My Browser Builds (Part 3)

[NotHereToPlayGames]

13 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Second, 360EE v13 identifies itself as Chrome 86. Amwater.com's banner says Chrome 80 or later is required. So 360EE v13 or 13.5 should have worked - why was a UAO required? Is the banner a lie and it actually tests for Chrome 90-something now?

I've seen this at least a dozen times over the last year.  Not with that water bill site, per se, but on the modern web in general.

I read somewhere that the "future" will not have User Agents,

MOST web designers KNOW that a CRAPLOAD of users FAKE their User Agents so MOST web designers DO NOT USE THEM, they use "combinations" of things to TRULY know what browser/platform you are using.

I've seen users here at MSFN "fake" a CELL PHONE user agent but then not even bother "faking" their display resolution.

Any 5th grader working on a school project can tell you the user agent is FAKED because no cell phone built in the next 10 years has a 4K screen resolution!

So it's about a "combination" of detected metrics, not just one simplistic User Agent string that "we" have been FAKING for the last TWENTY PLUS YEARS.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

12 hours ago, VistaLover said:

But, lo and behold, with

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/86.0.4240.198 Safari/537.36

"amwater.com" no longer complains about my "set-up" and redirects to "https://amwater.okta.com/ , waiting for me to input my log-in credentials...

Thanks.  My reply above was alluding to this "combination" but I was reading one post at a time and didn't get this far yet.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

10 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

But that leaves me wondering: Why is NM 28 allowed, even though its default UA would reveal the same evil Windows version?

Because I had already gotten as far as changing my UA in NM to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/101.0.4951.54 Safari/537.36 before we discovered the site is looking for Chrome 80 and non-XP/Vista.

[D.Draker]

4 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I've seen users here at MSFN "fake" a CELL PHONE user agent but then not even bother "faking" their display resolution.

You forgot about canvas fingerprinting (like cloudafre) , btw it's not a problem to create a fake resolution. I'm sure there are extensions for those who are lazy to do it manually.

EDIT :

Tried your favourite Amwater.com from a real chromium 80 (not chinese) on Vista with win32's ex-kernel (installed locally). Works ! I entered 

UserID : WIndows7

Password:  Sucks

 

And it just says "unable to login" , so no , the banner is not a lie.

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by D.Draker

[roytam1]

2 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

no cell phone built in the next 10 years has a 4K screen resolution!

do you count 3840px as "4K"? high-end SONY smartphones have 3840*1644 or 3840*2160 screens!

[UCyborg]

21 hours ago, VistaLover said:

@Mathwiz : Chrome 80 is indeed the minimum required, as long as your WinOS is a sanctioned one (XP and Vista are, of course, ostracised like the plague    ); I have verified that

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.163 Safari/537.36

(Chrome 80 on Win8.1) does work for AW purposes... Again, the same ol' FUD about XP and Vista users definitely being part of the botnet...

Chill bro, you're not special with your Vista, I tried the following and it doesn't work neither.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0

But Linux x86_64 works. FreeBSD doesn't work either, regardless of bitness. There is more to this world than just Windows. Again, you guys aren't f****** special!

But yeah, I agree with the premise, obviously the site is coded by a bunch of morons.

BTW, I noticed Serpent has media.suspend-bkgnd-video.enabled set to false, maybe other roytam1's browsers as well. If you often leave videos playing in the background, you might want to turn this on to reduce CPU load as it won't process the video then, just the audio.

Edited June 12, 2022 by UCyborg

[Mathwiz]

7 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Because I had already gotten as far as changing my UA in NM to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/101.0.4951.54 Safari/537.36 before we discovered the site is looking for Chrome 80 and non-XP/Vista.

Ah; well, that explains it then. The site truly is an anti-XP (and Vista) bigot; you just chose to "pass" as Win 10. Probably not even realizing you needed to.

8 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I've seen users here at MSFN "fake" a CELL PHONE user agent but then not even bother "faking" their display resolution.

Pray tell, how do you fake your display resolution, given that it's not part of the UA? Asking for a friend

Seriously; faking a display resolution would help with browser fingerprinting, for those of us using Microsoft's VM. In full-screen mode, the display resolution is usually your monitor's resolution minus two rows. That "minus two rows" stands out like a sore thumb.

6 hours ago, roytam1 said:

do you count 3840px as "4K"? high-end SONY smartphones have 3840*1644 or 3840*2160 screens!

I don't personally, but a lot of folks do.

BTW, this is a great example of "hyper-resolution-itis;" a disease which inflicts many designers of smart phone and laptop screens these days: The compulsion to cram as many pixels as possible into as small a rectangle as possible.

Come on, let's get real: no one can see the difference between 1280x720 and anything greater, on a screen the size of a typical smart phone, unless they're viewing the screen with a microscope! Even my old BlackBerry Priv (well, ca. 2015 is "old" when you're talking about smart phones) has a 2560x1440 screen! (I like the phone anyway.)

But "4K" resolution lets the marketing guys brag: "You need our phone because we have more pixels than the other guys!!" And enough folks are stupid enough to fall for it, that the disease has become endemic.

[Mathwiz]

14 minutes ago, UCyborg said:

Linux x86_64 works. FreeBSD doesn't work neither, regardless of bitness.

