My Browser Builds (Part 3)

[Egorkaru]

roytam1, can you still update RetroZilla Browser for Windows 9x based on Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.20 and add support for the following cipher suites?:

• TLS 1.2: ECDHE_ECDSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
• TLS 1.3: AES_128_GCM_SHA256
• TLS 1.3: AES_256_GCM_SHA384
• TLS 1.3: CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256

Then RetroZilla Browser would be the immortal browser for Windows 9x and Pentium 1.

[roytam1]

29 minutes ago, Egorkaru said:

roytam1, can you still update RetroZilla Browser for Windows 9x based on Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.20 and add support for the following cipher suites?:

• TLS 1.2: ECDHE_ECDSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
• TLS 1.3: AES_128_GCM_SHA256
• TLS 1.3: AES_256_GCM_SHA384
• TLS 1.3: CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256

Then RetroZilla Browser would be the immortal browser for Windows 9x and Pentium 1.

not possible without rewriting upstream changes in C89 syntax, thus not possible to be included in NSS-Legacy.

my old answer still applies:

 

Edited May 23, 2022 by roytam1

[Egorkaru]

1 hour ago, roytam1 said:

not possible without rewriting upstream changes in C89 syntax, thus not possible to be included in NSS-Legacy.

Due to the lack of support for the ECDHE_ECDSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 cipher suite in RetroZilla Browser, the following errors pop up when opening the site https://www.old-games.ru.

Can anything be done without uninstalling Windows 98 and installing Windows XP?

Edited May 23, 2022 by Egorkaru

[soggi]

Did you read the "Alert" message? RZ can't connect to pagead.googlesyndication.com, this is just advertising BS - just block it with NoScript/AdBlock or something like this. The *.googlesyndication.com domain should be blocked in general as it doesn't serve any valuable content.

BTW:

Anyone knows a good Adobe Flash Player solution for NM27/28 these days? I need it to visit (old) snapshots of Flash based websites on web.archive.org.

kind regards
soggi

Edited May 23, 2022 by soggi

[roytam1]

2 hours ago, Egorkaru said:

Due to the lack of support for the ECDHE_ECDSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 cipher suite in RetroZilla Browser, the following errors pop up when opening the site https://www.old-games.ru.

see https://github.com/rn10950/RetroZilla/pull/56

[VistaLover]

The 1s, video-only, clip (GIFV) in the tweet below:

https://twitter.com/KeviSkillz/status/1527748243001581571

refuses to play in Serpent 52.9.0 32-bit:

I tried first with Vista SP2's native h264 decoder,

media.wmf.enabled;true
media.ffvpx.enabled;false

then with St52's "embedded" h264 decoder,

media.wmf.enabled;false
media.ffvpx.enabled;true

and then with BOTH turned on, but still no dice... The direct link to the clip is:

https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/FTOm21xX0AcJkcs.mp4

and when that is loaded in a tab, it too, as you'd expect, fails to play, citing: "Video format or MIME type is not supported";
perhaps UXP's MP4 parser and/or the (ffmpeg-based) h264 decoder of St52 (inside the ffvpx lib) is in need of an update/fix...
"naturally", 360EE has no problem playing back that embedded clip...

[cmccaff1]

13 hours ago, soggi said:

Anyone knows a good Adobe Flash Player solution for NM27/28 these days? I need it to visit (old) snapshots of Flash based websites on web.archive.org.

I learned a while ago that the final version of Flash Player before Adobe added the 'time bomb' (lockout) is 32.0.0.371.
If you download & install this version of Flash, and select 'Never check for updates', this version should work with absolutely no problems in NM27 & NM28 (I can confirm from experience that it works great in both).
There are ways to get later 32.x versions working, along with the China-exclusive 34.x releases, but for various reasons I cannot in all good conscience recommend going this route.

Alternatively, you can install older versions depending on how powerful your hardware is...the best compromise between features and speed might be either 10.3.183.90 or 11.1.102.63 (or, if you're on Windows 2000, 11.1.102.55).
(My favorite version is 9.0.289.0, as it runs well, supports modern codecs that earlier Flash 9 releases don't, and works on Windows 98 without needing KernelEx. In general, this is the earliest Flash version that will work with the majority of Flash content on the Internet with little to no problems, and it's actually quite rare to find something that legitimately needs a newer version.)

