eat 9.3GB memory here.

and finally all excessively allocated memory are released and showing you a broken polyfill.

Edited December 7, 2021 by roytam1

[Mathwiz]

On 12/6/2021 at 12:21 AM, j7n said:

How do I grab the PmPlayer addon linked on the PaleMoon site? It shows the button "Only on Pale Moon".

Unfortunately PMPlayer (which, I assume, stands for Pale Moon Player) appears to be available only from the Pale Moon and Basilisk add-on pages. (The source is available from GitLab, but that's another whole can of worms.)

Quote

You can install it for Pale Moon from here, for Basilisk from here and view the source repository here.

To access them, you have to "pretend" to be "official" Pale Moon or Basilisk with a SSUAO. Here's one I use in New Moon:

general.useragent.override.addons.palemoon.org;Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:4.8) Goanna/20211001 PaleMoon/29.4.0.2

That pretends to be Pale Moon v29.4 on 64-bit Windows 7. Once you set the SSUAO, the Pale Moon add-on page will give you the "Install Now" button.

Unfortunately, Pale Moon's add-on site doesn't let you download add-ons to a directory of your choice. AFAICS all you can do is click "Install Now." And because of differing version numbers between official Pale Moon and @roytam1's New Moon, the latter won't install it, claiming it's incompatible (even though we know it isn't) To get around that, first install JustOff's Moon Tester Tool from https://github.com/JustOff/moon-tester-tool/releases; then install PMPlayer from the Pale Moon add-on site. (Whew!)

OK, the Moon Tester Tool didn't work either. So let's try Serpent 52. The SSUAO (courtesy @VistaLover) is

general.useragent.override.addons.basilisk-browser.org;Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.8 Firefox/68.0 Basilisk/52.9.2021.07.19

Now, go to the Basilisk add-on site above and you'll have the "Install Now" button. Click it, and finally, it works!!

If I'd known it was going to be this much trouble, I wouldn't have said anything!

P.S. For the real experts around here, I'd love to know why Moon Tester Tool didn't work. I actually went to the trouble to find the downloaded .xpi in the browser cache (not easy), rename it pmplayer.xpi, and use the "Test Add-On from file" option, and it still said it was incompatible!

Maybe there's a clue from my next step: I opened the .xpi with 7-Zip and edited install.rdf as usual - and the bloody thing refused to update, saying it was "read-only!" I finally had to change the extension to .zip, replace install.rdf using Windows Explorer, and change the extension back to .xpi before I could install it in New Moon!

Edited December 7, 2021 by Mathwiz

[Mathwiz]

15 hours ago, InterLinked said:

I'm also encountering a lot of sites that no longer work in UXP, or even Chromium 70.

Why they're all deciding to suddenly replacing working JS with JS that doesn't work on most browsers seems asinine to me, but I guess that's to be expected.

Yes, browsing on XP is getting harder by the day.

MSFN still works OK on Serpent 55, although I'm noticing that even it slows down when I'm typing a reply and the reply window needs to expand or contract. I'm slowly moving to IceApe-UXP for better speed and for GitHub/GitLab support (via JustOff's wc-polyfill add-on).

For avsforum.com, I'm using @NotHereToPlayGames's "unGoogled" build of 360Chrome v13. I can read the site with Basilisk or IceApe, but typing replies is tortuously slow now.

As for why this is happening, I suspect in most cases it's not intentional; they're just building their Web sites with software from Google (or Micro$oft or Mozilla, both of which are in bed with Google).

[Mathwiz]

6 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

The browser doesn't crash completely only that tab and I can continue.

I'm not sure why, but, for me, 55 doesn't crash my computer (just dug it up to test for you) but won't load at all and times out.

Sounds like you're running in multiprocess mode. That makes it somewhat more resilient against crashes. But from the subsequent discussion, it sounds like you'd need the 64-bit version of Serpent to have any chance of actually opening that Web site. That, of course, requires a 64-bit version of Windows and a 64-bit PC.

