What you need to know
- MyPal68 is a modern open source web browser project that allows Windows XP users (and all nostalgia fans) to use the Internet in modern times.
- It is based on Firefox 68, which is itself quite old, but at least makes browsing the web on outdated hardware and software a decent experience.
- While there are still obstacles and websites that just don’t work properly, you can’t help but be impressed.
Last night, for reasons known only to the parts of my brain that don’t often come out, I started booting up a bunch of virtual machines running older versions of Windows. There’s a reason I won’t go into here, but it was pretty fun messing around with operating systems from my youth.
One of the bigger problems with using old versions of Windows, like the legendary XP, is that modern stuff often just doesn’t work. This goes for the Internet and the browsers we use to interact with it. Internet Explorer is long dead, and even if it did work, it would be terrible.
To fix the problem, however, you have to turn to an absolute legend, because after some searching, you came across MyPal68. No, it’s not some dodgy online chat app from the late 90s, but a modern web browser that supports Windows XP. And it works!
MyPal68 is an open source project, and you can poke around a bit at its GitHub repo. I use the term “modern” in the broadest sense, because while it’s absolutely cutting edge for Windows XP, it’s still based on technology that’s outdated by Windows 11 standards.
It’s based on Firefox 68, hence the number in the title. Way behind the version of Firefox you’d use today, but of course there are limitations to what can be achieved on such an old operating system. More specifically, it’s based on the Pale Moon browser, which is itself a fork of the Firefox code. It supports a few extensions, has Brave as its default search engine, and is, as far as I can tell, absolutely brilliant.
That’s not to say it’s perfect, and I don’t think it ever could be. There are things that are outside the developer’s control when it comes to websites and whether they work properly. Unfortunately, Windows Central doesn’t render properly, which is a shame, but at least the content is there to read. In Internet Explorer, it just doesn’t even load. But YouTube does, and that’s probably more important. You can report websites that don’t work via the GitHub repository, so the developer might be able to do something about some of them.
The point is, though, that it works. It’s fast, and at least it allows you to browse the web on Windows XP without wanting to tear your hair out. I find it remarkable that such a thing even exists. While no one should be using Windows XP as their daily work machine in 2024, there are plenty of people out there who still want to use it.
Whether you have an old machine lying around, enjoy playing nostalgic music through virtual machines, or are a true vintage computer enthusiast, this tool belongs in your arsenal. What I love most is that it is possible and there are people passionate enough to bring it to life. Long may it continue.
If you want to try MyPal 68 for yourself, visit the GitHub repository where you’ll find both 32-bit and 64-bit versions to get you started.
