My Browser Builds (Part 5)

[Slavich]

19 hours ago, roytam1 said:

New build of post-deprecated Serpent/moebius for XP!
* Notice: This repo will not be built on regular schedule, and changes are experimental as usual.
** Current moebius patch level should be on par with 52.9, but some security patches can not be applied/ported due to source milestone differences between versions.

 

Hello!

In the NM28 browser, the website of the Russian national social network "In contact" is reflected with errors

Photos are attached. Thank you for your hard work.

https://ibb.co/MRbJJ6m

https://ibb.co/n0gR7LC

 

 

 

 

Edited May 25 by Slavich

[kuja killer]

Hello roytam1

I wish to ask a question about the Serpent Browser. I've been using it for a year or so and it's been great, however i just had 1 single little concern about a website i frequently use " https://pixai.art " (no quotes) -

So it's an AI image generator site, and it would always show image previews on all the pages, account pages, etc. But ever since just about 2 or 3 weeks ago, it no longer ever happens anymore. Instead everything is always displayed as a very small rectangle box you have to click on manually, to see the image(s).

I dont know if it's because they changed some scripts or code on their site. But again it was perfectly fine just a few weeks ago.

Would you maybe know what this issue is ? And is it possible to support or fix in a future update of your Serpent browser ? It must be some type of javascript or html or something they changed that's not making these previews appear normally anymore. I have no idea. I'm using your most latest update from today by the way.

this is what i mean by these textboxes that appear (it should not look like this)

https://i.ibb.co/z5R0fHy/textbox1.png

https://i.ibb.co/fGy03vf/textbox2.png

https://i.ibb.co/y4BpTNj/textbox3.png

Edited 15 hours ago by kuja killer

[schwups]

On 5/18/2024 at 12:54 PM, roytam1 said:

On 5/18/2024 at 12:43 PM, schwups said:

Latest PM 27 doesn't start anymore - also with a new profile. However, I haven't tested on a clean XPSP3 system. It works with the previous Xul.dll.

got a crash here. need to debug whats going wrong here.

EDIT: the last rev cause the crash, need to decompose it and test each change later.

EDIT2: the last change in the combined commit causes the issue, while merging new changes fixed the problem so no revert is done.

The new version starts and runs again.

[VistaLover]

47 minutes ago, kuja killer said:

and it would always show image previews on all the pages, account pages, etc. But ever since just about 2 or 3 weeks ago, it no longer ever happens anymore. Instead everything is always displayed as a very small rectangle box you have to click on manually, to see the image(s).
...
Would you maybe know what this issue is

For starters, I can't even load in St52
https://pixai.art/search?q=asuna&sort=trending
with uBlock Origin "legacy" turned OFF (but this is material for another research  ) ...

With uBO ON, the page eventually loads; Web Console throws below TypeError: 

Several web searches later, it appears this is a Firefox-specific predicament; @roytam1, please take a look at below Bugzilla bugs: 

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1533680

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1335594

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1367251

Mozilla "fixed" the bug in Firefox 93.0+ ; it's unclear to me if "their" code can be ported to UXP and St52 ; of course, the "bug" isn't present in Chromium (KMB, Ch87-based, here ) ...

[UCyborg]

On 5/23/2024 at 11:53 PM, UCyborg said:

Welp, as I finally got around to this, I stumbled upon the first obstacle, there's no Python 2.7 in Debian Bookworm.

I managed to get Python 2.7 going (installed). Pale Moon (64-bit GTK2 version) took slightly over 58 minutes to compile on a Raspberry Pi 5. I did not use --disable-debug-symbols option, used defaults as suggested in build instructions, the source code was downloaded to external WD 5 TB hard disk, the slower kind using SMR tech.

Still can't believe the browser works, that was the first time I ever compiled any web browser from source code.

[AstroSkipper]

6 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Still can't believe the browser works, that was the first time I ever compiled any web browser from source code.

Congratulations on your first browser compilation! 

[UCyborg]

23 hours ago, VistaLover said:

https://pixai.art/search?q=asuna&sort=trending

Model tab looks closer to how it was intended.

Except for uncontrolled element enlarging, I bet it's due to certain combination of CSS parameters.

[chermany4ever]

Hi guys. I want to say something regarding what you were chatting about a few posts ago. A bit off topic but I'll keep it short.

