Which internet browser?

[PluMGMK]

I'm running Windows 3.1 on my main PC, which has a Qualcomm Atheros network adapter on the motherboard. Unfortunately none of the DOS packet drivers out there seem to work with it, so I'm stuck with serial… Of course, someday I might decide to try to write a packet driver myself, or hack one of the existing ones…

[Reese Riverson]

I'm running Windows 3.1 on my main PC, which has a Qualcomm Atheros network adapter on the motherboard. Unfortunately none of the DOS packet drivers out there seem to work with it, so I'm stuck with serial… Of course, someday I might decide to try to write a packet driver myself, or hack one of the existing ones…

Have you thought about running things through 86Box so you could use your networking that way?

[PluMGMK]

I do run it through qemu sometimes, but where's the fun in that?

[Reese Riverson]

Heh, you like a little challenge in that stuff, don't you?

[PluMGMK]

That I do! It's pretty cool, I've been able to write drivers to make Windows 3.1 work with the SATA controller in AHCI mode, and to make Rayman 1 play its sound through the HD Audio device on the motherboard, and for the last year or so I've been working on-and-off on a driver to make Windows 3.1 run in full-colour 1080p!

[Reese Riverson]

Hmm, how good are you at writing drivers for that OS?

[PluMGMK]

Good enough I guess I'm just working with the templates in the old Win3.1 Driver Development Kit…

[dr_st]

What I do find fun is being able to browse the old web on my Windows 98SE machine, since there seems to be a community trying to more or less restore some of that. I forget what it's called but you just edit some settings in IE on there to use their servers.

I recall I switched to Firefox towards the end of my Win98SE regular usage days. I think version 2.0.0.20 is the last one officially supported?

[Reese Riverson]

Good enough I guess I'm just working with the templates in the old Win3.1 Driver Development Kit…

Hmm, do you happen to have a copy of that handy?

I recall I switched to Firefox towards the end of my Win98SE regular usage days. I think version 2.0.0.20 is the last one officially supported?

Now that you say that, I do believe I was using Firefox on Windows 98SE towards the end of me using it as well. As for the last version officially supported, I do not recall. Though with the likes of KernelEX you can easily go well beyond that.

[LoveMetal]

That I do! It's pretty cool, I've been able to write drivers to make Windows 3.1 work with the SATA controller in AHCI mode, and to make Rayman 1 play its sound through the HD Audio device on the motherboard, and for the last year or so I've been working on-and-off on a driver to make Windows 3.1 run in full-colour 1080p!

Holy cow! Is there some place where you showcase that stuff or is it private at this point?

[PluMGMK]

Hmm, do you happen to have a copy of that handy?

You can grab a copy here http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php?p=22924 If you want to use the "WDEB386.EXE" debugger on anything newer than a 386/486, you need to hex edit it (At 63D8, change 0F 24 F0 to 66 33 C0, and at 63DF, change 0F 24 F8 to (again) 66 33 C0.)

Now that you say that, I do believe I was using Firefox on Windows 98SE towards the end of me using it as well. As for the last version officially supported, I do not recall. Though with the likes of KernelEX you can easily go well beyond that.

I'm not sure about KernelEX, but you can get RetroZilla, which is basically the SeaMonkey equivalent of Firefox 2.0.0.20, but with support for newer TLS versions added IIRC.

Holy cow! Is there some place where you showcase that stuff or is it private at this point?

Most of it's on my GitHub. The HD Audio driver is here, and the Windows 3.1 fixer for AHCI mode is here. The graphics driver for Windows 3.1 is still private since I don't want to put it online until I'm happy that it's usable. The reason being that I don't trust myself to follow through and complete it after putting it online, and I don't want to get people's hopes up for a project that never gets finished

[LoveMetal]

Thanks! I spied on your Github a little bit, looks like you're really into low-level stuff.
What are you doing now? I'd bet on electrical engineering.

[Hunchman801]

I use Chrome, but I can't say I've experimented with a lot of alternatives since I switched from Firefox, 10 to 15 years ago.

[Reese Riverson]

Hmm, do you happen to have a copy of that handy?

You can grab a copy here http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php?p=22924 If you want to use the "WDEB386.EXE" debugger on anything newer than a 386/486, you need to hex edit it (At 63D8, change 0F 24 F0 to 66 33 C0, and at 63DF, change 0F 24 F8 to (again) 66 33 C0.)

