Browsers working on Win 7:

[Uitlander]

Over the last three+ years I have been 'test-driving' these browsers on Win7:


Chrome 109.0.5414.120
ComodoDragon 98.0.4758.102
Epic Privacy Browser 104.0.5112.81
Iridium 2022.04
LibreWolf 111.0-3
Basilisk 2025.10.10
Firefox 115 ESR
Waterfox 2022.11


All work, though Firefox but barely…so much so, I ended up jettisoning it last month. As of two weeks ago, I replaced it with Eclipse r3dfox 147.0.1, which is far superior in every way, and is able to download extensions from Mozilla.


Last week I also downloaded a Chrome clone….Supermium 138.0.7204.300. Too early to tell, but it appears way better than Chrome. So these are the ten browsers working on Win 7 Pro (64-bit), in case anyone is curious.

 

[billmcct]

r3dfox:

Releases . Eclipse-Community/r3dfox . GitHub

 

[visitor]

Brave v1.48.152 beta (Chromium 109.0.5414.119) is the latest version of Brave browser i could get working on Win 7.

Whale Browser v3.18.154.13

 

[Dimitris B]

Over the last three+ years I have been 'test-driving' these browsers on Win7:
Chrome 109.0.5414.120
ComodoDragon 98.0.4758.102
Epic Privacy Browser 104.0.5112.81
Iridium 2022.04
LibreWolf 111.0-3
Basilisk 2025.10.10
Firefox 115 ESR
Waterfox 2022.11


All work, though Firefox but barely…so much so, I ended up jettisoning it last month. As of two weeks ago, I replaced it with Eclipse r3dfox 147.0.1, which is far superior in every way, and is able to download extensions from Mozilla.


Last week I also downloaded a Chrome clone….Supermium 138.0.7204.300. Too early to tell, but it appears way better than Chrome. So these are the ten browsers working on Win 7 Pro (64-bit), in case anyone is curious.

I use ESR 115, its still pretty good, too bad support ends this month.
You can also use Echelon, a custom Firefox theme ( Echelon — An Old Mozilla Firefox Theme ) which accurately themes specifically ESR 115 with the old Firefox theme, and its rock solid and bug-free.

 

[Uitlander]

Sorry. I left out Brave. Most online shopping sites reject it, so I rarely use it. I have Brave 1.47.186.

Brave v1.48.152 beta (Chromium 109.0.5414.119) is the latest version of Brave browser i could get working on Win 7.

Whale Browser v3.18.154.13

- - - Updated - - -

I use ESR 115, its still pretty good, too bad support ends this month.
You can also use Echelon, a custom Firefox theme ( Echelon — An Old Mozilla Firefox Theme ) which accurately themes specifically ESR 115 with the old Firefox theme, and its rock solid and bug-free.

Firefox was decent at one time, like couple years ago, then went downhiil fast. Maybe six months ago my addons started disappearing one by one, despite my best efforts to ban Mozilla from my computer. When uBlock Origin vanished, and I was stopped from access to the addons store to replace it, Firefox became worthless (other than as a open door for advertisers). I definitely don't miss it...especially now that I discovered r3dfox.

Echelon is a zip file. I'm able to download, but never managed to install one. I have it, but it will have to wait for the computer tech to come by to install.

 

[Dimitris B]

Sorry. I left out Brave. Most online shopping sites reject it, so I rarely use it. I have Brave 1.47.186.



- - - Updated - - -




Firefox was decent at one time, like couple years ago, then went downhiil fast. Maybe six months ago my addons started disappearing one by one, despite my best efforts to ban Mozilla from my computer. When uBlock Origin vanished, and I was stopped from access to the addons store to replace it, Firefox became worthless (other than as a open door for advertisers). I definitely don't miss it...especially now that I discovered r3dfox.

Echelon is a zip file. I'm able to download, but never managed to install one. I have it, but it will have to wait for the computer tech to come by to install.

Echelon is rather simple to install. Just copy some files and follow the instructions...
Im thinking about making an installer to simplify things one day..

ALSO I SHALL note Echelon does NOT work with r3dfox... because its ESR 14x-based, and Echelon only works with 115.

Dont try it, itll break the UI!!!!

 

[maxseven]

I am using now r3dfox after having some trouble with Firefox, and there are still some sites that don't like it and I've grown weary of spending time tracking-down the possibility that it's "just a setting".

I don't even remember any more exactly why I left Firefox (though it's still on my laptop as is Brave and I might use them to check something) but there can be no doubt but that as more & more websites tweak their security procedures we all are going to suffer for it...

 

[Dimitris B]

I am using now r3dfox after having some trouble with Firefox, and there are still some sites that don't like it and I've grown weary of spending time tracking-down the possibility that it's "just a setting".

I don't even remember any more exactly why I left Firefox (though it's still on my laptop as is Brave and I might use them to check something) but there can be no doubt but that as more & more websites tweak their security procedures we all are going to suffer for it...

have you updated your operating system's root certificates? It fixed a lot of internet-based problems for me...

 

[maxseven]

have you updated your operating system's root certificates? It fixed a lot of internet-based problems for me...

Never done that and after surfing on it don't know I'm gonna--looks non-trivial at best?

 

[Dimitris B]

Never done that and after surfing on it don't know I'm gonna--looks non-trivial at best?

its pretty easy, Legacy Update: Get back online, activate, and install updates on your legacy Windows PC does it for you, alongside many other very important updates for older windows versions.

 

[maxseven]

its pretty easy, Legacy Update: Get back online, activate, and install updates on your legacy Windows PC does it for you, alongside many other very important updates for older windows versions.

