So you surf like it was 1996
With “The Old Net” we can dive into the world of old websites and discover curious finds. This is not only worthwhile for nostalgics!
“Are all of our pages wearing the same uniform as in a dystopian novel?” Developer Richard Bettridge asks this question in a brief text which he wrote to introduce his project “The Old Net”. Today’s websites all look the same, he continues. He lacks individually designed pages and amateur projects apart from social media.
While Bettridge is involved in the development of modern applications in his day-to-day work, he is privately involved in the retro computing community. Old hardware and software that has been awakened from the deep sleep, pictures in a nostalgic pixel look, games from childhood – lovers of the interior like to take a look back at the past again and again. So Bettridge created a tool that could pull web views that are decades old.
Screenshot: nintendo.com view from 1996 via “The Old Net”.
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Retro-Web: This is how the search with “The Old Net” works
If you just want to visit a few pages with a vintage look out of curiosity, you can do so very easily at first using the input mask on theoldnet.com. There you can search for the entire URL or individual keywords. “The Old Net” works with the “Wayback Machine” of the nonprofit initiative “Internet Archive”which, according to its own information, has archived over 588 billion websites since 1996. In addition, when searching via theoldnet.com, users can, for example, fall back on 68k.news, frogfind.com and Wikipedia.
Vintage computing: if you want a little more – browser proxy and app
Instead of using the input mask on the “The Old Net” landing page, users of a Mozilla browser, for example, can also enter the desired target page directly in the address line. However, in order to end up on the old pages instead of the latest version, a corresponding browser proxy is required.
The proxies can be accessed via the network settings of the computer used. Theoldnet.com can be set there as a web proxy (HTTP), and the respective target year between 1996 and 2012 from which the search is to begin is selected as the port. Then enter web.archive.org in the “No Proxy for” list so that, among other things, images and zip files work properly. If you use Internet Explorer as your browser – completely in retro mode – you will also find one on the search engine page itself detailed instructions for the proxy setup.
In addition to browser access, there is also a separate “The Old Net” app for Android and iOS for vintage views on the go. Use of all “The Old Net” applications is free of charge for personal use.
