My Browser Builds (Part 4)

[mina7601]

1 hour ago, chermany4ever said:

Thanks! Yes, it is. I use the unattended version of XP called UE6 which is much lighter, trimmed down. It works very well. It's fast and doesn't take up any space. Heavily configured to emulate mac. I use many small programs for different aspects and functions. Obviously Flyakite had to be in the game. A must have.

Here is another sample. There is no way to achieve this wonder with any other modern version of windows, as far as I know.

That looks like an even older version of FlyakiteOSX (and not 3.5 as I thought), knowing the explorer toolbar icons. Anyway, thanks for sharing, and it sure looks awesome!

Edited August 19, 2023 by mina7601

[roytam1]

2 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I have always wondered how the 1 came to be.

mine is simple, my first internet account (yahoo mail) appended a number to my username when registering.

[chermany4ever]

5 minutes ago, mina7601 said:

That looks like an even older version of FlyakiteOSX, knowing the explorer toolbar icons. Either way, thanks for sharing, and it looks awesome!

Thank you again. I assure you it is version 3.5. In version 3.5 the toolbar, as you say, is different. But many users liked the previous one better, so Chris at that time released a patch to be able to apply the old toolbar. Everyone was happy.

[roytam1]

1 hour ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Us XP-users were just handed a new "definition".

By this new definition, if you run ANY software on your computer that the CREATOR of that software used Win7 or Win10 in order to CREATE, then we can no longer label ourselves as a "real" XP user.  

I don't think we need such a defination

[NotHereToPlayGames]

2 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

I do not provide personal data in forums generally.

Generally speaking, I agree.  But on the other hand, we really only have a FEW dozen folks that even follow MSFN.  We really are a DYING BREED.

I guess I also have the "advantage" of a USA flag by my name (population roughly 340,239,956) opposed to Germany (population roughly 83,289,087 [which is a lot higher than I would have guessed]).

[UCyborg]

That definition was my counter-attack towards the notion that emerged a while back on the forum that people using an OS on a virtual machine are not real (XP) users. And I suspected it would strike up some conversation. Tell you what, Windows 2000 lasted until about 2016 or so in my usage history for running a specific quirky program from early 2000's. The program used to be installed on a slow and noisy Pentium 233 MHz machine with 128 MB of RAM. That machine didn't have any other use other than running that program. Nothing particularly interesting, it used InterBase database for storing invoices, customer records etc. It was migrated to a much beefier PC at some point (running Windows 7 at the time) inside a virtual machine to safely contain it, it didn't like the newer OS much, even on XP there was a delay at startup that didn't occur on Windows 2000, plus it had the weird licensing system (it was CrypKey of the era). I just found it redundant to keep that old computer around if I have much more capable computer at my disposal, so it might as well be used to run that program as well. And it really speed up that old program, no more waiting for forms to open, no more waiting for print preview to open. So that virtual machine was getting real work done.

While XP was pretty much removed from my regular usage in 2009 when Windows 7 came out. I simply have better memories of Windows 2000, one factor is certainly that it never gave me activation troubles. I've read Win10 at some point at some version in certain circumstances downgraded itself from Pro to Home...Windows XP back in the day locked me out completely at some point, "can't activate due to exceeded number of activation attempts, bye-bye to the welcome screen". Ended up re-installing then searching the internet for a bypass. On a computer with legitimate XP license sticker! Microsoft support? What did I know about that back then?

Though to be fair, I never expected much from Windows 2000, so it could be an important factor. Then I got used to the number of aspects of Microsoft's newer systems, from Windows 7 taskbar's ability for programs tell progress via taskbar button to Windows 10's console host and now I can't go back. Unless I needed an old OS for something specific again.

[UCyborg]

3 hours ago, RamonUn said:

Also I always felt Windows XP to be quite meaty so I do not feel vegetarian at all when using it, I feel carnivore...

I also suspected responsiveness could be a bit better on my previous computer, 2 GHz Intel Celeron, 256 MB of RAM (later bumped to 1 GB), NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 (), but never got around to trying an older OS. By the time I got the idea, the disk was dead. Those Maxtors were really short-lived.

[ClassicNick]

5 hours ago, UCyborg said:

@NotHereToPlayGames
Yup, that's what I meant. None of the even remotely usable web browsers are built using Visual Studio 2010's toolchain, which was the last that worked on XP (and Vista) if I remember correctly. 360Chrome seems to be built using Visual Studio 2015's toolchain, as indicated by the LinkerVersion 14.0 in the Optional Header in 360chrome.exe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio#History). I suspect code changes would be needed for browsers to be even buildable on older toolchains and I doubt they'd be small ones. If I remember correctly, didn't roytam1 recently switch to 2019 toolchain? All these require Windows 7 as the minimum, which makes all of you indirectly dependent on Windows 7 (or newer), whether you care to admit it or not.

