Firefox and ActiveX

I cannot begin to describe how frustrating it is to have a fully functional device be rendered obsolete. This is due to many factors. The manufacturer choosing a poor technology for its software interface (but otherwise having a wonderful physical implementation of the hardware). Microsoft not providing or continuing a method for maintaining backwards / legacy compatibility, etc. And after writing that sentence, I feel myself softening a bit in terms of thinking of all the Microsoft engineers as idiots for some of the decisions they make. I'm sure if I was in their shoes, I might make the same decision.

Here's what's going on in terms of Microsoft. Here it is, July 2022 and Internet Explorer's days are over. Microsoft elected to not include it within Windows 11. But they did include some backwards compatibility by including the Trident Engine (the rendering software for Internet Explorer) with Microsoft Edge. That allows for some backwards compatibility. But what about if a website uses ActiveX technology. Well, your SOL as far as Edge is concerned. And SOL with every other browser out there.

The solution? Bad news, Internet Explorer

And now lets address why anyone would want to access a website that uses ActiveX technology (OCX, etc.)... Well, how about surveillance cameras, among many other hardware items. Yup, I'm not speaking about publicly available websites. I'm talking only about hardware devices. Private hardware devices, behind firewalls on private sub-nets, and password protected, not available to the public, for personal use only. A very good, legitimate reason to still use a web browser that has ActiveX technology. And I'll follow that sentence with this statement: To all the nay-Sayers, whatever your argument, like "buy a new device", I'll tell you like an old friend would say to me: "Shhhhh...." And because nay-Sayers tend to be obtuse, I'll translate: "Shut up. Your argument is as stupid as you are."

That last statement is a lead in (and due to) the next issue I have, which are all the websites that have just plain wrong, incorrect, and have stupid information on the subject of maintaining accessibility and functionality of older hardware. And in the grand wisdom of Google (or because those same people are talented with SEO), all the crap results that are just plain wrong, pollute the internet.

Below is an image from a LaView Surveillance system that uses ActiveX viewer software (no other choice, except their Windows Utility), viewed in Firefox (version 53.9.0b esr 'extended service release') over HTTPS, on a Windows 11 computer that is installed on an SSD with an MBR partition (not GPT) on a laptop computer configured with Legacy Boot enabled (not UEFI) with TPM (Trusted Platform Management) version 1.1 in July 2022. And big middle finger for all the nay-Sayers that declare something like this isn't possible

Requiem

And of course it should be pointed out, not that any intelligent person wouldn't understand, that Firefox version 53 should not be used for any public website access (and I'm not sure it can even deal with modern TLS certificates).