Best web browser for XP

I never did try because I learned that MS discontinued support for any browser other than Edge/Chrome in Skype for Web in late 2018. I've also read that changing the user agent doesn't work well, even in recent Firefox versions on Windows 10 - Supposedly you can login, but can't place any calls.

I'm curious as to whether you've successfully placed any audio/video calls in your current setup. Skype for Web requires WebRTC which is not supported in Palemoon.

If I have time I will try it on Windows 7 then XP and post my results.
 
Skype for Web is officially a NO GO in Windows XP.

Although you are able to login once you change the user agent you will NOT be able to place any audio/video calls. You will see it as 'ringing' in the browser but the party you are calling will never see the call coming in. The same applies if someone calls you on your XP browser - they will see it as 'ringing', you will never see the call coming in.

Tested with Serpent 55, Firefox 52, Slimjet 6, Chrome 45. Other XP browsers (New Moon, MyPal, Centaury) lack the WebRTC component that allows the browser to access your Mic and Webcam so I excluded them from my testing.

Well that's enough tech support for today. Off to the pub to feast on Wings, Beer and NBA Playoffs.
 
ClippyBeer said:
I have been testing other browsers for modern website compatibility on XP. The only ones besides the 3 above that are still maintained at the time of this writing are K-Meleon, QT-Web and derivitaves (Otter) and Advanced Chrome 54.20.6530.0. so I downloaded and installed. There are other browsers rumored to be working on XP (Yandex) but their websites are scant on system requirements and wanted me to "Agree to participate in improving Yandex services by sending browser usage statistics to the developers". Hard pass on Yandex for my testing.

I put them though their paces and ran into a few glitches (QTWeb/Otter are crash-prone). For example, ESPN.COM wouldn't show the high scores banners on those web browsers. Another site I visit regularly, Masslive.com, doesn't render properly on any of these browsers

badrender.png



Here's the site on NewMoon/MyPal, Serpent/Basilisk AND any current version of Chrome/Firefox on newer Windows:

oldbrowser.png


NewMoon/MyPal and Serpent/Basilisk are still the champs on Windows XP. The other browsers I tested worked fine with most websites but as you can see had some quirks with CSS rendering on certain sites.

Please note I am not in denial about XP's end of life, I could easily install a Linux distro on this old laptop but for now I'll keep XP for the sake of nostalgia. At least modern websites are still accessible (I also went on Discord's test server, worked fine). My next test is Skype's web client - will post follow-up when I get a chance to test.

In the meantime I would like to hear anyone else's experiences with other browsers still being maintained for XP, specifically I am interested in an updated Chromium based browser for XP - Advanced Chrome Custom is based on Chromium 54 and that still had rendering issues on certain sites. Try ESPN and Masslive.com for baseline.
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I tried out masslive.com on Centaury 52.9.0, and had no problem surfing the site, nor playing its videos. Centuary browser sometimes screws up the sound on videos at certain sites, but not here.
 
Janice said:
Of all these suitable browsers for XP which ones, if any, make it possible to delete cookies, like 'Self destructing cookies' does in Firefox and also to prevent scripts from running, like 'No script' in FIrefox.
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Centaury will accept 'self-destructing cookies' via the Pale Moon add-ons page (Firefox add-ons page blocks downloads to Centaury browser). Same for Mypal. There is a 'ScriptBlock' listed for PaleMoon addons.

SRWare Iron will take the add-on 'ScriptSafe 1.0.9.3', and 'sef-destructing cookies' is also available.

Comodo IceDragon: 'Self-destructing cookies' is available, but not Scriptsafe.

Slimjet: 'ScriptSafe' & 'Self-destructing cokies' are available.
 
Lots of good info in this thread! A few sites I trust on XP (Wikipedia), however most sites I don't trust in any version of Windows and safely browse them with Chromium or Firefox on Linux Mint.

I've learned much about speeding up VMWare VMs over the past few months. #1 performance enhancer: run the VM with a single CPU core (on Window 7). You read that correctly. Several threads found with Google confirms this odd behavior with VMWare- that Windows XP, 7 and Linux all run faster single CPU on VMWare. Why, I have no idea, but I run all those now single CPU.

It's easy to test VMs on a different PC- Move/copy the VM's folder, import into VMWare Player (that you've installed on the different PC), and run it. Answer "I copied it" to the query.

