Help old computers use the web with FrogFind.com & 68k.news

Date:
Wed, 27 Apr 2022 16:04:26 GMT

Description:
Because getting retro computers on "The Web" is tricky. We can use all the help we can get.

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Browsing the Web from aging Operating Systems and computers can be more than
a little tricky. Heck, simply using a web browser that is more than a couple years old can (all too often) make the majority of websites completely nonfunctional.

The two big culprits tend to be:

Incompatibilities with older versions of SSL / HTTPS.

Javascript and CSS (either not being supported, or not the latest versions).

Which is where FrogFind.com comes in.

The brainchild of Sean Malseed creator of the Action Retro channel on
YouTube FrogFind.com is, at first glance, a simple search engine. But, once you start using it, you realize what an absolute godsend it can be for retro computing enthusiasts.

FrogFind takes the search results from DuckDuckGo and presents it as the simplest possible HTML.

Then, when you click a link in the search results, that page is passed
through a PHP port of the Readability library (which strips out all the fluff
ads, navigation bars, etc.) then FrogFind strips it all down a little
further still.

The whole point is to return a webpage that:

Is accessed via simple HTTP (and thus accessible via nearly any web browser) and

Is as simple and basic HTML as possible (no CSS or Javascript).

The net result is that a some (but not all) of the web pages that were previously unusable on aging web browsers (such as versions of Netscape, Mosaic, and others) suddenly become semi-sorta usable!

The developer put together a short video showing why he built it and how to use it.

While it doesnt make every site on the Internet suddenly browseable on, say, Netscape Navigator 1.0 it does improve the situation a bit. And that is
darn handy.

Plus, the developer has released the source code up on GitHub . Which is a plus. 68k.news

Along those same lines, the same developer has created a simple website that takes Google News and sends it through the same make it simple HTML process. He calls it 68k.news . (A little nod to using it on 68000 powered, classic Macintoshes.)

The result looks like this:

Its only for Google News but its still pretty cool that you can use such a thing on nearly any web browser ever created (including long abandoned browsers, and text-only browsers).

I enthusiastically approve. Dont forget Browservice

I would be remiss if I did not mention Browservice right now.

Browservice is a completely different approach to getting aging web browsers to function on the modern web one with benefits and drawbacks.

What Browservice does is, essentially, renders the full webpage using an invisible Chromium instance (typically on a different computer) then sends a picture of the resulting webpage to the client browser, with just enough Javascript to allow users to interact with it. Internet Explorer under
Windows 3.1 using a modern website.

The benefit here is that you can use nearly the entire web. File uploading even works.

The downside is that youll need a web browser with at least a little Javascript for it to function. Internet Explorer 5? No problem. Want to go much earlier and things arent going to work so well.

I, personally, run Browservice on a remote server that I connect to with my aging computers. A cheap little VPS server that I already had for a few
other tasks. Works like a charm.

I recommend keeping FrogFind.com and Browservice in your bag of tricks to get aging computers on the web. Both do an admirable job of helping to keep
those older systems connected to the modern world. DOS and Linux video games.
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Link to news story: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/help-old-computers-use-the-web-with


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