Correction: roytam1 uses the Visual C++ 2017 toolchain. The last version of Firefox that was able to officially compile on Visual C++ 2010 was 36.0.4, however, I have only managed to compile up to Firefox 35.0.1 on Windows XP SP3. BTW, I have a local build of Firefox 30.0 that I compiled using Visual C++ 2008 SP1, although I did use the --disable-ion configure flag due to a crash in mozjs.dll, which removes jit support. My eventual goal is to get New Moon 27.9.4+ and Arctic-Fox 42.0 targeting Windows 2000 and XP RTM/SP1. In my testing on Windows XP, I get an error stating the program cannot start because the application configuration is incorrect. Apparently Visual C++ 2008 can target Windows 2000, but restricts Windows XP compatibility to SP2. @roytam1 Do I need to use Visual C++ 2005 SP1 for Windows XP and XP SP1 support?

[NotHereToPlayGames]

2 hours ago, UCyborg said:

That definition was my counter-attack towards the notion that emerged a while back on the forum that people using an OS on a virtual machine are not real (XP) users.

Agreed!

I've been using a Win10 VM since 2017 (and a Win7 VM, for that matter) but only THIS YEAR migrated my installation that evolved many many times since as an OS onto real hardware.

[UCyborg]

1 hour ago, ClassicNick said:

Correction: roytam1 uses the Visual C++ 2017 toolchain.

Guess my memory is susceptible to bit flipping.

 

Another broken site: https://2fas.com/

Wants ReadableStream. Chrome had it since version 43 (May 2015), Firefox since version 65 (January 2019).

Edit: Apparently not implemented deliberately, purposefully.

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=28891&p=232398&hilit=ReadableStream#p232398

Edited August 19, 2023 by UCyborg

[mina7601]

7 hours ago, chermany4ever said:

Thank you again. I assure you it is version 3.5. In version 3.5 the toolbar, as you say, is different. But many users liked the previous one better, so Chris at that time released a patch to be able to apply the old toolbar. Everyone was happy.

Ah, so it's version 3.5, as I thought. Ok, but this is the first time I hear about that patch, so at first I thought you installed an older version (version 2.0) because of the previous explorer toolbar icons. Thanks for clearing that up, sorry for any misleadings, and thanks again for sharing your setup! Much appreciated!

Edited August 19, 2023 by mina7601

[Mathwiz]

We seem to have drifted a bit off topic with all this discussion about who's a "real" XP user. If you need a browser that runs on XP, you're welcome here, regardless of how "real" your XP use may seem to others.

On 8/12/2023 at 7:58 PM, roytam1 said:

no, they use gitea's issue tracker.

dbsoft is referencing mozilla's bugzilla entries.

Thanks for the clarification, although I'm surprised that anything on bugzilla is still relevant to UXP! (Considering how much FF has diverged from UXP in the last several years.)

On 8/17/2023 at 9:05 PM, roytam1 said:

bring 2 prefs for disabling them in my tree: https://github.com/roytam1/UXP/commit/864fc133a33dcdc0a12a5531d340d3ee6e9f3778

Thank you! A couple of simple prefs make a lot more sense than jumping through hoops to get the necessary code off userstyles.org! (Seriously - they actually look for the word "Chrome" in the browser user agent? Sounds to me like a good reason to avoid them altogether!)

[Mathwiz]

New animation pref works like a charm. When set to false:

... and CPU usage is sane again.

[roytam1]

just heard that there is some audio output issues regarding float32 output from cubeb library.

therefore later IA32/SSE builds will have flag "--enable-int-audio-sample" specified (which also means wasapi will be disabled on those builds)

https://github.com/roytam1/UXP/commit/ef5e4f06e06aaa2516ac5f068ea07846487700c4

Edited August 21, 2023 by roytam1

[UCyborg]

On 8/18/2023 at 9:45 PM, UCyborg said:

Got a mail from GitHub that they'll enforce 2FA by the end of September. I hate 2FA, what are the alternatives?

After making it past the notion that you need bloated Electron app or a smartphone just to generate a code to login, things don't seem to be as annoying. But due to today's society obsession with smartphones, other options remain hidden from plain sight. Common form of 2FA, also employed by GitHub, they give you a Base32 encoded key, which should be stored in a safe place, and this key serves to generate time based one-time code.

It doesn't really matter what application is used to generate the code. One lightweight option for Windows is the good old KeePass password manager (pick the latest portable 2.xy version, installer doesn't work on pre-Win7 OSes, with some extra steps, it could be converted to properly installed application though). On the Advanced tab of the individual password entry, when you right-click in the section containing String fields, there is an option OTP Generator Settings..., where on the Time-Based (TOPT) tab, the key given by the website is entered without spaces/dashes and that's pretty much it, assuming the site/service expects the common configuration - Base32 string, 6-digits for generated code, 30 seconds expiry time and HMAC-SHA-1 algorithm. The current code will be shown right away under Preview, later, it can be shown by right-clicking the password entry in the main window under Other Data option, where there are options to copy the current code to clipboard or show it in a message box.

Some older versions of KeePass already have OTP functionality, but no special dialog to configure it, regardless, could be set to perform auto-type of the OTP code after main credentials. There's a plugin that brings its own configuration dialog, a dialog with the code being refreshed in real-time, a context-menu and even the ability to read QR code containing the key off the screen... - KeeOtp2 - seems to require .NET Framework 4.5, so Windows Vista is the oldest OS that should run it.