Really, @UCyborg, that's a double negative. Do you mean it "does work also?"

Seriously though, I get the point. The Amwater.com site really wants you to use "modern" Windows or MacOS. I doubt even Win 7 will work for long, assuming it even works now! (Ironically, they don't recommend Edge as a "supported" browser....)

It's like a reverse IQ test. If you use anything "too smart" you're blocked!

[UCyborg]

36 minutes ago, Mathwiz said:

But "4K" resolution lets the marketing guys brag: "You need our phone because we have more pixels than the other guys!!" And enough folks are stupid enough to fall for it, that the disease has become endemic.

Agree!

My mother had to buy new phone last year (just so that she has something newer), its screen is 2400 x 1080. I find even that excessive, was feeling "high DPI" problems when navigating menus, eg. why web browser looks normal, but settings menu has barely readable fonts out-of-the-box.

17 minutes ago, Mathwiz said:

Really, @UCyborg, that's a double negative. Do you mean it "does work also?"

Thanks, fixed.

Edited June 12, 2022 by UCyborg

[soggi]

The mirror of latest BNavigator, Firefox 45ESR, IceApe, IceDove, K-Meleon 1.5.x/74/76, MailNews 52, New Moon 26.5/27/28 and Serpent 52/55 builds by @roytam1 has been updated -> soggi.org - tools.

changelog:
- added latest BNavigator 0.9 20220611 build
- added latest IceApe 52 20220611 build
- added latest IceDove 52 20220611 build
- added latest MailNews 52 20220611 build
- added latest New Moon 28 20220611 builds
- added latest Serpent 52 20220611 builds
- added latest Serpent 55 20220611 builds

kind regards
soggi

[UCyborg]

On 6/11/2022 at 2:21 PM, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I was experimenting with NM28 and St52, javascript and e10s and other miscellaneous settings, and holy crap, I kept wanting to smack the side of the computer to dislodge whatever was slowing it down in contrast to performance I've become used to with 360Chrome.

Agreed, the performance is abysmal, doesn't matter if you put it on the supercomputer. Don't even try to open the debugger on a bit heavier web page, you'll kill it completely that way.

The score on Speedometer 2.0 is in the Firefox 52 range; that's the browser from over 5 years ago. MCP guys don't believe in benchmarks, but this particular one is quite telling of what to expect when dealing client-rendered web apps.

Edited June 13, 2022 by UCyborg

[NotHereToPlayGames]

2 hours ago, UCyborg said:

The score on Speedometer 2.0 is in the Firefox 52 range; that's the browser from over 5 years ago.

Firefox Mozilla has been on a steady decline since v31.7 (May 12, 2015!) from my benchmarks over the years !!!

Scores improved with v68 and v78.

 

Edited June 13, 2022 by NotHereToPlayGames

[UCyborg]

Mine are in lower 10s last time I checked (slower CPU), cca. 13.9. ChrEdge 94 and Firefox 96 on Win10 easily get 46. MyPal 68 on XP is about 36-38 I think, don't recall exactly, would have to re-test.

Edit: oh, you showed Speedometer 1.0 and I'm talking about results of Speedometer 2.0. I don't recall ever trying 1.0 variant.

Edited June 13, 2022 by UCyborg

[Ascii2]

@roytam1:  Thank you for your software and software development.  I am now trying and testing them.

I would like to report to you a few bugs that I noticed while using your MailNews 52.9.8161a1 (2022-06-10)(32-bit) application.  The bugs are as follows:

1. When replying to a message or forwarding a message, if one does not click or move somewhere else in the body and then uses the Quote feature twice consecutively (such as by clicking the Quote button twice).  The MailNews application crashes.
    
2. BACKGROUND:  While in a compose message ("Write") window that provides for HTML (Rich Text) editing, and while focus is in the top portion of the composition (header area), the "Insert" and "Format" menus are grayed out.
   THE BUG:  When available menus are opened and one passes the mouse pointer over the menu labels of the menus that are unavailable, the state of menu bars having menu open is lost; after one passes the mouse pointer to another menu label of an available menu after passing over one of the unavailable menus, menus are no longer open.

Edited June 16, 2022 by Ascii2
Clarified Bug 2.

[roytam1]

29 minutes ago, Ascii2 said:

@roytam1:  Thank you for your software and software development.  I am now trying and testing them.

I would like to report to you a few bugs that I noticed while using your MailNews 52.9.8161a1 (2022-06-10)(32-bit) application.  The bugs are as follows:

1. When replying to a message or forwarding a message, if one does not click or move somewhere else in the body and then uses the Quote feature twice consecutively (such as by clicking the Quote button twice).  The MailNews application crashes.
    
2. BACKGROUND:  While in a compose message ("Write") window, and while focus is in the top portion of the composition (header area), the "Insert" and "Format" menus are unavailable.
   THE BUG:  When available menus are opened and one passes the mouse pointer over the menu labels of the menus that are unavailable, the state of menu bars having menu open is lost; after one passes the mouse pointer to another menu label of an available menu after passing over one of the unavailable menus, menus are no longer open.

first one is fixed in my tree: https://github.com/roytam1/UXP/commit/082405259b7b6698f775783e24bcaf40acd99ccc

for second one, I can't reproduce here.