My Browser Builds (Part 5)

[UCyborg]

Performance of Chromium forks with rich interactive content totally sucks on XP last time I checked.

[j7n]

More like when you throw a fast processor at the problem. On a slow computer many websites go into an infinite loop until the prompt to stop the script comes up.

[j7n]

More like when you throw a fast processor at the problem. On a slow computer many websites go into an infinite loop until the prompt to stop the script comes up.

[dmiranda]

" Very very very VERY patient"

For those who use xul browsers (maybe I exaggerate, I haven't used anything xul but sp52 for 3 years or so) regularly, it's obvious that you have something wrong in your settings.

In my case, speed is acceptable - except for ublock loading in startup- and similar to what you get in linux, or a poorly configured W10.

But maybe it's that I/we are more patient than the chrome crowd. Edited Saturday at 04:25 AM by dmiranda

[UCyborg]

Throwing fast CPU at UXP just prevents it from being totally unbearable. Pale Moon is atrocious on my POS Lenovo (dual core 1,35 GHz APU, 2 GB RAM, graphics taking 256 MB of that), even auto-scrolling on freshly launched instance is choppy. Kinda prefer Edge there, still haven't updated it past 94 though. I miss the old pre-Chromium Edge.

Kinda funny, that laptop would be the only conventional computer I have that satisfies the AVX requirement of official build, I doubt it would help with anything, even if I switched to 64-bit OS to be able to use it. Should probably get more RAM either way before it'll obtainable only at the junkyards.

7 hours ago, dmiranda said:

it's obvious that you have something wrong in your settings

What settings? There are no such settings, if they existed, they would be default long time ago. Performance complaints have existed for several years now.

Or tell us the settings to load/run some of the below examples well:

https://www.dr.dk/

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission

https://www.mimovrste.com/

Edited Saturday at 08:12 AM by UCyborg

[dmiranda]

There are many sites I cannot visit with Serpent. The whole bunch of social media, to begin with. For those, I use other browsers that work relatively well in XP. For banks, etc, I use a chromebook, even my phone. If you were using XP, I would suggest you do the same.

But for most sites, sp52 is good enough for me, and I feel safer and more private using SP52 with them, than using MP68 or supermium.

As per settings, there are of two types.Those in the browser: for firefox derivatives, I keep saying use arkenfox, and have made public most of the tricks I use. It's up to you to find them in this and mypal's threads, and try them. It ain't easy as using vanilla, though. For chrome derivatives, check supermium's (maybe thorium's) thread. Astroskipper's threads on xul browsers and mypal are also good resources. Edited Saturday at 11:12 AM by dmiranda

[dmiranda]

Those (settings) in XP are discussed at nauseam in the XP sub-forum. Until you get the hang of it, you will have to spend some time, though, and have an XP ready backup image (or many, as you advance). With the specs of that laptop of yours, it will be difficult, but (again), check with Astroskipper, it is possible.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

3 hours ago, dmiranda said:

Those (settings) in XP are discussed at nauseam in the XP sub-forum.

They do not work!  Placebo Effect.  I believe in measureable results and there is NO BEFORE-AND-AFTER difference.  None!

The only thing that works is disabling javascript (obviously), blocking ads (obviously), and those types of things that even an eight-year-old can do.

[UCyborg]

I meant to say there are no browser settings that will make the browser crunch through JavaScript half-decently. Apparently I can buy a new computer and emulate PlayStation 3 at decent speed while UXP browsers will still be slow and laggy.

Also, disabling JavaScript is useless if the site is client-rendered...

Edited Saturday at 03:22 PM by UCyborg

[Kmuland]

The KEY to use modern internet is not use cromium (because faster javascript).... roytam1´s browsers are enough

You must block selectively the javaspript that bloat each page.

UblockO addon is not enough. You need script block addons, expecially for XP and weak cpus

Edited Saturday at 04:11 PM by Kmuland

[Sampei.Nihira]

Why is it not enough?
Already blocking third-party frames and scripts would allow better web page loading speed.
Even using uBlock Origin Lite in chromium-compatible browsers would ensure content blocking performed by the browser itself,without RAM and CPU consumption by the extension with a noticeable increase in web page loading speed.
More extensions worsen performance.

P.S.

Moving network filtering to the DNS level would also help speed up web page opening speed.

Edited Saturday at 05:43 PM by Sampei.Nihira

[Mathwiz]

19 hours ago, UCyborg said:

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission

Yeah, that's unusably slow on St 55 (not strictly UXP but close), even with e10s enabled on 64-bit W7 with 8 GB RAM. But I'm not surprised an Android developer site uses Javascript that's only fast on "modern" browsers. After all, everyone who goes there (present company excepted) probably uses Chrome on at least an 8-core processor. Just bloat the site up with as many "cool" features as you can think of, and if someone finds it slow, just quote "system requirements" at them rather than making the slightest effort to optimize the code. It's the modern way of the Internet.