Thanks I've never seen that before and will take a look.

BTW I learned yesterday that my problems logging-in to Discover.com with r3dfox could be solved by finding and asserting the very latest Firefox User Agent using the below extension. I forgot that I had done this once before, and now I believe that at least discover.com must routinely update their login to always look that customers are using latest/greatest/securest apps.

User Agent Switcher and Manager :: WebExtension.ORG

 

[torchwood]

running Opera gx on mine

 

[erpster4]

I use ESR 115, its still pretty good, too bad support ends this month.

nope
Mozilla recently decided to extend FF 115 ESR again (til August 2026)

Firefox users on macOS 10.12, 10.13 and 10.14 moving to Extended Support Release | Firefox Help

 

[disu1950]

Good old InternetExplorer 9
Blisk (chroniums like chromes)
FireFox Nightly
OperaGX

is what i use on win7-32bit...

 

[NewW7User]

I agree that r3dfox is generally a good browser but it has a major problem: it does not reliably download PDF files. Sometimes the file is downloaded but most of the of the time when I look for the downloaded file it's not there. As I can't rely on r3dfox for this I have to switch to Avast browser [a Chrome variant] or Firefox and go back to the site and download the file. I reported this problem. I don't remember the exact response but it was something along the lines that they weren't going to bother to fix it.

 

[maxseven]

I agree that r3dfox is generally a good browser but it has a major problem: it does not reliably download PDF files. Sometimes the file is downloaded but most of the of the time when I look for the downloaded file it's not there. As I can't rely on r3dfox for this I have to switch to Avast browser [a Chrome variant] or Firefox and go back to the site and download the file. I reported this problem. I don't remember the exact response but it was something along the lines that they weren't going to bother to fix it.

I have no problems with PDFs but today again r3dfox locked-up my laptop hard, requiring a hard OFF (power button) though thankfully "Resume Windows normally..." worked with no apparent residual issues.

The lockups (and it's happened maybe a half-dozen times in the last couple months) appear as first a frozen r3dfox window, with no ability to select e.g. Quit, and then CTL-ALT-DEL to Task Manager reveals all the instances of r3dfox.exe, most of which are End Process-able, but there remains one that simply won't quit, and I have to hard OFF.

This is a bad problem. Running 148.0 64-bit.

 

[Lenovouser72]

Here r3dfox works without any complaints.
Updated to version - 149.0.2 (32bit)

 

[maxseven]

Here r3dfox works without any complaints.
Updated to version - 149.0.2 (32bit)

I'm surprised there appears to be no "automatic update" notices when a new version appears.

Thanks for posting, I'm updated now, using 64-bit.

 

[townsbg]

I tried using pale moon but didn't like it. First off I couldn't use the 64-bit version because it requires an instruction set not used on my processor. I find it strange that FF doesn't use that but pale moon does. The error on 7 was generic, some kind of hex code. However trying to install it on 10 (for diagnostic purposes) gave me the full story. I couldn't even install it. I installed 32 bit but I experienced performance issues. I had an extreme lag and even browsing 7 forums caused my fan to start revving up. Generally I found the interface to be archaic and the plugins outdated. One of them didn't even work.

- - - Updated - - -

I decided to take the plunge and go with R3dfox rather than FF. I copied my FF profile and set it for that and it appears to be working however it doesn't look quite right. The menu and tabs are more shrunken compared to FF. Is this normal and can I correct it? When I tried R3dfox last year I created a new profile so I don't remember this happening but I'm not for sure. I'm posting a screenshot of each. Oh I installed a new theme and I have the same issue so it's not like something is wrong with the one I had. I suppose that this cosmetic. I tried looking through the setting that they have and can't figure them out. They seemed to change nothing.

Just to test I got out the backed up copy of my F3dfox test from last year and it's doing the same thing as is a brand new profile. It's also got aero.

 

[dg1261]

I decided to take the plunge and go with R3dfox rather than FF. I copied my FF profile and set it for that and it appears to be working however it doesn't look quite right. The menu and tabs are more shrunken compared to FF.

Don't know if any of this will help, but I'll offer a few observations.

Here's a side-by-side with fresh default configs of FF 115 and R3dfox 147, with no previous profile.



(I'm illustrating portable installations of both so as to be certain they're not pulling any prior config from the registry or old profiles anywhere. The orange colors are my Win7 OS default window colors, so ignore.)

Note there's still a slight vertical compression, but not much. The conclusion I draw from this is there's not much difference in the basic source code of one browser vs. the other, and so the differences you're noticing must have more to do with how you've customized each browser.

Next, I saved/downloaded your screenshots in post #19, and noticed they appear to have different dimensions. The upper image appears to be 997 pixels wide and lower image is 1603 wide. In post #19 the forum software seems to rescale them to appear as the same width, so it stands to reason the lower image will look more compressed. When the two images are viewed side-by-side at the same resolution, they look like this:



Notice there's still some compression, but much less than the screenshots in post #19 might lead one to believe.

You might try ditching the old profile and starting from scratch. Without carefully going through the old profiles, you don't know for sure what is causing the apprearance changes and so don't know what to do about it.

Without having to preserve them from the old profile, bookmarks can easily be exported/imported, and extensions can simply be reinstalled anew.

Also, try scanning about:config and prefs.js to see if anything jumps out at you.

In addition, there are probably css options to tweak the browser window metrics. I haven't bothered to explore Firefox's userChrome.css file, but I have used it to alter Mozilla Thunderbird so it's more to my liking, so that may give you similar control over FF or the forks.