What browser will xp users switch to when firefox ends support for xp?

jim, start page is a search engine not a browser,

 

Lol.

I can vouch for K-Meleon Goanna. Since the original browser isn't worked on anymore, it's unlikely it will be broken in future, and it uses native Win32 API for the UX so would be faster than either PaleMoon or Basilisk which use Mozilla XUL.

^^

 

Greetings, fellow XPocalypse survivors!

I apologize for commenting on a thread that received its last reply in August, but was hoping to introduce myself and share where I personally stand on the browser situation with regards to WinXP (I've used SP3 since 2008).

My name is Cameron. Compared to some of you, I'm a young buck, but at the same time I'm probably older than a few of the folks who use this forum (I'm glad to see so many bright youngsters have taken a vested interest in this fantastic operating system!)--I'll be 26 next month, and have been a faithful WinXP user since about 2004-05 (around the time SP2 was first released; prior to that time I was still on 98SE). I have tried nearly every major Windows release at least once, from Win3.1 to Win10, and every single time I ended up going right back to XP. It was, in my opinion, the last time Microsoft truly 'got it right' when it comes to creating an OS that lets YOU be the king (or queen) of the castle, giving you free rein to tweak nearly everything to your precise liking. Its low system requirements/overhead are the icing on the cake and it blazes on my current PC (an HP Pavilion Slimline with a Pentium E6800/4GB RAM [XP sees only 3GB, however] and a DVD+/-RW drive; it's MORE than enough for me).

For many years, my go-to browser on any version of Windows (from 3.1 on up) was Opera (way back in the Presto days before they switched to the Chromium engine). It was built for speed, fully featured with almost no need to install extensions (I can't remember ever installing one extension on Opera, actually), and perhaps the all-time best browser for computers that had a single-core processor and/or 512MB of RAM or less. I kept using Opera 12.x for as long as I possibly could, but eventually had to retire it because its aging JavaScript engine started to suffer tons of slowdown with sites that used a lot of scripts (including websites I had to connect to for purposes of work & school). I tried the 'new' Opera for a while, but it lacked much of what made the Presto-era versions so unique and reliable, and so I dumped it in favor of Firefox 28 (the last pre-Australis version), which worked great for a while until it too began to struggle with script-heavy websites. Begrudgingly, I 'upgraded' to 38ESR, and while I wasn't big on the direction Mozilla was going in with their browser (it seemed like they were striving too much to turn Firefox into a clone of Chrome, which I wasn't a big fan of at the time and still aren't) it grew on me. From then on I kept using the latest Firefox version as my main XP browser, all the way up to a few days ago (when what for all intents and purposes may be the final security update, 52.9.1 [Tinderbox build], was released). This normally wouldn't have been an issue. I figure, even if it's the last update it's not a big deal as long as I still have access to the legacy add-on archive and I can download every extension I enjoy using for a new installation (or add extensions, which I do from time to time, on a current installation). But then I find out that Mozilla is not only cutting off support for WinXP but they'll also take down the legacy add-on archive in October (which means that anything that hasn't been archived before the cutoff date [I believe it's October 5] is gone for good). Way to alienate a longtime user! I did find out about efforts to create a catalog of these add-ons, and I applaud all who are striving to make this happen, but from the looks of things the archive is not a searchable site but a giant file (around 35-40MB) with tens of thousands of different versions. I had six extensions I enjoyed using (a UA switcher, CTR, QuickJava, uBlock Origin, & a couple HTML-5 content blockers). It seemed counter-intuitive (and wasteful of bandwidth) to download such a big file just to find six extensions (with no guarantee that each specific program I enjoyed using would still be available). With Firefox now officially dead on Windows XP, & with the web standards continuing to change every day, I started doing research towards finding a successor.

roytam1's builds of Basilisk, K-Meleon, Mypal, New Moon, Pale Moon, etc. initially caught my interest, until it was clear to me that they are all forking from pre-Quantum Mozilla code (FF56,the last pre-Quantum Firefox version, scored only four points higher [478 to 474] on the HTML-5 test compared to FF52; not enough reason 2 switch). I asked him if there is any chance of a continuation of 52ESR (much like he's doing for 45ESR now), and he said "there is no new revision other than auto updates" (which I took as meaning 52.9.1, or wherever Mozilla stops, is his ceiling for all these different builds). It seemed self-defeating to switch to any browser that despite security updates would still be relying on old code; the developers of Pale Moon avoided forking past 24ESR as long as they could, but eventually had to jump up fourteen versions to 38ESR because of dwindling web compatibility. It seems that all these browsers, as applause-worthy as the effort to maintain secure browsing on XP is (and it is VERY admirable), are destined to hit a ceiling unless major breakthroughs are achieved in getting newer/more compatible source code to function properly on XP. Chrome 49/Adv. Chrome 54 worked better, but not by much.