My point was only that UXP meets @j7n's definition of "retro" - new functionality with an old UI. I even conceded that it was slow! Not many sites are as bad as that one, though.

[Mathwiz]

I think a big part of the problem is that Javascript wasn't originally designed to do the kinds of tasks modern Web sites have it doing now. Originally it was just intended to do simple "bells and whistles" tasks that the site could live without - hence you could disable it and still use the site, albeit with less functionality. But since then, it's evolved into a complex programming language that folks even write .PDF viewers in!

In a perfect world, perhaps we'd start over with C-script or something; some kind of language easy to JIT compile into efficient machine code. Come to think of it, didn't Micro$oft try to push VBScript as an alternative, many moons ago when IE was the dominant browser? The effort failed because no other browsers supported VBScript, but perhaps we'd be better off now if M$ had succeeded. Or not. Just a thought.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

4 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Javascript wasn't originally designed to do the kinds of tasks modern Web sites have it doing

I'm not sure that I agree.  At least not 100% agree.  Maybe closer to like 60% agree.

I remember the days when all websites basically looked like a "newspaper" rendered on my computer screen.

Basically all web sites looked IDENTICAL.  A picture or two here and there, everything else just text.

"Creativity" only stemmed from if the text "overlayed" the images or if the text "wrapped around" the image.  Or 3 or 4 columns of text instead of just 1 or 2.

There were no "shadows" to frame borders, there were no "anti-alias" fonts, there were no fade-ins, et cetera.

The only way designers could make there web design not look IDENTICAL to everything else out there was to use STUPID things like "marquee" to add something that MOVED (ie, scrolling text).

If a web designer really got creative, they employed Macromedia Flash and Java applets.

And if you don't remember Flash and Java pegging your CPU to 100%, then you kind of don't really remember what the web was like before javascript (invented in 1995, mainstream by the early 2000s).

Yahoo Games was Flash and there were games that could lock up the PC of the era.

Geocities was javascript.  I don't recall ever being locked up by a Geocity web site.

I began using Proxomitron way back in those days!  Originally hosted on a Geocity web site.  Also on some Yahoo Groups web sites.

The web "pre-javascript" was also BLOATED and HEAVY.  Early days of fade-ins, big animated .gif images, hi-res banners on 56k modem transmissions.

No offense, but the web has always always always had content that would lock up a PC that wasn't "top-of-the-line".

Has it gotten worse?  I'm not so sure, to be honest.  Because back then, it was 10% of the total consumer population that knew how to block that stuff and joined web sites to converse with "birds of a feather" that flock together.

Is it really that much different nowadays?  I kind of don't think so...  It's still 10% of us, but today we flock together at cites like this instead of Geocity or Yahoo Groups.

Edited Sunday at 08:31 AM by NotHereToPlayGames

[UCyborg]

5 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

But I'm not surprised an Android developer site uses Javascript that's only fast on "modern" browsers.

That page loads without JavaScript. Another reminder UXP doesn't struggle with JavaScript alone.

5 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

But since then, it's evolved into a complex programming language that folks even write .PDF viewers in!

Nice thing about UXP is NPAPI, so can re-use your favorite native PDF reader in a browser tab, PDF.js is just silly.

Though it's true you can port various native C++ programs to web. I'd like to bring up d3wasm again, not only showing what you can do, but also how performance on web lags behind native, even on Chromium.

But it was Mozilla that popularized the concept of being able to do anything on the web! Google just beat them at their own game and no one has resources or interest to do anything interesting with Chromium, that's why you only have re-skins with no substantial changes under the hood. And Google doesn't want you to be in control. Guess that's what you can afford when you grow too big.

MCP crew is just riding on the high horse of being ethically and morally better than Google/Mozilla/Microsoft while no one takes them seriously, sure a lot of that probably stems from struggling of the platform to handle the bloat on the web, but I suspect some of it is also general closed-mindedness. And from perspective developers, developing for UXP can be easily seen as extra work without much payoff.

2 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

No offense, but the web has always always always had content that would lock up a PC that wasn't "top-of-the-line".

Isn't this slowly changing with this decade? OK, if you insist on your older computer and you were cheap when you bought it, sure, but today a Raspberry Pi 5 (assuming version with 8 GB of RAM) is pretty competent for the web unless you really go overboard with web "apps". But in the 90s, your PC was obsolete in a matter of months!

I don't know what's your "top-of-the-line" today and even if our perceptions differ, I'm sure anything along those lines is a big overkill if you just want to run a web browser.

Edit: Assuming differing perceptions because I'm sure neither of us would go for the most expensive ones! I do have approximate specs in mind that are tempting, but I wouldn't go for a new computer because of web browsers, the current one easily handles those, though I wouldn't say the same for the previous computer from 2002 or so.

Edited Sunday at 09:18 AM by UCyborg