Internet Archive Brings Classic Windows 3.1 Apps To Your Browser (google.com) 109
The Internet Archive has made it possible for you to make a virtual visit to the wide, wide world of Windows 3.1 games (and other apps, too), via a collection of virtualized images. Jason Scott is the game collector and digital archivist behind the online museum of malware mentioned here a few days ago. "Now," Ars Technica reports, "Scott and his crew have done it again with the Windows 3.X Showcase, made up of a whopping 1,523 downloads (and counting), all running in a surprisingly robust, browser-based JavaScript emulation of Windows 3.1. You'll recognize offerings like WinRisk and SkiFree, but the vast majority of the collection sticks to a particularly wild world of Windows shareware history, one in which burgeoning developers seemed to throw everything imaginable against 3.1's GUI wall to see what stuck." Says the article: A volunteer "really did the hard work" of getting the Windows files required for each DOSBOX instance down to 1.8 MB, and in the process came up with a more centralized version of those files on his server's side, as opposed to kinds that would require optimizations for every single emulated app.
Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange.
I don't recall those programs being called apps. Applications maybe, more commonly programs ... but not apps.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Remember though, this was in the wild west days of PCs where there didn't seem to be a standard for anything. Sometime I miss those days, then I remember the "fun" of dial-up and move on.
Re:Apps (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe you have a bad memory...?
I've been working in the IT industry since the early 90s, and the term "app" has been used as a shorthand for "application" since then at least. It has fairly recently taken the connotation of a mobile app, or some other kind of mini-application (web apps?), but that's actually something from the last 10 years. I forget exactly when that started because I have a bad memory too.
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Re:Apps (Score:5, Funny)
The technical term was "proggie".
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If it was long and complex and hard to understand, it was just "prog". :-P
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Yes, that too. My understanding (though this was before my time) was that "application" used to refer to the use, whereas "program" was the thing you ran. So "word processing" is an application of your computer, while "Microsoft Word" is the program you use to do that. That was according to my dad, who worked for IBM back in the days of punch cards, but it's possible that was just his own distinction.
But by the 90s, you could describe Microsoft Word as either an "application" or "program" (or "app"). T
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As a kid in the 80s and 90s, "Applications" were the things Dad used to get work done, "Utilities" were boring things that you weren't supposed to touch because you could break the computer, and "Games" were the only fun things. They were all programs, though you sounded like an egghead calling them that.
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Back in the 90's, I always though of 'apps' as 'applets' - little utilities that lived in my Apple Menu. Calculator and AfterDark and whatnot...
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Yeah, that was how I understood it as well. Apps would be things that came pre-installed WITH Windows, like Calculator or Paint(brush?) or Notepad. Things like Microsoft Office or Lotus Notes or Autocad were full blown applications or programs, but certainly not called apps.
Besides, w/ Windows 8 and the store, app has come to mean anything you download from the store. But if you have your old CD of Civilization III and install it using the same technique that's been used since Windows 95, that is very
"killer app" != "app" (Score:2)
Didn't we call them "programs"?
And "killer app" was a concept long before smartphones.
Everyone in this industry will have differing experience. This is mine: "killer app" is something that came during the dot-com when everyone and their grandma wanted a spot in the .com valuation orgy.
But as far as I remember, the "app" in "killer app" never carried over to the general lingo. It was rarely "application", but "program". Sure, we used "applications" in formal docs and lingo, but in the typical work vernacular, either among ourselves or when interacting with users, it was typically "programs
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I don't recall those programs being called apps. Applications maybe, more commonly programs ... but not apps.
"Apps" is shorthand for "applications". Has always been.
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I don't recall those programs being called apps. Applications maybe, more commonly programs ... but not apps.
"Apps" is shorthand for "applications". Has always been.
I used WIn 3.1 when it was first released. We never called them "apps" then.
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No, it's not a mere context. An app is something - you go to the Windows store online, you see something that catches your eye (usually free), you try it out, if you like it, you keep it.
An application/program is something which today - you go to a specific web site, download it from there, then hit install and it runs. Usually, it will set up something in your program files, and would have its own folder, uninstall routine and so on.