Looking at different threads on MSFN about the future of XP browsing led me to one particular thread which had a reply (by roytam1, ironically enough) about a browser called Maxthon (which I'd tried many years ago when it was nothing more than a glorified IE shell and didn't care for at all). Supposedly, the latest version still supported XP, AND had Chromium 61 code. It seemed too good to be true, and of course an immediate caveat was pointed out: Maxthon is coded by Chinese programmers (which is to say, security may not necessarily be guaranteed). I always tweak any browser I use for security/privacy as much as I can possibly do and clear my browsing data before closing out of a session, so it actually didn't make me nervous in the slightest to find this out. After biting the bullet, downloading, and installing it, I was pleasantly surprised. I checked to see how Chrome 61 had fared on the HTML-5 test. It scored a whopping 526 points, more than fifty more than FF52 (and nearly forty more than Chrome 49). After configuring the settings as much as I possibly could and installing the only useful extension I could find (Adblock Plus; sadly, Maxthon has a very barren collection of extensions), I began to see how useful Maxthon could be as my primary browser. So far it's worked great! The only snag I ran into was when I tried to use mobile Facebook (https://mobile.facebook.com). For years in Opera & later Firefox, I used a special legacy Facebook version designed for older browsers (in many ways it's similar to Facebook as it was in its earliest days). Try that link in Presto Opera or any version of Firefox and you'll see what I mean. When I tried to access the same page in Chrome 49/Adv. Chrome 54, I got a different kind of site, which seemingly has been optimized more for smartphones. This was no issue in those browsers, because I was able to download a UA switcher similar to the old Firefox one and get the legacy page. Maxthon has no third-party extension for UA switching & the built-in one changes your UA in name only, as opposed to also altering how pages are rendered. I was able to get around this by switching to the IE core for Facebook, which renders the legacy site through IE8 (not the best solution but it works well enough). While using Twitter I noticed that a .gif that someone had posted hadn't redirected to an error message. Same thing with a video right below it. I clicked on both. They worked with no problems! I subsequently went to a friend's Instagram page and tried to view a clip they'd recently uploaded. It played all the way through with no issues! With this ended a drought of never having been able to view H.264 and AVC content properly on Windows XP (at least not without going through a multi-step process which did not always work; in this case, everything worked right out of the box). The cherry on an astonishingly good sundae!

I can confirm that Maxthon 5.2.4.3000 is fully working on XP SP3, and the talk about it having Chromium 61 code is not hearsay. I'm not sure what the future is going to look like for browsing on XP, but for now this seems to be the best browser out there for those who want/need the best possible compatibility with modern web standards and have a sufficiently fast machine (if you have two or more single-core processors with SSE2 support, or one or more dual-cores, and 2GB or more of RAM, it should work fine). Of course, it all depends on what you like to have in a browser--all browsers have their own pros/cons. If you only go online to look up something on Google or Wikipedia, and usually find yourself going to pages that aren't filled with a bunch of widgets or tons of scripts, it should still be possible to get by with older versions of Presto Opera (I recommend 12.18, though all versions from 9.x on up are worth a try) and/or Firefox (I recommend 28, though all versions from 2.x on up are worth a try). If you expect more out of your browsers and plan to keep using XP for serious tasks as long as you can, I advise using a more recent browser (Firefox 52ESR, Chrome 49/Opera 36, Adv.Chrome 54, Maxthon 5.2.4, etc; roytam1's browsers are worth a look if you crave security, but bear in mind that a ceiling could well be reached as far as how compatible the code is with modern web standards). I'm not sure who's going to see this, but I pray that this will be of interest to someone! My apologies for writing a long novel! May Jesus Christ bless you always!

Respectfully,
Cameron M.

 

ha ha ha thanks Elizabeth, ha ha ha its good for my soul to be reminded I have not wasted life "Time" memorizing stuff that will have no meaning next year.

If I was a IT Admin tho, I would gladly and proudly learn all this stuff,
thank god for Admin.

 

WELCOME TO THE FORUM

 

It's good to be here, Jim--thank you for the warmth of your welcome! I hope to be here for a long time to come. I'll do my best to offer any insights I can!

 

ha ha ha ha ha
Insights are against the law now, you are only allowed to "Wonder"

 

To amend a prior message, it turns out Maxthon (at least right now) isn't all it seemed to be cracked up to be. Not to say it's bad--it's not--but it doesn't work with the "Tile Windows Vertically" feature & it bluescreened on me earlier today. Along with the fact that there's no way to toggle JavaScript off, that's all the reason I needed to give it up. All that glitters is not gold, evidently. I'm now back on Firefox 52.9.1 ESR, and won't be looking back.

