Slashdot Mirror
Classic Browsers Given New Life
randomErr writes: "Recently a new site opened up that shows these youngsters how we had to surf in the old days. Deja Vu.org pulls a given URL and filters out the tags according to what was viewable by your chosen browser. Just for kicks take a look at how Slashdot.org looks on Netscape 0.9 and IE 2.0" Very fun -- the timeline is interesting reading, too. It's like a trip down Memory Lane. Or something.
I wish we _could_ go back to NS2 or whatever. The web has never been a very tidy place, but it is becoming almost uninhabitable unless you use IE5, which I refuse to do on principle. If that means I get cut off entirely so be it...
Losing a great deal of the other HTML features modern sites use would be enough to make me switch immediately (hell, it was enough to make me switch to netscape 2 in '96...)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
That is amazingly accurate except for one thing:
Mosaic 1.0 did not render jpegs. It put an
NCSA logo box in their place.
Can't beat reading slashdot in black on a black background. Shame the links aren't in black.
Don't know if it's because the server is being slashdotted or what, but what I get for both Mosaic and IE 2 is a 500 error ... which means that some things haven't changed *too* much =)
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
That sounds alot like the ROLM phone system at Virginia Tech. Each dorm room had ONE extension, which included a digital phone and a 19,200kb serial line. You had to enter commands like "c 53223" to connect to another station. It was possible to set up a SLIP connection by connecting to a special connection they set up. This system led to the proliferation of warez BBS's like you wouldn't believe
Unfortunately, there was no way to connect a real modem to the system to dial outside, and the University only had 2400 baud dialouts. I made a "J-box" which connected to the handset jack and allowed you to connect a conventional phone and/or modem. We were able to get 14.4k dialout that way. (this was in 1992).
Server Error
This server has encountered an internal error which prevents it from fulfilling your request. The most likely cause is a misconfiguration. Please ask the administrator to look for messages in the server's error log.
This is a lot like Slashdot looks NOW.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The Homepage of Edinburgh Univeristies Computing Department.
Leading the world in research in Speech technology, Bioinformatics, Cognitive science and other such leading fields - I challenge you to spot any differences between how their webpage renders in Netscape 1.0 and IE 5.5.
The other way of doing this of course, is simply to download and install the appropriate browser from the evolt.org browser archive at http://browsers.evolt.org/.
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
A little planning goes a long way...
IE 5? Worst browser I've ever used (the fact that it doesnt like my firewall has something to do with it)
Netscape 4.7? Slowest piece of...........
Mozilla? Don't even get me started
Does anyone else remember that browser?
I think it was the last of the "1" series before v2 introduced frames (and tables? - no, I think that was in v1).
I think I still have the floppys for a Windows 3.1 install for that. It ran really well on my 386DX40...
I remember the Netscape beta releases - hearing stories about how we couldn't get them in Australia because the servers were too overloaded for mirroring.
Then, when v1 came out, we figured out a way to set up the destops on the uni machines to use one of the lectures proxys and give us external access, and everyone downloaded it. Ahh.... makes me feel like I've been around for ever, and I'm only 25.
The old copies of Mosaic were never taken off of NCSA's FTP server You can find them here. This is a little more complete than Evolt.org since it includes the Unix binaries along with source for several versions. Don't forget to pick up your copy of NCSA HTTPD while you're there!
I'm not weird, you're just all boring.
I used Mosaic for a long time, until 1995 or so, mainly because it was the only browser available for DECStations with ULTRIX. But after that I started using Netscape on Sun boxen instead (Tables in webpages! Woohoo!). I just wanted to say that I still think the spinning icon in the top-right corner of the browser should be the one that stops loading the page... I can't remember how many times I clicked on the "N" icon in Netscape and got sent to their homepage, when I just wanted to stop the page loading. After some time of that, I noticed that Netscape had a separate "stop" button, but it took long to get used to.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I forgot that HTML compresses large numbers of spaces. Funny how life has changed.
D
----
I still have Netscape 0.96 installed on my machine. I use it for testing purposes. I figure that if my pages display OK on that, they will display on anything. Also, it's good to see that your NOFRAMES and NOSCRIPT tags are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing.
I tried /. with it just now. It displayed for a minute, then the browser GPF'd. You can't get much more authentic than that!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As someone who was lucky enough to try the original browser, probably within days of its release, I find this annoying. :-)
Check out this web page http://www.w3.org/People/Ber ners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.htmlc .gif.
or this nice screenshot: http://www.w3. org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/CACM/screensnap2_24
Note that this wasn't just a browser -- it was a "Browser - Editor!" Very advanced for its time, eh?
(sorry...its just always ticked me off that credit isn't given where it's due on this one...)
david.
I tried viewing Slashdot in NCSA Mosaic 0.9, and was able to pull up an article. In Threaded mode, which uses mostly standard UL and LI tags to represent messages, it was surprisingly readable. However, when I changed my settings and clicked "Change," I was presented with the comments rendered entirely in... my current browser, IE5.5!