I ran this Linux VM on another XP box, gave it as much as 2GB, and it performed slower than local. Like my main XP box, that XP box also runs a single 5GB pagefile.sys on a RAMDisk using unmanaged RAM not visible to XP. Running the VM single core doesn't change much.

Best performance by far:
Linux Mint on a VMWare VM on a Win7 x64 box with 6GB (or more) for the VM, single CPU, over VNC to XP- very fast- plays Youtube videos just fine. I now can run multiple instances of Firefox (different profiles) with as many windows as I want. The Win7 box has 16GB RAM and is a Core2Quad 3GHz (hyperthreading disabled). Doesn't make much sense to me, but single CPU and lots of memory gets the VM hopping.

I've used VMWare Player v4 to v12 (called Workstation Player), and v4 has all the features I need (plus it's the only free version with VMNetCfg should you need that utility).

Also, I did try Linux as the VNC server (various VNC servers were tried) but none perform as well as just running UltraVNC on Windows 7.

XP is EOL only if you believe it is. I view it as a powerful master controller for other PCs running Windows 7, XP, 2000, 98, and Linux via VNC and drive mappings. It helps that I have 14 stereo inputs on my jukebox PC and get audio directly from the other PCs (for a while I used Icecast, but the audio lag was too much).
 
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Mypal earns my vote for reasons that require a bit of explanation.

Firefox used to have a wonderful little cookie-blocking function named "Ask me every time". In short, this allowed users to allow or block cookies on an individual basis. Such a fine degree of control has never been offered by any other browser, except those that can trace their ancestry to Firefox. This function alone made Firefox better than all other browsers, and existed all the way up through version 43.

Then, in Firefox 44, it was removed. This was the second-biggest mistake that Mozilla ever made. When I learned about this, I searched for forks that retained the function, and found out about Pale Moon, which became my browser for a couple of years after that.

Now here's where things get interesting. The removal of the function from Firefox prompted the development of a cookie-blocking addon called Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster is unique among addons in that it prevents cookies from being planted on your computer to begin with, rather than just allowing them to be planted and deleting them later. Because Pale Moon was forked from Firefox, it was very, very easy for Cookie Monster to be forked as well, into a Pale Moon addon called Cookie Masters. Although Cookie Monster is now deprecated, Cookie Masters is still maintained... a fact that proved to be extremely important when Pale Moon eventually made the same mistake as Firefox and removed "Ask Me Every Time" in version 27.7

Because New Moon and Mypal just take the Pale Moon code and recompile it for XP with almost no changes, they work perfectly fine with Cookie Masters. Between the two of them, current versions of Mypal are MUCH easier to find, so I give it the edge over New Moon. This combination of Mypal and CM gives me everything I need in a browser: it works with XP, it gives me the extremely fine degree of control over cookie-blocking that Firefox 43 offered, and it's regularly updated to maintain compatibility with websites that are constantly trying to break browsers.
 
Very well said, Katie!

Mypal and New Moon (roytam1) are both excellent options for XP users; in fact, the latest version of Mypal added a "duplicate tab" feature not available in New Moon.
 
Slimjet and Cent are updated? And, between them, what's your favourite? They can do a good render of the page as mypal or serpent?

P.S. Sorry for my english.
 
Slimjet and Cent are updated only for Windows 7 and higher. The versions I listed are the latest ones that will work on XP and haven't been updated. Slimjet and Cent are Chrome-based so they will render a page just like Google Chrome for XP. On http://html5test.com/ Slimjet scores 496 while Cent scores 489 so they may do a slightly better job of rendering pages than Serpent which scores 474.

My advice is download the portable versions of Slimjet and Cent and try them yourself - All the Chrome extensions that work with Chrome 49 will work.

On Windows 10 I have the newest version of Cent but my default browser is Serpent 55. I just like the extensions better.
 
Where can I find the old Self Destructing Cookies? The new version deletes cookies after the tab or window is closed. In the old one I can set the time, after which cookies will be destroyed. I like the old one because of that. I want to install this in Serpent browser.
 
Sixthofmay said:
XP (Wikipedia)
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wiki pedia , was birthed from the owners first love porno, he created the first porn-pedia for searching for specific sexual aberrations.
3 out five wiki pages have been deemed propaganda, tho some page are very clean, they are no longer mention-able in currently banned at my library whose admin showed me page after page of propaganda
 
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