• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

A search engine for fast-loading, vintage-style web sites

vwestlife

vwestlife

Veteran Member
Joined
May 2, 2008
Messages
5,398
Location
central NJ
Great for finding web pages to demonstrate on vintage computers connected to the Internet:

https://wiby.me/

"Why wiby?

Search engines like Google are indispensable, able to find answers to all of your technical questions; but along the way, the fun of web surfing was lost. In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercial pages that overcrowded everything else. All the personalized websites are hidden among a pile of commercial pages. Google isn't great at finding those gems, its focus is on finding answers to technical questions, and it works well. But finding things you didn't know you wanted to know, which was the real joy of web surfing, no longer happens. In addition, many pages today are created using bloated scripts that add slick cosmetic features in order to mask the lack of content available on them. Those pages contribute to the blandness of today's web.

The wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet."
 
Ditto. All I get when I try to load it in Netscape 3 and 4 is "connection reset".

It loads, at least for today, in SeaMonkey 1.1.20. But soooo many other HTTPS sites are already failing to connect in this browser it is just a matter of time. All it takes one small server update becausesecurtylessthan1percentyouarenotsupportedyoucantbetoosafethinkofthechildrenpollywannacracker. Eventually I'm going to have to pop this thing open again and see if I can't tweek or update the security modules. Either that or upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 10 just so I can run Firefox [Insert this minutes version here].

If it doesn't load in Pathworks Mosasic, its useless :p
 
SomeGuy said:
Ditto. All I get when I try to load it in Netscape 3 and 4 is "connection reset".

It loads, at least for today, in SeaMonkey 1.1.20. But soooo many other HTTPS sites are already failing to connect in this browser it is just a matter of time. All it takes one small server update becausesecurtylessthan1percentyouarenotsupportedyoucantbetoosafethinkofthechildrenpollywannacracker. Eventually I'm going to have to pop this thing open again and see if I can't tweek or update the security modules. Either that or upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 10 just so I can run Firefox [Insert this minutes version here].

If it doesn't load in Pathworks Mosasic, its useless :p
Click to expand...

Try http://www.loband.org/loband/ - it reformat websites so that they can render nicely on low-bandwidth connections. Works fine with Arachne and IE3 in my tests.
 
Hey guys, I have found this forum from the referrer stats of my server logs. Hope you don't mind me registering to answer this issue regarding https.

I put a condition where any user agent containing "Mozilla/4", "Mozilla/3", "Mozilla/2" will be served http instead of being redirected to https as long as you type http://wiby.me instead of https. I would hate this not to work on vintage computers and browsers, so I hope this is an ok compromise. Please let me know if it doesn't work for you. I tested it for Mozilla/4, but didn't get a chance to test the other 2 conditions.
 
There are many other user agents that would need to be added (links, lynx, arachne, etc.) than just Mozilla.

Cute project. It's not really a search engine though; it's more like a portal that has a google-like interface.
 
wib said:
Hey guys, I have found this forum from the referrer stats of my server logs. Hope you don't mind me registering to answer this issue regarding https.

I put a condition where any user agent containing "Mozilla/4", "Mozilla/3", "Mozilla/2" will be served http instead of being redirected to https as long as you type http://wiby.me instead of https. I would hate this not to work on vintage computers and browsers, so I hope this is an ok compromise. Please let me know if it doesn't work for you. I tested it for Mozilla/4, but didn't get a chance to test the other 2 conditions.
Click to expand...


I think you'd be better off setting up a non HTTP landing page, that asks the user if they want HTTP or HTTPS and re-directing from there based on the link they click.
 
Trixter said:
There are many other user agents that would need to be added (links, lynx, arachne, etc.) than just Mozilla.

Cute project. It's not really a search engine though; it's more like a portal that has a google-like interface.
Click to expand...

Lynx should be fine. The version on my systems has no problems with TLS, and it's not particularly current. It loads the HTTPS version without difficulty.

I just tried the HTTP version with Macintosh Internet Explorer 5.1 under Classic in OS X Tiger and it works fine. Netscape Navigator 3.0 does load the HTTP version, though of course the style sheets don't work. Communicator 4.8 can load the full HTTP version, and the site design appears more or less correctly as long as both style sheets and JavaScript are enabled. Both were also tested under Classic.

Overall, it works pretty well, considering. Some relevant sites pop up with basic searches and those sites are appropriate to purpose. I think it's a great start.
 
Hey thanks all for trying it out.

I have a proper way to handle http now. It only forces HTTPS if the user agent contains 'Mozilla/5'. Since all modern browsers will stick 'Mozilla/5' into their user agents. That should allow the myriad of old browsers to still get http without issue.

Incidentally, finding this forum caused me to bring out my old SE/30 from the basement so I could test all this. Nice and fast browsing with 8MB ram with Netscape 2... as long as its pure text. Now this has caused me to order 4x 4MB simms and new caps. Didn't realize this mac had shot up in value. I had bought it for cheap in 2006.se30.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top