ArcticFoxie/NotHereToPlayGames -- 360Chrome v13.5.1030 rebuild 8

[NotHereToPlayGames]

The Luna Olive Green and Silver skins would both seem to be fairly easy - once time permits.

Unsure on the Aero Trans Brushed Metal - I dislike "aero" and disable it on OSes that it pertains to.

Aero is not "native" to XP, to the best of my knowledge, though I suspect it has been backported as making XP look like 7 used to be a "big thing" on many forums.

Aero also doesn't exist in 10 or 11 - again, to the best of my knowledge.

While it may be an order of "semantics", 10 does have a "transparency" effect but that's not really the same as "aero".

I'm not a fan of "transparent" and "blurry" toolbars either.  I want crisp and clear, not blurry and distorted.  

 

"To each their own", as the saying goes.

[mina7601]

Aero last existed in Windows 8 Release Preview, actually.

[cmccaff1]

On 3/30/2023 at 3:52 AM, NotHereToPlayGames said:

As much as I respect and appreciate the user base (which you yourself, D.Draker, admit that you are not among) of my 360Chrome "rebuilds", I encourage that user base to actually take that same path.

That path being to migrate away from XP, skip right over Vista and 7, get 10 or 11 to your liking (you will need other forums for that learning curve), and you should be fine until the year 2030.

I appreciate your honesty, and thank you for your efforts to maintain a good XP-compatible browser!
I've taken your words to heart and decided to finally commit to upgrading to 10, this time for good. Unless I'm on a PC so ancient it will run like a one-legged dog with anything newer than XP, it's 10 all the way.
I went back to my favorite version (LTSB 2015) and so far, it's running fine! No kernel-related issues are preventing me from running the latest versions of my favorite software (typing this from Chromium 111, which works absolutely beautifully)...there were a couple quirks that don't merit elaboration, but other than that it was a butter smooth transition.
I also have the latest stable OpenShell and StopUpdates10 updates running just fine.

LTSB/LTSC are pretty much what 10 should have been from the beginning. It's just the right proportion of useful features kept to bloat taken out, and the versions I've tried run beautifully on my old PC. LTSB/LTSC is a good road to take to ease the 10 transition.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

2 hours ago, cmccaff1 said:

LTSB/LTSC are pretty much what 10 should have been from the beginning.

Agreed!

Windows went downhill FAST when "metro app KIDDY GAMES" took over!

I'll revisit over the weekend or so, but I seem to think that LTSB 2015 wouldn't let me install TurboTax a couple years back, have not verified with recent editions of TurboTax.

Very likely .net framework dependencies which took me a while to get correct in my LTSB 2016 so I may have given up too soon on LTSB 2015 when I was trying it.

Edited April 4, 2023 by NotHereToPlayGames

[msfntor]

12 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Unsure on the Aero Trans Brushed Metal - I dislike "aero" and disable it on OSes that it pertains to.

I only care about the color (brushed metallic silver), and with the new tab and page content also silver, not this Aero feature, which I don't like either.

PS.

Found another silver theme not bad: Smoothie Alternative: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smoothie-alternative/fepblochcbcpmoeeinhfhnkdmhoahjho?hl=en-US 

Size 4.77 KiB...

Edited April 4, 2023 by msfntor

[mina7601]

11 hours ago, cmccaff1 said:

I've taken your words to heart and decided to finally commit to upgrading to 10, this time for good.

Welcome back to Windows 10, friend!

[legacyfan]

I finally made the move to windows 10 permanently and its never been better! its so much smoother compaired to older windows versions and can run things so much better than even 7 can! it been a good experience

[cmccaff1]

12 hours ago, mina7601 said:

Welcome back to Windows 10, friend!

Thank you! I settled on the compromise of dual-booting LTSC 2015 and XP x64 SP2...best of both worlds! On newer hardware I'll have to go all in on 10, or I might get lucky and be able to dual boot it with 7. For now I'm happy with what I've got!

[NotHereToPlayGames]

6 hours ago, cmccaff1 said:

I settled on the compromise of dual-booting LTSC 2015 and XP x64 SP2...best of both worlds!

I did a triple-boot between XP x64 SP2, 7 Enterprise, and LTSB 2016 for about two years.

It didn't really help me in the long run and only "held me back" because I would always always always boot into Old And Familiar instead of truly giving New a real chance.

It was only when I turned the laptop into 10 and only 10 did it truly take off.

Edited April 5, 2023 by NotHereToPlayGames

[Anbima]

On 4/3/2023 at 11:17 AM, msfntor said:

No, cause I don't more have rebuild 6 - could you post the link to download this version (if not by PM...), please?