11 hours ago, roytam1 said:

see https://github.com/rn10950/RetroZilla/pull/56

Wow! I definitely hope these commits can be added to the official RetroZilla eventually! It would be nice to see a new RZ release, once the developers feel everything is stable and has been tested enough. Thank you very much for all of your efforts!

[VistaLover]

On 5/22/2022 at 12:02 PM, kuja killer said:

twitch chats no longer ever load anymore in firefox 52.9.1 ever since....and they obviously arent goinig to do crap about it. I mean the site will load...but the actual chat wont anymore, for example here (i've been watching this person for many years with no problem)

https://www.twitch.tv/popout/kuumba_/chat

It just shows "stream chat" at the top of screen, but wont ever load it for reals period. There so called "fix" scam according to twitter instead permenately "broke" it in firefox now...i know they are NOT going to respond to me about this, or bother to fix it again..

The actual reason that "popout chat" won't load in Fx ESR 52.9.1 is that Twitch are now using the ResizeObserver API there:

That API was first implemented in Firefox 69.0/Google Chrome 64.0, so am afraid the use of ProxHTTPSProxy together with FxESR 52 will do nothing to mitigate your "Twitch chat" predicament (as the problem isn't really secure-protocol and/or cipher-suite related) ...

On 5/22/2022 at 6:08 PM, kuja killer said:

And i meant about the "Twitch" chats (the popout version i showed) not working anymore in firefox 52.9.1 -
does that work in that chrome 360 or the mypal ?? I'm sorry if i de-railed your thread.

Since the missing API I mentioned above was first implemented in Ch64, ALL three versions of 360EE, v11 (ch69-based), v12 (ch78-based) and v13 (ch86-based) should be able to display that Twitch chat... OTOH, MyPal68 is based on FxESR 68, thus shouldn't be able to handle it... Good news is that the UXP browsers (e.g. New Moon 28, Serpent 52.9.0) have that API now natively implemented, so they should be also fine for your usercase:

(this one is with Serpent 52.9.0  ; BTW, I don't have a Twitch account...)

[soggi]

8 hours ago, cmccaff1 said:

I learned a while ago that the final version of Flash Player before Adobe added the 'time bomb' (lockout) is 32.0.0.371.
If you download & install this version of Flash, and select 'Never check for updates', this version should work with absolutely no problems in NM27 & NM28 (I can confirm from experience that it works great in both).
There are ways to get later 32.x versions working, along with the China-exclusive 34.x releases, but for various reasons I cannot in all good conscience recommend going this route.

Alternatively, you can install older versions depending on how powerful your hardware is...the best compromise between features and speed might be either 10.3.183.90 or 11.1.102.63 (or, if you're on Windows 2000, 11.1.102.55).
(My favorite version is 9.0.289.0, as it runs well, supports modern codecs that earlier Flash 9 releases don't, and works on Windows 98 without needing KernelEx. In general, this is the earliest Flash version that will work with the majority of Flash content on the Internet with little to no problems, and it's actually quite rare to find something that legitimately needs a newer version.)

Oh yes, I know about this "time bomb" thing. After that I deinstalled Adobe Flash Player finally with the hope I'll never need it again but yes I knew some day I'll have to install this crapware again...just because of these outrageous Flash only websites from the late 90s and the 2000s.

Based on your comment I started the search for version 32.0.0.371 and came to the Archived Flash Player versions (via archive.org) (edit: also available from the archive.org - Adobe Flash Player Complete Collection) where a lot of old versions are available. Version 9.0.289.0 is already in my archive as it was the last release for Win98SE when I still used it very much. The latest version for Win2k should be 10.3.183.90 (ESR) which was released over 1 1/2 year after 11.1.102.55.

