WRP - Web Rendering Proxy

A browser-in-browser "proxy" server that allows to use historical / vintage web browsers on the modern web. It works by rendering a web page in to a GIF or PNG image with clickable imagemap.

Current Status

• This is a new version using GoLang/ChromeDP (Python/Webkit is now deprecated).
• Fully supported an maintained.
• Works as browser-in-browser. A real http proxy mode is being investigated but very unlikely to happen. Mostly because a lot of clicable elements are not http links and there is no way to proxy them. Also there is no universal way of stripping SSL that would satisfy all browsers. Check issue #35 for more info.
• Supports clicking on non-link elements (eg. cookie warnings, dropdown menus, etc.) and sending keystrokes. Yes, you can login to Gmail, etc.

Usage

1. Download a WRP binary and run it on a machine that will become your WRP gateway server.
2. Point your legacy browser to http://address:port of WRP server. Do not set or use it as a "http proxy server".
3. Type a search string or a http/https URL and click Go.
4. Adjust your screen width/height/scale/#colors to fit in your old browser.
5. Scroll web page by clicking on the in-image scroll bar.
6. Do not use client browser history-back, instead use Bk WRP button.
7. To send keystrokes fill K input box and press Go. There also are buttons for backspace, enter and arrow keys.

Docker

docker hub:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 tenox7/wrp

gcr.io:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 gcr.io/tenox7/wrp:latest

Flags

-l  listen address:port, default :8080
-t  image type gif (default) or png, when using PNG number of colors is ignored
-g  image geometry, WxHXC, height can be 0 for unlimited, default 1152x600x256"
-h  headed mode, display browser window
-d  chromedp debug logging
-n  do not free maps and gif images after use

Minimal Requirements

• Server / Gateway should run on a modern hardware/os that supports memory hungry Chrome.

• Client / Browser needs to support HTML FORMs and ISMAP. Typically Mosaic 2.0 would be minimum version for forms. However ISMAP was supported since 0.6B, so if you manually enter url using ?url=... you can use ealier version.

History

• In 2014, version 1.0 started as a cgi-bin script, adaptation of webkit2png.py and pcidade.py, blog post.
• Later in 2014, version 2.0 became a stand alone http-proxy server, also support for both Linux/MacOS, another post.
• In 2016 the whole internet migrated to HTTPS/SSL/TLS and WRP largely stopped working. Python code became unmaintainable and mostly unportable (especially to Windows, even WSL).
• In 2019 WRP 3.0 has been rewritten in Golang/Chromedp as browser-in-browser instead of http proxy.
• Later in 2019, WRP 4.0 has been completely refactored to use mouse clicks instead using a href nodes. Also in 4.1 added sending keystrokes in to input boxes. You can now login to Gmail. Also now runs as a Docker container.

Credits

• Uses chromedp, thanks to mvdan for dealing with my issues
• Uses go-quantize, thanks to ericpauley for developing the missing go quantizer
• Thanks to Jason Stevens of Fun With Virtualization for graciously hosting my rumblings
• Thanks to claunia for help with the Python/Webkit version in the past

Legal Stuff

License: Apache 2.0
Copyright (c) 2013-2018 Antoni Sawicki
Copyright (c) 2019 Google LLC