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwtlmyoebk4j0hc/360ChromePortable_13.5.1030_rebuild_6_ungoogled.zip?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sn3s4ra40gby6cp/360ChromePortable_13.5.1030_rebuild_6.zip?dl=1

[mina7601]

15 hours ago, cmccaff1 said:

Thank you! I settled on the compromise of dual-booting LTSC 2015 and XP x64 SP2...best of both worlds! On newer hardware I'll have to go all in on 10, or I might get lucky and be able to dual boot it with 7. For now I'm happy with what I've got!

You're welcome! I'm glad you are happy with what you have.

[legacyfan]

15 hours ago, cmccaff1 said:

Thank you! I settled on the compromise of dual-booting LTSC 2015 and XP x64 SP2...best of both worlds! On newer hardware I'll have to go all in on 10, or I might get lucky and be able to dual boot it with 7. For now I'm happy with what I've got!

windows xp is the best! (and one of my best memories from my younger years)

[NotHereToPlayGames]

I've kind of learned to "redefine" my preference toward XP (which I know is not going to last forever).

I no longer define XP as "the best" but rather as "clean and without clutter".

We all think of 10 and 11 as "bloatware" but it digs much deeper - remove the bloat and it still doesn't pass our inspection.

Organize and remove the "clutter" and now we have an OS that can carry us into the next decade.

I don't do the whole "Start Is/All Back" routine, there are other ways to clean the clutter and get 10 to a more manageable and ergonomic eXPerience.

But the whole "Start Is/All Back" is exactly the same paradigm - return to a more manageable and ergonomic eXPerience.

[cmccaff1]

2 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I've kind of learned to "redefine" my preference toward XP (which I know is not going to last forever).

I no longer define XP as "the best" but rather as "clean and without clutter".

We all think of 10 and 11 as "bloatware" but it digs much deeper - remove the bloat and it still doesn't pass our inspection.

Organize and remove the "clutter" and now we have an OS that can carry us into the next decade.

I don't do the whole "Start Is/All Back" routine, there are other ways to clean the clutter and get 10 to a more manageable and ergonomic eXPerience.

But the whole "Start Is/All Back" is exactly the same paradigm - return to a more manageable and ergonomic eXPerience.

Very well said...it's going to take some time, but I'm going to get used to 10. Scrapped the XP partition and reinstalled LTSB 2015 fresh--and I'm very impressed with the speed.
There's no denying that when it comes to the kernel, under the hood 10 has major improvements compared to XP. It's really not even close. And once the bloat is dealt with, it's not too far removed from what XP was.
I find that for the most part all the stuff that was in XP can still be found--it was just moved around. And for everything else there's the WinAero Tweaker (I don't bother with it in general usage but have tried it and was quite impressed with all the features it has).

The funny thing is that for offline use, 10 is actually still compatible with a lot of old 9x-era software that already worked fine in XP. I stick with a lot of 'legacy apps' that have low CPU/RAM overhead, but it is necessary to have a modern browser for today's Web. I was greeted with a sobering reminder of XP's browser mortality when I fired up the latest build of Serpent 52 and found the main Reddit site doesn't render properly (the 'old' Reddit does work fine, though).
Sadly, we got to a point where XP fell too far behind the curve compared to what the latest Chrome or Firefox can do...I'm now using Chromium 112 and it's brilliant. It actually uses the integrated GPU properly, taking a load off the CPU (this really helps on a dual-core PC). There is a truly pronounced gap in capabilities between the best browsers XP can handle and what you can get out of even 7/8.x (and especially 10/11). I admire the efforts to keep classic OSes alive by kernel extensions but I'm not interested in possibly corrupting my OS just to get a few modern programs running (especially not when most of the stuff I stick with will run fine even in 9x; aside from my browser, just about all the programs I put on a fresh Windows target 9x or are possible by KernelEx).
It wouldn't be an issue for me if XP could still run the latest Firefox/Chrome, but unless some truly gifted coders step up to the plate we've just about hit the ceiling of what it can handle. 10 isn't perfect, but in pure power it runs MARATHONS around XP. Mobo manufacturers still support 10, anything with SSE2 and 1GB+ of RAM can run 10...it's a future-proof OS old HW can still run and the latest HW is still designed for.

[Anbima]

I would like to use Windows 10 or 11, but I just can't get certain programs to run on Windows 10 (nor Windows 7).
Is there any way to get such programs to run under Windows 10?

I suspect that the problems are related to .net framework, since 1.1 and 2 is used.
During installation there are errors due to DLL registrations.

Is there perhaps a howto for the procedure for such problems?