VOGONS


First post, by Robbbert

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Just found out that google search has killed support of all versions of IE. The only thing that works is image search on IE11. Normal search on IE11 shows like normal but when you search for something it breaks. Same problem happens on Retrozilla.

In fact all browsers on Win98 are broken except Retrozilla, and even then you have to use duckduckgo/lite.

Duckduckgo produces a white screen on most browsers now, but the lite version works on IE8 (but not IE9).

So in other words, if you use an old machine, google is NO LONGER your friend.

Can someone recommend search pages that actually work on old browsers?

Reply 2 of 11, by Jo22

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Hi, a few sites I know..

//FrogFind//
Search engine for old browsers
http://www.frogfind.com/
http://frogfind.de/

//Wiby//
Search engine for classic websites (no Java etc)
http://wiby.me
http://wiby.org

//Wayback Classic//
Frontend for Wayback Machine for old browsers
https://wayback-classic.net/

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 4 of 11, by Robbbert

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Thanks for responses. I tested each and this is what I found:

- search.aol.com redirects to search.yahoo.com

- frogfind works everywhere, but it shows the results as text only, something like a RSS feed. It isn't possible to actually look at a page correctly.

- wiby only shows results for things it already knows about. If you type in something else, it finds nothing. For example, it finds "news", but not "latest news". The search results are questionable, as it seems to use a very old search database. But given all that, it does kinda work.

- yahoo was the best bet, but it doesn't work on all browsers, for example no IE6. On win98 it does work on Firefox and Opera.

- On my win98, I can't update the certificate store because it says it's read-only or full. No idea how to fix this. Therefore it isn't possible to try anything for IE6.

I'll try more things and see what happens.

Reply 5 of 11, by rmay635703

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IE6 has been broken a very very long time.
I always reverted to IE5/5.5 or Firefox beta .8/.9 as more would work to some extent which was strange.

Reply 6 of 11, by Dude111

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Robbbert wrote:

So in other words, if you use an old machine, google is NO LONGER your friend.

Yes I think its because they cant track us using older stuff so they dont want us there..

I have found a way around it by changing my UA to something other than MSIE 6.0 .. Interestingly "MSIE6.0" works! (No space)

Its the "enable scripts" that makes it not work.. The scripts are not compat with our older browsers 😀

Last edited by Dude111 on 2025-12-07, 09:30. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 7 of 11, by Jo22

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Dude111 wrote on 2025-12-06, 10:09:
Yes I think its because they cant track us using older stuff so they dont want us there.. […]
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Robbbert wrote:

So in other words, if you use an old machine, google is NO LONGER your friend.

Yes I think its because they cant track us using older stuff so they dont want us there..

I have found a way around it by changing my UA to something other than MSIE 6.0 .. Interestingly "MSIE6.0" works! (No space)

Its the "enable scripts" that makes it not work.. The scripts are not compat wth our older browsers 😀

On my G4 Mac running OS X 10.4 Tiger, I can reach Google with Internet Explorer 5.x.
The Mac version had an browser engine different from Trident (it used Tasman).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac

@Robbbert Wiby is meant to find oldschool websites, I think.
Not obsolete websites, but all websites of any year that are made like old/traditional websites.
This also includes websites from, say, the 2010s or 2020s if they were made like in the good old day.

I occasionally use that search engine to find HTML 2 compatible websites for vintage browsers such as Minuet (1994) or obscure Windows 3.x browsers (Mosaic, Cello)..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_web_browser

Another retro site is http://retroreddit.com/ which is a front-end to reddit website.
It even works with a 1994 era web browser. It's fun to read stuff on Lynx or a VT100 terminal, for example.
Or for browsing the internet on a text-browser on the console via CoolRetroTerm.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 8 of 11, by Robbbert

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On my windows 7 machine today, so experimentation limited to IE11.

Found that Bing works fine, although if you type quickly the search string gets garbled.

The site https://www.searchenginecolossus.com, although somewhat dated, has hundreds of search engines of all kinds.

Many of these engines don't have crawlers, so you need to register sites on them manually. I don't bother with those engines.

Still, there's a few gems in there.

Back to google: You can go to the news and get a list of headlines, but clicking on any story gives a white screen.

Also, https://www.whatismybrowser.com can't seem to detect if javascript is enabled or not in IE11. I have it enabled, but some of the pages say it's not enabled.

Reply 9 of 11, by Dude111

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Ya I get that on IE6 also.. Scripts are indeed enabled but it doesnt detect they are...

Its interesting how Google works on IE5 for Mac.. IE5 is the last one for mac isnt it??

Its interesting they let it go so long on google that any browser can use it,then all of a sudden google and bing block most older stuff..

Reply 10 of 11, by Oink The Pentium

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I recommend using the protoweb proxy server for Win 9x/2000

Reply 11 of 11, by Dude111

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Proxy servers are very useful,especially now when they are trying to block us...