
Show HN: Browservice – Browse the modern web on historical browsers - ttalvitie
https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice
======
dusted
Oh THAT way round, that's super cool! I was thinking the other way.. "See what
that stinking pile of javascript and css looks like in Mosaic", but, this is
actually useful! :D

~~~
KenoFischer
Yeah, same confusion here. First example, being HN added to the confusion,
since HN seems like exactly the kind of site that would render fine on a
thirty year old browser (not meant as a swipe in any way - HN does one thing
and it does it well).

~~~
app4soft
Yeah, I from tim-to-time browse & comment on HN using _Links2_ [0] (in
graphics & terminal mode).

[0] [http://links.twibright.com](http://links.twibright.com)

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betamaxthetape
As the Readme notes, a similar project is the Web Rendering Proxy (WRP) -
[https://github.com/tenox7/wrp](https://github.com/tenox7/wrp), however the
two projects differ in their use (or lack of) JavaScript:

> This idea of using a proxy to render the browser view into images has been
> used before by WRP (Web Rendering proxy). Browservice differs from WRP in
> that it uses JavaScript on the client browser to animate the browser view
> and gather user input events, while in WRP, the user has to use web forms
> and image maps to provide the input, and the page has to be reloaded for
> every update in the view. Thus Browservice gives the user a more immersive
> web browsing experience, but also requires a newer client browser and more
> powerful hardware. While WRP can run on browsers as old as NCSA Mosaic 2.0,
> the earliest supported client browsers for Browservice are from late 90s and
> early 00s.

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Wowfunhappy
My OS of choice is OS X 10.9 "Mavericks". It's not old enough to be "Retro"
yet, but I want to stay here for a while, and Firefox says they're dropping
support in a year. And while there are a bunch of alternatives browsers I can
move to (ArcticFox, Unofficial Intel Builds of TenFourFox, etc), they don't
always work with every website.

So, one long-term possibility I'm toying with is using OS X's implementation
of X11. I could run Firefox in a modern Linux distro (probably a VM on the
same machine, although it could be a different machine), and use X Forwarding
to make it appear as a normal app. I think this should theoretically work for
a lot of OS's, from the earliest versions of OS X to decade-old copies of
Linux.

Has anyone used this approach for old machines?

~~~
keyle
Snow Leopard is my favourite OS to date. It was blazing fast and got out of
the way. After that, it kept getting worse gradually...

That said I'd be concerned about not getting security updates by running a
legacy OS... Aren't you?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I shared my little security self-assessment a couple weeks ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23473839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23473839)

Also in that comment thread, some thoughts on Mavericks vs Snow Leopard:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467082)

------
LeoPanthera
If you want to do the reverse, browse the old web on modern browsers, go to
[https://theoldnet.com](https://theoldnet.com)

It uses the Wayback Machine as its backend, but with tweaks so the site
appears to load "natively".

(Also works on old browsers, too, if you use http instead of https.)

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gitgud
So this pre-renders modern websites in a proxy server, so older browsers can
read them? Is that correct?

Reminds me of [1] "Browsh", which is a service that pre-renders a URL for
viewability in terminals.

[1] [https://www.brow.sh/](https://www.brow.sh/)

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Ayesh
This reminds me of Opera Mini (not the same as Opera Mobile).

It server-side rendered pages (on Opera servers), and converted them to a
lightweight HTML page (with OPML extension IIRC), and then sent to the
browser.

I presume the server costs were high, because you run a giant proxy that did a
lot of things for users, but for end users, it meant semi-interactice web
pages that were 10-15kb in size.

~~~
niutech
You can run Opera Mini MIDP using MicroEmulator on Windows or install Opera
Mobile Emulator: [https://dev.opera.com/articles/opera-mobile-
emulator/](https://dev.opera.com/articles/opera-mobile-emulator/)

------
empyrical
This seems like a modern equivalent of Google Chrome Frame[1], pretty cool!

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_Frame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_Frame)

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asmosoinio
On the screenshots page, I found this fun:

> Browservice is 100% AJAX-free software, handmade in Finland

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satvikpendem
Something somewhat related is Mighty by Suhail Doshi, cofounder of Mixpanel
and eventually pushed out from the CEO position, but that's irrelevant. Mighty
is Chrome but prerendered on some powerful machine. Sounds like a parody but
it isn't.

www.mightyapp.com

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TheSpiceIsLife
I was just saying the other day:

 _We need an app that abstracts away the browser / browser engine, and just
presents a working website to the user, probably without ads._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570523)

------
weeezes
Microsoft has been preparing for this with
[https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/visual-studio-
co...](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/visual-studio-codespaces/)

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livatlantis
This is delightful! As someone who really, really liked Win2000 before
switching to Mac, getting to browse the web on an NT/IE6 is a wonderful
nostalgia trip (especially when you know it's simulation of sorts).

Thanks for creating this, author!

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signaru
Had a good laugh watching the "Evangelion" part in one of the screenshots. :-D

I think I found a good use for my Raspberry Pi. And for stuff to download,
there's WinWorldPC.

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alfonsodev
I’ll try this on my iPad first generation, it’s a bit sad to see the device
being responsive but pretty much useless, without iCloud support, hard to find
iOS 5 apps

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rkagerer
Does it imagemap the links?

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mongojunction
Not entirely sure of the architecture of this app, after a quick look. Using
CEF and C++, with a client and a proxy. But where does the CEF sit, and how is
it controlled by the client?

I made something similar in Node.JS using headless Chrome, that targets mobile
and desktop browsers. The "proxy" runs anywhere, and a client (that runs in
the web browser) connects using Remote Debugging Protocol[0], passing along
the user interaction intents by converting them to the wire protocol of RDP.
The remote browser server then, like this project ( I think ), passes back
pixels from screenshots of the rendered web.

It's a safe but not particularly fast way to do it. MightyApp[2] are doing
some sort of MP4 streaming of a remote browser, for speed, I think.

I like the retrocomputing focus of this, and the screenshots and image of the
modern web running on an old ThinkPad like machine look really awesome. The
focus of my project[1] was more an open-source remote isolated browser, for
security, and automation uses.

[0]: [https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-
protocol/](https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/)

[1]:
[https://github.com/dosyago/RemoteView](https://github.com/dosyago/RemoteView)

[2]: [https://mightyapp.com/](https://mightyapp.com/)

