My Browser Builds (Part 4)

[grey_rat]

Quote

Firstly it is packaged as a zip file, but the K-Meleon Extensions Manager 8 requires extensions to be packed as 7z archives. I tried extracting the contents of the zip file provided and then repacked as a 7z archive and installed it with the Extensions Manager, but all the files had 0 bytes when copied.

I unpacked it manually and drag the files into folders

[mina7601]

15 hours ago, grey_rat said:

I unpacked it manually and drag the files into folders

OK, thanks, I did that, and I can now confirm the 3rd issue in your reply.

[WSC4]

https://www.choicehotels.com

Anyone using XP or Vista.  Choose your language top left.  Click to sign in top right.  Enter any name and password.  Does it hang and do nothing?

[modnar]

8 hours ago, WSC4 said:

https://www.choicehotels.com

Anyone using XP or Vista.  Choose your language top left.  Click to sign in top right.  Enter any name and password.  Does it hang and do nothing?

XP_SP3 (USP4) here: I chose lang EN_US and then sign in, wrote some username and pass and it does nothing, because they're of course not correct; it does not freeze. It just spins 1 revolution in vain as many times as I click "Sign in".

I'm using Serpent 52.9 by the way.

Edited December 3, 2023 by modnar
Added information

[mina7601]

16 hours ago, WSC4 said:

https://www.choicehotels.com

Anyone using XP or Vista.  Choose your language top left.  Click to sign in top right.  Enter any name and password.  Does it hang and do nothing?

A quick test in Serpent 52 and Serpent 55 under XP SP3 up to date with all POSReady updates: I choosed en-US, clicked to sign in, entered a random username and password, and it didn't hang, but it did nothing either.

Edited December 3, 2023 by mina7601

[WSC4]

Sorry,  I used the wrong word "hang".   Yes, their circle pops up and then nothing happens.  You can get out of the site, go elsewhere or close the browser with no problems.

I have tried New Moon 28, Mypal 68 and 360 Extreme Explorer.  All the latest versions.  Even tried the general.useragent.override trick and @AstroSkipper HTTPSProxy.exe with TLS 1.2 support with no luck.

It does not matter, because I'm going to close down my account with them anyway.

[mina7601]

5 minutes ago, WSC4 said:

Sorry,  I used the wrong word "hang".   Yes, their circle pops up and then nothing happens.

In that case, yes, the same thing happens with me as well, a circle just pops up and nothing happens after that.

[Mathwiz]

1 hour ago, WSC4 said:

I used the wrong word "hang".   Yes, their circle pops up and then nothing happens.

It does not matter, because I'm going to close down my account with them anyway.

So you're saying it does nothing even if you use a valid user ID and password.

If using an invalid sign-on, I would at least expect an error message, rather than doing nothing at all.

Doesn't work using Serpent 55 (probably all the UXP browsers too) even on Windows 7, so the problem is likely just another unsupported Googlism. If we can figure out which one, a polyfill might be found for it.

[loblolly986]

On 8/17/2023 at 2:15 PM, VistaLover said:

By creating the below SSUAO for "google.com",

general.useragent.override.google.com;Mozilla/5.0 (%OS_SLICE% rv:65.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/65.0

[...] that "google.com" SSUAO will allow you now to be served the most recent incarnation of the

https://www.google.com/

search engine result pages, instead of a dumped-down version "legacy" browsers are being served (Fx < 65.0) .

Thanks for this tip for New Moon 28. Although pleasingly lighter-weight, I finally got tired of the "legacy" Google Search interface's limited functionality compared to the regular version (which, as I recall, used to be what N.M. 28 in "Native" user-agent mode was served a while back). I just added this user-agent override, and it still works like a charm. (Though as of right now, I'm still not seeing any link to the "cached" version of a result in its "about this result" popup, while Mypal 68 gets a different popup that does have such a link.) Any particular reason such an override isn't part of the default configuration?

Edited December 4, 2023 by loblolly986

[dmiranda]

Somehow this place, https://www.researchgate.net is broken: cloudfare verification stops it, here and in mypal68, where I'm replicating this post in case there are different options (I will blank out the one that doesnt' correspond, and accept @Dave-H o r other moderator ruling about it. Basically, if I have the exact download pdf/doc address, no problem. If I have to go through the interface, cloudfare (surprise, surprise) complicates things the way it does. I tried different suaos, and using firefox 115.0 almost does it in vanilla, but not quite. Thanks.

 

[VistaLover]

15 hours ago, loblolly986 said:

(Though as of right now, I'm still not seeing any link to the "cached" version of a result in its "about this result" popup,
while Mypal 68 gets a different popup that does have such a link.)

... Not all Google Search results offer the "cached" version feature  ; as for NM28 with "the" SSUAO, I did a test right now and can't confirm your finding ...

The "modern" GS GUI loaded alright, I searched for "xenon fluoride": the "about this result" popup to the right (for the first result) has a footer with a "cached version" button, that leads to, er, a cached version of the result, with the proviso it hasn't expired by the time you asked for it (the specific example in the screenshot now returns a 404  ...):

FWIW, in NM28 I've noticed that the popup has the word "beta" in its header, whereas in Kafan MiniBrowser (I'm writing this on ) the popup is quite different, supposedly it's the one you yourself get with Mypal68 ... 

