Have you ever wondered what the Web was like
before the
Mosaic Web browser? If you were born in the last 20-odd years, or you only discovered your inner geek recently, did you miss out on
monochrome monitors and the
dial-up BBS era? Well, here's your chance to get a sneak peek at history: grab the
ChromeLite extension and marvel as the entire Web is transformed into ASCII characters.
Now, ChromeLite isn't really all that functional. For the most part, it simply strips images and converts text into a
monospaced terminal font. There are a few
Easter eggs inserted -- such as a fun message at the bottom of YouTube (image after the break) -- and some fun
ASCII art, but that's about it. Rather oddly, most JavaScript continues to work -- so you can still enjoy Google Instant Search!
ChromeLite was actually made by Google as an April Fools' joke -- and indeed, an annoying 'you can uninstall this!' message appears at the top of every page -- but we're kind of hoping that Google, or another developer, takes ChromeLite and turns it into a real ASCII browsing extension with configurable settings. If anything, it will provide an easy way to save bandwidth and CPU time.
Continue reading ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear
ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/04/chromelite-experience-the-ascii-web-of-yesteryear/
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