WebOne - proxy for old browsers to make them Web 2.0-capable

[sparty411]

I found this project on the vogons forum
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=67165

Hi all! I'm developing a HTTP proxy server that should help older browsers to work in the modern internet. It is called WebOne.

Currently WebOne can only request pages from any modern servers (even through HTTPS connections when the browser is too old to decode server's cipher) and convert content code page from UTF-8 to system's local (should be useful for non-English users with Windows 9x). This should return possibility to see some content of webpages in retro browsers (while currently they're simply stops loading due to TLS errors).

Upd:
Also it can replace JavaScript frameworks to older versions that can work in old browsers, make redirections to Web.Archive.Org (for sites that are dead) and make WebDAV working in older clients (such as IE 5.0). With Opera 12 and Firefox 10 most of sites became usable again. Very elderly browsers like IE 2.0 also became usable because Host header (which is now required by 99% of servers) is added when using the proxy.

It's not a rendering proxy, it helps old rendering engines in displaying content of webpages using their own possibilities.”

I’ve tested webone with Safari 4.1.3, and it was able to access sites that were previously unreachable due to lack of compatibility with modern security cyphers. Just thought it was interesting.

 

[z970]

Incredible.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

 

[sparty411]

Incredible.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

Yeah, it’s pretty neat. I figured the OS9 guys and gals might appreciate this.

 

[z970]

Yeah, it’s pretty neat. I figured the OS9 guys and gals might appreciate this.

The application is packaged as an .exe, alongside a .conf file.

How did you get this working in Tiger (Safari 4.1.3)?

 

[sparty411]

The application is packaged as an .exe, alongside a .conf file.

How did you get this working in Tiger (Safari 4.1.3)?

I ran the client on Windows 7, and connected to the host with safari 4.1.3 on tiger.

 

[z970]

I ran the client on Windows 7, and connected to the host with safari 4.1.3 on tiger.

Eeesh...

So it does require Windows...

Well, it's open source. Maybe someone can recompile it?

 

[sparty411]

Eeesh...

So it does require Windows...

Well, it's open source. Maybe someone can recompile it?

Yeah, I was wondering if it could be recompiled for Linux, or MacOS. I don’t mind Windows 7 too much, though. I still run SP1 with security updates turned off ha!

 

[Amethyst1]

Eeesh...So it does require Windows...

Just have to run it in VPC then

 

[sparty411]

Just have to run it in VPC then

The developer states that it might run Ok under Mono as well.

 

[tweedy7736]

Bumping this to report that I have the WebOne proxy running using the .Net Core Runtime on my 2017 MacBook Pro. Really easy too - dotnet, ImageMagick, and ffmpeg are its only dependencies, and all of those can be had with homebrew. No VPC required.

Edit: Mac OS download is here https://github.com/atauenis/webone/releases

Suddenly I have the web back on my iMac G4, no matter the browser. It's kind of a funky solution to the TLS nightmare, but it works! This plus a little UserAgent tweaking and suddenly I can load most of the web again in Safari 4.

 

[Vaccaria]

@tweedy7736 Mind If I ask which UserAgent are you using?

I tried setting the server up in Archlinux.
Although, Websites are loading blazingly fast on my iBook,they don't look right.
Some parts overlap, all dropdown menues are open. Websites are wider than normal.
In short: Seems to me that Java/Javascript has some issues?

 

[tweedy7736]

@Vaccaria others on this forum know much more than I do about the best user agent choice(s), but this is the one I'm using right now (from @z970mp in another thread):

Mozilla/5.l0 (Linuix; Android 4.4) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

 

[sparty411]

@tweedy7736 Mind If I ask which UserAgent are you using?

I tried setting the server up in Archlinux.
Although, Websites are loading blazingly fast on my iBook,they don't look right.
Some parts overlap, all dropdown menues are open. Websites are wider than normal.
In short: Seems to me that Java/Javascript has some issues?

Modern CSS and JS are going to be problematic, and will cause many pages not to render properly. Using a mobile device UA might help.

 

[tweedy7736]

Another minor revelation -- the .Net app can be run in the background using launchctl rather than in-console. Here's the setup for anyone interested.

I created a file local.dotnet.WebOne.api.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons/

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>GroupName</key>
        <string>_www</string>
        <key>InitGroups</key>
        <true/>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <true/>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>local.dotnet.WebOne.api</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/usr/local/share/dotnet/dotnet</string>
                <string>WebOne.dll</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/dotnet-api-sterr.log</string>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/dotnet-api-stdout.log</string>
        <key>UserName</key>
        <string>_www</string>
        <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
        <string>/usr/local/share/dotnet/WebOne/</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Then run sudo launchctl -w local.dotnet.WebOne.api from the LaunchDaemons directory. (unload stops it.)

