browservice VS ViewFinderJS

Browservice - proxy but goes one step further and renders the page and actually only sends back a clickable image to the browser on the old machine. Almost like screensharing.

I have a [Browservice](https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice) server set up for the faster machines, which basically streams images, and a [retroproxy](https://github.com/humbertocsjr/retroproxy) service for the slower machines :)

Original iMac G3 (the very first) running Mac OS X 10.1 and Netscape 7.01. The magic comes from this program : https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice

Browservice may be suitable if you have to use IE6 and you're OK using a proxy system.

"browservice" will render web pages server-side and then deliver them to your browser as an image with simple javascript.

It works in virtually all "old" browsers and can be very useful for older computers.

https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice

TL;DR: Read the entirety of Readme.md (it's at the bottom of https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice). If you still have specific questions, i'll try to help.

Check out browservice; either run it on your host, or in another VM.

A 4th gen i7, the VM gets 2.3 GB, but I've done similarly stupid stuff on an AMD Athlon 64 (sluggish but usable, 720p YT dropping frames but watchable). Browservice running in a VM to serve XP's IE8 is another fun Goldbergian trick.

Hey HN

I need to kill this before the GCP credits expire (in less than 1 day). I've switched it to Stripe Test Mode, so to use it, just:

- click the button

- enter an email and the stripe test card number (4242 4242 4242 4242) and any future expiry and any 3 digit CVC (sorry for the confusion, it won't make sense unless you've developed with Stripe before)

- submit the checkout form

You'll be take to a page where you can get your browser link, then you can use that link just for you, or you can send it to other people to "co-browse". Be warned, the screen will automatically shrink to the smallest width x height connected.

The browsers are meant to last 1 day but I will probably need to kill this demo before then as the credits expire.

Best of luck!

PS - Why might you use this? Co-browsing can be used to deliver live interactive training and support, to more than 1 person in real time, it can also give you visibility into your automation processes (connect to running puppeteer scripts, for example), or you can set it up as a secure remote isolated browser. It's basically a "head" for a headless browser. You can see the public version open-sourced here: https://github.com/i5ik/ViewFinderJS (without enhancements like co-browsing and variable-rate streaming) and you can write to me ([email protected]) if you're interested in deploying this either self-hosted or managed. Flexible contract, maintenance, and support options are available. See https://dosyago.com for more info (but please not the listed prices need to be updated!)

Don't expect Opera Mini crazy reduction though, they take out a lot of the page before delivering to you. https://github.com/i5ik/ViewFinderJS do render the page for you but it's not focused on compression. For extremely slow connection, brow.sh might be a better bet.

perhaps https://github.com/i5ik/ViewFinderJS

Hello I posted this a week ago but it's iterated quite a lot since then. I don't expect much discussion I'm just sort of using posting here to keep a track of my progress and see if any of the iterations sticks with this community. I've got some ideas on use cases in terms of customer support, bug reporting or just sort of a weird thing where you can cobrowse with other people.

I have WebRTC support but I've turned it off in favor of websockets because I find that in general the performance is better. But I'd like to play around with the sctp settings as well as experimenting with a per frame ack before we send the next frame to improve WebRTC performance because I think one of the things that's going wrong with it is it will send a lot of frames and they kind of get stuck in transit which then causes latency. if I do that I think webrtc should be able to perform better than websocket but I'm not sure.

if you want to create your own private room rather than join this public one you can visit

https://comebrowsewithme.com/

Have fun, browse safe!

Hey, cool song choice! :) Sorry audio will not work on this 8002 port demo, but audio works fine if you go to https://comebrowsewithme.com create a meeting and send the invite to people. Honestly I don't know why that is. As for not knowing if anyone is watching with you, on my todo list is add a participant count. There's also a chat tab in the menu at right that I want to surface.

2 known issues:

- DevTools doesn't display the viewport. I'm not sure if this is due to a change in the latest Chrome to which I just updated (~90) or because I broke my serving of it by updating it. A workaround will be serving a static snapshot of the devtools front-end rather than just (simply, as I'm doing right now) pulling it out of Chrome's RDP endpoint each time. This may take some time to do.

- DevTools doesn't seem to work on iOS (as I've tested it, Safari or Chrome).

- There are many more issues, and a lot, but not all, of them are edge cases but they'll be fixed eventually.

More bug reports, UI/UX tips and advice, and other feedback are very welcome! Unfortunately the whole app is not open source but some parts are open source, namely, the virtualized browser[0], and the devtools-front-end[1].

[0]: https://github.com/i5ik/ViewFinderJS

[1]: https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/devtools-frontend