Some of us would want to return and see how the old web pages looked. It gives us nostalgia and takes us back to our earlier days when the Internet was super slow, not so beautiful, and, well, inefficient. However, it certainly had its charm. Here is our chance to look back at the time and surf web pages in the old way, thanks to oldweb.today – an innovative project.
How to use oldweb.today to surf the old web
As Rhizome describes, old web pages connected to users more than modern web pages. Modern web browsers have a design that amalgamates with their visual surroundings. On the other hand, old web browsers had many icons associated with travel, conveying that the users were going on a journey. Old web.today takes you to the journey of these old web browsers, where the real world was different from the digital world, unlike today.
The old web today acts as an emulator or imitator for the old Internet. Instead of simply archiving web pages and freezing them in time to be revisited, the project focuses on recreating the experience of visiting those sites. This is certainly happening for the very first time.
On the front page of oldweb.today, you can select a web browser from the range of web browsers from different time periods. These web browsers allow users to understand the browser environment’s impact on the web experience.
After selecting a web browser, old web.today allows you to check out Yahoo’s home page from October 1996 using Internet Explorer 4.01. If you want to check out any other website, enter the respective web address, select your preferred browser, and set a target date for archived content.
The app, oldweb.today will check sites like Internet Archive for the closest match.
What changes you can see on the web pages with the help of oldweb.today
In case if you have forgotten those old web pages and how the web browsers functioned in the early days; oldweb.today will help you understand. You will see many changes when you use oldweb.today for surfing a particular web page. You might notice the following changes:
- The browser environment has changed along with the users’ experiences of the web.
- This directly applies to how users see and interact with web pages.
- In old days’ web browsers, you can see the HTML tags are deprecated
- Even the design for the drop-down menus is different.
- Modern-day plug-ins are no longer supported in the old days’ web browsers.
- Even the most well-preserved page may be subject to quite a drastic change over time.
The only thing that has remained unchanged even today is the HTTP protocol. The protocol, which is the foundation of the web, has remained pretty much unchanged since its initial release, reports Rhizome.
How is oldweb.today different than the other emulators
oldweb.today is not the only emulator in the industry. It is pretty similar to bwFLA’s Emulation as a Service, which imitates the legacy computer systems on the server side. However, oldweb.today uses a suite of tools to mimic the original versions of the browsers. It imitates even the exact pixels of that particular web page. However, oldweb.today cannot support sound in this process. As mentioned by Rhizome, oldweb.today is a specialized and lightweight browser-emulation framework. For recreating the old days’ magic, this app connects legacy browsers with web archives.
If you want to take this ride in the past, visit this link.