 

I use XP hack POSReady and since August 2018 I have watched many browsers and I have stayed with Mypal 28. It is tremendously fast compared to FF52.9.0esr, works with tweeter videos and has all the extensions you want. I do not recommend FF52.9 for the lack of security updates.
Neither Russian Yandex nor Chinese Maxthon (you could be charged to the bank or to the cards).

 

I definitely appreciate the recommendation, my friend! I only have one question: does Mypal get automatic updates or do you have to manually update each time? One of the things I liked about Firefox during its long run on XP was that it would silently download updates and then install them when I started a new browsing session.

For now I've switched off of Firefox and onto a combination of Opera 12.18 for most sites and Opera 36 for the ones it doesn't support. Considering Opera's perennial underdog status, it seems an unlikely target for hacking, not to mention Opera 36 scored higher on the HTML-5 test than Firefox 52 (489 to 474).

 

Mypal does not have automatic updates.
For me it is not a problem since it is usually updated once a month. I only have to enter once a month on their website https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal/releases download the latest version and install it on the one you already have installed. All the configuration is preserved. It's only 3 minutes a month.
It also has RSS live bookmarks https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal/releases.atom and notifies you of updates without having to enter the web.

 

hello!
I've tried Mypal 28, and it's definitely fast compared to FF52.9.0esr.
Is there an option to move the back/forward arrows from the left to the right of the address bar,
like in some other browsers?

 

Ah, okay. For now, I've got a combination that is good enough for my needs (Opera 12.18 + Firefox 38.8.0 ESR). Most of these updated XP browsers seem to be forking from the 38 codebase, which suggests to me that 38 is still very usable in 2018. It uses far less RAM than 45ESR and 52ESR too, I've noticed (and this is particularly clear on my old HP Compaq DC5000 SFF [2.8GHz Pentium 4 (Prescott), 4GB RAM, 40GB HDD & a DVD+/-RW drive], which I recently migrated back onto). Twitter/Instagram videos aren't really a selling point for me...simply a nice bonus. As long as I've got a browser that can let me access modern sites that Opera 12.18 slows down or even fails/crashes on, that's fine for me. And of course, I make sure to adjust for privacy/security and clear out all my browsing data at the end of a session, so I'm not peeing myself at the thought of a hacker invading my privacy/stealing information. Frankly, XP is probably one of the most hacker-proof OSes in 2018 considering its rapidly dwindling market share. XP-era viruses are no longer in the wild, and new ones for the most part aren't programmed for XP compatibility.

 

True. These compatible browsers for XP start from old versions that worked for XP, but more importantly, all security updates have been added.
You are in an error if you believe that a browser based on another old one is the same as the old one.
Mypal = Firefox 38 + all security updates until today
Firefox 38 = Firefox 38 + security updates until its creation date of april 2016.

 

My apologies for not responding sooner, wyxchari! I was busy this morning with a reinstallation of XP, which will hopefully be my last one for a while now. I should have given you more credit than I did for your excellent browser recommendation, and you are absolutely right: Mypal is far and away the best modern browser for XP at this time.

I wasn't expecting to make so many changes to my browser setup, but I guess it's a bigger issue than I'd originally anticipated. I now have a combination that works for me: Opera 12.18 for older/some modern sites, and Mypal for most modern ones. Mypal is a solid choice, but I migrated to it for a reason that you may not necessarily expect.

As I said before, being able to view H.264/AAC video is not a selling point for me when it comes to potentially trying a browser. As it turns out, Twitter/Instagram videos now play perfectly, but I keep the Media Source extensions off. It wouldn't be an issue on a newer machine, but on my old Pentium 4 they can run somewhat slow, unfortunately. I love that P4, though, and plan to continue using it for the foreseeable future. It still gets the job done every day.

Actually, the main reason I moved over to Mypal is because of Flash Player (I use version 11.1.102.63 on my PC; newer versions do not function well on older processors, at least not in my experiences). As strange as it may sound, older versions of Firefox are now starting to have issues with the Flash plugin and websites that support Flash Player. I would try to access the Homestar Runner site (HR is the ONLY reason I have Flash installed) but it wouldn't load properly, and trying to access the site through the 'Toons' page would not always trigger the Flash Player to work. I tried different versions of FF, from 38 through to 45, and it just wouldn't work the way I wanted it to. Only Firefox 52 has proven seamless in its support of Flash and its ability to load websites that use the Flash Player, but compared to older FF versions with code that was better optimized for older processors, it's very slow.

