Old Computers and WWW / 2026-03-07 20:17:38

Modern WWW on Old Computers

The WWW evolved a lot since the last Amiga was produced and, for better or worst, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML5 are now de-facto standard for many Web sites. Also, many Web sites use SSL even without good reasons. Finally, a lot of Web sites are now Web applications, doing some kind of AJAX.

In these conditions, our Amigas are a bit at a disadvantage... Although the famous and well-featured IBrowse receives again regular updates, it doesn't support CSS and has limited support for JavaScript.

But complements/alternatives exist! Beyond other Web browsers, like Links (and its v2.12 for Amiga), there are the possibility to interpose a proxy that convert modern Web sites into clickable images. This Web site explains very well these alternatives:

• Web Rendering Proxy (WRP): to render modern Web sites as clickable images;
• Squid: to perform TLS/SSL handshakes with modern Web sites from a browser with SSL;
• Crypto Ancienne (Cryanc): to integrate TLS in pre-C99 code.

For our Amigas, WRP is really great. Install it on your favourite Raspberry PI and point your browser to it and you can access modern Web sites, albeit a bit slower...