Running Windows 3.1 in Browser!

http://www.michaelv.org

Michaelv.org is coded in JavaScript and strict XHTML 1.0, with AJAX functionality provided through PHP. It has been tested for compatibility in Firefox and IE. Firefox 2 or 3 is highly recommended, but the site is almost entirely functional in IE 6, 7, or 8. Media Player does not work in IE as IE lacks the ability to dynamically instantiate <OBJECT>.

The file system is stored in SQL and is dynamic. File creation, renaming, deletion, reading, and writing can all be accomplished in real-time and with persistent results. However, for obvious reasons, visitors are not able to make changes to the file system in any way.

The goal of this site is not to create an entirely complete mirror image of Windows 3.1, but rather keep the spirit and omit features when they are not justified by an effort to usability ratio. For example, Notepad lacks a find and replace feature because it is not worth the effort. Where features do exist, every effort is made to present them in exactly the manner that they existed in Windows 3.1.

The developer has also endeavored to put plenty of features in which are not readily apparent, hopefully making the site a fun and long-lasting process of experimentation and discovery. For example, try pressing the keystroke for full screen mode in MS-DOS Prompt.

Disclaimer: The above post is extracted from Main -> Readme section of http://www.michaelv.org

Access Filesystem using Javascript

Using only native browser capabilities, it is impossible for a web application to access the user’s hard drive. However, trephine allows users to opt-in and grant more privileges to scripts on a page. This article explains how to interrogate the client’s filesystem using JavaScript and trephine. To see this in action, check out the file browser demo.

The above screenshot shows my filesystem browser in firefox 3.0.8.