(Tangent alert) Why does modern Firefox suck so much?

[Mæstro]

Thank you for answering my long outstanding question of how Chinese users continue to run their edition of Flash, supposing that they are neither simply using older browser versions nor a secret Pale Moon army. Knowing that a Chromium fork exists which maintains NPAPI without too much difficulty, like we do towards Firefox, makes the dominant browsers’ choice to abolish its use all the more glaring.

[Moonchild]

Thank you for answering my long outstanding question of how Chinese users continue to run their edition of Flash, supposing that they are neither simply using older browser versions nor a secret Pale Moon army. Knowing that a Chromium fork exists which maintains NPAPI without too much difficulty, like we do towards Firefox, makes the dominant browsers’ choice to abolish its use all the more glaring.

But haven't you heard? Anything that starts with "Web" is by default so much better! WebExtensions, WebGPU, WebRender, WebAuthn, ...
Actually, it reminds me of the trend longer ago when anything prefixed with "Open" was praised into heaven, even if they were not open technologies at all.

[UCyborg]

NPAPI is more of a theoretical than practical interest to me. Flash games got boring really quickly and I have too much "real" games I never get around to playing. I know there are other uses of Flash, but I don't remember it being used around here much beyond for annoyances. The only NPAPI plugin I used in recent times was PDF-XChange Editor's. But then, TBH, opening PDF in the browser tab doesn't hold that much of a significant value. Plus the thing can be rather unstable when trying to do something in it that it isn't just viewing and scrolling. I don't know if it doesn't like Pale Moon or my version of the program is too new or too old or the plugin is just unstable in general.

Java? My only uses of it are for DBeaver and some utilities related to Android. So the browser plugin is irrelevant. And if I'm not mistaken, it's exclusive to old Java.

Silverlight? Where is this still usable?

Unity? It's kinda in the same league like Flash to me.

VLC web plugin? Again, where it's usable? I was messing with user script that tries making use of it for YouTube video playback, but found it clunky and poorly integrated compared to just using HTML5 player.

[Mæstro]

Flash is especially important to those of us who grew up during its heyday. Guarding a Flash file, not necessarily a game, can often be almost like guarding a childhood storybook which has gone out of print. (I do both.) The diverse web designs which it offered were fun to explore as a child and have never been matched in its successor. Creative site designs possess artistic merit, and ought to be preserved as such.

Java and Shockwave are notable omissions from your list of plug-ins. Web applications have their place, just not in the browser core. These plug-ins powered many applets back in the day, without anybody being daft enough to suggest trying to render a text site with them.

VLC was likewise readily usable, as were proprietary equivalents like Windows Media Player. If it is less compatible now, thank Google for this like so many other of our plights. Complaining that VLC, Silverlight or whatever else is useless now is like complaining, as one friend did, that XMPP is useless because everybody is on Discord.

[UCyborg]

I did mention Java. Perhaps I lived in another world. Or at least not as much in the web browser. I do remember YouTube using Flash back then. And ATI's driver crashing when attempting 4K video playback. it would recover on first crash, but second resulted in BSOD.

I also remember some clone (presumably) of Insaniquarium Deluxe being served on the web and needing Java. And of the older generations of software at workplace has web UI made entirely in Flash. There was a brief moment of panic when Adobe pulled the plug on it.

I remember there were some didactic games in late 90s that used QuickTime, but those weren't web based. I probably didn't know about the internet in 20th century.

[Mæstro]

I also remember some clone (presumably) of Insaniquarium Deluxe being served on the web and needing Java.

Did it happen to use Gill Sans for most of its labelling? I wonder whether you and I have got the same one in mind.

[UCyborg]

https://jamesland.org/flash/Popcap/Insaniquarium (so it's just Insaniquarium, though I'm sure I played the conventional desktop version of Deluxe edition many years ago)

Who knew, there's a port of Java to WebAssembly.

