Amiga.org

Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga community support ideas => Topic started by: OldAmigan on December 02, 2019, 05:42:57 PM

Title: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: OldAmigan on December 02, 2019, 05:42:57 PM
Ok, daft ideas time!

As we all know, there's very little we can do to fully view the internet with the browsers we have on any of the  flavours of our OS.

Would it be possible (and I'm by no means any sort of programmer so I don't know how feasible this is) to have separate modules which could take, separately, CSS content, JavaScript, etc, and feed them out to a requesting browser as plain html?

The browser would call for a web page which would be directed through a module which would inspect the page and decide what the content was

Each module could output to a catch area which could believed up by another called module so if there was, say, CSS plus JavaScript, the web page is obtained, containing both.

Next, the CSS module is asked for its output, which is sent to the catch area as html plus anything else not translated (the JavaScript)

This content is then requested by the JavaScript module, which then processes it's part and returns the output again to the catch area as plain html.

This output is then returned to the requesting browser
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: OldAmigan on December 02, 2019, 05:52:55 PM
The (any) browser output would be directed via a webserver.

It's output would be intercepted and fed to our translator instead of the originating browser

Perhaps Arexx could be used to redirect?
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: SamuraiCrow on December 02, 2019, 07:07:22 PM
VNC to a Linux box works like this.
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: Matt_H on December 03, 2019, 03:53:08 AM
I think there was a proxy in place for the previous design of Amiga.org that did pretty much exactly this, re-rendering the site to something IBrowse could display. I wonder if such a thing could be made to run on a local machine to translate the entire web.
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: kevlarian on December 03, 2019, 04:54:50 AM
I think the answer for the 'Amiga Internet' is BBS's. Seriously, we love the platform, not because it does everything that a modern computer does, but because it represents a time/history. That time/history includes a world of BBSs as the primary way to connect, communicate, share, explore, and trade warez.

Seriously, with the advent of Telnet/IP BBS's why should we attempt to use an Amiga in any other method.

I say we build the worlds largest BBS community for the Amiga! wHAT sAY yOU!?
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: OldAmigan on December 03, 2019, 03:43:28 PM
@ SamuraiCrow.   Thanks, die know that. Could it be turned to this use, though?

@ Matt_H  It would be good to find out and see if we could use it.

@ Kevlarian Be nice to be able to do both

Fred
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: kolla on December 03, 2019, 09:14:43 PM
There was Internet before web browsers, not just BBSes, and Amiga was pretty darn good at it. But since web came along, all other “content protocols” have slowly faded away, sadly. Instead of asking “what good can Amiga do on the Internet”, one should ask “what good can the Internet bring to Amiga” - Instead of wasting time with browsers, use http and other protocols to deliver Amiga friendly, and even Amiga specific, content.
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: OldAmigan on December 03, 2019, 09:24:29 PM
@ Kolla   

I'm afraid I just barely remember people talking about BBS'es. I have no idea what else was available on the internet/worldwideweb back then, apart from email.

I've heard of usenet but I don't know what it was.

However, most content these days requires (for the average mortal) a web browser. Even our Amiga forums need a web browser, with https in the main.

I'm just wondering if we can have a program which can help our browsers give us what we want, without rewriting the browsers  - 'cos that isn't happening
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: kolla on December 03, 2019, 10:01:35 PM

However, most content these days requires (for the average mortal) a web browser. Even our Amiga forums need a web browser, with https in the main.

I'm just wondering if we can have a program which can help our browsers give us what we want, without rewriting the browsers  - 'cos that isn't happening

What you are looking for is a web proxy that does rendering for you - this exists of course.

https://github.com/tenox7/wrp

Personally, I would prefer just using old protocols as frontends to modern services, or native clients for amiga specific services. For example web forums such as this, could have Amiga native frontends as alternatives to web browsers, similar way to how Tapatalk works. Or use gopher.

You mention USENET - it should be well within reach to operate a small number of "amiga specific" NNTP servers.

IRC is luckily still alive and will probably never vanish :)

( I have played with the idea of adding SSL to old Finger and Talk and submit as April 1. RFCs, FingerS and STalk sounds good :) )
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: SamuraiCrow on December 04, 2019, 09:42:06 AM
I had half a mind to make a Tapatalk-style client using Hollywood and the RapaGUI and Hurl plugins.  Unfortunately the server side needs to produce something MUI can still render.  I get hung up on the forum software itself.  If LibGit2 were ported and finished on all the Amiga-likes, I could use that to update a blog of posts on GitHub Pages or something similar like Bitbucket or GitLab.  The forum stage could then render individual posts from their links.  Right now the limit is the TextEditor.MCC on MUI.
Title: Re: Way forward to use the internet for all Amiga flavours?
Post by: giZmo350 on December 04, 2019, 02:49:11 PM

What you are looking for is a web proxy that does rendering for you - this exists of course.

https://github.com/tenox7/wrp

@kolla....   thanks for this link. I've been wanting to put up a web proxy but didn't really even know how to get started with the software.   ;)