Guess it doesn't do forms just yet.
For more information, click here.
We operate the service from sweden, where lawyers don't have nearly as much power as in the US, so hopefully we won't run into trouble, but if we do we'll deal with it then.
It is possible to have both IE5 and IE4 installed on the same machine, and it is very easy to install multiple versions of Netscape.
For the site I just finished creating (not allowed to link to it until officially open) the minimum browser requirement ended up being IE4 + Netscape 3, but it also would work in near-perfect fashion on older browsers (no javascript). The testing for the site was done on 3-4 different machines. I had access to a machine with IE 4 + IE 5 + Netscape Latest, another with IE @ (NT), another with IE 3 + Netscape 3.
If you don't have the ability to do this there are general rules to follow as to what version of a browser supports what and how well. Most of that information can be found on the web, if not on netscape.com & microsoft.com.
Another choice people will tell you is that it doesn't matter and that everyone who can't see your site should upgrade to the latest version. But do you really want to turn away the people looking at your site and tell them to upgrade?
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
This is a bit divergent from the topic, but I found a very usefull aspect of this tool:
Finding web bugs! Those 1x1 pixel images show up everywhere now! Well, at least they do when I'm using Mosaic 1.0
Jump to http://www.cnn.com with the mosaic emulator and right on the top, upper right hand size is a small blue square. Gottcha.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
We had to browse the web on pure text-based browsers that still took five hours to start up! And we had to manually type in our links and we liked it! And when we got to an interesting site, our browser and OS would crash on us and dance about on our desk and sing hallelujah!
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Y'know, DJ Delorie (http://www.delorie.com) has a bunch of stuff like this thing.
Here's the Lynx viewer.
The Purifier
and the Compatibility Viewer.
Poor thing can probably only handle three or four simultaneous users, what with being a CGI and all. And probably one in an interpreted scripting language at that.
/. archives it'll be possible to have a look at it.
Maybe in two or three weeks when the story is sufficiently hard to find in the
Those rules are fine and dandy, but realistically worthless. You can't write an entire site under those standards and honestly expect both Netscaspe and IE to follow them, unless you're not using anything more difficult then .
It's gotten so bad, that I found a protocol that was made it into HTML 4.0, was requested by Netscape, was not supported in Netscape 4.72, but was supported in IE 5+. I don't remember what it was but I do remember it had to do with image maps.
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
Since the original site's being
http://finnegan.metamatrix.se/dejavu/
There is a mirror on http://finnegan.metamatrix.se/dejavu/emulator.htm that seems ok for now ;)
IE 2.0 still comes with Windows NT doesn't it? At least that's what the PDC here @ work is running.. :)
BilldaCat
There are many good reasons to still use a text-based browser. Many times I want to grab something from freshmeat or search on Deja when I'm at a Linux box without X. It is also great for the visually impared. (My wife is VI, so I know from experience) If your site can't be viewed from within Lynx, you're cutting of a not insignificant portion of your market. Plus, I don't have to look at all the damn banner ads.
What a great idea! This could be a whole genre in itself, like classic gaming! Think of the possibilities:
Software that slows your computer down so you can see what it would have been like to run Unreal on a 286;
Mailing lists with aficionados of poor reception advising each other of the exact settings to use to make cable reception on popular models of television look like the signal is coming into a bent coathanger jammed into the back of the TV;
Petitioning supermarkets and other grocery stores to be open only from 9-5, like in the old days.
The possibilities are limitless!
-
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
I don't get it. I'm still using Netscape 1.2N
(It has nntp and everything - except the buggy features such as javascript!)
2 years ago, when I went to college, I had to say goodbye to my P75 and hello to my parents Mac LC, at least until I got my PIII at the end of my freshman year. It was like a trip down memory lane then, as I looked up web pages using browsers and such that took advantage of the 40 Meg hard drive (now much larger) and the 256 color display (still stock), and as I played games such as Lode Runner, that would fit on the drive. People seemed amazed that I got all of that onto 40 Megs of space, and could do just about everything that anybody else could do (albiet Quake wasn't one of those things) with my old Mac.
It was a fun experience, looking back. Still, it would have been fun to have the PIII at the start of freshman year.
Eh...
Ok, i'm moving it to a new server now. The thing
is that we (dejavu.org) got sponsored with a
very nice (8 years old or so) hardware from digital. Very nice, but doesn't handle load
very well. I'm moving over the site to a (somewhat
faster) linuxbox that should be able to handle
the slashdotters somewhat better. For those
of you who doesn't want to await the dns synching
the address is http://finnegan.metamatrix.se/dejavu/
But if you're thinking of using this to check web page accessibility, check out the Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer instead.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It seems to me that the Dialectizer got in trouble some time back for letting people run URLs through a filter like this. Could these guys get in the same trouble?
--
Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air.
.sig: file not found
Sorry guys I still love my lynx