First post, by keenmaster486
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EDIT: scroll to the end of this post for the latest info on which old browsers work and ways to make them work if they don't.
Since many of us use and even build retro PC and other systems, many of us also have an incentive to want to access the VOGONS forums directly on these old systems.
It cannot reasonably be expected that the forum administrators support these old systems, as, after all, the purpose of the site is "Very Old Games on NEW Systems" and the vintage computing hobby has sort of been tacked onto that and grown into a large part of the site regardless. But this is not a primary concern of the forum administrators.
Unless the forum admins feel like being generous and providing some way to access and use VOGONS on old systems, the burden will probably fall on US, the users, to figure out some useful way to make this happen.
Now, this used to be very easy going back even as far as Windows 95; all that was required was a 1999-era or better browser (IE 5+, any Firefox) and an internet connection of some sort.
It could even be done on positively ancient browsers such as Internet Explorer 3 or Netscape Navigator 3; albeit with all the styling completely borked, but you could still log in and make posts.
But with the newly updated forums, this is no longer possible. The forced HTTPS alone makes it impossible to access the site without a proxy on anything other than RetroZilla, which is Firefox 2 updated with modern security protocols.
Loading the new site on RetroZilla renders the following, and you cannot log in (just redirects you back to the login page):
Now, this renders not so horribly as might be expected. The use of HTML tables for the indexes definitely makes things easier. But the fact that you can't even log in, coupled with the forced HTTPS, makes the site all but useless on older browsers.
This thread is for discussion of ways to make the site usable on old machines.
Some ideas to throw out there right off the bat:
- Web Render Proxy: the "cheating" way to do it. Highly inefficient and totally useless for actually making posts, since you cannot directly input text into input boxes.
- "WebOne" proxy or similar: will fix the HTTPS problem but probably will not fix the login issue, or any of the styling, obviously.
- Some kind of system to "convert" new HTML/CSS into something that will at least be laid out properly using HTML tables on ancient browsers. I've been thinking about making something like this for a while, and this might finally give me a good excuse. But this would turn into a larger project to create a proxy that would "convert" any webpage, not just VOGONS.
- An auxiliary "forum" that is accessible from and only really looks right on retro browsers. People could post things over there and link to their "retro" threads from their VOGONS threads. This would probably be the most future-proof and FUN solution, if done properly. (edit: and I would be willing to and possess the skills and resources to make this happen, if there is demand for it)
Thoughts and comments?
EDIT: notes and findings:
You can login using RetroZilla if you follow the instructions in this post: Re: Very New VOGONS on Old Systems: using the 2020 era forums on retro PCs to add the necessary ciphers. It works for now, but there's no telling for how long it will work. It doesn't look remotely pretty or pleasant, however.
It is also possible to log in with Links browser (for many OS's including DOS), if you point it directly to the HTTPS version of the site instead of just typing "vogons.org".
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