I've been testing Supermium and Thorium. At least on my machine -XP SP2- Supermium started 2 times out of 8 and ran very unstable. It finally crashed my system one day when I was trying to block scripts with uBlock. I deleted it and had to revert back using an image. Then tried Thorium and although it seems more stable it also starts up when it wants, is unstable, freezes the machine at times and didn't inspire 10% of the confidence I feel browsing with Serpent. Sure it's nice to go back to using WhatsApp Web and browse some difficult sites in a more accessible way but I don't think it's worth it. I opted to stick with Serpent and only use 360Chrome for these other situations on relatively clean pages. That's about it.

[kuja killer]

4 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Model tab looks closer to how it was intended.

 

  Hide contents

 

Except for uncontrolled element enlarging, I bet it's due to certain combination of CSS parameters.

Oh yea that page is the only one that really seems to work, but it acts very strange as you said, when i scroll down the page with the mouse wheel.. or try to scroll down/up anyway, the page automatically keeps trying to scroll back up without me even touching anything - it makes it hard to click through to some model pages sometimes...
and they keep like zooming-in on everything until its almost impossible to see anything (in the serpent browser) and/or the image windows grow to some stupid huge size ..it's really weird, i think that's a glitch cause i dont think that's supposed to happen either. i dont recall that ever doing that either in the past.

I just kinda wished all the other pages actually worked though as it did a few weeks ago.

also, yea i noticed that error message too VistaLover said after he checked it out, it appears most of the pages about missing image arguments thing, on the Web Console thing.

Edited May 27 by kuja killer

[UCyborg]

There was a suggestion in this thread that freeing memory might be improved if one closes whole window. Got Pale Moon to consume little over 4 GB yesterday, having it open throughout the day and browsing as usual + a bit of GitHub, the site that is notoriously problematic on UXP browsers.

In the end, I opened an empty window and closed the old window. The amount of freed memory after forcing it with Minimize memory usage button on about:memory page was negligible. my set of enabled extensions does cause a noticeable slowdown in browser startup time, but I don't recall them ever having other noticeable bad side effects.

I got curious about --disable-jemalloc build option as it was brought up in one discussion on PM forum, so built the browser with it, will see how it works on Raspberry then. I know one Windows user reported a crash inspecting element on a certain site with such build that didn't occur otherwise. Maybe testing that way so it uses operating system's memory allocator would be an easier step towards finding some subtle bugs in the code.

Apparently it was decided jemalloc was a better option back in XP days, might still be on XP, but the rest, who knows.

[AstroSkipper]

12 hours ago, chermany4ever said:

Hi guys. I want to say something regarding what you were chatting about a few posts ago. A bit off topic but I'll keep it short.

I've been testing Supermium and Thorium. At least on my machine -XP SP2- Supermium started 2 times out of 8 and ran very unstable. It finally crashed my system one day when I was trying to block scripts with uBlock. I deleted it and had to revert back using an image. Then tried Thorium and although it seems more stable it also starts up when it wants, is unstable, freezes the machine at times and didn't inspire 10% of the confidence I feel browsing with Serpent. Sure it's nice to go back to using WhatsApp Web and browse some difficult sites in a more accessible way but I don't think it's worth it. I opted to stick with Serpent and only use 360Chrome for these other situations on relatively clean pages. That's about it.

Regarding running Supermium under Windows XP on old, weak hardware, I definitely have to agree. This browser does not work properly there. On the other hand, Thorium does, though. But you have to exactly configure it suitable for your hardware. But TBH, my main browsers under Windows XP still remain New Moon 28 and Serpent. 

[chermany4ever]

4 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

you have to exactly configure it suitable for your hardware

In all honesty, I don't know if I have the knowledge to configure Thorium exactly for my machine but tried in Settings all the friendlier options and didn't get it to work much better, was still pretty unstable. Another thing that didn't convince me is that I got used to the fact that with Serpent the cache is stored in memory -not on disk- but between Thorium folder and the cache it ate more than 1gb! Too much for me for a program that works quite unstable. I'll pass for now, although of course I recognise the effort.

[Mathwiz]

WTF now, M$?

Github.com comes up fine in Edge or even 360EE.

