My Browser Builds (Part 5)

[modnar]

3 hours ago, UCyborg said:

No reason to bother with that unless you use Chromium AFAIK. And even then it's not a 100% thing, there are a bunch of certificates XP doesn't understand anyway and validation fails.

Odd thing is that sometimes ads were shown (before the latest cert update)...

[UCyborg]

1 hour ago, j7n said:

I used to use them for streaming media players like SMPlayer.

Oh yeah, that could be another reason to use them. I only ever used PotPlayer with YouTube and I never tried making it fail on purpose, so checking with the browser what root certificate it's linked to and disabling it.

YouTube wasn't the problem in either old 360Chrome 13.5 or Supermium (both on XP).

2 minutes ago, modnar said:

dd thing is that sometimes ads were shown (before the latest cert update)...

Right, no explanation for that, so I didn't say anything. Should have been explicit.

Edited December 3 by UCyborg

[modnar]

Mighty fine! I've searched around and found this fine site Cert_updates for legacy Windows - imported root and intermediate certificates and everything works correctly, e.g. Tomshardware site.

[D.Draker]

16 hours ago, j7n said:

Does Supermium have built-in certificates? Yeah, the certificate aspect of XP has become obsolete. I used to use them for streaming media players like SMPlayer. But those stopped being able to open most media for various reasons.

Facebook has started showing me a message about New Moon being obsolete. It can be dismissed.

https://i.imgur.com/jQxMpmt.png

No.

[VistaLover]

14 hours ago, j7n said:

Does Supermium have built-in certificates?

... Answered in the Supermium thread, where I think it's more pertinent  ...

[j7n]

One of the things I really love about the New Moon browser is how easy it is to transfer everything to another computer. All cookies and settings still work. I don't need to log in to all the sites, the search toolbar and bookmarks are there. Losing the cookies is a disaster when some of the passwords  have been forgotten.

Opera (Opium) is deliberately giving me a hard time with a concept called "secure preferences", which make them tied to the Windows user account.

[Slavich]

Hello, Roytam! Three sites in the browser are not working correctly:

https://ibb.co/HFfzKgs

https://ibb.co/VDLpp2H

https://ibb.co/Pjgv1VY

Thank you for your work.

[j7n]

How is the "Make New Moon the Default Browser" button supposed to work? It didn't do anything to me on Windows 2008 R2 and kept asking on startup to make default. I am Administrator with all rights, UAC off. I used to have Opera 8 as default. But it couldn't open anything anymore, so I tried to make New Moon the default. Since then either Internet Explorer would open, or sometimes Opera 12 would open if it was open already. It seems to be guessed and helped by Windows (of course).

There is some complexity with this feature, which has gotten worse since in Windows 7. If I did it by the book, in Control Panel -> Programs -> Default Programs -> Set Associations, only Internet Explorer would presented as the choice, and I can't browse.

So I opened HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell and created an open command with Palemoon replacing the old command with Internet Explorer, which seems to work. I scoured the registry and couldn't find any references to Opera.

[AstroSkipper]

On 12/8/2024 at 1:19 PM, j7n said:

How is the "Make New Moon the Default Browser" button supposed to work? It didn't do anything to me on Windows 2008 R2 and kept asking on startup to make default. I am Administrator with all rights, UAC off. I used to have Opera 8 as default. But it couldn't open anything anymore, so I tried to make New Moon the default. Since then either Internet Explorer would open, or sometimes Opera 12 would open if it was open already. It seems to be guessed and helped by Windows (of course).

There is some complexity with this feature, which has gotten worse since in Windows 7. If I did it by the book, in Control Panel -> Programs -> Default Programs -> Set Associations, only Internet Explorer would presented as the choice, and I can't browse.

So I opened HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell and created an open command with Palemoon replacing the old command with Internet Explorer, which seems to work. I scoured the registry and couldn't find any references to Opera.

I can't say what's going wrong in your system as I never have used Windows 2008. And I don't know whether New Moon 28 targets this OS at all. Under Windows XP, the "Make New Moon the default browser" button has always worked like a charm. And if this feature didn't work in other browsers, I either edited the respective registry entries manually or I used the tool Default Browser 1.8. Unfortunately, this tool is for Windows XP only but maybe, there is also a tool which does this job under your OS. Here are important registry locations which were set by me for using New Moon 28 as default browser under Windows XP:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\palemoon.exe
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ftp
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaleMoonHTML
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaleMoonURL
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\palemoon.exe
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\https
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\ftp
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\PaleMoonHTML
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\PaleMoonURL
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet\Pale Moon web browser
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet\PALEMOON.EXE

Under the registry path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet all registered standard web browsers are listed. So if you want to be offered a standard browser, you have to enter the corresponding one there.  BTW, New Moon's native function for setting it as default browser is SetDefaultBrowser(). When checking its source code, you will exactly know what actions the "Make New Moon the default browser" button performs.

Edited December 11 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[UCyborg]

Wow, https://www.gog.com/en/ took whooping 54 seconds to load fully here on official Pale Moon 33.5.0, 34 seconds on older Firefox 110.0.1 and 24 seconds on even older Edge 94.0.992.58.

[j7n]

For me the GOG page loads fine. Maybe it was an issue with the network, not specific to any browser.

I see now that the default browser is set using a separate program: uninstall\helper.exe /SetAsDefaultAppUser  At some point I deleted this when I cleaned up the Palemoon directory because I didn't actually "install" the browser (it comes in a zip file).

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT is a merged view of HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes { usually empty } and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes ; so adding something to HKCR just works and puts it under machine or sometimes user if it can't put it under machine. This is where everything would go on old OS and still does for me. There is some new-OS specific override, but on my system I couldn't find it. Maybe it is never created if user doesn't chooses a browser.

You can witness a "ghost key" if you create two keys with the same name under both machine and user. Then go under HKCR and delete it and think it is gone. It gets deleted from user. Then it "respawns" and is read from machine. One of the surprised that came with XP where user began to be used more.

Windows, without setting another browser, seems do something strange. It looks if any browser is already open and then uses that to open a HTTP link. Normally I have Opera 8 open to receive e-mails. It doesn't seem to actually be in the registry. I wonder how it knows that it is a browser.

Edited December 11 by j7n

[UCyborg]

9 hours ago, j7n said:

For me the GOG page loads fine. Maybe it was an issue with the network, not specific to any browser.

Still takes about 25 seconds on work laptop with Pale Moon and 100 Mbps downstream connection. The time is cut in half with Edge.

[j7n]

I get about 20 seconds in New Moon and 4 seconds in Supermium. That's just how modern sites are. At least it finished loading.

Even if they made their website look like MSDOS with eyesore colors, I bet they'd have stretching and squeezing in the background. People are afraid to be left behind on the web and judged for poor security and standards. Look at all the pixelated retro games that have come out recently and require a 64-bit computer with Direct3D.

Out of all that GOG has, I have www.googletagmanager.com blocked.

Edited December 12 by j7n

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Of course silly-me tried two days in a row to time that site.  Hit in the face with the corporate popup that this computer is monitored and that site violates policy.  At least nobody has come knocking on the door yet, lol.

[genieautravail]

Somebody have an idea what is happening with this filter update (failed, checksum mismatch):

If I click on the "Filter list" link I can open the list:

Regards