Graphical Web browser

[parabyte]

I found this project on github, any use to elks?
https://github.com/jhhoward/MicroWeb

[ghaerr]

A quick look at this Micro Web Browser shows definite potential for ELKS, as it's built for 16-bit real mode and already uses the OpenWatcom C compiler. So getting it running isn't necessarily a huge amount of work, except for the TCP portion.

Getting the project compiled will still need conversion from mTCP, a DOS TCP/IP implementation (different from Watcom's TCP/IP), and that could be a lot of work, but not sure, I have never looked into that. The other major issue is the browser only supports HTTP connections, not HTTPS. These days, I believe there are very very few non-secure websites out there, so the entire project might have very limited usefulness from what any user might naturally expect. Another severe limitation is support for GIF images only, neither PNG nor JPG will display.

[toncho11]

The problem with HTTPS is well known indeed. So people do a special proxy for example between a retro browser and the real website. The proxy does the job of providing each website as http instead of https. The are other hacks where the browser actually presents screenshots and calculates where you click with the mouse, then this click on the image is send as a real click to a real browser and the result is sent back again to the retro bowser. So you have some kind of (slow) refresh rate, but ... it you get HTML5! Actually I am sure there are more hacks on the internet, I just do not remember all of them.

https://computernewb.com/wiki/How_to_browse_the_web_on_very_old_computers