ClassicConnect

[VCSMaster]

Well, over the last hour or so, I've given a couple different "modern" browsers for Windows XP a try, and I gotta say, I'm extremely impressed!

https://dmkho.tripod.com/mb/index.html MiniBrowser (Chrome based) was the first I tried, and while it completely works, it was a little sluggish (surprise to nobody). It reports itself as some version of Google Chrome built into Safari, and it was able to not only get to YouTube but actually play a video, albeit with some stuttering and of course maxed CPU utilization. Very impressed right off the bat!
Seems to have a built in adblocker, too, which was very welcome. It appears that MiniBrowser is being actively developed, too.

http://kmeleonbrowser.org/ K-Meleon (Custom engine based on Firefox) was the second I tried, and while I personally think the UI is ugly, it did work and it was pretty fast. It actually reports itself as Goanna (the name of it's custom engine) or Firefox 52.9, which causes some issues. It was also able to get to YouTube successfully AND play a video, mostly stutter-free and ~90% CPU utilization. It was, however, straddled with the limited function of the mobile version of YouTube, which it kept auto-redirecting to for no discernable reason. Perhaps the screen resolution was setting it off?
It did have some nice features in the form of built in script blockers that had toolbar buttons to swap around, though. K-Meleon looks like it has stopped being developed.

https://www.mypal-browser.org/ MYpal 68 was the next I tried, which is built on something called "Firefox Quantum," which is apparently some kind of next-gen thing Mozilla was working on for a high performance version of Firefox. I have to say, if Quantum itself is anything like the performance I get here, it's going to be legendarily fantastic! This is lickety split, even here on a Pentium 4. No built in adblocker or anything, though, which was a little disappointing to find out. It reports itself as Firefox 88. I was able to get to desktop YouTube no problem and play a video completely stutter free, and to my absolute amazement, after a few seconds of loading while idle, the CPU usage dropped to ~30% while playing 360p video!
This absolutely blew me away to see. Full functionality YouTube on Windows XP and a Pentium 4, with tolerable CPU utilization? Absolutely insane! Looks like version 68 here is no longer being developed.

https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal68/releases Mypal 74 was the last version I tried, which I am very pleased with. There was nothing "wrong" with Mypal 68 that would cause me not to use it, but the absolute latest version, 74.1.3, works just beautifully. Same as 68, same great performance, same layout. My hunch though is that this will "last" longer and remain useful further into the future. It reports itself as Firefox 102 and has similarly shockingly low CPU utilization during youtube video playback. I was even able to get it to play 480p reasonably well. It appears that as of writing this, Mypal 74 actually received an update YESTERDAY, meaning that this seems to be pretty actively developed.

I was able to find an old version of uBlock Origin that actually worked on Mypal 74, https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/file/4047353/ublock_origin-1.46.0.xpi here. Version 1.46.0 seems to work just fine, though I had to disable XPI whitelisting in about:config to make it install.

I noticed a small drop in performance loading web pages with uBlock installed, which is to be expected, but I suspect it could still be even faster if I could get uBlock for Legacy Firefox to actually work. I found a Github repo for it https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock-for-firefox-legacy/releases here but was not able to get it to install on either Mypal 68 nor 74 no matter what I tried.

One last thing to mention, for some reason, both Mypal 68 and 74 have an issue with my triple monitors. On display 1 (central LCD driven by DVI from GF6200) it is completely fine. When on display 2 (right side CRT driven by VGA from onboard 845 video) it is expectedly very sluggish. When on display 3 (left CRT, driven by VGA on GF6200) it is also sluggish and choppy!

I am not sure why this is, since the monitor is actually running at 85hz in the same resolution, and VLC has no problem playing to it, neither does anything else running on that display, even Rigs of Rods doesn't have any appreciable display. leading me to believe that this must be something Mypal doesn't like very much. Perhaps it will be fixed in a future version.

All in all, it would seem that the state of "modernized" browsers on Windows XP is actually very, very good right now! I highly recommend giving some of these a try if you have the chance.



One other thing that I have noticed, I don't like using web-based clients for anything if I can help it, and while Mypal will absolutely go to Gmail just fine, I want to find a nice email client for this machine. OE Classic demanded a login via browser, so perhaps Mypal will make this feasible? I think I will go and try a couple email clients for XP soon and probably report back my findings there as well.

Personally speaking, a halfway decent web browser, youtube, gmail in a desktop client, local video playback, and Discord are pretty much all I care to do on my modern comptuer. Aside from a couple games, this machine is scarily close to being able to completely replace my Ryzen now.

Cheers!

[nick99nack]

I have tried most of these, except for MiniBrowser. That one I am especially interested in and will have to give it a try on Windows 2000 with extended kernel. I wish we had more browsers for 2000 as that's what I much prefer to use over Windows XP.

Firefox Quantum is the Firefox we have now. It's a rewritten version of the gecko engine that was first released with Firefox 57 back in 2017. I used it for quite a while when it was still in development and was excited about it. It was fast! Probably the last time Mozilla actually cared about the browser...

Later on, Mozilla would end up adding a ton of bloat to the browser, and web pages are getting increasingly full of stupid javascript, so it's back to being slow and buggy again.

A bit of a side tangent but yeah, I'm going to have to get back into figuring out web browsing on 2000 again.
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If you like browsing without an ad blocker, you might also like getting rid of your virus scanner, and running around with your pants down. --SomeGuy, 2016

[VCSMaster]