Slimjet updated to 10.0.3.0

[MilesAhead]

http://www.slimjet.com/en/

Slimjet updated to 5.0.4.0.  Both installer and portable versions are available.  I am using the 32 bit portable.  It seems to run without anything very weird happening.  I have not tried the x64 build(s).

I unpacked the new 5.x release over my 4.x version.  It seems not to have scrambled my bookmarks, settings or extensions.  Also 5.x has a couple of new features you may read about on the home page.

[MilesAhead]

For some reason the version 9.x portable did not detect that version 10.x was available.

I have renewed interest in using this as my goto browser because it opens quickly and even if Fast Dial is set to show on startup it will accept a url typed into the address bar.  Firefox I cannot take anymore.  It opens and hangs for 30 seconds before it will react to any input whatsoever.

[x16wda]

10.0.1.0 is out today, but it was only a few days ago the last 9 series update came out. Slimjet is my goto browser these days too, fewer annoyances than most others. 

[MilesAhead]

10.0.1.0 is out today, but it was only a few days ago the last 9 series update came out. Slimjet is my goto browser these days too, fewer annoyances than most others. 

-x16wda (May 21, 2016, 03:39 PM)

By any chance do you use Vanilla Cookie Manager?  I never had a problem with it before. Now on a few sites it shows the cookie icon in the address bar with a small 'x'.  On most sites if I click it then click Done Button with radio selected "Always allow site to set cookies" and hit F5, the cookie icon goes away.  But on DC and my page, so far, it just stays there.  Pretty strange.

Edit: I was blocking 3rd party cookies.  Turning that off seems to have fixed it. 

Glad you like SlimJet too.  I was a bit leery of chrome because I ran my Laptop using Performance profile and it seemed like chrome based browsers could pull my battery down even when I was plugged in.  But there seems no problem after switching to Balanced profile.

[dantheman]

Slimjet is an excellent rendition of Chromium for sure!
Must admit that Google Chrome dev 64bit is faster and reliable.
Slimjet is always playing catch-up in that regards.
Otherwise, SJ features are superb! 
SJ is the main reason for my gradual transitioning from stagnant, regress full Firefox (its "hello" and my "good-bye").

[MilesAhead]

Google Chrome dev 64 bit

-dantheman (May 24, 2016, 08:27 AM)

I may check it out in the future.  Right now I want to let things stabilize for a bit.  I took a quick look and did not see a portable version.  I just got done with my system backup regimen.  Maybe in a few days when I am due for the next incremental backup I'll take another look.

One encouraging thing is I seem to have the cookies working almost perfectly with SAS not complaining during quick scans.  The "genius" of Windows is you keep tweaking it, so you always have something to pass the time.  But it does get tedious when done too frequently. 

[rjbull]

Do the current frustrations with Firefox extend to its forks, like SeaMonkey and Pale Moon?

[MilesAhead]

Do the current frustrations with Firefox extend to its forks, like SeaMonkey and Pale Moon?

-rjbull (May 24, 2016, 04:39 PM)

It has been awhile since I messed with Pale Moon.  I do still have Cyberfox x64 installed and up to date.  It does not display the recurrent problems that plague the 64 bit FF.  Also it seems a bit steadier in its behavior.  But to rival SlimJet load times I think you would need to run FF portable out of a ram disk.  If you open your browser and leave it running then that is not much of an issue.  If you like Firefox I think Cyberfox is definitely worth a try.  It runs most FF AddOns.  It hasn't really torqued me off or I would have uninstalled it long ago. 

I keep my FF 32 bit since it is all configured and there are a few sites that do not play well with chrome or already have the cookie I need or whatnot.

[IainB]

...Firefox I cannot take anymore.  It opens and hangs for 30 seconds before it will react to any input whatsoever.
______________________

-MilesAhead (May 21, 2016, 10:02 AM)

Yup. In double-quick time, Mozilla would seem to have managed to pretty much achieve their apparent(?) objective of killing off Firefox (well, that's the only explanation that I have been able to come up with that seems to make any sense of the otherwise inexplicable mess that they have been making of FF, anyway).

As potential alternatives to what used to be a superb browser, I've been using Google Canary (64-bit Beta) for a while now, and Chromium. Both are pretty good, but Chromium seems to have been hobbled somewhat by the removal of Google APIs, or something.
I didn't know anything much about Slimjet until reading this thread, but the browser comparison table on http://www.slimjet.com/ is rather telling - assuming nobody's making unfair comparisons.
I rather liked SJ's "Stop eye irritation with automatic web page color inverting". It'd be worth trying for that alone, in my case.

[MilesAhead]

I rather liked SJ's "Stop eye irritation with automatic web page color inverting". It'd be worth trying for that alone, in my case.

-IainB (May 24, 2016, 11:24 PM)

I just tried it out.  I was disappointed.  I was using the FF ColorToggle extension for those cases when the page text is blurry or there was not enough contrast to easily read text off a certain background.  I just tried SJ auto color inversion on the pages that happened to be open.  Out of 4 pages only one had text easy to read.  On the other three pages the text color was too dim.  It seems like a good idea but not a good implementation.  Edit: I did notice a chrome extension called "care your eyes" that looked more versatile though. 

[MilesAhead]

Apparently one of the things updated it the broken auto update feature.
See link in first post to manually download.

