[Coco] So, would you like a little Internet with your CoCo?

[richec]

On Sunday 17 May 2009 20:16:38 Steve Bjork wrote:
> I can understand the appeal of the Internet. From email to web pages and
> the latest fads like Twitter, it would be great for the Color Computer
> to have a piece of the action. For myself, I go nuts when the Internet
> is down at my office. Without access to all the information on the World
> Wide Web it feels like my computer is still turned off.
>
> The Color Computer is based on 30 years old technology and computers
> have grown a bit since then. The new computer that I’m designing is
> 54,000 times faster than my 23-year-old CoCo 3 system.
>
> The Internet has gown with the power of our computer systems. Gone are
> the simple text pages that the CoCo could handle. The entry page of
> CoCo3.com is almost 500,000 bytes when you include the HTML, Graphics,
> CSS and Javascript data it takes to build it. A far cry from a bit more
> than a decade ago when most web pages took just a few hundred bytes.
> That’s why I’ve posted messages that the CoCo cannot handle most modern
> web pages.
>
> We can’t turn the whole Internet back round to those simple days but we
> can take a lesson from mobile phones. They also had real problems
> rendering those big web pages on underpowered devices with small
> screens. They got around their problems by making their own version of
> the web by creating their own standards and so can we for the CoCo.
>
> Their “WAP” standard for mobile devices was design for a low speed CPU
> in the first smart Cell phones. These devices also have small screen
> with limited color. Sounds familiar? You can see the direction that I’m
> Going with this.
>
> We don’t try to get the CoCo to use the whole Internet, just the parts
> it can handle. We can also create new Internet applications that are
> design for what our “little system” can do.
>
> Many of you would love to get the CoCo directly connected to the
> Internet with a TCP/IP Network Pak. Well, there are none out there for
> the CoCo. Someday, that may change. But for now, we have to use other
> solutions.
>
> The quick and cheap solution is to use a modern PC to handle the
> Internet protocol and feed the processed data to the CoCo via the serial
> RS-232 port or Deluxe Wireless RS-232 Pak from CoCo3.com. Since the
> technology is here today and working, a new server application could be
> written quickly. (Maybe in the future a standalone TCP/IP card could be
> created for the CoCo. But for now, let just get the project off the
> ground without any extra delays because of a design cycle for new
> hardware.)
>
> So, what could a CoCo do with an Internet design it? Maybe not view the
> main entry page of CoCo3.com. But view alternated web page design for
> the CoCo in mind. How about a live chat room for just CoCo users? These
> would be a piece a cake for a CoCo running the simple browser client
> using the CoCo Internet protocols.
>
> Let us not forget the games and other applications that could benefit
> from a web server designed for real time information transfer for the CoCo.
>
> These are just a few of the ideas for an Internet design for the CoCo.
> But first, there is a need for CoCo Internet standards.
>
> Much as there are web standards for formatting pages we will need to set
> standards for CoCo web pages. First, the TCP/IP server running on the PC
> would report to the website that it’s interacting as a “CoCo” client.
> This would get the website to create generic HTML code or in the case of
> CoCo friendly website to use CoCo protocols.
>
> The naming structure for files for the CoCo standard should follow the
> file “types” as the web standard. For ease, let us just add the word
> “CoCo” to them. A CoCo HTML file would be “cocohtml” for example.
>
> We will address other protocols or standards in later documents. To that
> end, a standards committee will need to be created. Any volunteers?
>
> Please note that I’m already in line to help this project.
>
> Steve (6809er) Bjork
>
>
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Isn't there a text base browser out there called Lynx or something like that? 
With todays graphics oriented sites, text will leave a lot to be desired, but 
I believe that this could be a viable alternative for the CoCo. Sooo... as 
you said, lets get it started.