About TLS: If you self-host/have control over the HTTP server config, you usually redirect HTTP to HTTPS for modern browsers there. I configured my web server to check the user-agent and if the user agent looks like one of the browsers on my retro machines I just skip the HTTPS redirect. In general, user-agent sniffing is frowned upon, but in this case it works, and since the redirect is done at the HTTP request/response level, you don’t have much other info to go by.

So a modern browser accesses my web page via http - https redirect active, browser gets TLS (would need to be combined with HSTS if you want to avoid TLS Stripping, which would be fine, as older browsers don’t understand HSTS anyway).

But when one of my known retro browsers accesses the website, it just skips the https redirect, and it uses unencrypted HTTP.

You can try it at http://thp.io - downside is that external links might still require https.

As for HTML, since it’s mostly quirks mode, what worked for me is to write straightforward modern (but simple) HTML and then test, test, test and adapt with older browsers, and add graceful degradation.

Oh, and don’t forget text mode browsers. It‘s nice to use w3m every once in a while and see how far you can get. Will also indirectly help to make it a bit more accessible to people with screen readers.

thp wrote on 2024-11-25, 07:02:

You can try it at http://thp.io - downside is that external links might still require https.

My browser (NM28) is not redirected to HTTPS, despite it fully supports latest TLS 1.3 standards.

That's why I don't redirect HTTP -> HTTPS or vice versa, UAs are very unreliable. HSTS is interesting but I don't know how to implement it correctly. For the moment I'm at the point that all external links which are made by myself are HTTPS (hopefully links set by others too), the website is registered as HTTPS at search engines and the canonicals are also set to HTTPS - but if you need (or want) the HTTP version, you get it, by accessing.

HSTS would give this a push to the right direction (HTTPS if supported, else HTTP).

kind regards
soggi

soggi wrote on 2024-11-25, 07:34:

My browser (NM28) is not redirected to HTTPS, despite it fully supports latest TLS 1.3 standards.

I just checked and it seems like I unconditionally avoid a HTTP->HTTPS redirect for "Windows NT 5.1" (i.e. XP) in the user-agent string, independent of the rest of the browser identification. Also didn't know about New Moon, seems like it's a fork of Pale Moon (the User-Agent string doesn't even identify itself as New Moon at all).

In any case, it's not like I'm preventing those browsers from using https, but the user has to manually request the page via https://, it's more of an "make it work with legacy browsers in old operating systems without any additional work, while still retaining https upgrades for modern browsers".

As seen here, it's not fully water proof 😀

Yeah - welcome to the "hell of UAs"! The uncommon browsers (others than standard Chrome/Edge/Firefox) have to use fake UAs on many sites, else they would have been blocked, get a different version of the website or just stop working while loading.

You're right, you don't block a browser from getting the HTTPS version, it just doesn't redirect all requests because your rules for redirecting are incomplete - so it has to be done manually. I only redirect all wrong entities (like www subdomain) and the old .eu domainto the HTTPS version, the rest should be solved with HSTS in the future.

BTW New Moon is roytam1's fork of older Pale Moon versions which work on WinXP+ (NM 27/28) or Win2k (NM26), he also has other forks of Gecko/Goanna based browsers which are partially working on Win95/98 on CPUs w/o SSE(2) down to 80386 (K-Meleon 1.5.4) and even support TLS 1.3! Have a look at roytam1's blogspot page, his 5th thread about his browser builds on MSFN, repositories at github and/or the tools section on my website which is an authorized mirror of his builds (-> https://soggi.org/misc/tools.htm).

kind regards
soggi

I'm back! Progress is going quite well I'd say. Without going into too much detail, I can't find an encoder software for RealVideo. The RealEncoder 1.0 software on archive.org gives me an installation error of "this copy of the installer has expired". With that being said, RealVideo confuses me. Is RealVideo the same as RealMedia? Which Real(Video,Media,Audio) is era appropriate for the late 90's? I've been testing on a stock IE 5.0 on Win98SE.

Another thing, what about hosting? I've considered Apache on Ubuntu, but I've never used it before and would hate to mess something up. Do any third party web hosts support old websites?

RealVideo: video codecs; RealAudio: audio codecs; RealMedia: media container format for streams encoded using the previous two. (And unsurprisingly, RealPlayer: player for all of that.)

Era appropriate is whatever's compatible with RealPlayer 7 or earlier.

As for encoding, ffmpeg does RV10 and RV20 formats, and considering RV30 was introduced with RealPlayer 8, that happens to exactly fit your use case, and is free (as in both beer and -dom). It also does RealAudio 1.0. I dunno when 2.0 came around, but you ain't getting it without a commercial encoder (and you wouldn't steal one now would you?) so that's pretty much moot anyways.

Anonymoose wrote on 2024-11-30, 18:54:

Another thing, what about hosting? I've considered Apache on Ubuntu, but I've never used it before and would hate to mess something up. Do any third party web hosts support old websites?

This shouldn't be a problem. The server side is developing slowly and very backwards compatible compared to the client side. Any hosting on Apache httpd should be appropriate - for nginx and others I don't know, but they also should be compatible.

kind regards
soggi

Main issue with trying to use shared hosting is going to be the forced redirect to https issue. Also, any kind of free hosting site is likely to inject JavaScript for advertising that will crash old browsers.

Which "forced redirect to https issue"? I never heard about that when I read about hosting and therefor never had this issue with the few hosters I used until today. There was never a problem to serve via HTTP, rather the other way around.

The injected Javascript and such stuff I only can remember from ~20 or more years ago, so it should be easy to find one w/o such crap - I used some free hosters w/o onsite advertising, but they had other (big) issues.