[IainB]

Well, I have now downloaded and installed SlimJet v10.0.2.0 into my "C:\UTIL\" directory (not a "C:\Programs..." folder) and set it's Cache to a RAMdisk folder..
It Synced all my Chrome/Chromium extensions - took some time to do that, but nothing exceptional.
Hmm. After playing about with it for a while, I have to say that I like the differences/improvements of SlimJet over Google Chrome Canary and Chromium.

[MilesAhead]

Well, I have now downloaded and installed SlimJet v10.0.2.0 into my "C:\UTIL\" directory (not a "C:\Programs..." folder) and set it's Cache to a RAMdisk folder..
It Synced all my Chrome/Chromium extensions - took some time to do that, but nothing exceptional.
Hmm. After playing about with it for a while, I have to say that I like the differences/improvements of SlimJet over Google Chrome Canary and Chromium.

-IainB (May 25, 2016, 10:02 AM)

I am glad you like it.  I don't know why it took me so long to set it as default when FF started down the slippery slope to useless.    It is a pleasure to see the browser window come up only a few seconds after launch.  So many these days take over 30 seconds to display a window frame and even then they may not accept input for another 30.

The ramdisk cache sounds like a good idea.  The browser loads fast enough that there is no need to copy the whole shooting match to the ramdisk.  On system shutdown just dump it instead of bothering to delete.  Out of curiosity which ramdisk are you using?

Edit:  I have been running this for a couple of days using SoftPerfect free Ramdisk.  I discard the contents at shutdown.  Also I set SlimJet to delete the cache on close.  So far all seems smooth. 

[MilesAhead]

This is really strange.  Yesterday I was experimenting enabling and disabling SlimJet to delete cache files on program close.  Now the setting is gone!  I have been combing the settings for at least an hour.  It just ain't there today.  Talk about weird.

I guess I will just set CCleaner to clear the cache manually.

[IainB]

...Now the setting is gone! ...

-MilesAhead (May 26, 2016, 05:15 PM)

I don't think I've seen that setting. I couldn't find it when I looked just now anyway.

By the way, I am becoming grudgingly impressed with SlimJet:

• (a) Ah bliss! It has absolutely no problems running Gmail and Bazqux - my most used two tabs that I always have running in my browser.
• (b) By contrast, Firefox was regularly brought to its knees in Gmail and Bazqux with "Unresponsive script" warnings - more often than not it was a bazqux script, but even if I hadn't started Bazqux, Gmail would crawl along or halt. Bazqux signs on using the Gmail signon, and that - just signing on to Gmail - seemed to be the common point where the script(s) started hanging.
• (c) The Change Colours extension works beautifully in SlimJet. For example, I can get my green phosphor characters output onto a black background, just as I did with the FF add-on NoSquint (killed off by by FF mandatory signature rules), but with the exception that the icons do not display in SlimJet - which is no real loss as the removal of the pretty icons is a perceptual decluttering of the visual display/content.
• (d) The "Invert web page colour" button in SlimJet looks to have interesting possibilities, but it does not always do what one might expect it to do on some sites. I used to use the FF add-on NoSquint to control overly glary - to my eyes - pages (e.g., as on DC Forum), but have not yet got an equivalent effect with SlimJet. Still experimenting.

[MilesAhead]

By the way, I am becoming grudgingly impressed with SlimJet:

-IainB (May 27, 2016, 08:58 AM)

For me it does have some minor frustrations.  Although it snaps open and appears responsive, I find that once a page is loaded there are strange delays when trying to vertical scroll.  Sometimes I drag the scroll bar thumb tab and it stubbornly remains at the current location for 10 or more seconds.  If I use the mouse wheel to scroll it does nothing at first, then does more than what I want so that I have to keep going by where I want to go instead of going right to it.

In some ways Netscape 6.x and dial-up with my USR 56K external modem was superior.  Other than file download speed that is.

[MilesAhead]

Hmmm auto updating on my portable version does not seem to be fixed yet.

[IainB]

I can't seem to find a way to get Slimjet to auto-update, so i manually update it.
v12.0.14.0 is still the latest version I can find as at 2017-01-01.

I today found a useful chrome store add-on to perform the same role as the excellent Firefox self-destucting cookies extension  - it's called Tab Cookies. It seems to work very well and does what it says:

• Get in control of your privacy automatically deleting the unused cookies created in each tab when you close it.
  This extensions deletes all the cookies created in a tab (which are not used by other tabs) when you close the tab. In this way your privacy is guaranteed.
  
  For example, as long as you stay on gMail, you are logged in, but once you close that tab (and all the others which are or have been on a Google site) the tracking cookies of Google disappear. Same for Facebook,
  

I searched for it after getting a message from https://www.washingtonpost.com/ that I had already read 2 pages and wasn't allowed to read any more. I found that interruption unspeakably annoying. - I mean, who the heck do they think they are and what gives them the right to monitor how many pages I read of anything and interrupt my web browsing and take control like that?
Sheesh.
I was also annoyed by the assumptions it made - I had got to that particular page not because I wanted to read that particular page or even their blasted organ per se, but because it was a link referred to by a post on another website. When I follow a link, I am generally not too interested in whose website it is.

If I had not found the Tab Cookies add-on or similar, then I would have just blocked the washingtonpost.com domain in my browser and they could shove it. They don't have copyright on news.