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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.

What standard of design should The New Old Web, or Web 1.1, ideally adhere to?

  • < HTML4, CSS2, no JS, no embedded media (Closer to 90's Web)

    Votes: 14 16.5%
  • =< HTML4, CSS2, frugal JS, frugally embedded media (Closer to Early 2000's Web)

    Votes: 67 78.8%
  • Something else (Post an alternative)

    Votes: 4 4.7%

  • Total voters
    85

MysticCow

macrumors 68000
May 27, 2013
1,564
1,760
Since we're working with items like iWeb, is there a page like the old AppleWorks User Group? A place that has extra templates and such.
 

AL1630

macrumors 6502
Apr 24, 2016
482
578
Idaho, USA
I totally forgot about iWeb and the like! I was working on a site using my very basic HTML skills, but now I might be able to make something that looks a lot more presentable.
 

MysticCow

macrumors 68000
May 27, 2013
1,564
1,760
I totally forgot about iWeb and the like! I was working on a site using my very basic HTML skills, but now I might be able to make something that looks a lot more presentable.

I loved iWeb, even though the pages it made were filled with tremendous amounts of crap. My i5 mini still has it, but sadly my G3 doesn't...I'll have to check my G4 tower for a copy.
 

z970

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2017
3,589
4,541
- Added retro remotecpu to Specialty Websites (without Message Boards).

- Added Starring the Computer to Specialty Websites (without Message Boards).
 
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Macbookprodude

Suspended
Jan 1, 2018
3,306
898
I actually have iwork 5 and 6 - can this app still be used to make basic websites, which will load in OS9 and OS X ? I am thinking of making my own PowerPC friendly blog and also a blog about my mac collection.
 

Macbookprodude

Suspended
Jan 1, 2018
3,306
898
I finished version 1 of ame.lmao.rip today; it's a Web 1.1 compliant backport of my main development homepage ameowli.dev.

I wish I could have made it something like 'old.ameowli.dev', but .devs enforce HSTS at the TLD level, so if I were to do that it would have absolutely had to have been HTTPS and unencrypted HTTP would've been not an option. Instead I chose to change the domain to have that vintage HTTP compatibility.

I've tested (or will test) ame.lmao.rip under the following test environments:
MachineOS versionBrowserResult
A1046 PowerBook G4 15"Mac OS X 10.4.11Safari 3.0.4Fully compatible, no issues
A1046 PowerBook G4 15"Mac OS X 10.4.11Internet Explorer:mac 5.2Fully compatible, no issues
A1104 PowerBook G4 12"Mac OS X 10.5.8Safari 5.0.6Fully compatible, no issues
A1002 eMacMac OS 9.2.2Classilla 9.3.4bUntested, will test at a later time. It probably works though.

There is some server side magic behind the scenes to make everything happen, but to your browser, it looks like your regular HTML 4.01 page. There's no JavaScript and just one line of CSS. It doesn't look like much right now, but I'm proud of it.

Signature starfield coming in version 2. :p

Might also take up the image host concept from the OP. More on this later.
Classilla 9.3.4b - horrible, doesn't load any webpages at all. Best version is 9.3.3, until the bugs are taken out of alpha class 9.3.4b which in itself is beta. Couldn't load any page with it, other than Google.
 

MysticCow

macrumors 68000
May 27, 2013
1,564
1,760
I actually have iwork 5 and 6 - can this app still be used to make basic websites, which will load in OS9 and OS X ? I am thinking of making my own PowerPC friendly blog and also a blog about my mac collection.

I'd assume so. I know Word X and 2004 can save out as a web page.
 

Macbookprodude

Suspended
Jan 1, 2018
3,306
898
Found this gem today:

I tested it in IE 5.0 in Classic (9.2.2) and IE 5.2 in Jaguar. Seems like a good resource, it's built specifically for IE 5.1.7, Navigator 9, and Classilla 9.3.3. Looks like it's being actively maintained. Added to the Wiki!
Good find and yea, it is being maintained - I may create a website similar to that for use on any platform.
 

bsdppc

macrumors newbie
Apr 15, 2021
10
16
how did we all used to watch videos or stream videos in OS 9 before Google and Youtube ?
You didn't stream videos back then. Well, not as we know and experience streaming nowadays. Remember that most people were on analogue modems with transfer speeds of 33.6 to 56kbps. The average 720p YouTube video requires about 2,500kbps — over 50x the average capacity of a modem. Thus to do something like "watch a 720p music video" that was 4 minutes long, you would first spend 200 minutes — nearly three and a half hours — downloading, followed by 4 minutes of watching. Nothing at all like what we are used to nowadays.

