Overview of WebOne
The WebOne Proxy Server is a HTTP 1.1 server that receives requests from classic Internet browsers, then makes a new request to requested remote server (using HTTPS 1.1/2.0/3.0 and all security things) and returns the requested content with adaptations need to display it in "elderly" browser.
Few tens years ago all access to WWW in some networks was made through proxies (gateways). So now this network architecture is back, but for help older systems interact with modern Internet.
Nowadays almost all Web servers are working over secure HTTPS protocol with strong TLS 1.3 encryption. But many older Web browsers and software cannot work with such encryption algorithms. For them, WebOne is able to accept HTTP 1.0 incoming traffic, then connect to remote server via HTTPS, and return content over plain HTTP.
WebOne can also accept incoming HTTPS-Proxy connections (aka HTTP CONNECT method), and work via pseudo-HTTPS. In this mode the proxy server is decrypting TLS 1.2/1.3 tunnel and re-encrypting it to SSL 2.0/3.0 or TLS 1.x tunnel suitable for older software. The limitation is that real certificates are lost, and a fake certificate issued by proxy server is used to sign the SSL traffic.
This feature is available in WebOne v0.16 and up. See more: HTTPS and SSL.
The normal operation mode is when the client browser is configured to use WebOne as proxy server (also known as HTTP gateway). However, some browsers do not support proxies at all. For these cases there is an other mode, called Alternate access mode. Use http://192.168.1.1:8080/https://google.com URL format to open sites via WebOne without configuring it as a proxy. However, this mode is not quite stable and is not recommended to use.
Because cookies and some headers in HTTPS and HTTP/2, HTTP/3 have slightly different format than in classic HTTP, they are gets edited to HTTP 1.1 syntax, otherwise browsers will reject them. Also WebOne can modify some headers for browsers which can understand only HTTP/0.9.
Client user-agent too gets modified by the Proxy by adding WebOne/X.Y.Z suffix, so server can detect the proxy and understand that the old browser is not as dumb as it was in the 1990s.
WebOne is ready to be used on public hosts. To prevent unauthorized use of it there are possible to enable password-based proxy authentication. If it is enabled, the browser will ask you for password before allowing use of the proxy. So the proxy server will not be used to post spam or by kids.
All text-based content (such as HTML, CSS, JS, XML) may be edited by WebOne. Binary files are transferred pass-through as is. List of MIME types of content which should be touched by content editing is set in TextTypes configuration file option.
Some sites or internet applications to display and work correctly (in old software) may require manual editing of some traffic using something like "find and replace" function of text editors. For such cases the proxy can apply all required Sets of edits.
Most of modern web is encoded in UTF-8. But if you want to use non-UTF-aware browser with non-English web sites, WebOne can convert text content to any available encoding. Even alphabet transliteration is available for really old browsers without non-Latin letter support.
Default WebOne configuration defines automatic converting UTF-8 to classic code pages for all historical browsers without UTF-8 support. All newer browsers are mapped to AsIs OutputEncoding setting, meaning keeping original encoding (code page).
All content from remote servers is downloaded by WebOne using encoding said in Content-Type header or by finding Byte Order Mark. But for servers with invalid UTF-8 content you may set forced downloading using selected code page in webone.conf. Currently it's ForceUtf8 section but probably it will be changed in later nightly builds
To replace some linked content on pages or to use archived copy of some URLs instead of real web it is possible to use Edit Sets with AddRedirect rule.
In case of unavailability of the site due to content removal (on Server Not Found or 404 errors), WebOne tries to get the content from Internet Archive Wayback Machine. If there are chances to see something, browser gets an redirection to archived copy. This behavior may be enabled or disabled via SearchInArchive option.
Older browsers cannot correctly display "Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived" messages from Internet Archive. For them there are possibility to replace the message with built into WebOne. To disable 404 message replacing, unset ShortenArchiveErrors option.
Because older browsers cannot correctly display pictures in WebP and PNG formats, WebOne can convert them to acceptable picture formats like GIF or even XBM. This feature also can be used to convert video files, if the Proxy is running on a fast modern machine with fast Internet connection. All format converting things is configured via Edit Sets with OnContentType detection rule (syntax).
WebOne also makes possible to watch videos from YouTube and some other online video services. The Retro Online Video Player can even convert codecs to make the video compatible with older players (such as Flash plugin or Windows Media 6.4 plugin) and slow PCs. See YouTube playback article for details.
This feature is available in WebOne v0.15 and up.
All HTTPS proxies by the protocol are able to work with other protocols, such as IRC/IRCS, MSN Messenger, ICQ or AIM. For them, a HTTPS proxy such as WebOne is establishing a TCP tunnel to remote server. Just like other SSL downgrade software, such as ProxHttpsProxyMII, WebOne can change encryption algorithm used in tunnel from TLS 1.3 to TLS 1.0 or even SSL 2.0 with proper old ciphers.
The list of supported applications includes, for example, mIRC client and some versions of Microsoft MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger).
It's also possible to debug HTTP-based applications (like MSN Messenger, which is using HTTP and HTTPS to log-in and all activity) by enabling traffic dumping feature.
To access content from FTP servers via web browsers, there is a built-in Web-FTP Client. It's also useful for modern Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox versions without FTP support. See more: Using with FTP servers.
This feature is available in WebOne v0.14 and up.
I (the main developer, Alexander "atauenis" Tauenis) have many ideas about what can be added to the Proxy, but if you have own suggestions, you may leave them in GitHub Issues.
Also if you know HTML/CSS/JS/HTTP/XML and/or C# language, the project wants your skill. We are welcome forks and pull requests with new features and bug fixes.