My question had the background that I thought there is a project (or some projects) which removed the "time bomb" - but maybe it's this "china thing" (which I wouldn't use either).

edit:
Found it -> GitHub - FlashPatch! With this someone can remove the "time bomb" / "kill-switch" from the latest version 32.0.0.465. BTW this "chinese thing" is an official version maintained by Adobe - "but contains a non-closable process, known as the >Flash Helper Service<, that collects private information and pops up advertisement window contents.". There are cleaned versions available.
/edit

Maybe...I'll consider to put some versions on my website...let me know if this is requested.

---------------------------------

On 3/20/2022 at 1:11 AM, VistaLover said:

Saw the following posted elsewhere a while ago, it concerns "upstream", so relevant to these forks, too: 

https://old.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/ti1okk/ntpmat_hes_done_finally/

Pale Moon forum - [TOBIN] I'm done.
(edit: link title and color by soggi)

Later EDIT: PM forums are back on-line:

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=28003

23/03/2022 EDIT: Above PM forum thread hidden from non-members  ;
see: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=28058

OMG...didn't had the time to have an eye on this topic back then. Now I came across it through PM's English Wikipedia article and also found the following statement by Moonchild -> Pale Moon forum - Outage post-mortem, and apologies.

Good news that mad M.A.T. has departed from the PM project. Despite everything - best wishes for him and especially for his mental health. Hopefully(ish) this will be a new start and a reincarnation and no nullishing of the PM project, keep fingers crossed.

kind regards
soggi

Edited May 24, 2022 by soggi

[roytam1]

7 hours ago, VistaLover said:

The 1s, video-only, clip (GIFV) in the tweet below:

https://twitter.com/KeviSkillz/status/1527748243001581571

refuses to play in Serpent 52.9.0 32-bit:

I tried first with Vista SP2's native h264 decoder,

media.wmf.enabled;true
media.ffvpx.enabled;false

then with St52's "embedded" h264 decoder,

media.wmf.enabled;false
media.ffvpx.enabled;true

and then with BOTH turned on, but still no dice... The direct link to the clip is:

https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/FTOm21xX0AcJkcs.mp4

and when that is loaded in a tab, it too, as you'd expect, fails to play, citing: "Video format or MIME type is not supported";
perhaps UXP's MP4 parser and/or the (ffmpeg-based) h264 decoder of St52 (inside the ffvpx lib) is in need of an update/fix...
"naturally", 360EE has no problem playing back that embedded clip...

the problem is in old libstagefright bundled in UXP as it can't find any tracks from that MP4 file. I need to dig upstreams to see if there is a fix for this issue.

[Dave-H]

@roytam1 @schwups

I've moved our conversation here as it doesn't relate to Windows XP (or Vista/2000).
I hope you're OK with that and we can carry it on.
Cheers,
Dave.

[UCyborg]

14 hours ago, soggi said:

My question had the background that I thought there is a project (or some projects) which removed the "time bomb" - but maybe it's this "china thing" (which I wouldn't use either).

edit:
Found it -> GitHub - FlashPatch! With this someone can remove the "time bomb" / "kill-switch" from the latest version 32.0.0.465.

I was the first who posted about how to hex edit the DLL one way to extend the date, at least on MSFN.

Didn't know about that project though...just hex-edited my DLL and forgot about it. FlashPatch! doesn't run on XP, but most of it can be made to run with small modifications.

FlashPatch_NetFx4.zip

FlashPatch_NetFx4_src.zip

I threw out some unreferenced namepaces from .csproj file, commented out update checking function and fixed another error related to retrieving HRESULT code from Exception object occurring when accessing it directly on older .NET version, then it compiles on XP using .NET Framework 4's bundled tools:

cd <path\to\FlashPatch\folder>
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe FlashPatch.csproj /p:Configuration=Release

[cmccaff1]

19 hours ago, soggi said:

Maybe...I'll consider to put some versions on my website...let me know if this is requested.