In practice, a lot of mid-late 90s "streamed" video ended up being in resolutions like 120x90 or 160x120 and were then simply stretched to fit the user's screen — often 640x480 — making for a pixellated/blurry viewing experience.

Most folk today would consider something like '90p' or '120p' to be "unwatchable".

Within a browser like Netscape Navigator, a link to the video file would be tagged with a 'content type' (similar to MIME type), and either an external program would be launched to handle it, or the code in a browser 'plug-in' would be invoked to handle it. You usually had to wait a long, long time before enough of the file had buffered so you had even a chance of playing it smoothly to the end.

Since buffer memory allocated to video and audio plug-ins was often improperly handled, it was common for errors to occur which would over-write/-run the buffer and crash the browser. Since these browsers were running on a cooperative multi-tasking operating system, when the browser froze it would often/usually take the OS with it, and force a hard reboot. Corrupt browser caches were common as a result, and many of us located our browser caches to RAM Disks to prevent the corruption from spreading to the filesystem on the HDD.

Fun times. ;)
 
Last edited:

readyselectstart

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2021
7
13
Hey all,

I don't own a Mac but hear me out about why I just signed up before you get your pitch forks! :)

Over the last few years I've been collecting vintage PCs and handhelds and its really bothered me that 90%+ of the internet does not work on them. I spent the last few months looking into solutions to this, recently I set up a Web Rendering Proxy but this was so tedious to use.

Anyway to cut a long story short I looked into ways to recreate the internet of old and came across this thread. You all seem to want the same as me, the internet as it was 20 or so years ago. Simpler to use. I have today created a website on Wordpress that I've designed with the principles in mind at the start of this thread, a Web 1.1 standard if you will. So far it renders fine on all my old browsers.

I wanted to know however if you all had any input on creating a number of websites to make a new old internet?

Thanks
 

RogerWilco6502

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2019
1,823
1,944
Tír na nÓg
Hey all,

I don't own a Mac but hear me out about why I just signed up before you get your pitch forks! :)

Over the last few years I've been collecting vintage PCs and handhelds and its really bothered me that 90%+ of the internet does not work on them. I spent the last few months looking into solutions to this, recently I set up a Web Rendering Proxy but this was so tedious to use.

Anyway to cut a long story short I looked into ways to recreate the internet of old and came across this thread. You all seem to want the same as me, the internet as it was 20 or so years ago. Simpler to use. I have today created a website on Wordpress that I've designed with the principles in mind at the start of this thread, a Web 1.1 standard if you will. So far it renders fine on all my old browsers.

I wanted to know however if you all had any input on creating a number of websites to make a new old internet?

Thanks
What's WordPress' policy on encryption? I've never used them, but the encryption might prove difficult for some web browsers.

What's your site? I'd be curious to take a look :D
 

z970

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2017
3,589
4,541
@readyselectstart Welcome aboard my friend, we're glad to have you! :)

Input on 'creating a number of websites to make a new old internet' is a somewhat broad request that can produce somewhat broad answers, so forgive me if this is not what you were looking for, but I will try to provide my own input on this in several ways ...

From the best of what I can gather, this presently seems to be a concept with near universal approval. And in fact, this thread wasn't even started with that as the intention; as all it wanted to initially do is map out and showcase new websites that happened to fit that mold as an occurrence with increasing frequency. However, it somehow ended up turning into a full-blown initiative to make this a real thing, and it all just grew from there. That being said, time will tell whether this actually gains any real ground as a bona fide "unofficial" standard and not just another Internet thread with brief momentum.

For actually developing a website, I know that for a bare metal approach, BBEdit and TextWrangler are popular HTML editors (both back then and here). And there was recently discussion on using iWeb to create websites via an easier and more visually-minded fashion as well - although it has also been said that the code it produces is not as clean as what might be assembled manually.

Using the bare metal approach, as I have mentioned previously, I have found Khan Academy's courses on HTML and CSS very educational, and I have also found Blue Triangle's articles on image and CSS optimization for increased page rendering performance very helpful in coding my own website. In addition, several of us have also found the World Wide Web Consortium's Content Accessibility Guidelines for the original Web 1.0 useful for core site design, should one wish to make use of their recommendations.

