#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #search #searchengine #frogFind #dillo #links

Catch of the Day: The Purist Unix Faction (Dillo & Links) 🐧💻

Hey Retro Fans!

When we talk about the "retro web," most people immediately picture bulky CRT monitors, Windows 95, or colorful iMacs. However, today's glance at our server logs reveals a massive return of the silent heroes of the internet: the hardcore Unix purists!

Our top catches of the day are Dillo (Version 3.2.0) and Links (Version 2.30).

For those who haven't met these legends yet:

🪶 Dillo: This is an incredibly lightweight graphical web browser written in C/C++. Its secret recipe for blazing speed on vintage Linux or BSD rigs? It completely ignores modern web bloat like JavaScript and complex CSS layouts.

⌨️ Links: This browser takes it one step further. Who needs images or a mouse anyway? Links is the absolute king of text-based browsers. When a sysadmin is working deep in the night via SSH on a server and "just needs to search" the web real quick, the terminal glows thanks to Links.

Why do these browsers love the Frog pond so much?

Because FrogFind speaks their exact language! No JavaScript frameworks, no trackers, no massive background downloads, and zero popups. We simply deliver squeaky-clean, classic HTML. Just pure text, wrapped in maximum speed.

Keep those terminals glowing and stay purist!
Your FrogFind Team 🐸

I'd pay monthly for a reasonable #searchEngine that either has no AI or lets me definitely permanently turn it all off, and ideally which has features like #startPage which lets you tell it to ignore certain domains (e.g. amazon.com). Also that's not US-based for obvious reasons.

Instead I get "oh please disable your ad blocker" and if I do, then the ads get in the way, slow down the results loading and generally annoy me.

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #search #searchengine #frogFind #download

FrogFind's "News of the Day": Version 2.00 is here! (The FrogLoad Update) 🐸🚀💾

Hey Retro Fans!

Today, we're giving our server logs a break. Instead of our usual "Catch of the Day", we have some real breaking news for you! One of your biggest requests was to end the dreaded "SSL / Cipher Mismatch" error that makes downloading files on vintage machines almost impossible today.

You asked, we started coding. Welcome to FrogFind Version 2.00!

What's new:

📥 FrogLoad (The TLS Download Proxy): Whenever you click on a file link now (like .sit, .hqx, .zip, .pdf, or .dsk), FrogFind steps in as a bridge. We securely download the file via our modern connection and stream it directly to your vintage browser over clean, classic HTTP!

🛑 25 MB Retro Limit & Smart Cache: FrogFind now caches popular downloads (like the Classilla browser) to reduce the load on source servers. To keep our own servers from melting, there is a strict 25 MB limit per file. (Perfect for old tools and patches – for massive CD ISOs, please keep using a modern computer).

The retro web has never felt more alive. Fire up those old modems and enjoy hassle-free downloading!

Your FrogFind Team 🐸

#Development #Explainers
Inside Googlebot · How Google’s crawl system decides which content gets indexed https://ilo.im/16btho

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#Business #Google #SearchEngine #SEO #Crawlers #Content #RobotsTxt #Development #WebDev #Frontend

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #search #searchengine #frogFind #sega #dreamcast #KallistOS #NetSurf

FrogFind's "Catch of the Day": The Dreamcast is alive! (Homebrew Edition) 🌀🎮

Hey Retro Fans!
Today's Catch of the Day proves that some consoles just refuse to die. We had the pleasure of welcoming a very special guest to the pond:

🏆 NetSurf 3.12 on KallistiOS

For those scratching their heads right now: KallistiOS is an open-source operating system developed specifically for the Sega Dreamcast! Instead of using the old, official browser from 1999, someone tricked out their Dreamcast with modern homebrew software and is using the lightweight NetSurf browser to read today's web via FrogFind. It's a fantastic achievement by the community and pure console love. Sega does what Nintendon't – even in 2026! 😉

Your FrogFind Team 🐸

I will say it again: #AI tools are often better at finding sources for me not because it's a good technology but because #SEO and #SearchEngines in general are so shit. The concept of the #SearchEngine and result ranking needs to be reworked from the ground-up.