Edit: For information, the following pref is at its default value:

network.http.accept-encoding;gzip, deflate, vary

Edit 2: Hmm.... Works in St 52, not St 55. Could it be a profile issue? BRB....

Edit 3: Yep, it's a profile issue. Works in a clean profile, or even in my default profile with add-ons disabled. So, I just have to figure out which of my many add-ons is causing this

Edit 4: Found it! It was Palefill 1.28, which, ironically, I don't think we even need any more! (I've instead been injecting polyfills with Violentmonkey as needed.)

Unfortunately, disabling Palefill 1.28 didn't fix the other M$ site that no longer loads in Serpent: the Windows Update Catalog. I'll keep working on that.

Edited May 28 by Mathwiz

[Mathwiz]

On 5/19/2024 at 4:25 PM, Mathwiz said:

OK, now things have gotten beyond ridiculous. Chase.com is one thing, but now I can't even open the Micro$oft Update Catalog in Serpent 55! It starts, but gets stuck in the "loading" state; never finishes (not even with a blank screen). User agent overrides appear to have no effect, although I obviously haven't tried every possibility.

Thing is, I can open M$ Update Catalog even in 360EE, so it doesn't require a particularly new browser to load it.

Edit: Never mind. M$ update catalog loads just fine in a clean profile. (FWIW, Chase.com works more reliably in a clean profile too, although "fill login" is still broken in Serpent. I don't even need my StructuredClone polyfill any more!) Obviously one of my add-ons or about:config tweaks is interfering.

Someday I'll learn to check with a clean profile before posting an issue.

I must admit, this one has me baffled. If I go to about:profiles and click "Restart with Add-Ons Disabled," the Windows Update Catalog loads fine. But if I disable every add-on manually and restart, the site still hangs at the "loading" state.

I even tried switching back to the default theme, on the off-chance that it was causing the issue, but it didn't help either.

Clearly, "Restart with Add-Ons Disabled" is doing more than disabling all add-ons and custom themes, but it's not at all clear to me what to try next.

[Tomcat76]

I'd like to report some problems I am having using Serpent 52 (G4.8 win32) if I may.
 
1) Starting with build basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20240518-3219d2d-uxp-e76fa74573-xpmod, some of my tabs get a blank title.  Thus far, I have only experienced it with local image files; I expect to see their file name instead.  The file names and their paths don't contain any special characters that aren't present in image files showing in tabs where the title does appear, so I don't know what could be causing this.  Clicking such tab makes the file name appear briefly, but then it turns blank again.  This problem is still there in build 20240525.  Reverting to build 20240511 fixes the problem.
 
2) For a couple of months now, I have experienced issues related to session management.  I have lost tabs that were opened up to 3-4 hours prior to a forced restart following unresponsiveness due to 100% CPU and memory usage, including tabs that were opened while the browser was still fully responsive.  This happened twice so far.  Also, if the browser is starting to become slow and I restart it (via File>Restart provided by Classic Theme Restorer), I am sometimes met with an error message from Session Manager saying "The session/window data is corrupted".  Clearing the closed windows/tabs list using Session Manager prior to restarting can increase the chances of this happening.  Similarly, if the browser is getting slow or nearly unresponsive and I try to save the session using Session Manager, I will always get an error saying "This operation failed due to a file access error".  I can only save a session shortly after opening the browser.
I don't know if it's related, but I used to experience freezes after leaving the browser idle; the duration of these freezes would last anywhere from a few seconds to around 5 minutes, depending on how many windows/tabs were left open and for how long.  The freezes still happen, but they don't seem to last 5 minutes anymore.  Could it be that a time limit was implemented a few months ago which somehow corrupts the session management?
I could revert to an older build from late 2023, but then some websites (such as WIX sites) won't load properly.
 
3) I have found that some forum-based websites using a specific software don't load properly.  I get a basic version with disabled scrollbar.  Example: https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/modded-intel-ahci-and-raid-drivers-digitally-signed/19691
I think it's Discourse.
 
4) Any way to fix the "new" Hotmail website?  MS abandoned the old Hotmail site in favor of a Microsoft Exchange layout, but I'm getting the dumbed down version even when "Use the light version" is unchecked.  I don't really mind the smaller font, but the From and the Subject fields are truncated after just a few words even though there's ample space in the column to show a lot more (up to three times and four times respectively).

Edited May 28 by Tomcat76