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I've called programs "apps" for a rather long time. It was "programs" and then "applications" and then just "apps." I don't know where or when the conversion started for any of those but that happened long before smart phones or apps in the way you're describing them - even programs with full installers and the likes, they've been apps for a very long time - since the earliest days, as far as I recollect.
I want to say that "apps" was in use in the 80s and I know we used it in the 90s - especially while typi
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The parlance may have started with the Apple III and Macintosh. I think Apple referred to its GUI apps on
Can someone explain how it does it? (Score:3)
Is the javascript emulating the OS and all applications itself or is the javascript emulating an old PC and then the windows binaries are running on that? I'm guessing the latter since doing the former would be a boatload of work. Impressive whichever way they did it.
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Javascript run version of dosbox emulating computer to run windows/apps.
Re:Can someone explain how it does it? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I used a few tricks to automate the launching of the game once Win3x started. Sometimes this was as basic as just putting a shortcut in the startup folder, but that was a final solution when nothing else worked. In general, I wanted win3x to exit when the game/app closed.
I have a great way of doing this. I have several games on my MythTV HTPC that I want to open/close by remote control. And I had to find a way to automate startup of the game and exit of Windows.
You can add an exe as an argument to win in autoexec.bat and it will run that on startup. I used a recently-created free program called runexit.exe [shdon.com] to launch the game. When the game is exited, runexit.exe shuts down Windows.
So for a game called game.exe, it was:
win C:\runexit.exe C:\gamepath\game.exe
This worked
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I guess that's your method, too - it's one of the files in the vanilla 3.1 demo.
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Good god you have a lot of spare time! It must have taken years to assemble this collection.
I'm happy that someone worked to preserve these works of art.
Is your collection available online?
Re: Can someone explain how it does it? (Score:1)
Shell=game.exe
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Thank you for doing this. Maybe they aren't so useful today but I would really hate for this material to be lost.
And there are a few old DOS and Win3.x programs that still don't seem to have good replacements.
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QuickTime... thanks. I had managed to forget about that and RealPlayer until you brought it up!
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Link to the real thing (Score:5, Informative)
Just pick your application to run here:
https://archive.org/details/so... [archive.org]
Use the preview, dimothy (Score:2)
WTF is a "showcaseâ"? Is it Norwegian or something?
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Wheel of Fortune! (Score:1)
I had that Wheel of Fortune!
But everybody knows that the best Win 3.1 shareware games were:
Operation Inner Space, a top down spaceship arcade shooter where you went inside the filesystem of your PC and collected the icons before they could be destroyed by viruses. Complete with a super secret ending! Inexplicably, it's still being sold TO THIS DAY by SDI software.
World Empire IV. A simplified Risk-like boardgame where you can attack neighboring countries, and the results are decided by a coin-flip fifty fif
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Windows 3.x games? No. (Score:1)
In those days the best games were DOS games. Windows simply used up too much memory, and you still had to faff with your config.sys and autoexec.bat to make those even start in some cases, until that thing in DOS 6 appeared that tried to do it for you and failed in some cases, was still better to do it by hand.
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Ah yes, the days of himem.sys and emm386... Most of the time it wasn't so bad but, every now and then you'd have two applications that required mutually exclusive settings. Now that was a pain. DOS was not exactly set up for multi-boot configurations.
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Actually it was, at least for DOS 6.0 on you could easily have multiple configurations specified in config.sys and autoexec, which could be setup to provide a menu based selection of which configuration you wanted to boot on start up.
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Yea, they finally implemented multiple profiles by then because it had been such an issue. DOS 3.x and 4.x, forget it. I can't remember if profile support came in DOS 5.x or 6.x.
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Yeah and ISA Plug-n-Pray cards from competing vendors that *would not* work together in the same system... jumper pins, dip switches and manual IRQ settings... oh those were the days...
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MFM... really glad those days are gone, PATA too.
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Yea, I remember having to hunt down 3Com modems that had hardware ISA jumpers because of Plug-n-pray issues. I had enough problems that I finally just started buying those cards full time. They had a plug-n-play option but, you could set the IRQ via hardware. Best of both worlds of the era.