Not a bad idea! It's up to you which versions you want to make available, but my recommendations would be

• 32.0.0.371 (last version without "time bomb")
• 29.0.0.171 (last version that doesn't require SSE2)
• 10.3.183.90/11.1.102.55 (last ESR and last regular version for vanilla Win2K)
• 9.0.289.0 (last version for vanilla Win98)
• 8.0.42.0 (last version for NT 4.0)
• 7.0.73.0 (last version for Win95 [and NT 3.51 with some effort])

Alternatively, for Flash 7, you could also (with his permission) mirror Nathan Lineback's custom hex-edited Flash 7 "YouTube Spoofer" that disguises itself as 8.0.42.0 (and will be recognized by browsers as Flash 8) and include it alongside the 7.0.73.0 installer (the idea being that a user would install Flash 7 as normal, then overwrite the NPSWF32.dll file with Nathan's version). Though it no longer serves the purpose it was designed for on YouTube, it can be helpful for some rare sites that reject Flash 7 and expect at least Flash 8 (a surprisingly high number of which are still available to this day and can be found by simply searching for "this site requires Flash 8").

My apologies if I've gone off-topic here...I'll try to keep my posts relevant as much as possible!

[kuja killer]

On 5/23/2022 at 6:43 PM, VistaLover said:

The actual reason that "popout chat" won't load in Fx ESR 52.9.1 is that Twitch are now using the ResizeObserver API there:

That API was first implemented in Firefox 69.0/Google Chrome 64.0, so am afraid the use of ProxHTTPSProxy together with FxESR 52 will do nothing to mitigate your "Twitch chat" predicament (as the problem isn't really secure-protocol and/or cipher-suite related) ...

Since the missing API I mentioned above was first implemented in Ch64, ALL three versions of 360EE, v11 (ch69-based), v12 (ch78-based) and v13 (ch86-based) should be able to display that Twitch chat... OTOH, MyPal68 is based on FxESR 68, thus shouldn't be able to handle it... Good news is that the UXP browsers (e.g. New Moon 28, Serpent 52.9.0) have that API now natively implemented, so they should be also fine for your usercase:

(this one is with Serpent 52.9.0  ; BTW, I don't have a Twitch account...)

wow dang i wasnt aware about the whole them using this newer API thing, im sorry. :( Well i decided to try out the "serpent" first since you mentioned that specificaly. I didnt actually know it was literally a clone of firefox 52.9.0/1 besides the version number. I got it from this May 21, 2022 link

https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser

Yea twitch works now in that one unlike the original firefox. And i figured it'd be just as resource heavy/intensive as the original firefox. This serpent 52.9 instantly uses 500 to 700 MB of RAM when loading a twitch stream + chat. which is way too much. it's very annoying. But it did that too on regular firefox 52.9.1 i had been using.

I noticed some video players in sites work now with this too, while firefox would be "no compatible source found" or something weird like that, even though i thoroughly followed all the guides here about enabling h264, and all the codecs/files and so on.

So yea that's cool i'll keep this as a backup. I still havent tried the 360chrome(s) yet. apparently those 3 versions all have big performance differences, i'd perfer the lowest RAM usage/cpu intensive/etc. I will try eventually.

Edited May 25, 2022 by kuja killer

[Mathwiz]

On 5/23/2022 at 4:58 AM, soggi said:

Anyone knows a good Adobe Flash Player solution for NM27/28 these days?

On 5/24/2022 at 1:05 AM, soggi said:

I thought there is a project (or some projects) which removed the "time bomb" - but maybe it's this "china thing" (which I wouldn't use either).

On 5/24/2022 at 1:05 AM, soggi said:

BTW this "chinese thing" is an official version maintained by Adobe - "but contains a non-closable process, known as the >Flash Helper Service<, that collects private information and pops up advertisement window contents.". There are cleaned versions available.

Cleaned (i.e., adware/spyware removed) versions of the "Chinese thing" are available at https://gitlab.com/cleanflash/installer/-/releases/

Note: Gh-wc-polyfill v1.2.19 is now required for gitlab.com to work, so install that first. Should install without modification on St 52; due to version numbering differences between PM and NM, NM 28 will require modifying install.rdf in the .xpi file (which is actually just a .zip file with a different extension).

Edit: I now recommend Palefill v1.20 (link is to @AstroSkipper's version) over Gh-wc-polyfill. Works with more sites and is compatible with all of @roytam1's UXP browsers without modification. (Modifying install.rdf is still required for Serpent 55, which is not UXP-based.)

Edited September 11, 2022 by Mathwiz