local curl URL's failing in 2 browsers

[RobertShiplett]

Folks,
With either the Curl plugin up-grade or browser upgrades or some combination, 2 browsers have stopped behaving as they have in past years.
Firefox refuses to load local plain .curl URL's unless wrapped in an HTML page within and OBJECT : it instead asks how to open the file, but I have no work-around as for Chrome which will force Surge to always run.
Opera refuses local Curl files whether wrapped or not.
So far I am having these problems in 32-bit browsers running on an older test XP SP-3 machine.
IE8 and the latest Pale Moon 32-bit continue problem-free with the same local Curl web pages - of which I have many for daily use.
Am I alone in reporting these difficulties at this time ?
I hope to hear from someone.
Thanks.

UPDATE : hitting some similar issues in three browsers on WIN 7 64-bit SP1 Example: Safari requiring LOCAL .curl files to run as embedded in HTML. Several Firefox issues but none yet in the current build of Pale Moon browser. IE 64-bit and 32-but fine again. Chrome remains fine with local .curl files. Will start Linux test later today after finish trying to find WIN 7 work-arounds.

[RobertShiplett]

OPERA
<Error> - An error occurred while loading this applet.
SyntaxError: file:///c:/web/jlpt-5-1a.curl:1[1]: Expected {curl ... applet} statement. The main source file of a Curl 'applet' component must begin with such a statement. The author of this file either wrote this in error or did not intend the file to be used as a 'applet' component. This error can also be caused by missing or incorrect character encoding specification.

BUT : the RTE manager reports that the applet is running ! And will suspend ... Same whether wrapped in HTML or not ; same with various encodings ; I am careful to clear app manager and to purge browser cache and all apps set to resync
Can anyone shed light on this ? I often prefer to use Opera as it is light-weight as modern browsers go ... especially if running other demanding app's on older hardware.

[RobertShiplett]

Help, please !
Nothing that I have tried will defeat this in Opera 12 :

<Error> - An error occurred while loading this applet.
SyntaxError: file:///c:/web/aule-09.curl:1[1]: Expected {curl ... applet} statement. The main source file of a Curl 'applet' component must begin with such a statement. The author of this file either wrote this in error or did not intend the file to be used as a 'applet' component. This error can also be caused by missing or incorrect character encoding specification.

Curl is running and reports the applet as running
I have tried 9 variants as you can see ... all of which run in IE8