[UCyborg]

Does the game above run for anyone with real Java? I have latest Java 8 (Update 491), if I access https://jamesland.org/flash/Games/Insaniquarium_Applet/content/freshpulp.com/Insaniquarium/fishtank directly, it just stays on loading screen. I seem to remember this game ran with Java 8 in the past, though I don't remember where it was hosted then.

Edit: Seems to load after a long while...it shouldn't take so long.

[Gemmaugr]

Does the game above run for anyone with real Java? I have latest Java 8 (Update 491), if I access https://jamesland.org/flash/Games/Insaniquarium_Applet/content/freshpulp.com/Insaniquarium/fishtank directly, it just stays on loading screen.

First time it said my Java was outdated, and to update. So I did. Now with 491 it says "java security blocked the app". Because of;

Code: Select all

Medium (removed from Java 8 Update 20 and later versions)
Only unsigned applications that request all permissions are blocked. All other applications are allowed to run with security prompts. Selecting the Medium security level is not recommended and will make your computer more vulnerable should you run a malicious application. 

So I went into java settings and added a temporary exclusion. Now it says loading, but it takes a minute for it to start showing game tips, and even after 4 minutes, it's still loading. Tabbing away and back ends up with a white screen and no loading text.

[UCyborg]

Yeah, have to add an exclusion. Strange. I didn't time how long it takes, but on the main page, where it's supposed to display in iframe, it never displays at all.

[UCyborg]

Oooh, and I remember messing with Chinese 360Chrome, the one based on Chromium 86. It has NPAPI support. Its GUI is a bit more flexible than typical Chromium. Not on Vivaldi level (quite far from it), but not stock either. My memories are a bit blurry, but I think it has the option for tabs below URL bar.

Its formal name is 360 Extreme Explorer. Out-of-box, it's riddled with unsolicited connections. There used to be repacks of it that cleaned it up, but, repackers lost interest as soon as Chinese dropped Windows XP.

Resorting to this browser appeared to me as an act desperation of Windows XP fans to keep it usable on modern web. I have the impression that this particular browser started the exodus of legacy OS fans from UXP browsers to Chromium. Later, Supermium took the spot, but NPAPI is still buried somewhere on the wishlist.

[UCyborg]

Tabbing away and back ends up with a white screen and no loading text.

So when it loads and after going to another tab, it hangs permanently.

[Mæstro]

Resorting to this browser appeared to me as an act desperation of Windows XP fans to keep it usable on modern web.

I think there are many Western users out there who regard Chinese spyware, as opposed to Western (whether commercial or official), effectively benign, or at least preferable. Facebook and the Five Eyes can reach the man on the Clapham omnibus, but their Chinese equivalents cannot even reach all the territory Peking claims, and he has no reason to enter anywhere she can.

[jobbautista9]

Its formal name is 360 Extreme Explorer. Out-of-box, it's riddled with unsolicited connections. There used to be repacks of it that cleaned it up, but, repackers lost interest as soon as Chinese dropped Windows XP.

There is still an English repack of it at https://360fans.pages.dev/, though I don't think it removes the unsolicited connections. Its latest version is also still in version 132 (January 2025, but the repack is published February 2026). Still supports NPAPI (tested with Flash and VLC) too surprisingly enough!

[UCyborg]

That's interesting, missed that. And the same people behind my favorite YouTube frontend.

I don't know what Chromium the latest version is based on (binaries are dated early 2026), but it does come with a handful of NPAPI plugins that Chinese still use these days. One is apparently connected to online payments.

Thorium with --disable-background-networking looks pretty good at first glance, though admittedly, I haven't performed deeper analysis. I did manually turn mtalk.google.com in chrome.dll into an empty string, this connection is opened at all times and there is no flag or anything to turn it off as far as I can tell. There's also group policy that queries their time service. And obviously, Google Safe Browsing in settings.

Anyway, I just like reducing noise as much as possible, less cruft in System Informer's Network tab then, less cruft when you monitor with Wireshark etc.