Hey cool, great it helped already
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clutterless
Under Privacy & Security > Paranonia > Accept Cookies the default ticked option is "From the originating website only." You're saying I should select "Never (Block cookies)" or "Always." Correct?
Yes exactly. Not necessarily as default setting, but for testing such probs.
Frankly it keeps amazing me how many people never ever toggle any of the original default settings. Actually this "medium" setting for cookies is only available in Preferences sheets, but not when toggling cookies either via toolbar button or via Privacy menu. As soon as one of THOSE methods is used, the setting jumps only between Allow ALL / Block ALL (technically they could also use a 3x toggle, with a half-green-half-red icon, but traditionally it's still just 2-way.) So I assume, you never ever toggled that setting even once yet.
That's fine of course, but there's a little trap with this medium setting, and you're not the first to fall into it:
The button looks the same for "Allow ALL" and for the default "Allow from same website only"!
So if someone is trying to find reasons for stuff like captcha probs, they may look at the cookie button, it looks like "allowed", and of course everyone assumes now "cookies are allowed"! Then continue searching elsewhere...
Instead you should have clicked it off-on, just to make sure that really ALL cookies are allowed, for the purpose of error hunting.
In theory this "original website" setting is the best compromise, that's true. But unfortunately in reality lots of website authors nowadays insist that you allow not only their own, but also cookies from all sorts of other domains or otherwise they will block you. Like cookies of the spying google ad service etc., but am no expert on such stuff.
So, yes - as you suggested, trying "Never (Block cookies)" is always a good idea to check such probs.
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clutterless
One of the best features of K-Meleon is the toolbar that allows you to toggle Cookies, Java, JavaScript, Popups, Images, Clear Cache, and Kill Flash.
ABSOLUTELY. Mine too. Couldn't live without the privbar!
Actually have added a bunch more buttons to mine, happily toggling them all as necessary (DOMstorage, embedded Objects, style-killer, css-adblock, referrer, useragent etc., plus some lesser used on a second hidden toolbar like CSS-sheets, iframes etc., plus using special macros to mass-toggle whole sets at once, handling permanent exceptions etc.) Don't start me on this subject, LOL!
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clutterless
I make sure all these buttons are not depressed, meaning they're all fully functional when I visit a site with a CAPTCHA.
There, what I meant above - not necessarily "fully" if using default settings...
A propos settings, very important for such probs is also the "
REFERER" permission.
Right-click a PrivBar button or use Tools>Privacy and look for "HTTP referer".
And as often, the Preferences sheets offer yet more options:
F2 > Privacy > Paranoia: Send http + https referers for problematic sites.
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clutterless
I opened Preferences > Page Display > Images. There is no tick next to "Disallow scripts to change images." It must be a default setting, because I never changed anything under the "Images" tab.
Probably yes. But just in case, can't harm to click it 2x on-off, to be 100% sure the setting now really exists.
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clutterless
Some of the sites that have displayed the "switch to a supported browser" message are owned by corporations like Google. That's why I believed it was a legitimate warning about my browser.
Of course. They biggest ones are the most infamous for FORCING people to always do what they want exactly (=install all the newest tracking features) Regardless if technically necessary or not, in most cases it's just fake, as the useragent trick proves. (The "legitimate" part is kinda funny speaking of the biggest trojan company, but opinions differ widely there :cool
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clutterless
I didn't know that this was a problem with other modern browsers.
Uhm, that sounds like there's a misunderstanding now. If you mean that "useragent" thing?
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clutterless
I definitely want to try KM76RC. I'm a little confused about the download link. You say, "ignore the first replies there."
Yeah I meant to download it from the first POST but ignore the following REPLIES which are talking about bugs. Some of those were only contained in the first version of the download, but the first post was meanwhile edited and contains now an improved version. with some of those bugs already fixed. Not all yet, pity. They say for example that print preview doesn't work yet.
Anyway, the
USERAGENT trick is one of the most important solutions to get rid of fake "old browser" warnings. It does not help always, and not every website author will blindly believe everything that you fake back, but it does help in most cases.
This "useragent string" is only a text line which browsers send to every webpage you visit, to give them your computer specs. Like an ID-badge that some company people have to wear on their jackets.
If you click on "Help>About K-Meleon", it's this cryptic text line which appears right below the image.
It usually contains your operating system, your browser and its version, perhaps your language, etc.
If you fake this text and claim your browser were not KM75.1, but e.g. FF51, this will be send instead of the true values to all website you visit now. And the "KM>about" page will also show the fake text!
Just as example, what guenter has posted above:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:51.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/51.0
The prob is, the macro to toggle the UA simply by MENU is not included anymore in the newer KM-versions
So users must install it themselves now (the old macro still works, and they say the pref too!) But in my experience hardly anyone seems to ever install any additional macros (judging from comparing the download numbers for the browser and the download numbers for macros, e.g. from kmext site) Too bad. And this macro is also a bit more complicated to explain as others, due to requiring some preinstalled prefs.
Second prob is, newer KM-versions contain natively a second macro and pref setting, something in Tools>User... and some pref for "Firefox compatibility", doing similar things, and personally am not familiar with those yet, being stuck in KM1.6 due to old system.
Anyway. If you just want a
QUICK TEST with a fake UA, that's easy, create the necessary pref manually:
Open page "about
:config", accept the warning (no worry), and look if this pref already exists:
general.useragent.override
Probably not, in this case right-click and CREATE it. Use type "string".
Then enter as value e.g. guenters example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:51.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/51.0
Now try loading the stubborn page again....
Don't worry, this fake string can easily be reset again later. Just doubleclick it in "about
:config" and set it empty, then Help>About KM will show your original UA again.
And of course, most problematic sites also insist in JAVASCRIPT allowed, but that should work if your button shows up green.
A special gecko/firefox/mozilla prob is though, that cross-domain scripts are forbidden. This can be a REAL prob with no workaround