[HN Gopher] The final official release of Classilla
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The final official release of Classilla
Author : zdw
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-03-29 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
| abrowne wrote:
| And the end of TenFourFox!
| http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-end-of-tenfourfox...
| EamonnMR wrote:
| This is sad to see. I wonder if there are smaller browser
| codebases out there that might be possible to port.
| tyingq wrote:
| Might be interesting to have a way to seamlessly have the
| browser "run" on something modern, while displaying locally,
| and intercepting things like downloads to be on a local
| filesystem. I know most of this exists, but it's typically
| complex to set up.
| techmememe wrote:
| Might be possible to slap these patches on top UXP and get it
| building. http://thereisonlyxul.org
| classichasclass wrote:
| Author here. Sadly, not without a current toolchain, plus all
| the custom changes for Mac OS 9 on top of NSPR and other
| pieces. CodeWarrior is a solid compiler but the classic Mac
| OS versions definitely show their age compared to modern gcc
| and clang.
| duskwuff wrote:
| I wonder how much work would be needed to generate PEF from
| a modern PowerPC toolchain...
| classichasclass wrote:
| There's Retro68. It might be able to pull this off. You'd
| still need all the other pieces, of course.
| stratosmacker wrote:
| Regardless, thank you for all of your work and
| contributions. Keeping those old PPC devices alive did
| more for the environment than I think you'll ever be able
| to quantify. Not to mention, I had a lot of fun with old
| PowerBooks and iMacs surfing the web.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Author here. I looked at some of those (and I did recently dust
| off the classic Mac port of Lynx:
| https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2021/02/maclynx-beta-3-really.ht...
| ) but they suffer some similar problems in that they are
| generally "toys" and won't view sites most people today would
| require as essential. The biggest bugaboo is JavaScript.
| Classilla's JavaScript is far more advanced than WaMCoM and
| Mozilla 1.3's, but it is still based on Firefox 3.0, which by
| modern standards is ancient. And that doesn't include what's
| missing from the DOM, either.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| It's sad that the internet has become primarily a tool for
| commerce. High security comes at a price (barrier to entry, pay-
| to-play, and lack of options). I wish for an alternative protocol
| for document discovery and retrieval, like the old internet.
| Gopher, maybe?
| duskwuff wrote:
| > High security comes at a price (barrier to entry, pay-to-
| play, and lack of options).
|
| What are you talking about?
|
| Implementing secure online applications is easier today than
| it's ever been before. Free signed certificates are readily
| available to hobbyists through Let's Encrypt and other
| projects, and there are a number of lightweight TLS libraries
| available if you don't want to use OpenSSL, such as mbedTLS and
| wolfSSL.
| tyingq wrote:
| I suspect they mean the level of effort to get a working web
| browser, on an older OS, that supports current websites. Of
| course, it's not just security (TLS, etc) that makes it hard.
| Browsers are very complicated these days.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, that's the choice of these current websites, which
| wouldn't also want to support an alternative protocol if
| one (like the parent post suggests) would get made.
|
| If you need a protocol for document discovery and retrieval
| like the old internet and have the cooperation of the
| sites, then you can simply use basic https without
| javascript, all the things that Lynx browser can support,
| all the infrastructure is still there. But you can't force
| the websites to support that if their operators don't share
| these goals and values.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" Well, that's the choice of these current websites"_
|
| Sometimes. For example, there was a pretty organized
| effort to make plain http websites seem insecure, even if
| they were just informational sites.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Perhaps they're talking about how you can't just grab any old
| computer and expect it to (at least partially) function?
| timw4mail wrote:
| Http still works
| tyingq wrote:
| Perhaps a reference to Chrome defaulting to https in the
| address bar soon. And whatever other future things put http
| further in the back row.
| zdw wrote:
| You're probably looking for Gemini
| blacktriangle wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_space#Gemini_resources
| for those who are curious.
|
| I ran into Gemini last week looking into lightweight markup
| languages and Gemtext seems like an interesting one.
|
| Gemini really does seem like a heavy handed approach (in a
| good way) to creating a pure hypermedia system and avoiding
| the road HTML went down. No Code-on-demand constraint, no
| concept of styling at all leaving display totally up to the
| client removes a ton of the complexity. I saw Gemini defined
| as "a better gopher" and think that's fairly accurate.
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(page generated 2021-03-29 23:02 UTC)