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With this and Ruffle, we will soon return to the days of Internet Explorer 6 but with 4k monitors!

All we need now is to run ActiveX. I think BottledWine can run Windows executables in the browser, how hard would it be to simulate the ActiveX bindings?



When everything else fails, you can just boot up a full Windows VM: https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98


If you run Windows and are jonesing for some ActiveX action, and want to be really careful, you can run WSL, run LXDE on WSL, and run https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98 on Firefox on LXDE[1].

That’s maybe enough layers of indirection to make ActiveX safe :-)

[1] https://imgur.com/a/VHYehLQ


Maaaybe!

This reminds me of the time I was running Linux on my desktop PC back in high school. I'd just received a very suspicious .exe email attachment, and to demonstrate Linux's inherent safety (despite not running any antivirus software!) to a friend, I double-clicked it – and Wine, invoked through binfmt_misc, perfectly emulated the virus it contained, writing garbage to my home directory (fortunately mostly the emulated Windows directories in it!).


THE SYSTEM. IS DOWN. THE SYSTEM. IS DOWN.


Context: a classic episode from the Flash animation series Homestar Runner (and my favorite) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1F4W8-DqjE. Original release date January 2003.

Edit: the song is likely it https://youtu.be/JwZwkk7q25I


Twenty years ago?? Hmmm <homestar face>


Always a pleasant surprise to see how well Ruffle works with the HR website: https://homestarrunner.com/sbemails/45-techno

The only thing I'm missing is the ability to find the easter eggs by hitting the tab key like you could do with Flash...


Lightswitch rave!! But IIRC, The Cheat then gets sent to his room.


Reminds me of "The fall and rise of JavaScript"


Did you mean "The Birth and Death of Javascript":

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...


Does anyone know a simple and portable flash and java player? A firefox 3 in a folder, or something like that. Or maybe a small linux in a virtual machine.


If the goal is to play old Flash games Flashpoint is very good. https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/


anyone remember dhtml, which allowed adding powerpoint-like transitions to hyperlinks?


DHTML was basically just a buzzword for the first SPA interactions.

The first, real uses cases for XMLHttpRequests was sending chunks of HTML over the wire and updating the DOM via JavaScript - so “Dynamic HTML”


I had a book on DHTML in the late 90s long before ajax was a thing. It simply meant scripting the DOM. The MS version did have some fancy transition filters too.


Yep spa weren't even a possibility back then


They were. Microsoft Outlook Web Access was exactly that, it's why Microsoft invented XHR. Google Maps later got a lot of credit for kicking off "Ajax", but OWA laid the groundwork.


While we’re narrowing actuallys, it was Gmail that got the credit. And somewhat relevant to the article, I believe that was Google’s first major showcase of the Java-based GWT.


See also htmx for a modern buzzword for this idea


(Ignoring the other posts defining what DHTML is/was..) if you would like that sort of functionality on the Web, Chrome is only too happy to oblige: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/view-transiti...


Can't wait to play RuneScape in-browser again with Java applets!




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