As I recall, Win 3.1 deserves its own wing (Score:3, Interesting)
in the online museum of malware.
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Was there very much malware directed at Win 3.1, or was most of it just working on the underlying DOS system?
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There was plenty. People in HR always seemed to pick things up from bad resumes. I remember chasing KAK virus through a ton of startup options manually as an exercise and gave up on it for lack of time. A lot of the malware was more benign or experimental in those days, things like displaying a message rather than wrecking things or trying to steal information. There was more of a distinction between viruses and invited software that did things you didn't like, gator etc.
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I was referring specifically to windows 3.1, not malware directed at it.
Recognize what now? (Score:2, Interesting)
You'll recognize offerings like WinRisk and SkiFree,
Umm, we will? I substantially predate Windows 3.1 and I never heard of those applications. Maybe they were a big thing in some circles but certainly nothing most of us would recognize.
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Yea, I can't say I have a lot of Windows 3.x experience either. I preferred working with DOS and only used Windows when I had to until Windows 95 rolled around and it started to resemble something useable.
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SkiFree was a bona fide classic. It even has an XKCD comic!
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=skifree&es_sm=93
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SkiFree was a bona fide classic. It even has an XKCD comic!
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=skifree&es_sm=93
FFS .. what is /. coming to? Mentioning that a topic has an XKCD related cartoon yet not even linking to the original source [xkcd.com]
Even the ACs here are getting lamer.
But yeah, I'm with the OP on this one. I predate Windows in total for working with computers and I have no idea about skiFree. Maybe its a split between those of use who see computers as a tool for work vs those that see them as entertainment.
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" Maybe its a split between those of use who see computers as a tool for work vs those that see them as entertainment."
I was 16 in 1992. If you were under 8 or over 18, or didn't have brothers or sisters that age at this time, you probably missed this stuff.
Now you want scary... Skifree came out only 5 years before the debut of Slashdot.... And Slashdot is getting close to 20 years old.
https://xkcd.com/1393/ [xkcd.com]
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You all should thank Exo for making this happen. He spent the past 3 years and a good sum of his own money buying every crappy win3.1 game/application he could get his hands on. He is the same one that made that MSDOS collection happen as well on archive. He is working with the archive guys to make it work in the browser so everyone can see.
Make no mistakes here. Some of this stuff is truly terrible. He and I disagree on that point though. I do concede that there probably is some OK stuff in there. B
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Myst and YDKJ both work on 3.1
Though Windows 95 was already out when You Don't Know Jack was released.
Actual Link (Score:5, Informative)
Win3.x Win8.x (Score:5, Interesting)
Those were the days, when Windows did not spy its users and it used navigation components which had some visual clue for their usage. Nowadays the programs must be flat fullscreen bi-color planes which have only huge text and user is left randomly clicking every word to find out which are actually buttons. Current Windows actually emulates the early point-and-click games, where user needed to discover functionality by brute force trial and error.
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That leaves you with alpine and void linux (they may still have udev but are moving away from it)
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Blame web and mobile app designers and use a Mac while you can, we are going to flat land of GUI design and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
OS X introduced flat GUI in Yosemite as well...
Windows 7 and Ubuntu Unity are the remaining ones that still look cool.
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XP won't run in DOSBox. Windows ME was the last system to have a DOS (vs. NT) subsystem.
But this DOES use actual Windows 3.1, just not MS-DOS. That's replaced with DOSBox.
Ah, been done before... (Score:3)
http://windowsreallygoodeditio... [windowsrea...dition.com]
On the topic of old software being emulated (Score:3, Informative)
The site is a good argument for why (1) copyright on software should be for a shorter duration than for other media, or (2) copyright on software should expire if it hasn't been republished for a decade or two. Unlike an old book which you can pick off the shelf in a library and read, software is pretty useless unless you can actually run it. Unless the copyright owner is actively porting the old software to run on new hardware, it's essentially become abandonware. And only through the work of sites like this (technically illegal under copyright law) can people experience what the software was originally like.
