users discussion thread - your favorite chrome flags on XPSP3

[JoachimHenze]

This thread is for discussion from users for users of Supermium (121) on Windows XP x86.
I am interested in recommendations for chrome flags for maximum stability of the browser and minimal RAM consumption.
Personally I do currently use
the cmd-line-option
--in-process-gpu
as a RAM saver and the following chrome-flags for various reasons:

Can anyone propose other flags for reducing the RAM consumption, increasing stability or speed, or make the fonts render a bit better? e.g. here is a screenshot of poor font rendering on sourceforge.net

All of that sounds like a lot of fiddling, I know, but I wouldn't discuss it here, if I wouldn't believe in this browser having great potential.

[Stepman123]

It looks like you have turned off font smoothing in your system. Under such conditions, you can improve fonts by replacing them with simpler ones. It also depends on the specific rendering implementation. In theory, a special renderer is needed for such situations.

[JoachimHenze]

Thank you for your reply. The same font on the same website does render much better in the Firefox-forked (actually Palemoon-forked) "New Moon 28" browser of roytam:

So I heavily doubt that the poor rendering here is caused by my OS or the OSes font smoothing setting. It is something specific to Chrome (or maybe? that specific Chrome version called Supermium). I don't want to change how my Windows or other browsers do render the fonts, they do it excellent. Only some of the Supermium browsers rendered fonts do looks off on some websites (while it renders the Tahoma font nicely in its titlebar, see the pic in my initial post. Also this thread in github has a good font rendering even on Supermium.).
I already experimented with the flags #force-gdi and #print-with-reduced-rasterization but both didn't change anything in that regard.

[andika207]

Enable download bubble... Yes, that is the default.

I was about to open an issue because I didn't knew how to restore this download button (I hate the download tray at the botton )
I checked out my chrome flags and it was not disabled to my surprise.

[JoachimHenze]

Sure, most of the settings are a matter of taste, therefore I created this an open discussion thread.

[Stepman123]

On windows XP you don't need #force-gdi as XP only has GDI.
NewMoon28 may not be displaying webfonts. Then it's just different fonts that look similar.
If you block webfonts in Supermium, sourceforge will look the same as NewMoon28. Try it.

[JoachimHenze]

Excellent, I added --disable-remote-fonts as a startup argument. That fixed the sourceforges font rendering in Supermium. Thank you very much!

[JoachimHenze]

Is there also something to disable this warning when downloading executable files?

It tells me "files of this type can cause damage on your computer. Du you want to keep xyz.exe anyway?"
I already have set chrome-flag #disable-download-upload but that does not seem to be enough.
I also have turned off the "safe browsing feature" already in the Chrome settings.

[andika207]

Is there also something to disable this warning when downloading executable files?

https://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-or-disable-insecure-download-warning-in-chrome/

[JoachimHenze]

No https://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-or-disable-insecure-download-warning-in-chrome/ did not help me:

• turning off the "safe browsing feature" in the Chrome settings / Security did not help
• chrome flag #download-warning-improvements setting it to enabled did not help, setting it to default did not help, (disabled setting does not exist in Supermium 121)
• the chrome flag #insecure-download-warnings mentioned in the linked article did not exist. Maybe Google ripped that out at some point (those idiots!)

[andika207]

• the chrome flag #insecure-download-warning mentioned in the linked article did not exist.
  Maybe Google ripped that out at some point (those idiots!)

LOL. this flag is available in the former Supermium releases.

[JoachimHenze]

It doesn't show up here in Supermium 121. Can you confirm @andika207 ?

[win32ss]

Another flag to re-add.

It's unbelievable how much stuff Google tears out.

[JoachimHenze]

Thank you, I created #247 as a distinct actionable ticket just about that thing, so we can keep the general open discussion in here about "each and every flag". 246 is not intended to be an actionable ticket.

[JoachimHenze]

Excellent, I added --disable-remote-fonts as a startup argument. That fixed the sourceforges font rendering in Supermium.

