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Thread ID: 48941 2004-09-05 10:39:00 Goodbye FireFox, hello Mosaic............. Terry Porritt (14) Press F1
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269530 2004-09-05 10:39:00 This is just for a bit of fun.... and descending into retro mode....

I mentioned Mosaic the other day. For those old enough to remember, Mosaic, developed by NCSA was the first web browser from which all others were developed.

Now versions of Mosaic up to 2.0 were 16 bit, then it was changed to 32 bit, and for Windows 3x, the win32s extensions had to be installed.

The first browser I had was in a Spry Internet in a Box version 1.0 package, which I think was basically Mosaic 1.

I recently fired up Windows for Workgroups 3.11 installed TCP/IP and Win32S, and hooked it into my LAN for a bit of fun.
I downloaded various Mosaic versions to play with, some worked, some threw up annoying errors.

Anyway here is a screen dump of the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

sal.neoburn.net

I had a bit of a job translating the WFWG clipboard image into a form that could be recognised in XP or Win 98. In the end I used Irfanview to view the Win3x .clp file, then saved it .jpg.


You will have to take my word for it that the original screen dump in W3.11 was infinitely better than it turned out in jpg :)

I expect Windows For Work Groups and Mosaic are completely immune to all the current trojans, worms and hackers :D

For those that want to play, Mosaic can be found here:

ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/Windows/
Terry Porritt (14)
269531 2004-09-05 10:46:00 I have no idea why you've done this and devoted a thread to it but what ever floats your boat.

Mosaic Security Issues and Responses

1. Mosaic 2.2, and all previous version of the NCSA Mosaic for the X
Window System have a serious security hole that allows telnet URLs
to execute an arbitrary UNIX command. The immediate action was
to inform people how to disable telnet URLs. As of Mosaic 2.3 this
bug has been fixed, for more information read about the details of
the telnet URL problem.

2. There was once a concern with Mosaic using ghostview as a
postscript viewer, because postscript can be insecure. The new
version of ghostscript (Version 2.6.1) used by ghostview runs in
secure mode by default, so this is no longer an issue.

3. There is a way (involving reconfiguration of both client and server)
to have Mosaic execute any arbitrary shell script that is passed over
the network. This is a documented feature that cannot be activated
accidentally, you should read about Executing Shell Scripts in Mosaic
before activating this feature.

THAT IS ALL! If there are any other security problems that any of you
know of, please mail mosaic@ncsa.uiuc.edu. If you post security concerns
to the net, please be kind enough to be specific. Vague alarmist postings just
make more busy work for us.

Mosaic Project, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
whiskeytangofoxtrot (438)
269532 2004-09-05 11:06:00 Some people have no sense of fun :( Terry Porritt (14)
269533 2004-09-05 11:16:00 It is pretty amazing that you can do much browsing with Mosiac, Terry, as the internet has changed rather dramatically since it first came out. There must be heaps of sites that look rather "interesting" in such an old browser, I bet. :-) Susan B (19)
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