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ttalvitie / browservice

Browservice: Browse the modern web on historical browsers
MIT License
1.08k stars 32 forks source link

Atari ST browser compatibility #50

Open Vagant1 opened 2 years ago

Vagant1 commented 2 years ago

Hi,

Browservice is a great idea and could be very useful for browsing web pages on retro Atari machines. The processing power of Atari TT is not a match for modern internet so I was hoping this could work. I tried to hook iy up and while CAB or NetSurf connect to the Webservice the screen stays blank. Any chances or tips how the Atari browsers could be connected?

ttalvitie commented 2 years ago

I don't really know anything about the state of web browsers on Atari TT, but judging by the specs of the computer, I presume that Browservice would be prohibitively slow for actual use. WRP would probably work a lot better on that machine.

Even if we ignore the performance issues for now, Browservice does require decent JavaScript support from the client browser, while at least in NetSurf the JavaScript support is very basic (and turned off by default). On older browsers, JavaScript support is often a bit nonstandard, which means that the Browservice JavaScript code would have to be tweaked with that browser in mind. I have already done this for the likes of IE4, but I don't have access to a Atari machine, so I cannot do it myself (but of course someone else could).