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Copyright doesn't have to expire for this to be possible. Companies can choose to officially offer free licenses to abandonware, while still selling emulated/ported versions commercially - and preventing other companies from profiting commercially on their IP. But instead, they want to re-monetize for every generation. Just look at Virtual Console on Wii and Wii U. Re-buy if you want it on 3DS too.
I just wish I could buy a used legal copy of The Neverhood for less than $30. I never played it when it wa
Ah, the good old WYSIWYG days (Score:1)
It might be a more stable platform than the current web stack where different browser brands under different OS settings render things in different places and different ways. Back in the day they were positioned mostly by absolute coordinates, reducing positioning surprises. Auto-flow has mostly failed.
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Auto-flow has mostly failed.
??? I think you're behind the times.
The problem is people were using a WYSIWYG mindset to try to design them. The responsive layout paradigm actually does fairly well. For an overly commercial example, just look at starbucks.com on a desktop browser and resize the window.
The world can't move on with everyone on the same screen size. Phones are here to stay as are tablets. Even Microsoft tried to advocate for resolution independence and using "Twips" as the primary unit for their VB GUI design tools. An
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For every one that works well, there's probably 10 that are screwy.
A fixed size is not what I asked for. I said, let the server compute the resizing, NOT the client. Big difference.
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For every one that works well, there's probably 10 that are screwy.
This is teh world as normal.
let the server compute the resizing, NOT the client.
What? Explain. So every time I want to change my browser window size, the server is going to send me a new page? Or do you mean separate mobile vs desktop sites, which breaks permalinks and search results?
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How often do you resize your window?
Further, I'm thinking of a standard for production/work applications, not eye-candy brochures and read-only sites.
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On a phone, a lot - I'll turn my phone to the best orientation for a specific page.
It's not as easy to come up with production/work applications off the top of my head, because I don't generally do those in the browser. The first that comes to mind is my own grocery list and meal schedule site, which I wrote myself and is not public.
But you didn't explain why the server side is better capable of handling varied screen sizes from small phone to large phone to tablet to desktop site. If the content is diffe
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The server could pre-calculate both horizontal and vertical phone orientations so each is ready when you flip it.
They are gradually moving to browser, but it's difficult because browser GUI's are a PITA.
I thought I did. The
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And my desktop browser windows is set at 1263x941. So you're saying the designer is going to create a static composition for every permutation?
As a web programmer myself, I understand the challenges and still think that the server would essentially have to be essentially doing the auto-flow from its end to be practical, and then you're just introducing latency for no reason and increasing load page size (because of sending the mobile browser two versions). There are more possible screen sizes than you can
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I didn't say that. I don't know where you got that. Let me try again: The resizing is computed ON THE SERVER, NOT THE CLIENT. But, it still happens.
The phone example was just an optimization suggestion. And again, I'm mostly thinking about work-oriented applications for desktops. Users don't normally resize their screen very often.
Note you could also have a zoom-mode in your browser that could scale up and down linea
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When it does it on the server, it's still auto-adapting and it's still not WYSIWYG. I don't see any practical difference between work done on the client and work done on the server. It's not resource-intensive, by any means.
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For one, you don't get different clients doing auto-flow different ways. The server would do it ONE WAY for all client brands and versions (unless explicitly coded for differences).
Clients doing auto-flow different has been a huge practical problem in my experience. Sure, with enough experience and practice one might finally over-come that, but why make it Rocket Science when it could be dirt simple: move it to where you want? I'm a multi-hatter in my position, I don't have the time to master auto-flow nua
Clarification [Re:Ah, the good old WYSIWYG days] (Score:1)
Let me re-state this to make sure I'm clear. By "one way" I don't mean the same layout for all client devices, but rather that the layout would be consistent across all client devices for a given target size.
For example, if we use centimeters as our standard (as an example only), then if an Apple client had a 8cm by 20cm screen and if an Android client had an 8cm by 20cm screen, then the positions an
Orly (Score:2)
Good news for the people at Orly airport [slashdot.org] .
Why is the splash screen cyan? (Score:2)