If I had an old always-on Mac mini or something, this could work as a standing TLS workaround for old browsers. Dreamy.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Bumping this to report that I have the WebOne proxy running using the .Net Core Runtime on my 2017 MacBook Pro. Really easy too - dotnet, ImageMagick, and ffmpeg are its only dependencies, and all of those can be had with homebrew. No VPC required.

Edit: Mac OS download is here https://github.com/atauenis/webone/releases

Suddenly I have the web back on my iMac G4, no matter the browser. It's kind of a funky solution to the TLS nightmare, but it works! This plus a little UserAgent tweaking and suddenly I can load most of the web again in Safari 4.

Which one is the mac version ? I see x86, but not mac.

View attachment 924942

 

[James Gryphon]

The macOS zip is fifth in the list, right below the Linux versions. It's x64, but if you're using a MacBook Pro for it, that shouldn't be a problem.

- - -

It's probably worth clarifying here, just to be sure to avoid any misunderstandings that might come up now or in the future, that WebOne is intended to be run on a modern machine; it's a middleman that uses the host computer's capabilities to translate input and output to give each party (modern websites, and your old computer) what they expect. You connect your old computer to the newer one (probably using Ethernet), and then set your proxy settings on the old machine to use the newer machine's IP. It isn't intended to be run on a single machine, nor would it help in this case even if it could, since dotnet, one of WebOne's prerequisites, doesn't have a PPC version.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Can I use OS 9.2.2 classila ? My PB G4 Ti with WebKit has no issues with SSL. I would install this on my Mac Pro using snow leopard 64-bit and use webone to allow Classila to Browse he web.

 

[James Gryphon]

The Mac Pro hardware certainly is capable of the job; I run this from a Raspberry Pi.

The problem area I see is with Snow Leopard. You may have trouble installing the prerequisites there, especially dotnet, since software vendors (Microsoft & others) are quick to abandon support for old OS X versions.

It might end up being easier to install Linux in an old Snow Leopard-compatible version of VirtualBox or some other VM, and then run WebOne inside of that. That'd take some doing too, but it would be just tedious, as opposed to hard and undocumented.

When WebOne is working, Classilla offers a tolerable, but flawed experience. It fixes the 'SSL lockout', so you can at least try to access websites, but it still has problems rendering most of them, and my experience is that it can have trouble logging into places (including, oddly, HTTP-only sites). It's better than it would be without the proxy, and WebOne will likely improve as the developer updates it, but it's not equivalent to a more modern browser.

 

[tweedy7736]

The problem area I see is with Snow Leopard. You may have trouble installing the prerequisites there, especially dotnet, since software vendors (Microsoft & others) are quick to abandon support for old OS X versions.

Exactly. It seems like the first version of .Net Core was only released in 2019 [can that really be true?!], and I can't find any resources online about its macOS version compatibilities. There's an open ticket over at macports for an installer, but they don't have it available either. So it's an open question whether it would run on 10.6, and if I were to bet, I'd bet it won't.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Just run it on HS or Mojave.
[automerge]1592861960[/automerge]

The Mac Pro hardware certainly is capable of the job; I run this from a Raspberry Pi.

The problem area I see is with Snow Leopard. You may have trouble installing the prerequisites there, especially dotnet, since software vendors (Microsoft & others) are quick to abandon support for old OS X versions.

It might end up being easier to install Linux in an old Snow Leopard-compatible version of VirtualBox or some other VM, and then run WebOne inside of that. That'd take some doing too, but it would be just tedious, as opposed to hard and undocumented.

When WebOne is working, Classilla offers a tolerable, but flawed experience. It fixes the 'SSL lockout', so you can at least try to access websites, but it still has problems rendering most of them, and my experience is that it can have trouble logging into places (including, oddly, HTTP-only sites). It's better than it would be without the proxy, and WebOne will likely improve as the developer updates it, but it's not equivalent to a more modern browser.

I would only use this for 9 personally.. Tiger I no longer run, and WebKit seems to render 99.9 percent very well, why doesn’t www.68kmla.com not allow WebKit to enter and they say they care about older Macs ? If they lock PPC users out due to the stupid SSL(wish this never ever existed).