Web Browsers on PDAS

We had about 10-15 years or so where the web wasn’t so complex and fast moving that a browser needed constant updates for things to work. Now browsers are more complex that entire operating systems and anything older than a few years just won’t work and publishers think that’s ok. I remember as late as 2008 verifying websites in Lynx (or elinks or links2) to ensure screen readers and low end devices would have a reasonable experience.

Now anything older than a few years is garbage that can be abandoned and websites have no problem using GBs of RAM. What a wasteful, fickle industry software is.

Arguably not really a web browser, but possibly the first (and pre-RSS!) "read it later" app: Plucker for Palm OS was amazing.

You could enqueue websites to download and compress from a PC during each HotSync operation and then read them offline on the PDA.

I remember using Dillo on a Compaq iPaq with Linux installed. No Dillo screen shots, but plenty of information about apps for Linux on the iPaq 3765 here:

https://www.frequal.com/ipaq/index.html

OT, but man, this is a beautifully designed website. The progress indicator on the left is particularly clever.

Dig the site layout. Left nav is interesting, glow around screenshots is a nice touch.

I thought everyone in my generation knows of PalmOS but TIL its later known as GarnetOS..