[George King]

Hi, how I can change default search engine to Google? I'm using latest Serpent build

[NotHereToPlayGames]

25 minutes ago, George King said:

Hi, how I can change default search engine to Google? I'm using latest Serpent build

Your answer is in this thread/post  --  https://msfn.org/board/topic/182647-my-browser-builds-part-3/?do=findComment&comment=1207849

[VistaLover]

22 hours ago, Sparrow said:

I also tried a fresh install of Serpent UXP 55

For new members/readers:

 That one isn't based on UXP (at least initially...); it is based on Moebius (itself a fork of a Mozilla 53.0a1 Nightly snapshot), a predecessor to UXP; some parts of the UXP platform code did find their way into post-Moebius Serpent 55, though... 

 Don't let an appVersion of "55" fool you; as far as Web Compatibility is concerned, St55 is quite behind compared to recent builds of St52: if a site misbehaves in St52, very few chances (if any) exist it'll behave as expected in St55... I don't use St55 myself very often (only for testing), frequent users (e.g. @Mathwiz) can share more with regards to WebCompat-issues and the "recent" (Chromium-centric) web... 

15 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

on others browsers, such as chrome 360 - it will load fine.

 Not a surprise, is it?  I suspect the web devs of British Gas kludged up something that would only be palatable to recent(-ish) Chromium (I doubt they even tested their web page on latest Firefox - but that one, as we all know, is "sniffin' the rear end"  of Chromium for the last few years or more...); UXP (MozillaESR52 based) would simply be something truly alien to them... 

[NotHereToPlayGames]

1 hour ago, VistaLover said:

I suspect the web devs of British Gas kludged up something that would only be palatable to recent(-ish) Chromium

The same thing has happened here in the Midwest USA.

American Water is the quasi-monopoly that supplies water/sewage services to California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinios, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

For those counting, that list is 16 states.  16 out of 50 is 32%.

But thanks to the Electoral College, we have an easy way to look at that based on POPULATION.

538 total Electoral College votes  --  CA 55, GA 16, HI 4, IL 20, IN 11, IA 6, KY 8, MD 10, MI 16, MO 10, NJ 14, NY 29, PA 29, TN 11, VA 13, WV 5.

That's 257.

257 out of 538 is 47.77%.

So I am in the same boat as basically 48% of the entire population of the USA  --  recent changes on their website forces me to use 360Chrome v13 or v13.5.

Can no longer use v11 or v12 as of about a month or so ago.  Also cannot use St52 (so I suspect that St55 will not work either).

 

edit - my solution, they now use the US Post Office to send me my invoice - I will not use bloated v13 or v13.5 all on account of ONE billpay website!

 

Edited December 7, 2021 by NotHereToPlayGames

[XPerceniol]

10 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Sounds like you're running in multiprocess mode. That makes it somewhat more resilient against crashes. But from the subsequent discussion, it sounds like you'd need the 64-bit version of Serpent to have any chance of actually opening that Web site. That, of course, requires a 64-bit version of Windows and a 64-bit PC.

Yes; Indeed :)

[XPerceniol]

15 hours ago, roytam1 said:

well done, it tries to eat 9.3GB memory here.

and finally all excessively allocated memory are released and showing you a broken polyfill.

Thank you for everything you do @roytam1 and have done to keep us going ... I know your work isn't done

Edited December 7, 2021 by XPerceniol

[George King]

10 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Your answer is in this thread/post  --  https://msfn.org/board/topic/182647-my-browser-builds-part-3/?do=findComment&comment=1207849

Thanks, adding new string under about:config works and now I'm able to add custom search engine.

general.useragent.override.addons.basilisk-browser.org
	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.8 Firefox/68.0 Basilisk/52.9.2021.07.19

 

I would like to include this settings in my Serpent SFX, do you know where Serpent save user settings? App folder is untouched after this settings. Any idea where are these setting stored?

 

Edited December 7, 2021 by George King

[NotHereToPlayGames]

My hunch would be the prefs.js file in your profile directory.

 

edit - that's where my about:config changes are stored for Arctic Fox, NM27, and BNav.  Anything I ever do in NM28, St52, or St55 is always "temporary" and deleted immediately after.

Edited December 7, 2021 by NotHereToPlayGames