Newyana2 <mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote:
[...]

> Yes. So I venture into Microsoft's ugly-ass and barely functional
> Metro forest, find default apps, find filetypes, got to .7z, for example,
> and the only choice is Hamster. Hamster? I don't remember ever installing
> anything called Hamster. I certainly don't have it now. I do have 7-Zip,
> but I can't choose it.

Interesting! I'm on Windows 11 and *do* have Hamster [1], but .7z is
defaulted to 'Windows Explorer' [sic] and can be changed to '7-Zip
Console'. So all is well on my system.

N.B. in Apps, Hamster is not found, but that's probably because it's
installed in a non-standard directory (C:\hamster).

[...]

> To use another program, the installed program
> has to have set the requisite Registry values to show up as
> a possible default program. Or I can go to right-click ->
> Open With, which offers only the mysterious Hamster program
> for .7z files.

Out of interest, what kind of icon do you see for Hamster?

I have Hamster Classic, whose icon is a front/face picture of a yellow
hamster.

[...]

[1] A personal 'proxy' news server, which sits between my newsreader
(tin) and my real NSP's (News Service Provider's) news server (in my
case News.Individual.Net).

Newyana2 wrote:
> On 4/14/2024 10:37 PM, John C. wrote:
>
>>>     The primary reason I updated to Win10 was broken webpages. Now
>>> I still see a lot of broken pages. Far too many are broken without
>>> script.
>>> It's gradually turning into a kiosk Internet where we're expected to
>>> be leaking personal info constantly while we watch ads.
>>
>> Too true. I fear that the internet may suffer the same fate as cable TV.
>> Check out the 1989 movie "How to Get Ahead in Advertising".
>>
>     I'll look that up. I've never heard of it. But my 4 streaming accounts
> should be good for something besides showing me a repeating list of
> what I've already watched. :)
>
>     I see people getting acclimated quickly. With Win10, for example,
> people are already talking passively. This past week there's talk of
> MS showing Win11 ads on Win10. But almost no one says, "This is nuts!
> How do I stop it?" They just whine that MS are mistreating them, as
> though their computer belongs to MS. With websites people are also
> becoming passive. Pretty much the only voice I find in support of the
> citizenry over corporatocracy is Tim Berners-Lee. He writes an article
> periodically about his invention being ruined, but few are listening.
>
>
>> You might want to take a look at Vivaldi. If I ever give up on Firefox,
>> that's what I'll go with. It's an un-Googled Chrome browser. Today I was
>> able to install every extension that I'm using in Firefox into Vivaldi.
>> That is, they're all ported to the Chrome based browsers. Only one
>> Firefox extension wasn't available, and I decided that life would
>> continue without it.
>>
>
>   Does it also have a menu bar and title bar?

Yes, it does:

Settings/Appearance/Show Title Bar

and:

Settings/Appearance/MENU/Menu Position/Horizontal

and:

Settings/Appearance/MENU/Menu Icon Style/Menu Icon

> For me the hamburger menu
> on Chrom* was the dealbreaker. Even menubar extensions don't work.

You and a lot of other people. Thank Google for pushing that UI change
on everybody, and then other companies for following their example.

> I just read the Wikipedia page on Vivaldi. It sounds interesting, except
> for one mention of a spyware function to send home a user I
From this article:

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/01/30/vivaldi-browser-privacy/

came:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ghacks editor-in-chief Martin Brinkmann wrote about the privacy of
Vivaldi in January 2018. He criticised the lack of an opt-out option for
the unique user ID it generates to get general statistics about the
browser's userbase, but commented that the unique ID "is easy enough to
delete" and "it is different anyway if you use Vivaldi on multiple devices"
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Not sure what's happened since 2018 (the year the article was published)
regarding this issue, but perhaps somebody else can help here.

> Though
> I don't really want a lot of customizations. I mostly just want a
> functional GUI, designed for a Desktop, with a Desktop menu bar, and the
> basic settings options. But these days I'm also dependent on NoScript.
> There so much script on pages -- with some sites loading script from a
> dozen sources -- that I don't see any solution aside from NoScript. I just
> can't disable script 100% like I used to.

I've never bothered dealing with javascript, but probably should do so.

--
John C.