5 ms·

it's a pretty fun exercise to download the earliest mosaic browser you can find and get it to build on your current platform. Then to see what sites actually st

it's a pretty fun exercise to download the earliest mosaic browser you can find and get it to build on your current platform. Then to see what sites actually still work. The last time I did this, Dennis Ritchie's site loaded the best.

rimliu 8y ago
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ should do pretty well too.
weinzierl 8y ago
Made this experiment a while ago too. Many pages, even plain simple ones, fail because it doesn‘t support the HTTP host header and therefore name based virtual hosts. It can only display one site per IP and port.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  jwz has a proxy you can run to inject the Host header for old browsers https://www.jwz.org/hacks/http10proxy.pl https://www.jwz.org/hacks/http10proxy.pl
  - derekp7 8y ago
    Is this the HN equivalent of the old "goatse" links? Or do some people on HN not realizes that jwz substitutes a page with an explicit graphic image when linked to on HN? Would be nice to see an HN update that converts jwz links to non-clickable.
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      Ugh, sorry my bad. I always open links from comments in new tabs and Safari doesn't send a Referer in that case so I had completely forgotten that he does that
    - colanderman 8y ago
      Yes, @dang, is it possible to ban jwz links?
    - wolfgang42 8y ago
      Better yet, special-case them to add rel="noreferrer". If jwz wants to break a fundamental part of how the web works, HN can break it right back.
kalleboo 8y ago
You can also use NCSA Mosaic to read all about this new up-and-coming browser http://home.mcom.com http://home.mcom.com
tigeba 8y ago
Last time I tried this out on my NeXT I found that pervasive use of HTTPS makes it pretty hard to find things to try out.
Lorkki 8y ago
If someone wants to save the trouble and just run it: https://github.com/lorkki/xmosaic-1.0 https://github.com/lorkki/xmosaic-1.0 It was interesting to see just how easy it can be to get software to build a whole 25 years later.

rimliu 8y ago

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ should do pretty well too.

weinzierl 8y ago

Made this experiment a while ago too. Many pages, even plain simple ones, fail because it doesn‘t support the HTTP host header and therefore name based virtual hosts. It can only display one site per IP and port.

kalleboo 8y ago
jwz has a proxy you can run to inject the Host header for old browsers https://www.jwz.org/hacks/http10proxy.pl https://www.jwz.org/hacks/http10proxy.pl
- derekp7 8y ago
  Is this the HN equivalent of the old "goatse" links? Or do some people on HN not realizes that jwz substitutes a page with an explicit graphic image when linked to on HN? Would be nice to see an HN update that converts jwz links to non-clickable.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    Ugh, sorry my bad. I always open links from comments in new tabs and Safari doesn't send a Referer in that case so I had completely forgotten that he does that
  - colanderman 8y ago
    Yes, @dang, is it possible to ban jwz links?
  - wolfgang42 8y ago
    Better yet, special-case them to add rel="noreferrer". If jwz wants to break a fundamental part of how the web works, HN can break it right back.

kalleboo 8y ago

You can also use NCSA Mosaic to read all about this new up-and-coming browser http://home.mcom.com http://home.mcom.com

tigeba 8y ago

Last time I tried this out on my NeXT I found that pervasive use of HTTPS makes it pretty hard to find things to try out.

Lorkki 8y ago

If someone wants to save the trouble and just run it: https://github.com/lorkki/xmosaic-1.0 https://github.com/lorkki/xmosaic-1.0 It was interesting to see just how easy it can be to get software to build a whole 25 years later.