There was only one free hoster which I was satisfied with -> https://www.web4free.eu/. They had also good and fast E-Mail support when I had a question.

kind regards
soggi

Hello! So I’d say the website is pretty good (still struggling with web hosting 😖). Now I have to fill up the list with older websites that render on older browsers! I’ve found a few, but is there a way to simplify the process? Possibly filtering through Google?

wiby.org might be a help

I’m back! This time, with a finished product! I’m still improving some things, but the main goal of the site (a list of helpful websites/drivers still viewable on older browsers) is implemented. I’m sure there’s plenty to fix, so let me know!

http://cybernet.h4ck.me

Nice, but I can't read the text over that psychedelic background.

That site is blocked by my IT department. Thanks anyway.

Couldn't reach the site using Minuet 1.0 Beta 18A..

(Edit: The browser is real vintage, so it probably isn't that important.
Just wanted to give some feedback! 😅)

Still, thanks for letting me know! It does have some graphics, and I haven’t tested it on any DOS browsers yet.

Anonymoose wrote on 2025-05-08, 16:29:

Still, thanks for letting me know! It does have some graphics, and I haven’t tested it on any DOS browsers yet.

Thanks, glad to hear! You're welcome. ^^
Arachne and MicroWeb 2 probably can render it okay, I think, no worries.
Minuet is interesting, since it is so early (world of '94) and works on IBM PC with any graphics cards (incl. MDA).
For testing purposes, you can open websites locally as file in these DOS browsers.
Minuet is a bit picky about the http server, though, so it's likely not your "fault" if the site can't be displayed online.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I didn't mean to confuse you here.
I'm currently working on a PC clone, so it made sense to give Minuet a try.
However, that doesn't mean you have to support it. Few websites do.

In practice, DOS users use Arachne, Dillo, MicroWeb or Lynx, I think.
Minuet is rather an interesting artifact of history, it also supports FTP/E-Mail/Gopher etc.
The web browser capability was a late addition, sort of an afterthought.
It's fun to tinker with, to see how far you can go.

Personally, I think that HTML 2.0 with some HTML 3 features was commonly being supported by mid-90s.
The web browser for Sega Saturn supported this, for example.
So that's a safe baseline setup, I would say. I don't say you have to exactly stop there though.

If you're uncertain, please just visit your favorite vintage websites via wayback machine and have a look at the html code. :)
Browsers like Firefox still allow displaying it no problem.

Also good sources are vintage websites on CD-ROM.
For example, these two shareware-style CDs:
https://archive.org/details/out-of-the-net
https://archive.org/details/in-to-the-net

Edit: Also interesting, maybe. Some vintage show about websites.
Internet Power! Volume 1 (1995)
Internet Power! Volume 2 (1995)

Hi, I've just stumbled upon this museum site:
https://internetmuseum.se/tidslinjen/annica-t … -own-web-pages/

The author still has the homepage and there's information about HTML 3.2, too, it seems.
http://www.tiger.se/sida.html

Jo22 wrote on 2025-06-14, 20:17:

Hi, I've just stumbled upon this museum site: https://internetmuseum.se/tidslinjen/annica-t … -own-web-pages/ […]
Show full quote

Hi, I've just stumbled upon this museum site:
https://internetmuseum.se/tidslinjen/annica-t … -own-web-pages/

The author still has the homepage and there's information about HTML 3.2, too, it seems.
http://www.tiger.se/sida.html

back when some website authors we're extra proud about coding html in plain text editors 😀

3.2 seems so far back now, well, i guess it is

gerry wrote on 2025-06-16, 07:47:

back when some website authors we're extra proud about coding html in plain text editors 😀

Hey, we still are! 😆

gerry wrote on 2025-06-16, 07:47:

3.2 seems so far back now, well, i guess it is

Indeed. 🙂

According to that site it was current in early '97, still, though.
By late '97 it was HTML 4, if I understand correctly ?

I must admit that I startes web browsing in circa '96.
At the time, Netscape Navigator 2.01 was just localized over here where I live.

It added support for frames, web forms, better JPEG and new GIF89a (with animations).
- Hm. I wonder, does that mean CompuServe's GIF was still GIF87a (WinCIM etc) ?

In 2000, Windows 98SE had shipped IE 5.x and HTML 4 was common, I think. And/or XHTML, DHTML.

Edit: Though in mid-90s, the web still was a wild wild west (www?) anyway. 😉
So web browsers weren't assuming everything to be so strict, so tidy.

Targeting HTML 4 wouldn't be so bad, either.
It rather depends on which features are used on a website, actually.

Many older browsers may also support certain future tags that weren't officially being part of current specification yet.

That's why it's best to simply experiment and see what works.

Just let's don't forget that Windows and Mac weren't the only platforms.
Some had Unix/Linux or OS/2 (Web Explorer, anyone?), some browsed the web with Amiga/Atari ST.

That reminds me of this comic panel. 😉
Here's a video of someone using an ST and Crystal Atari Browser (CAB): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiXQt-W-FZg

Though it's unlikely that many users here at Vogons or in retro community still use these platforms for browsing.
I'd rather assume it's Win 9x, maybe DOS, Win 3.1x..

Mac OS 7/8/9 also used to be a popular web browser platform, but nowadays there aren’t so many vintage Mac fans out there, I'm afraid.
Or they're just a bit quieter, which is understandable considering what image Apple nowadays has.

Edit: Sorry for repeating myself! 😅 Just noticed I already mentioned some of this earlier.