Dude111 wrote on 2025-12-08, 21:58:

I hear ya buddy 😀

If you wanted to make it available on IE6, you might be able to create a local proxy on a SBC that handles the TLS 1.3 handshake, simplifies HTML and serves it to your XP machine with HTTP?

I wouldn't expose an IE6 machine directly to the internet personally. Maybe some version of Opera that works on your PC? I seem to remember Opera having better legacy support but idk.

7F20 wrote on 2025-12-10, 15:27:

Dude111 wrote on 2025-12-08, 21:58:

I hear ya buddy 😀

I wouldn't expose an IE6 machine directly to the internet personally.

I didn't even want to expose a computer to IE6 (online or not) when it was brand new.

By far the worst PC browser I've ever used. I remember IE4 being "meh", so I would alternate between that and Netscape Navigator. IE5 was much better, so I mostly used that with a bit of Netscape on the side. When IE6 came out I tried to use it, but I think I ended up using IE5 again until switching to Firefox and haven't looked back in 20 years (aside from occasional Chrome or Edge use).

To use IE6 for the modern web in 2025 is interesting as a hobby... but sounds like pure masochism as a person's main browser.

There is an interest among participants in new "Programming" section. Perhaps it could be added, for example here, in "Heart of Gold"?

Its nice you guys are keeping the site so us people on older browsers can visit the site HTTP .. Alot of sites FORCE SSL and they have no bloody reason to!!

What are they trying to hide???

Homeland security can still see everything!!

ALOT OF SITES ARE NOT BANKIING SITES AND DO NOT NEED SSL!!!

It just makes problems where there are none!!

Anyway---

Seeing your keeping HTTP allowed so we can connect,why not have an alternate login??

That floating login ONLY WORKS ON CHROME OR OTHER NEW BROWSERS!!

If your site detects IE6 (Like when I am on my 98se using IE6) it should give me a standard login..

Or you guys could write a simple HTML file and post it here for us and we could copy/paste it and use it on on our computers to login here!!

Also.. How about having an option to MARK THE BASES READ so our read status is updated...

I dont know if database thread tracking is enabled here,I havent ever looked into that but if it IS,that would be very useful..

Thank you for reading...

EDIT:

Database thread tracking is NOT ENABLED here... (I just verified it)

Dude111 wrote on 2026-02-14, 02:47:

Its nice you guys are keeping the site so us people on older browsers can visit the site HTTP .. Alot of sites FORCE SSL and the […]
Show full quote

Its nice you guys are keeping the site so us people on older browsers can visit the site HTTP .. Alot of sites FORCE SSL and they have no bloody reason to!!

What are they trying to hide???

Homeland security can still see everything!!

ALOT OF SITES ARE NOT BANKIING SITES AND DO NOT NEED SSL!!!

It just makes problems where there are none!!

HTTPS at least can block the possibility of any random person or entity to intercept and/or manipulate the communication with little effort. Even a "weak" encryption (akin to a door with a simple lock) is sufficient to block a good amount of casual attackers.

There are still some (mostly old) sites without SSL and I'm not sure about all the safety implications when interacting with them in today's increasingly hostile cyber-atmosphere.

The bad part is not SSL or HTTPS itself. It's that they're no longer issuing/trusting certificates using outdated encryption technology in the excuse of being "insecure". This alone blocks a good amount of old browsers/devices from accessing the web.

And the opposite can also happen. Some very old network appliances and internal services might rely on very outdated software using outdated encryption algorithms that current browsers no longer support (that they'll report things like SSL cipher error), that one would have to use older versions of browsers, or compatible alternatives, to access their web interfaces.

Dude111 wrote on 2026-02-14, 02:47:

Anyway--- […]
Show full quote

Anyway---

Seeing your keeping HTTP allowed so we can connect,why not have an alternate login??

That floating login ONLY WORKS ON CHROME OR OTHER NEW BROWSERS!!

If your site detects IE6 (Like when I am on my 98se using IE6) it should give me a standard login..

Or you guys could write a simple HTML file and post it here for us and we could copy/paste it and use it on on our computers to login here!!

I wonder if the actual login page will work on old browsers, as I haven't tried. And I'm not sure if 2FA will work as well on old environments, either.

Dude111 wrote on 2026-02-14, 02:47:

Also.. How about having an option to MARK THE BASES READ so our read status is updated... […]
Show full quote

Also.. How about having an option to MARK THE BASES READ so our read status is updated...

I dont know if database thread tracking is enabled here,I havent ever looked into that but if it IS,that would be very useful..

Thank you for reading...

EDIT:

Database thread tracking is NOT ENABLED here... (I just verified it)

I'm not sure what exactly do you mean by this. Are you referring to marking certain posts as "read" without actually opening it, kind of like managing incoming e-mail in inboxes?

No the login here does not work on older stuff (safari,etc) but if someone wrote a small HTML file,I think the file could be used on 98se on IE6 to login 😀

Dude111 wrote on 2026-02-14, 02:47:

Its nice you guys are keeping the site so us people on older browsers can visit the site HTTP .. Alot of sites FORCE SSL and they have no bloody reason to!!

