Links to other areas
Other
links:
Clarence Verge
has an Arachne simulator for
IE and Netscape users, so that you can preview the browsers appearance
and config pages! Give it a test drive.
Saving your butt in DOS - useful pages with files to sort out problems windows users could only dream of !
Multimediaware
Have a DOS MPEG, MP3, AVI and MOV player plug in for Arachne.
Dev
Teelucksingh runs possibly the most comprehensive list of links to
DOS resources available. He includes alternate browsers, many graphics,
sound and CD utilities, and links to games sites.
Contact him at devtee@trinidad.net
For anybody brave enough
to try...
DOS web browsers
are available! One of my favourites is Arachne. Written by Michael Polak
at Arachne labs, it is a fully configurable graphical browser. I have tested
it on a 486/33 and on my present system : it's highly functional and much
quicker for text browsing, and can be run under Win95, with stable Beta
versions available for Linux. Additional versions
are in development for WAP and small screen devices such as PDA's.
Features
Setting up Arachne from scratch is now a breeze with the new installer.
It will auto-detect your modem, video card, screen resolution and set up
DOS virtual memory services. With a list of your ISP connection details,
you can be on and offline in the time it takes other browsers to load up
(Netscape being a major offender in this).
Arachne includes all the functionality of major browsers barring Java/Script,
and supports PNG, GIF and Jpeg Images.
It has an integrated email client named 'Insight' (in reference to a microsoft
product with similar functions) - load times aren't noticeable, which means
that : click on the mail toolbar and your pre-formatted email form is just
*there* in a flash.
Insight integrates well into Arachne, which gives pages a 'SendTo email
client' capability. Using Arachne you can also upload pages via FTP, export
to postscript files, save or print directly. Screen grabs can be taken and
saved as bitmaps, and I used that to generate the thumbnails on this page
(scaling down was done using Corel PhotoPaint 6).
The browser can also be set up as a 'thin client' on a network, and applications
include info-kiosk style services, with limited functionality and low resource
needs... Running in 4mb ram on a networked diskless workstation was one
application mentioned.
Please read the installation instructions as they contain lots of helpful
information. You can then download the file (it's under 1M, so should quickly
download). If you'd like to try Arachne, you'll need the file from http://www.arachne.cz
called "archn167.exe".This is a self-extracting zip file : create
a directory for it, drop the file in there and run (or double click it)
to extract. It can also be downloaded via email - send a blank email
to send-me-arachne@arachne.cz
Please take the time to check some of the readme files - they can seem daunting,
but if you have already set up an ISP account, all the information you need
can be found in the dial up networking section of control panel in windoze.
I have also hosted the arachne v1.61 file here
if their server is down, but please take the time to check for updates -
the latest recommended release is now version 1.67 (upgrades are numbered
in 0.01 steps!)
The setup dialogs are forms run from within arachne, and help is available
for them in the browser (you can preview some of arachne's functionality
at http://www.hwcn.org/~ao773/.
There is an active user group out there, which you can get as a digest
by email (you have to subscribe before posting). Also-rans include Lynx,
a text-only browser, and Opera.
Kept chugging along by
Linux
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|
The previous 1.66 version fixed a few security issues and improved the install process. With four releases in quick succession - boy this team is busy.
Version 1.62 was claimed to be 10-20% faster than 1.60 and takes
9k less DOS memory. View the change history here. Some
screen shots- Arachne in action. The page background can be
switched off for old PCs. Click the image to see a larger version. |
