This evening I had some free time and I started to remember the past. About the days when browsers were small and fast, and the size of a web page could be measured in kilobytes, not megabytes. About the times when we had another president.
In fact, all this happened not so long ago - Dmitry Medvedev was president in 2011, and browsers were really radically lighter. The Mozilla Firefox 1.5 distribution is just under 5 megabytes.
What's the use? This question I asked myself next, and immediately decided to check - is there much use from the then browsers in the modern world? I downloaded and installed myself sequentially Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.12, 10.0.2, 20.0.1, 30.0 and 40.0.3. I wanted to continue, but further research did not make sense (later it will be clear why).
Overall result
Firefox distributions are available. The browser can still be downloaded from the first to the latest version, all of them can be installed on the latest Windows 10, and so as not to interfere with other installed browsers (even yourself, but a later version), if you install them in different folders.
I tried to go to several well-known sites and click a couple of links to make sure they are working.
As a rule, if the browser managed to open the page, then it displayed it more or less correctly, there were no obvious problems with the layout. The problems were different.
A bit of specifics
|
|
1.5.0.12 |
10.0.2 |
20.0.1 |
30.0 |
40.0.3 |
mozilla.org |
- 1 |
- 4 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
google.com |
- 1 |
+/- 5 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
yandex.ru |
+ 2 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
sports.ru |
- |
- |
- |
+/- 6 |
+ |
kremlin.ru |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
thg.ru |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
+ 3 |
1 - no general https algorithm, does not load
2 - works but looks not quite correct
3 - HTTP connection is available - it works with it
4 - 308 permanent redirect
5 - the page loads, but when you try to click on the search button, the browser hangs up completely
6 - the site tried to show the page and dropped the browser to death
Outcome
Unfortunately, my hopes for the speed and lightness of the older versions did not materialize. Pages are rendered not that fast, although not slower than the modern version (86.0). I must note that the lack of support for modern encryption algorithms for HTTPS gives not only problems when displaying pages, but also a rather funny ad blocker effect. The fact is that connections to major ad networks also don't work, which means that banners won't load.
In general, there is very little benefit from old browsers, but those who for some reason have to use them (for example, Windows XP users do not have Firefox versions higher than 52), you can still keep hope. The web works, albeit not very well.