My Browser Builds (Part 4)

[NotHereToPlayGames]

10 minutes ago, Mathwiz said:

Why on Earth does their GitHub UI change if you sign in?

Agreed.  But unfortunately fairly common when sites allow the user to pick their own "theme" or "skin" which isn't applied until signed in.

edit - though I say that as a generality, I do not have a GitHub account to verify if this is the case herein.

Edited October 17, 2023 by NotHereToPlayGames

[Mathwiz]

3 minutes ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Agreed.  But unfortunately fairly common when sites allow the user to pick their own "theme" or "skin" which isn't applied until signed in.

Yes, and that would make sense to me. But as discussed above, M$ does not let you choose the old UI any more!

Once you sign in, apparently you're presented with the new UI whether you like it or not. So, being apparently mandatory, I'd expect it even for folks who aren't signed in.

Color me baffled....

[mina7601]

Hi @Mathwiz! You asked me this question:

On 10/11/2023 at 6:49 AM, Mathwiz said:

Can you ping www.rw-designer.com?

I replied with:

On 10/11/2023 at 6:35 PM, mina7601 said:

Yes, I am able to ping it via cmd

I am still awaiting a response from you. You haven't responded to me yet.

[VistaLover]

On 10/17/2023 at 8:47 PM, Mathwiz said:

Why on Earth does their GitHub UI change if you sign in?
I would expect the only change to be the words "Sign in" change to "Sign out."
But, I guess not in Micro$oftLand.

It's worse than that ; the sign-out option (not a button anymore, either ) is tucked away inside one's "avatar" menu, which now opens as a right sidebar:

OT : On the 360EEv13+ variants (which have better support for GH compared to current UXP-based browsers), my "avatar menu", instead of opening as a right sidebar, travels all the way to the left and displays as a left sidebar; this is annoying, because I then have to move the mouse cursor towards the left (vertical) tab border to access that menu's entries ; can others reproduce? A fix for that would be most welcome!

Yes, most sites (including GH) want you permanently signed-in, so that they would track/monitor you more efficiently ... I do spend a lot of online time on various GH pages and need to use members-only features (e.g. comment on issue trackers, react to comments, download GitHub Actions artifacts, etc.), and what with the "hoops" of signing-out and then signing back in (especially when your ISP has "given" you a new dynamic IP address in the interim ), I tend to stay mostly logged-in and protect those signed-in GitHub cookies in my browser profile via a dedicated extension...

BTW, GitLab also serve different CSS files to anonymous visitors Vs logged-in members:

Signed-out:

Signed-in (dark theme offered/selected):

On 10/17/2023 at 8:47 PM, Mathwiz said:

Follow-up: where are the defaults (if "Use Default" is checked) stored and can the defaults be modified?

You are shown the "default" vendor selection for a said site permission when the "Use Default" square has been ticked; e.g., for "Access Your Location", the default permission is "Always Ask" (and that default is again stored inside permissions.sqlite); if the user unticks the "Use Default" box, then he/she(/they-them ) can choose one of the two other (non-default) available selections (i.e. Allow/Block), which are now non-greyed-out; finally, ticking anew the "Use Default" square will reset the permission to "Always Ask" and grey-out the other two...

Edited October 20, 2023 by VistaLover

[VistaLover]

6 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

fairly common when sites allow the user to pick their own "theme" or "skin" which isn't applied until signed in.

In the case of GitHub, and I'm talking here strictly about a dark vs light theme, not the new "Global Navigation Update ", they respect the browser's default/custom setting (provided the browser has such a setting) with regards to anonymous visitors.

In Serpent 52, that setting is:

browser.display.prefers_color_scheme

and when left to its default value of 1, GH will serve their Light Theme to (anonymous) visitors; change that pref to a value of 2 and they'll serve their Dark Theme...

A signed-in GH member can control the type of Theme served via custom "Appearance" settings inside his GH profile, where more than two Theme selections are offered, and can thus override the aforementioned browser setting...

In contrast to GitHub, GitLab only offer their anonymous visitors a Light Theme variant (see my previous post); to change that, you'd have to sign-in ...

[Mathwiz]

2 hours ago, VistaLover said:

You are shown the "default" vendor selection for a said site permission when the "Use Default" square has been ticked; e.g., for "Access Your Location", the default permission is "Always Ask" (and that default is again stored inside permissions.sqlite); if the user unticks the "Use Default" box, then he/she(/they-them ) can choose one of the two other (non-default) available selections (i.e. Allow/Block), which are now non-greyed-out; finally, ticking anew the "Use Default" square will reset the permission to "Always Ask" and grey-out the other two...