I can also detail the site publishing and hosting process, but I've already outlined that in a prior post and I feel that this reply may have grown too long already.

As for a more literal response however, I think this project is a great idea and I'm all for it.

In any case, I hope that at least helped to answer your question. :)
 
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readyselectstart

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2021
7
13
What's WordPress' policy on encryption? I've never used them, but the encryption might prove difficult for some web browsers.

What's your site? I'd be curious to take a look :D
I went with Wordpress as I noticed my website at the time (which I've deleted to make way for this project) had no encryption out of the box and my website loaded on IE5 and Netscape Navigator some version or other (cannot recall).

It's ReadySelectStart.com - It's a WIP/Proof of Concept (please don't judge haha), I put together a post and a few pages to see how it displays on devices. It works great on my HP Ipaq Pocket PC, IE9 on an XP machine and is usable on IE3 on a Win95 laptop
 
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readyselectstart

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2021
7
13
@readyselectstart Welcome aboard my friend, we're glad to have you! :)

Input on 'creating a number of websites to make a new old internet' is a somewhat broad request that can produce somewhat broad answers, so forgive me if this is not what you were looking for, but I will try to provide my own input on this in several ways ...

From the best of what I can gather, this presently seems to be a concept with near universal approval. And in fact, this thread wasn't even started with that as the intention; as all it wanted to initially do is map out and showcase new websites that happened to fit that mold as an occurrence with increasing frequency. However, it somehow ended up turning into a full-blown initiative to make this a real thing, and it all just grew from there. That being said, time will tell whether this actually gains any real ground as a bona fide "unofficial" standard and not just another Internet thread with brief momentum.

For actually developing a website, I know that for a bare metal approach, BBEdit and TextWrangler are popular HTML editors (both back then and here). And there was recently discussion on using iWeb to create websites via an easier and more visually-minded fashion as well - although it has also been said that the code it produces is not as clean as what might be assembled manually.

Using the bare metal approach, as I have mentioned previously, I have found Khan Academy's courses on HTML and CSS very educational, and I have also found Blue Triangle's articles on image and CSS optimization for increased page rendering performance very helpful in coding my own website. In addition, several of us have also found the World Wide Web Consortium's Content Accessibility Guidelines for the original Web 1.0 useful for core site design, should one wish to make use of their recommendations.

I can also detail the site publishing and hosting process, but I've already outlined that in a prior post and I feel that this reply may have grown too long already.

As for a more literal response however, I think this project is a great idea and I'm all for it.

In any case, I hope that at least helped to answer your question. :)
Well I think it can be a hybrid of the two. A collection of websites that work to at least a reasonable standard on ancient browsers as well as moving forward encouraging and promoting websites that people make that meet those standards. (the standards for me that the website loads and I can easily navigate it on browsers from the mid 90s - If the formatting does not show correctly that is of little concern).

The website I made which was just a 10 minute thrown together job to do some testing with old browsers is on Wordpress (purely for ease of adding to it) and it works quite well (no encryption and I used a very basic theme with nothing extra fancy). That said, last night I couldn't sleep and was kept awake thinking if my website (and possibly more to follow) is in basic HTML with only text, hyperlinks, images and not much else then perhaps coding it in HTML would be easier. I haven't used Dreamweaver for a number of years but my first website was built by hand in it and was actually pretty good. Though my knowledge of HTML is very rusty, it was never amazing to begin with.

As for hosting, well I put the proof of concept site on GoDaddy with their hosting but if I do a basic HTML website I will probably host it myself on my own server (I mean if its not that complex, my NAS drive has the capabilities, but that makes me uneasy from a security perspective).

Just to outline what my objectives are for me personally:
- A website that can be displayed on old browsers and can be navigated
- A directory of working websites which I can use as a homepage on my old devices
- As a result of the above it can also be a place for a new blog of mine and way to link to my YouTube channel for anyone on a more modern browser

However, beyond my personal goals I would like to include in my A-Z directory of websites a link to everyones websites that meet a set standard. So I'd have my page, but then my page links to Person A's cooking blog and it links to Person B's car blog etc etc. Slowly creating a literaly web in the same sense as it was used in the 90s.

But again this is all more food for thought with a bit of proof of concept for me which is why I decided to stop lurking and sign up to talk to you all :)
 
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RogerWilco6502

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2019
1,823
1,944
Tír na nÓg
I went with Wordpress as I noticed my website at the time (which I've deleted to make way for this project) had no encryption out of the box and my website loaded on IE5 and Netscape Navigator some version or other (cannot recall).