15 hours ago, loblolly986 said:

Any particular reason such an override isn't part of the default configuration?

... As you said, the "legacy" format is much more lenient to older, under-resourced, H/W XP users are likely to be running the UXP browser(s) on  ; one thing I still like about the old format is that it's kept the "pagination" feature in result pages (look for it at the bottom of the page, i.e. "Next" -> "< Page 2 >" -> "<<  < Page 3 >" etc.), while the "modern" format has now permanently switched to "more results/infinite scrolling" ; BTW, while the true UXP-based browsers have no issue with that, Serpent 55 is BROKEN in this regard ; STR: 

in St55, apply the SSUAO that enables the "modern" GS GUI;
search for a term that is likely to generate a lot of results; 
as you scroll the results page down and have almost reached its end, a rotating circle will briefly appear but no additional results will be displayed; thus, in St55, you are limited to the first 10 results the "modern" GUI will offer  ; pinging @Mathwiz  and @roytam1 ...

Edited December 4, 2023 by VistaLover

[loblolly986]

2 hours ago, VistaLover said:

... Not all Google Search results offer the "cached" version feature  ; as for NM28 with "the" SSUAO, I did a test right now and can't confirm your finding ...

The "modern" GS GUI loaded alright, I searched for "xenon fluoride": the "about this result" popup to the right (for the first result) has a footer with a "cached version" button, that leads to, er, a cached version of the result, with the proviso it hasn't expired by the time you asked for it (the specific example in the screenshot now returns a 404  ...):

[image removed]

FWIW, in NM28 I've noticed that the popup has the word "beta" in its header, whereas in Kafan MiniBrowser (I'm writing this on ) the popup is quite different, supposedly it's the one you yourself get with Mypal68 ...

Thanks for checking. Here's a screenshot of the popup I was getting (it contained more content accessible with the mouse wheel, but a "cached" link/button was nowhere to be found). Turns out the problem was cookie cruft: prompted by your post, I tried deleting all cookies containing "google", and now I'm also getting the "beta" popup with the "cached" button (which is what I was getting in Mypal 68).

Quote

... As you said, the "legacy" format is much more lenient to older, under-resourced, H/W XP users are likely to be running the UXP browser(s) on  ; one thing I still like about the old format is that it's kept the "pagination" feature in result pages (look for it at the bottom of the page, i.e. "Next" -> "< Page 2 >" -> "<<  < Page 3 >" etc.), while the "modern" format has now permanently switched to "more results/endless scrolling" ; [...]

Good points. No disagreement from me. I may end up changing my mind and switching back to the "legacy" interface myself, though the features/functionality offered by the "modern" one are useful at times. Though I guess I could pull up Mypal and get to it there on the occasions I needed it...

I need to work harder at minimizing my use of Google (with its user tracking/data mining) anyway. DuckDuckGo is okay, but its results sometimes don't catch things Google does, and its regular interface doesn't split the results into separate pages either (though like Google, it does at least currently allow one to switch off the dreadful automatic loading/"infinite scroll"); its "HTML" and "Lite" interfaces do, but are also stripped-down in functionality. One search engine I keep forgetting to use is Startpage, which delivers Google results (that they pay Google to use) without the tracking; I just tried it, and am pleased to report it still uses traditional pagination.

Edited December 4, 2023 by loblolly986

[VistaLover]

18 hours ago, loblolly986 said:

Here's a screenshot of the popup I was getting (it contained more content accessible with the mouse wheel, but a "cached" link/button was nowhere to be found).

... That's the exact popup I'm being served with Kafan MiniBrowser (Ch87-based) ...

18 hours ago, loblolly986 said:

and its regular interface doesn't split the results into separate pages either (though like Google, it does at least currently allow one to switch off the dreadful automatic loading/"infinite scroll"); its "HTML" and "Lite" interfaces do, but are also stripped-down in functionality.

For anyone interested in getting back "traditional pagination" in the search results generated by the "modern" GS GUI, there's a userscript that attempts to emulate it (not fully, read the details in its description  ) : 

https://greasyfork.org/scripts/468360-return-pagination-to-google

Edited December 5, 2023 by VistaLover
locale-free URI

[nicolaasjan]

1 hour ago, VistaLover said:

For anyone interested in getting back "traditional pagination" in the search results generated by the "modern" GS GUI, there's a userscript that attempts to emulate it (not fully, read the details in its description  ) : 

https://greasyfork.org/el/scripts/468360-return-pagination-to-google

Or the English version of this page:

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/468360-return-pagination-to-google.

[Edit]

Found another one:

https://gist.github.com/sp00n/e8b91d2f47c471bc0627f7b31d659291

(scrapped that ; it's buggy on Pale Moon with Greasemonkey)

Edited December 4, 2023 by nicolaasjan

[VistaLover]

5 hours ago, nicolaasjan said:

Or the English version of this page:

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/468360-return-pagination-to-google.

Thanks  ; I had set preferred page locale to Greek in my browser, so GF loaded the "el" edition of the userscript page: 

My post above will be edited to a "locale-free" userscript URI, so that GF will load the default (en-US) or user-specified locale of that page (if it exists on GF, that is)  ...

Edited December 4, 2023 by VistaLover