Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

copy.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 171 posts

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#91

Post by lukeadams »

tomc1985 wrote: post #84
tkinom wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it is a very cool demo. Is there anyway I can find out the call flow of this JS program? Like to see the actual dynamic call flow graph instead of just simple static flow analysis output.

That's because the Win98 code is that much simpler. It has less to do with speed and more to do with complexity. Your phone is doing all sorts of weird shit behind your back as you poke about. Stuff that it's not supposed to be doing if app-makers were actually respectful of their users... On that note, why does that crap take so long on smartphones anyway?

One tweak that made my G2 feel much more responsive is simply turning down the UI animation length in Dev Settings. That's not to say that app developers don't love their non-native webview apps crammed to the brim with ads, though...

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#92

Post by boyaka »

tomc1985 wrote: post #85

The mouse cursor doesnt work.... my system's real cursor is still onscreen and the emulator is doing a very poor job of tracking my movements, and its not intercepting clicks or anything like that either. None of the toy 'show HN' emulators that have popped up have a properly working mouse cursor....

Did you try the lock cursor button? A lot of times in Windows VMs I have to go disable mouse acceleration, but it doesn't seem this version of Windows 98 has that option.

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#93

Post by tomc1985 »

darryl42 wrote: post #88
tomc1985 wrote: post #85

The mouse cursor doesnt work.... my system's real cursor is still onscreen and the emulator is doing a very poor job of tracking my movements, and its not intercepting clicks or anything like that either. None of the toy 'show HN' emulators that have popped up have a properly working mouse cursor....

It worked after clicking on lock mouse. Using the latest firefox.

That works. Chromium 47 here

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#95

Post by tomc1985 »

lukeadams wrote: post #91
tomc1985 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the Win98 code is that much simpler. It has less to do with speed and more to do with complexity. Your phone is doing all sorts of weird shit behind your back as you poke about. Stuff that it's not supposed to be doing if app-makers were actually respectful of their users... On that note, why does that crap take so long on smartphones anyway?

One tweak that made my G2 feel much more responsive is simply turning down the UI animation length in Dev Settings. That's not to say that app developers don't love their non-native webview apps crammed to the brim with ads, though...

UI animations have a lot to do with it, but I'm more referring to UI jank over simple stuff like 'enumerating a list of sharing targets' or 'swiping to the next page of the launchboard' when the phone is otherwise idle. Or, my favorites: the multi-second pause from unlocking my phone during a phone/skype call, or the taking of an actual eternity just to answer said fucking Skype call, of which half the time the call has already hung up once my phone is finally responding...

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#98

Post by orionblastar »

mollmerx wrote: post #69
vanattab wrote: post #37

Are there license issues around this project? I doubt Microsoft would care to put the resources into enforcement of windows 98 licenses but I am just curious about the legality.

Essentially you are being given a copy of a VM that has a copy of Windows pre-installed. It's unlikely (but possible) that Microsoft has granted a license for this. I imagine this is technically not legal, but as you say, unlikely to matter much.

Microsoft does not seem to bother with older software. It is because they don't support and upgeade it anymore.

Microsoft only goes against piracy of software they still support and upgrade.

They don't bother with the old software because it isn't worth it to sue or send a c&d letter because they don't earn an income with it anymore. So they don't lose income if someone pirates software they no longer sell.

In fact they gave away the source code to an early MS-DOS and MS-Word as part of their own open source license.

It is good PR for them if someone emulates their old software in the web browser and gives them free publicity.

Re: Show HN: Windows 98 in browser

#99

Post by khedoros »

truncate wrote: post #56
apetresc wrote: post #12

The network interface doesn't seem to be configured – when I try to open the browser it wants me to install a modem. Is the VM just not configured for that, or do I need to do something? Would love to see what today's web looks like on '98 IE :)

Really cool work. Looking forward to updates. When I tried to run Internet Explorer and open a website, the window closed (crashed I guess). I really want to open some common websites on Win 98 :D

They don't tend to work (you end up clicking a "script error" acknowledgement a lot). It's less fun than it sounds like it would be.
Post reply on HN