Let me rephrase my query. If I want to change the default for, say, "Access Location" to "Block" vs. "Always Ask" (so it never asks; that function is blocked by default unless I explicitly allow sites to use it), can I do that? I know I can set pref geo.enabled to false but that blocks it for all sites.

[Mathwiz]

3 hours ago, mina7601 said:

Hi @Mathwiz! You asked me this question:

I replied with:

I am still awaiting a response from you. You haven't responded to me yet.

Sorry; I'm not trying to ghost you. Since you can ping that site (and the IP address you get matches mine), I couldn't think of any other obvious reason why you alone can't access it with your browser, so I didn't have anything to say that was worth saying when I read your reply! Then the thread went on to other topics, and I just forgot.

The only other thing I can think of is that Web access to that site is blocked downstream, perhaps by a firewall or router setting. Clearly ICMP messages are getting through, though, so it's not a complete block.

[Mathwiz]

On 8/26/2023 at 6:14 PM, Mathwiz said:

The Aug. 18 version of St 55 spoofs FF 102, but surprisingly the July 28 version specified FF 112. Both work, but produce a warning, on the current Chase site. Edit: I see you discovered the same weirdness in St 52 almost a week ago.

Quote

@Mathwiz found out that now an upgrade to Fx-113.0+ versions is needed (to make the nag banner go away), but does logging in on https://secure.chase.com work as expected with that "upgrade" in place? 

So far, so good; but I don't expect that situation to continue for long.

As mentioned in @Humming Owl's 360EE thread, Chase finally lowered the boom. So far I haven't found an XP-compatible browser that works, even with an "acceptable" (to Chase) UA. 360EE and MiniBrowser (based on Chromium 86/87 respectively) let you sign in, but only the page header appears. St 55 and IceApe (UXP) seem to get a little further; it briefly looks like it's going to build the rest of the page, but then it goes away and the message

We’re having trouble showing this page right now. Please try again later.

appears. I get the following Javascript errors:

DataCloneError: The object could not be cloned.
https://static.chasecdn.com/web/library/@webchan/cxo-host-app/1.15.41/33.d848b99ac7fbd9417767.js:1

{}
https://static.chasecdn.com/web/library/@webchan/cxo-host-app/1.15.41/3935.94d28eeeaa747c5a1efa.js:16

["[@webchan/overview-dashboard-microapp]",{}]
https://static.chasecdn.com/web/library/@webchan/overview-dashboard-microapp/2.10.200/995d6cce2cb94409d19a.js:1

I'm not sure what any of that means.

I can install a Win 7 browser, so all is not lost for me; but others with only Win XP won't be so fortunate.

Edit: Trying to narrow down the Googlism that caused this breakage, I experimented a bit with portable versions of UnGoogled Chromium. It appears the minimum version that works is Chromium 98-100. (I can't be more exact because PortableApps didn't have versions 98 or 99. 100 worked but 97 did not.)

I assume official Pale Moon and Basilisk fail as well, but I haven't yet tried them to be certain of that. I haven't yet tried MyPal 68 either, but I'm not optimistic.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Mathwiz

[mina7601]

14 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Sorry; I'm not trying to ghost you. Since you can ping that site (and the IP address you get matches mine), I couldn't think of any other obvious reason why you alone can't access it with your browser, so I didn't have anything to say that was worth saying when I read your reply! Then the thread went on to other topics, and I just forgot.

The only other thing I can think of is that Web access to that site is blocked downstream, perhaps by a firewall or router setting. Clearly ICMP messages are getting through, though, so it's not a complete block.

Oh, I see. It's okay. Well, I am not complaining, because http://www.rw-designer.com/ loads at least in 360Chrome 13.5, which is something I am grateful for!

[Mathwiz]

1 hour ago, mina7601 said:

 http://www.rw-designer.com/ loads at least in 360Chrome 13.5, which is something I am grateful for!

OK, that's even more surprising! It proves you can access the site from your PC, but only from Chrome, not Serpent... (And you tried a clean profile, so it's not a browser extension interfering.) But the rest of us can access it from Serpent just fine.

Sounds like a firewall rule. Perhaps port 80 is blocked, with an exception for Chrome?