Holy crap, these are some really cool resources I wasn't aware of! I have much respect for you and your Windows 3.1 capabilities here, Plum!

Though for a lot of this stuff, such as the AHCI drivers, don't you have to patch DOS itself to run off that?

I use Chrome, but I can't say I've experimented with a lot of alternatives since I switched from Firefox, 10 to 15 years ago.

What made you decide to switch away from Firefox to begin with?

[PluMGMK]

What are you doing now? I'd bet on electrical engineering.

Well, I'm an electronic engineer professionally, and one of my other hobbies is mapping and understanding the power grid as an outsider, so…

Though for a lot of this stuff, such as the AHCI drivers, don't you have to patch DOS itself to run off that?

DOS can run in AHCI mode without any problems as long as the BIOS has a working int 13h implementation. In fact, Windows 3.1 does too as a fallback, and all my driver really does is intercept some bad int 4Bh calls that my BIOS makes so that they don't crash Windows 3.1. So, for now, it's not a "true" AHCI driver for Windows 3.1 (maybe someday I'll write one of those!).

[Hunchman801]

What made you decide to switch away from Firefox to begin with?

I'm not too sure, but maybe it was Firefox's heavy RAM usage, which is a bit ironic as Chrome became known for that too.

Searching through my old posts, I was already trying out Chrome in 2008, and it sounds like it was my main browser by 2012. The change was probably gradual, and it's likely that I used both for several years.

[dr_st]

I was using Firefox for a while. Then when Chrome usage skyrocketed and it was clear they are becoming "the new IE" (a browser that's de-facto the standard for the web), it seemed that Mozilla decided to turn Firefox into a Chrome clone - UI simplification, reduced customization, and copying every feature that Chrome seemed to have.

At that point I decided to go down the Pale Moon route, as the Pale Moon browser seemed to be driven by a small team with the goal of "keep Firefox the way it was", while keeping compatibility with modern technologies and web standards. Well, it soon became clear the team has neither the time not the aptitude to really keep up with this (non-trivial to say the least) goal. Mostly all they were doing is rebasing their changes over updated Firefox versions over and over, going crazy with multiple forks of their own (Pale Moon, Pale Moon for Windows XP, Pale Moon for Atom / Windows XP, Basilisk, and probably a few other things I forgot). And where they insisted to keep their self-maintained "Firefox-legacy" code - compatibility suffered. Because whether you like it or not, the web is going to cater to the big guns, not to some technical specification. Plus some people on the dev team were kind of jerks.

At that point I was like "well, if I have to use Chromium, maybe I can at least find something that is (a) fast, and (b) not directly tied to, fed by, or reporting to Google? And that's how I got to Flashpeak Slimjet.

The downside is that, like Chrome, they are quick to drop support for Legacy Windows. XP/Vista is down the toilet, and basically requires a different browser (Firefox ESR or the new Supermium or MyPal). Win7/8.1 support has been dropped a while ago too, but at least both the browser and the OS are still quasi-modern and the web does not outright break.

[Steo]

I don't personally like Chrome that much for a few reasons. I'll use it if I have to, and I believe my gf uses it. I always preferred Firefox for a long time. I think I used Firefox in 2007 for the first time, and by 2010 got Chrome shoved in my face and tried it. After a few years I just ended up going back to Firefox again because every Linux distro I tried basically had it installed by default, and I started to like it.

I know there are probably "better" options out there, but I still like Firefox and use it as of now. I'm not a fan of switching over to different programs and then having to adapt to where everything has been moved to. That said, once I do adapt to something, I can grow to like it. Linux was an example of this.

[dr_st]

The worst thing about Chrome and Chromium based browser is this "search in address bar" feature that is forced on you and you can't remove.

It's like intending to be idiot-friendly for people who cannot fathom two separate text boxes. However, it ends up creating a total mess between address history, search history, and Google's freaking suggestions. And auto-complete only half works. Very frequently I type pieces of URL that I KNOW are in my history, but it doesn't bring them up because of the stupid suggestions it tries to serve.

Another problem is accidental exposure of intra-net URLs - you type an intra-net address, but either you mistype it or you are not connected to your corporate network. Instead of getting a "address not found" - it tries to interpret it as a search query and sends it to Google. Admittedly, when using Chrome, it can and probably does send everything you type to Google anyway, so maybe it's not such a big additional attack surface.

[Reese Riverson]

You know the thing I still hate about modern webrowsers? The fact they took away my ability to hit backspace to go back a page. That was my favorite feature!