I had no issues with Flash in Opera, but wanted to be able to use Flash and Flash-based sites with no issues in Opera AND whatever my secondary browser choice turned out to be. FF52 is no longer an option, not only because it's not getting security updates anymore but because of how slowly it runs compared to old versions. Mypal worked flawlessly with the HR site and with Dailymotion (which would throw up a 'move to a newer browser' message in older FF versions; even if I spoofed the UA for Firefox 52 Flash still wouldn't function properly). I noticed that the Mypal installer was only 34MB, which seemed to be a promise of a browser that would be leaner/meaner than even older Firefox versions (the installers of which were in most cases 5-10MB bigger). That promise was by all means kept! My only regret is not moving over to Mypal sooner. It's EVERYTHING a browser should be, and while the code may be forked from older FF versions that's not a bad thing when you're using an older PC. That old code was designed to work well on old processors, and is still fine for the Internet of 2018.

I am done with Firefox, Maxthon, and all those other bloated crappy browsers. Opera + Mypal all the way for me! Thank you again for your patience and your kindness, wyxchari! I pray you will have an enjoyable weekend!

Your friend,
Cameron M.

 

Secondary mouse over blue bar, Customize, drag the buttons.

 

I just downloaded Mypal browser 28.0.1 last night, and been foolin' with it the last four hours (using it right now). I think it's a Pale Moon clone for XP...if so, it works a helluva lot better than PM ever did! Youtube videos play out of the box. Still too soon to tell for sure, but so far, I'm liking it:
https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal/releases
No problem installing it (I vaguely recall Pale Moon was a pain), and I don't recall PM having the 'File Edit Print' toolbar strip either. Since I detest the Chrome look, and the fact you have to go to extremes to scale the print size, Mypal already has brownie points with me!

 

Mypal is indeed forked from Pale Moon. It works VERY well on my ancient Pentium 4 (a 2.8GHz Prescott), much better than I was originally expecting (of course, having 4GB of RAM [the most my motherboard will accept] likely helps...that advantage is lessened by on-board graphics and an aging 40GB HDD, though).

For best results, I recommend at least a dual-core processor or two single-core processors (if you have a dual-socket motherboard or better). For YouTube/Twitter/Instagram/etc. videos, it seems that you need at least two cores to really have reliable performance these days (especially since YT eliminated the ability to use the Flash Player as a fallback, which really came in handy in previous years; thankfully, YT videos can still be viewed through VLC Media Player [version 1.1.11 is the last version I'd even think about using]). Older stuff that relies on Flash, like the Homestar Runner site and Dailymotion, still works fairly well on my Pentium 4; HR 'toons' load fine, and on Dailymotion I can view vids pretty comfortably as long as I don't have too much else going on in the background).

 

Like I said in the my other post, it's hard to believe this is a Pale Moon derivative. I had the last version of PM for XP about a week before I jettisoned it. Awful browser. Mypal must be a total overhaul. I currently have a used Dell Optiplex 755, Intel Core2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00 GHz, with an Intel Q35 chipset. XP thinks it's 3.0 GB RAM, but my MX Linux knows it's really 8GB. Pretty sure it's onboard graphics. I'm slowly working on a custom-build PC, which will hopefully run XP Pro at its best. My current PC has a buffering issue with action movies, irregardless of using XP Pro or MX Linix, so obviously a hardware limitation.....hopefully to be eliminated with the custom-build.

 

Do you mean PM 24.7.2 (which was the last true XP version) or 26.5.0 (which was the last official XP version but aimed at Atom processors)? In either case I don't blame you for not enjoying those older versions; if I'm not mistaken both were forks of Firefox 24ESR (the code of which was starting to get VERY dated by the time 26.5.0 was released). I don't think the Pale Moon team began forking from 38ESR until version 27 came out. Pale Moon and its forks are an odd beast...though the code is forked mainly from 38ESR there are bits of code from older versions that give it compatibility with some older addons (like an older FF28-compatible QuickJava version which I've confirmed works in Mypal and Michael Walden's Foxscape theme; a fork of the latter was released for Pale Moon, but if I'm not mistaken the last version for FF28 also works with no known bugs/glitches).

By XP standards that is some very solid hardware. I'm not sure what you're using to watch action movies, but for multimedia in general I've gotten by on a combination of VLC 1.1.11 & Winamp 2.79 for several years now. Winamp delivers flawless MP3/WAV playback and VLC has been able to handle virtually every format I've thrown at it. It even does high-definition video flawlessly too. I'm thinking about getting a newer PC, perhaps something from the Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge era, and seeing how it does with XP. In the meantime this P4 is still doing what I need it to do--I'm not ready to put the old dog down just yet.