Or perhaps a different proxy configuration? (Chrome uses Windows Internet settings; Serpent has its own, which would default to "direct connection" on a clean profile.)

[VistaLover]

16 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

It appears the minimum version that works is Chromium 98-100. (I can't be more exact because PortableApps didn't have versions 98 or 99. 100 worked but 97 did not.)

Try these links, from their SourceForge mirror:

64-bit:

GoogleChromePortable64_98.0.4758.102_online.paf.exe

GoogleChromePortable64_99.0.4844.84_online.paf.exe

32-bit:

GoogleChromePortable_98.0.4758.102_online.paf.exe

GoogleChromePortable_99.0.4844.84_online.paf.exe

As you might be already aware by now , these online installers need to fetch stuff from Google servers, but versions 98/99 are relatively recent to have been wiped out from Google CDNs...

Regards .

Edited October 18, 2023 by VistaLover

[UCyborg]

17 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

We’re having trouble showing this page right now. Please try again later.

appears. I get the following Javascript errors:

DataCloneError: The object could not be cloned.
https://static.chasecdn.com/web/library/@webchan/cxo-host-app/1.15.41/33.d848b99ac7fbd9417767.js:1

References structuredClone (Chrome 98+). There's polyfill for it in one of 360Chrome threads.

Oh, it's actually here:

 

On 9/26/2023 at 1:47 AM, mina7601 said:

Well, let me be honest here. I actually had uBO Legacy installed before, but I felt so bored (as I am not very familiar with uBO) that I uninstalled it. plus, the last release is from July 20, 2021, and I don'tlike installing extensions that haven't been updated for a long time. I am not familiar with uMatrix either, sorry.  (I actually heard it's more difficult to use than uBO)

It's install and forget if you leave it in easy mode. From the quick glance, I guess new versions understand newer syntax for writing filters. And I guess extension doesn't get updates for some filters anymore. I don't know, for few sites I visit, I still don't see any annoyance, even when left at default settings. Maybe lots is still blocked by filters containing old known domains hosting ads.

I used to use both NoScript and uBO (easy mode), that was before I even bothered with uBO documentation and before uBO had the concept of temporary rules. I don't think I'm ever using more than 1 extension for this sort of thing again. Micro-managing with one extension gets tiring as it is. Polishing my whitelist in recent times, I'm settling on the medium mode, similar to NoScript way, white-list JavaScript from main site and only selected domains the site fetches additional JavaScript. My reason is mostly just why run code that does nothing for me to be able to read the site. Lots of sites I don't visit regularly, but nice to have it ready. I don't think old NoScript has let you say something like "only allow google.com for this and that site", but it has some other bells and whistles, which I don't think I need...security related...you know I don't run an anti-virus either since I believe the probability of encountering an actual security issue is so low that it's not worth the bother.

No updates generally (not for uBO specifically) can sometimes be refreshing, I'm personally really tired of the constant update cycle when it comes to software in general, but I work a job where they're part of it, I would've quit a long time ago if it wasn't for the money...

On the other hand, an odd browser only used by a minority...depending on what you expect out if it, probability of encountering issues due to extensions not being updated is higher. I have about 28 extensions enabled, about 15 of them are used regularly, of the total 28, I have modified 9 of them, if I counted right, 2 of those 9 extensions only had cosmetic mods applied, but the rest had some kind of usability issue.

Edited October 18, 2023 by UCyborg

[UCyborg]

2 hours ago, VistaLover said:

As you might be already aware by now , these online installers need to fetch stuff from Google servers, but versions 98/99 are relatively recent to have been wiped out from Google CDNs...

@Mathwiz

Does it have to be Chrome? My recent adventures indicated you should be able to get a snapshot of Chromium in virtually any stage of development, along with offline installer.

https://storage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/index.html

Edit: Disregard, only some old builds up-to 2016 are there...

Edited October 18, 2023 by UCyborg

[VistaLover]

15 minutes ago, UCyborg said:

References structuredClone (Chrome 98+).

IIANM, structuredClone() has been already implemented in UXP in the recent past,

https://repo.palemoon.org/MoonchildProductions/UXP/issues/2197

so, perhaps, @Mathwiz stands a good chance of having chase.com (after signing-in) work in latest Serpent 52 and/or NM28 ...

[UCyborg]

I know, he could try it in 360Chrome.