#ArtificialIntelligence #SearchEngineOptimization

How many versions of #duckduckgo are there?

Am I missing something?

#Searchengine

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #search #searchengine #frogFind #apple #macos #internetexplorer #microsoft

FrogFind's "Catch of the Day": Sleeping with the Enemy? (Internet Explorer for Mac!) 🍏🤝🪟

Hey Retro Fans and have a great start to the week!

Today's Catch of the Day catapults us right back to 1997 – a time when Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy, and Steve Jobs made an announcement that caused the Mac community to gasp in horror. Around 12:32 PM, this legendary agent appeared in our logs:

🏆 Internet Explorer 4.0 on Mac

Why is this so special?
At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced a partnership with their arch-rival, Microsoft. Bill Gates invested $150 million into Apple, and in return, Internet Explorer became the default web browser on all Macintosh computers (starting with Mac OS 8.1) for five years!

IE for Mac wasn't just a cheap Windows port, either. Microsoft had a dedicated, highly motivated Mac team that perfectly adapted the browser to match Apple's "Platinum" interface design. The fact that someone booted up this historical peace treaty between Apple and Microsoft this afternoon to visit FrogFind is pure computer romance.

Who needs Safari when you have IE 4? 😉

Your FrogFind Team 🐸

I'm one of the lucky few discovering bangs in https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ today.

If you do "!gwiki forth", you get popped straight into the gentoo wiki page on forth. "!iep quine", and you're in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on Willard Van Orman himself.

If noai.duckduckgo.com is your default search engine in your gogo-address bar, this means to open a new tab and search directly on the page of the site that you want, cutting out all noise inbetween, you go

C-t "!site search" <RET>

(or C-l (i.e., that's L) to use current tab's URL bar)

where "site" is the shortcut of the site you want to search, and you're gone! Cool. Here's some to get started:

!archive --> Internet Archive
!ia --> WayBack Machine
!iep --> Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
!w --> Wikipedia
!gh --> Github (RIP)
!glab --> Gitlab
!ored --> old reddit
!had --> Hackaday
!arch --> Arch Linux Wiki
!gwiki --> Gentoo Wiki
!die --> linux.die.net man pages
!fman --> FreeBSD man pages

etc etc. See https://duckduckgo.com/bang_lite.html for a list of all bangs. If you type "!" inside the actual page (like https://noai.duckduckgo.com/) and not your URL bar, you can search there. But you might not get the shortest one without visiting the page of all bangs, and generally you've to check that they actually work, some don't (the above list all does, I think).

They didn't have Codeberg so I made a proposal to add it, with "cbg" as the term. The process was smooth, and you can make your own submissions for new bangs, or update existing bangs, here https://duckduckgo.com/newbang

I will update this with the results of the submission for Codeberg to be added :)

#Codeberg #DuckDuckGo #Search #SearchEngine #TIL

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #search #searchengine #frogFind #playstation #netfront

FrogFind's "Catch of the Day": Surfing on a Hard Drive! (PlayStation 2) 🎮🌐

Hey Retro Fans! Today's Catch of the Day proves once again that you can hook up absolutely anything to the internet. Yesterday afternoon, this fantastic exotic gem showed up in our logs:

🏆 NetFront 3.0 on the PlayStation 2 (PlayStation BB Navigator 1.0)
What exactly is this? The PlayStation 2 wasn't just a brilliant DVD player and gaming console. With the optional Network Adaptor and a chunky IDE hard drive attached to the back, it transformed into a true multimedia powerhouse! The "Broadband Navigator" was essentially the operating system for this hard drive (mostly popular in Japan) and included the NetFront browser to explore the early days of console internet. The fact that someone is still booting up this thick PS2 brick today just to visit FrogFind is absolutely legendary!

Your FrogFind Team 🐸