WWWOFFLE Version 2.8 Browser Page

I am trying here to make a list of the browsers that WWWOFFLE has been tested with, and how to use the browser to best effect with WWWOFFLE.

If you have used WWWOFFLE with a different browser, or you want to contribute information about any special features of the browser that you use then please let me know A lot of this information is out of date and remains here for historical interest only.

Arena

Version: Beta-3b
Proxy Configuration: See the Environment Variables section below.
Refresh: The Reload button on the toolbar will reload the page from the cache and not force a refresh.

Chimera

Version: 1.70
Proxy Configuration: See the Environment Variables section below.
Refresh: The Reload button on the toolbar will force a reload of the page as will pressing l.

Emacs (W3-mode)

Version: 3.0
Proxy Configuration: See the Environment Variables section below.
Refresh: Typing g or r in a buffer will force the page to be re-fetched. Typing R will just redraw the page.

Galeon

Version: 0.9.*, 1.0.*, 1.2.*
Proxy Configuration: Under the Settings Menu, select Preferences ..., and select the Advanced tab and the Network option. Enter localhost as the HTTP Proxy and 8080 as the Port, enter the same for the FTP Proxy. Disable the Enable proxy keep-alive option and select HTTP Version 1.0.

Grail

Version: 0.3

HotJava

Version: unknown

Internet Explorer

Version: 3.x, 4.x,5.x, 6.x
Proxy Configuration: In one of the advanced options dialog boxes there is the option to disable/enable HTTP/1.1 on requests to servers and proxies. You should disable HTTP/1.1 since WWWOFFLE is not compliant with this specification.
Problems: When this browser requests an FTP URL from a proxy it removes the trailing '/' character at the end of the URL if there is one. This means that it doesn't work with WWWOFFLE since the URL ftp://ftp.foo/pub/ is quite a different thing from the URL ftp://ftp.foo/pub.

kfm (Part of the KDE desktop)

Version: 1.0
Proxy Configuration: Select configure browser from the kfm options menu and then the proxy tab. Tick the use proxy box, enter the WWWOFFLE hostname and port number. Remember to save your settings - it is not saved by default

Konqueror

Version: 1.9.8, 2.2.2

Version: 3.0.2
Proxy Configuration: Turn off the option "Cache". Use Proxy "http://localhost" and Port "8080" for HTTP as well as for HTTPS and for FTP. Don't turn on the option "exceptions, only use proxy for.....".

K-Meleon

Version: ?

Lynx

Version: 2.5, 2.7.1, 2.8.4
Proxy Configuration: See the Environment Variables section below.
Refresh: Typing Control-R will force the page to be re-fetched. Typing Control-L or Control-W will just redraw the current page.
Problems (v 2.5, 2.7): When using this browser to fetch FTP URLs there is a bug that stops directory listings from being fetched. If you request the URL ftp://ftp.foo/pub/ then the browser will request the URL ftp://ftp.foo/pub instead (note the missing '/' at the end). This means that it will fail to get the directory listing.

Mosaic

Version: 2.6
Proxy Configuration: See the Environment Variables section below.
Refresh: The Reload Current option on the File menu and the Reload button on the toolbar will reload the page from the cache and not force a refresh. The Refresh Current option on the File menu will just redraw the page.

Mozilla

Version: M15-M18, 0.9.x, 1.0.*
Problems (version 0.8.x): When the HTTP/1.1 option is chosen for this browser it does not work with WWWOFFLE which is an HTTP/1.0 proxy. This problem does not occur for earlier versions of Mozilla. The solution is to disable the HTTP/1.1 support in the preferences.

Phoenix

Version: ?

Netscape

Version: 1.12
Proxy Configuration: Under the Options Menu, select Preferences ..., and select the Proxies dialog, Enter localhost as the HTTP Proxy and 8080 as the Port, enter the same for the FTP Proxy.
Refresh: The Reload button on the toolbar or the View menu will force WWWOFFLE to re-fetch the page. The Refresh option on the View menu will just redraw the page.

Version: 3.01
Proxy Configuration: Select the Network Preferences... option from the Options menu. Click the Proxies tab, the Manual Proxy Configuration option, and then the View... button. Enter localhost as HTTP Proxy and 8080 as the Port, do the same for the FTP Proxy.
Refresh: The Reload button on the toolbar or the View menu will force WWWOFFLE to re-fetch the page. The Refresh option on the View menu will just redraw the page.
Problems (v 3.0x): When the URL ftp://ftp.foo is requested and a link to pub/ is selected the browser goes the the URL ftp://pub/ which is not what is intended and is not what common sense would say should happen. WWWOFFLE's built-in tries to compensate for this by using a <BASE> tag.

Version: 4.0.x, 4.5, 4.7x
Proxy Configuration: Select the Network Preferences... option from the Edit menu. Select Advanced and then Proxies, the Manual Proxy Configuration option, and then the View... button. Enter localhost as HTTP Proxy and 8080 as the Port, do the same for the FTP Proxy.
Problems (v 4.0x): For some users this browser sends Pragma: no-cache as part of all requests, this means that WWWOFFLE is forced to refresh the page even if it is already in the cache. The symptom of this is that all pages that are browsed while offline are requested for download again. The cure if you see this happening is to set the pragma-no-cache option in the configuration file to no.

OmniWeb

Version: s 3.1, 4.0beta

Opera

Version: 4.0b2
Problems (v 4.0.2b): There have been reports of some issues with pages not displaying correctly in this version of Opera. When a page is refreshed parts of it are missing.

w3m

Version: 0.1.6, 0.1.10, 2.3.2

Configuring a Proxy

The descriptions for each of the browsers on how to configure the proxy assume that the hostname of the proxy server is localhost and the port number used for wwwoffled is 8080. If this is not the case, replace them with the correct values.

Environment Variables

The browsers that need environment variables set should be configured as follows.

In the csh/tcsh shell: Run the commands
setenv http_proxy http://localhost:8080/
setenv ftp_proxy http://localhost:8080/
or add them to your .cshrc file.
In the sh/bash shell: Run the commands
http_proxy=http://localhost:8080/ ; export http_proxy
ftp_proxy=http://localhost:8080/ ; export ftp_proxy
or add them to your .profile file.

Automatic Configuration

Netscape version 2.0 or later, Galeon, Mozilla and Internet Explorer allow automatic proxy configurations to be setup using a file that is supplied by a web-server.

Follow the instructions as above to find the Proxy configuration dialog box. Instead of selecting Manual Proxy Configuration select Automatic Proxy Configuration. In the box provided enter http://localhost:8080/wwwoffle.pac.

Note: If you install WWWOFFLE for use on an intranet and want to set up browsers using this method then you will need to edit wwwoffle.pac first since it uses localhost as the proxy.