Using Copy's v86 it's possible to recompile x86 code to browser native WASM.

This means you can load up Windows 98 in your browser! (There are a bunch of other operating systems available)

Before going any further, open up a new tab in your modern browser and visit https://relay.widgetry.org/. This is the Internet proxy that your browser within a browser will be using. As I write this, the security certificate has expired - so you'll need to manually add an exception. Hopefully this step won't be needed in the future.

Next, run the networking.bat file to connect to the internet.

Next, double-click the Internet Explorer icon.

Success! You can now visit pages which don't use https. This browser is too old to support modern encryption. In fact, it's so out-of-date that it'll fail to work on all but the most simple of pages.

It crashed fairly regularly.

So, there you go - IE 5 in the browser.

It's a slow, annoying, and somewhat painful process. Which, to be honest, is just how I remember it.

Yesterday morning I asked the Number 10 Downing Street web team if they could provide their statistics. I figured that the PM's website gets enough readers from a wide selection of the web community to give a fairly impartial measure of the popular web browsers.

Here's their (very quick) reply

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @10DowningStreet@downingstreet can you tell us how many Firefox/IE/Safari users visit the Number 10 website? Would be really helpful to UK web developers

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UK Prime Minister

@10DowningStreet

Replying to @edent@edent Top are: IE7 22%, IE8 20%, IE6 12%, Firefox3.5.3 9%, FF3.5.2 7%, FF3.0.14 5%, FF3.0.13 4%, Safari 4.0.3 4%, Chrome 2.0.172.43 2%

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Or, to express it graphically...

Chart Showing Browser Stats

Firefox overall accounts for 25% - a fairly strong showing. But with IE6 stubbornly stuck at 12%, it will be a while before we can consign it to the dustbin of web history. Opera is languishing in the 15% marked as "Other" along with my browser of choice, Lynx.