Yes, it fixed that. But other sites unfortunately depend on being able to load the webfonts. Here is a screenshot of ReactOS Mattermost chat, which seems to use the webfonts to draw a few glyphs on the buttons which are now just tofu-blocks when webfonts are disabled:

So that is unfortunately no totally legit solution. Having a whitelist for sites to allow/block the webfonts would be a potential workaround.
But being able for draw the sourceforge.net fonts without those strange scaling artifacts (while the webfonts are enabled) would be even better.
I wonder how the roytam browser manages to handle both fine at the same time.

[Stepman123]

I wonder how the roytam browser manages to handle both fine at the same time.

I too would like to know how it works in the Roytam1 browser.

In the meantime, you can use blocking and substitution.
It is convenient to use uBo to block fonts.
There are different extensions for replacing fonts, for example this: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/obgkjikcnonokgaiablbenkgjcdbknna
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/change-webpage-fonts/afelmehoohjbjfpjbadonkcondbilglp

[andika207]

It's unbelievable how much stuff Google tears out.

this is not a flag but I'll miss it a lot...
https://www.centbrowser.net/en/showthread.php?tid=3696&pid=17084#pid17084

[Vangelis66]

I added --disable-remote-fonts as a startup argument.
That fixed the sourceforge font rendering in Supermium

As suggested,

It is convenient to use uBo to block fonts.

instead of that global change via the cmdline, just use uBO to selectively block webfonts on a per-site-basis:

[JoachimHenze]

My favorite settings for "Supermium 122.0.6261.152 (R4)":

cmdline:
C:\Programme\Supermium\chrome.exe --disable-remote-fonts --disable-alternate-ds --safebrowsing-disable-download-protection --use-angle=gl --in-process-gpu --compact-ui --disable-features=ChromeLabs,DownloadBubble --disable-sharing-hub

chrome flags:

settings:
Peformance -> activate Memory saver
Privacy and security -> Security -> Safe Browsing "no protection"
Privacy and security -> Site settings -> "Don't allow sites to send notifications"
Downloads -> "Ask where to save each file before downloading"

My remaining issues:

• Poor youtube audio (and video) performance on XPSP3 without HW acceleration #200 / #412
• --disable-remote-fonts improves font rendering for some sites like sourceforge.net and makes it worse for other sites, which cannot display specific glyphs then.
• --ungoogled-supermium I don't use yet, because it makes youtube unusable D402
• --single-process I don't use on my main machine (dual-core) but is known to improve performance on very-low-end single-core-systems with little RAM, but has still some undesired side-effects like #552 (use it at your own risk)

[kda2495]

My favorite settings for "Supermium 122.0.6261.152 (R4)":

cmdline: C:\Programme\Supermium\chrome.exe --disable-remote-fonts --disable-alternate-ds --safebrowsing-disable-download-protection --use-angle=gl --in-process-gpu --compact-ui --disable-features=ChromeLabs,DownloadBubble --disable-sharing-hub

chrome flags:

settings: Leistung -> Arbeitsspeicher-Sparmodus aktivieren Datenschutz und Sicherheit -> Sicherheit -> Safe Browsing "Kein Schutz" Webseiten duerfen keine Benachrichtigungen senden Always ask for download location

My remaining issues:

• --disable-remote-fonts improves font rendering for some sites like sourceforge.net and makes it worse for other sites, which cannot display specific glyphs then.
• Poor youtube audio (and video) performance on XPSP3 without HW acceleration
• --ungoogled-supermium I don't use yet, because it makes youtube unusable

Maybe it's good idea to enable: chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization?

[JoachimHenze]

Maybe it's good idea to enable: chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization ?

I am on XPSP3 x86, where I don't have any GPU acceleration citing the developers. So I am not sure, whether this setting would improve anything for me. If anybody knows for sure, I would be interested to learn.

I am not even sure, whether the chrome://flags/#enable-zero-copy and chrome://flags/#enable-quic (that I have set both) are doing anything good for me or not. I am just setting this, because it "sounds faster" and behaves stable for me, but I have not measured/felt any performance improvement of those 2 changes ever to be honest.
All the other flags in my list are proven to work and are effective.