There are some reasons. One of them, for example, is that search engines like Google give you a competitively worse ranking in their search results if you don't use exclusive HTTPS. It's not that important for VOGONS, but if you're running a business, it is. And security-wise, it's a good idea as well.

schmatzler wrote on 2026-02-15, 11:04:

Dude111 wrote on 2026-02-14, 02:47:

Its nice you guys are keeping the site so us people on older browsers can visit the site HTTP .. Alot of sites FORCE SSL and they have no bloody reason to!!

There are some reasons. One of them, for example, is that search engines like Google give you a competitively worse ranking in their search results if you don't use exclusive HTTPS. It's not that important for VOGONS, but if you're running a business, it is. And security-wise, it's a good idea as well.

Does it affect subdomains?
It might be then worth to have "old.vogons.org" that does nothing else differently than just lacks the https related stuff, like redirections and whatnot.

Reducing security on VOGONS to accommodate old systems very likely to not happen . The amount of bots targeting this site makes it not feasable.

vetz wrote on 2026-02-16, 09:19:

The amount of bots targeting this site makes it not feasable.

Of course... the cyber-atmosphere nowadays is too hostile, and LLMs only made this even worse.

I'm already seeing some sites incorporating hash-based challenges such as Anubis to counter bots, which requires JavaScript enabled thus complicates things if one has NoScript active, and this will certainly raise requirements for both hardware and browsers.

Using robots.txt might help with limiting bots but then there are problems with bots that never honored them, and some bots have to be permitted otherwise the site will disappear from search engines.

Though I do admit search engine is no longer as useful as it was like about a decade ago. Google is long broken for me, and while DuckDuckGo still works, it's yielding very limited results.

Not to mention the ads in some search engines have become a real problem. Without proper adblocking, people using search engines will likely find fake ads/phishing sites placed on top of their search results, and over the real ones.

vetz wrote on 2026-02-16, 09:19:

Reducing security on VOGONS to accommodate old systems very likely to not happen . The amount of bots targeting this site makes it not feasable.

It's not security of vogons forum, but security between user and vogons server. If a user decides themselves to use non-https "old.vogons.org", they accept the risks of MITM attacks and other such vulnerabilities.

GigAHerZ wrote on 2026-02-16, 15:05:

vetz wrote on 2026-02-16, 09:19:

Reducing security on VOGONS to accommodate old systems very likely to not happen . The amount of bots targeting this site makes it not feasable.

It's not security of vogons forum, but security between user and vogons server. If a user decides themselves to use non-https "old.vogons.org", they accept the risks of MITM attacks and other such vulnerabilities.

http://old.xxx.com could be used to safely deliver cookieless read-only HTML/3 ? It would have to be a pet project though.

The attached animated GIF doesn't play in thumbnail.

I'd like to use animated GIFs for tutorials here on Vogons, but clicking each thumbnail to see the full-size GIF can be tricky.
Is there any chance to improve this experience?

[img] tag doesn't work for full-size link (https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=xxxx&mode=view)
[img] tag for external GIFs from Imgur works as expected, but image host may remove them after a while.

UPD:
Wow, attached GIFs actually works, but width/height shouldn't exceed 400 pixels. Otherwise, GIFs are shrunk to static thumbs.

That's a fair limitation, but it would be great to increase the pixel limit for lightweight GIFs.
GIFs with reduced frame rate/color palette shouldn't take up much space.

forum suggestion

A way to disable viewing any form of animated image & icon format while retaining normal images and icons .

weedeewee wrote on 2026-02-19, 16:36:

A way to disable viewing any form of animated image & icon format while retaining normal images and icons .

Oops, sorry about that. I deleted test image. I'd like to use GIFs for tutorial purposes only.

I'd like to be able to reward posts without explicitly typing text - a thank you, thumbs-up, or similar.

It's time for VOGONS to move into the 2020s with forum AI integration. I'm sure we would all appreciate AI assistance when composing our posts.

Errius wrote on Today, 19:11:

It's time for VOGONS to move into the 2020s with forum AI integration. I'm sure we would all appreciate AI assistance when composing our posts.

Please no. The amount of inaccurate information would be enormous.

Errius wrote on Today, 19:11:

It's time for VOGONS to move into the 2020s with forum AI integration. I'm sure we would all appreciate AI assistance when composing our posts.

Oh boy... no.

If anything, there's only one scenario i sometimes use AI when socializing in forums: To write a bullet-point list of my thoughts in clunky english, and then let it rephrase it into a nice fluent-flowing english. I might be doing that maybe 2% of the all posts i'll create. If there would be a button "Rephrase with AI", maybe it would rise to 1/10 of all my posts...

But is this really a problem we need to solve?

Errius wrote on Today, 19:11:

It's time for VOGONS to move into the 2020s with forum AI integration. I'm sure we would all appreciate AI assistance when composing our posts.

This must be ragebait. I'm pretty sure no one here wants this feature. 😁