what if melonland passed through protoweb?

[rnottelovesowls]

for those who don't know, the protoweb proxy server is a host of archived old websites, some passed-through modern websites that still use web 1.0 architecture, some sites that offer their current-day content with their old site layout (such as wikipedia or the weather channel), and warpstream, an archive of classic youtube videos. but there aren't really any... social spaces on it? sure, they have the sites for mIRC and crosstalk to download those chatroom programs, but they don't have any forums...

unless melon would be down with passing melonland through the proxy server? by its looks alone, i think melonland would be a shoe-in for protoweb. and i'm certain that this project would appeal to many here. what do you think, melon? would you be down for that?

[Melooon]

We have the 98 theme that is MOSTLY stable for old browsers, but reading their info page.. firstly I find their website really confusing and lacking in almost any info explaining how the whole thing actually works, but I thINK, its doable. Though they have a status page: https://protoweb.org/wiki/service-development-status/ it says that POST requests are not fully working, so no forum will work until they get those sorted. Also I have no idea what their "HTML" service is, verses a "proxy-pass-through", why would POST requests not work over a proxy?? Wouldn't a proxy just proxy to this server? Also if this site is up as HTTP, why would it even need a proxy?? It would just work normally 

Anyway, You could make the basic forum work, I think that's doable, but everything around it would be an issue. For example the everyone site is mostly CSS that is too new for Netscape, Guilds all use new CSS, people use new CSS on the profiles etc none of that would work correctly. Anything script based would not work, so the shoutbox would not be there.

The boards and threads themselves though could function since they are totally theme-able and don't use standard layouts based on modern CSS. Anything embedded like videos would all be broken, but we have the image proxy and that could be made to work I think.

All that said... that's a lot of work And that's work that's not going into other parts of the site and other projects, and only benefiting a few people who want to connect very old computers to the internet. I hate being too much of a pragmatist, but my thought would be, there are better things to use that effort on

If people really want a super basic read-only version of the forum that works on old computers though let me know, its not impossible to do

[rnottelovesowls]

All that said... that's a lot of work And that's work that's not going into other parts of the site and other projects, and only benefiting a few people who want to connect very old computers to the internet. I hate being too much of a pragmatist, but my thought would be, there are better things to use that effort on

If people really want a super basic read-only version of the forum that works on old computers though let me know, its not impossible to do

hmmm... you make a good point. maybe you can just run the WAP version of the forum through the proxy? i think that would be a simpler solution and much easier on the old computers that protoweb would be used on. besides, crosstalk runs their "diet" version through the proxy, not the main site. but if this is too much work, i understand

[arcus]

There's no need. The proxy is for sites that are no longer around and ones that don't have optional HTTPS. HTTPS is more secure, but old hardware and software don't support it.

It should be mostly fine with optional HTTPS and edits to the sidebar. The sidebar covers half the screen in Netsurf.

Edit: If you're curious as to how the site looks under an older browser, try oldweb.today (requires JavaScript).