... I tried in vain to download a (.exe) copy of your suggestion of Firefox V. 52.9.0 but all of the sites wanted to give me the latest version instead or half way through the install would tell me their was a problem and would NOT complete the install
HI CB-1:
If you want to try
Firefox ESR v52.9.0 (the legacy Extended Support Release edition for Win XP and Vista released June 2018) the full offline installers for all languages and regions are available from Mozilla at
https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/win32/. If you want the English-US version, for example, choose the EN-US directory to browse to
Directory Listing: /pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/win32/en-US/ and download the Firefox Setup 52.9.0
esr.exe installer. Note that you should use the 32-bit installer for both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista SP2 OSs.
Firefox ESR v52.9.0 browser has built-in support for
H.264 for video playback (using Cisco's OpenH264 Video Codec) and will support the TLS 1.2 (but not the the latest TLS 1.3) protocol for connections to secure HTTPS sites with the default settings, while Internet Explorer 9 only supports the older (and less secure) TLS 1.0 protocol and cannot connect to most modern web sites . Most popular ad blocker extensions like uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus that are available on the official
Firefox add-ons store are no longer compatible with Firefox ESR v52.9.0 but
Bitldefender TrafficLight for Firefox v3.2.5 (rel. 23-Nov-2023) is still compatible with FF44 and higher and might provide a bit of added protection.
If you prefer using a browser based on Firefox you might want to try a newer browser like Fedor's "new"
Mypal v68 that is listed in the Web Browser section of WinClient5270's
Last Versions of Software for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 in the MSFN Vista forum. The latest Mypal v68.13.7 (released 18-Nov-2023) is based on the Quantum engine of Firefox v68 (released 09-Jul-2019) and is still in beta but it is compatible with Win XP and Vista and is actively supported by the developer Fedor. See the Softpedia review <
here> for Mypal v68. The latest
Adblock Plus v3.17.1 (rel. 16-Jun-2023) extension is compatible with FF63 and higher so you should be able to install this ad blocker in Mypal v68. See
Mypal - Features for more information about browser extension compatibility.