It's ReadySelectStart.com - It's a WIP/Proof of Concept (please don't judge haha), I put together a post and a few pages to see how it displays on devices. It works great on my HP Ipaq Pocket PC, IE9 on an XP machine and is usable on IE3 on a Win95 laptop
This site looks epic! :D

I still need to update my site... xD
 

readyselectstart

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2021
7
13
By the way if you guys want to know why I hate the current state of the internet and why I have an adblocker with a custom list of over 2500 entries added by yours truly, plus ad blocking on my router, plus wanting to recreate the internet from 2 decades ago - Well you should watch a Video on YouTube by Tom Scott entitled "Why The Web Is Such a Mess"
 

Slix

macrumors 68000
Mar 24, 2010
1,586
2,357
I've been following this thread for a while now, and just want to say that this initiative is awesome. I try to keep my personal website as barebones as possible, for ease of programming, but also to make it fast and workable on older browsers. However, in recent years, HTTPS support has seemingly broken the site on a lot of older devices...

I don't know how feasible it would be to make a version that still supports HTTP for it, but either way, I want to help in some way with this project! I got myself a Macintosh Garden homepage account, so I plan to use that alongside their image hosting, to create some sort of website for this. I've been brainstorming how possible it would be to make an image sharing/posting site, but I don't know if it's possible without some sort of database on the backend. I'll continue doing some research.

I also was reminded that Mac OS X Server has a built-in Web hosting feature, and my local server at home has it running, and allows for blog-style posting from users on the network. Perhaps someone with a Mac Server hooked up to the outside internet could use that to host simple blogs that people could join and comment on each other's posts? I know there's potential here, since this was built on the same browser/OS that these old computers run on, so they definitely work there!

Screen Shot 2021-06-01 at 10.22.28 PM.png
 

readyselectstart

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2021
7
13
I've been following this thread for a while now, and just want to say that this initiative is awesome. I try to keep my personal website as barebones as possible, for ease of programming, but also to make it fast and workable on older browsers. However, in recent years, HTTPS support has seemingly broken the site on a lot of older devices...

I don't know how feasible it would be to make a version that still supports HTTP for it, but either way, I want to help in some way with this project! I got myself a Macintosh Garden homepage account, so I plan to use that alongside their image hosting, to create some sort of website for this. I've been brainstorming how possible it would be to make an image sharing/posting site, but I don't know if it's possible without some sort of database on the backend. I'll continue doing some research.

I also was reminded that Mac OS X Server has a built-in Web hosting feature, and my local server at home has it running, and allows for blog-style posting from users on the network. Perhaps someone with a Mac Server hooked up to the outside internet could use that to host simple blogs that people could join and comment on each other's posts? I know there's potential here, since this was built on the same browser/OS that these old computers run on, so they definitely work there!

View attachment 1785557
If it is a website you are hosting yourself you should be able to remove encryption. If it is hosting elsewhere or using a service like Squarespace then you may be out of luck. I am not sure how long Godaddy and their Managed Wordpress Hosting will continue to be unencrypted by default but if they change it I will self-host my own website in plain HTML (which to be honest I'm tempted to do anyway)

You can get around the issue on older devices by using a proxy such as WebOne or alternatively using a Web Rendering Proxy which sends an interactive image to your older device, though this method I found too fiddly and unreliable.

I suspect most of the websites that we will all have working will be blogs for the time being but other types of websites may emerge. Plus even if we get 1,000 blogs going without encryption about all different topics then that'll be enough to keep me busy :)

The main issue that may come up is if you want to follow this initiative but wish to make a website that handles personal data. For example, I was thinking if it would be possible to make a chat room or an MSN style client that both work on older browsers. I believe it is possible of course, but then you have personal data being sent/received without encryption and that raises a number of issues.

That said, you could work around them by asking users to use a unique username/password not used anywhere else but whether people do that or not and I'm not sure if that'll satisfy data protection laws such as GDPR
 

readyselectstart

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2021
7
13
Not sure what the rules are in terms of linking, so if it isn't allowed then delete this comment mods/admins.

However I have put together a quick document outline what we want Web 1.1 to be (it's a very early quick draft but of course this is a group effort so want all of your input :) )

Word .Doc Document:
 
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