Yet another Hacker News

65 points gitgud 3 days ago 30 comments

Encarta is super nostalgic, and I was surprised it wasn't available to use online. So I embarked on the difficult task of making it so.

The way this works is the most convoluted, nonsense and brittle system ever... but it works as a statically hosted gh-pages site!

Please note: All the material on this site is freely available through the internet archive (see github readme)

Github repo -> https://github.com/benwinding/encarta_95_web

neronuser 3 days ago | parent

Oh, that's very nostalgic, even though I only got acquainted with Encarta in the 2000s

sucrose 2 days ago | parent

I got carried away and started playing the Age of Empires Demo from the desktop after I exited Encarta

pixel_popping 2 days ago | parent

Back to prompting now.

nether1 1 hour ago | parent

Me too

OuterVale 1 hour ago | parent

Glad to see I'm not the only one who immediately ditched an opportunity to learn for AoE. It lures like a siren's song.

usern20260720 42 minutes ago | parent

it is amazing that you can emulate win 95 on a browser tab and play win 95 video games like it's 1998.

mysterydip 15 minutes ago | parent

It goes to show how actually powerful modern hardware is, and how much of it is squandered by modern software.

karim79 2 days ago | parent

Oh God I remember running this on my dad's computer which had the first CD-ROM drive I had seen. I felt like I was in a spaceship

bombcar 17 minutes ago | parent

I remember the CD drive on the school computer took CDs in a big case with a floppy like opening.

BorisMelnik 2 days ago | parent

wow blast from the past. I do beleive this exact version prob in exactly 95 was the first CD I ever inserted into a CD rom. lots of fun!

tadfisher 2 days ago | parent

Just checked, the Soundgarden clip is in its proper place on the Rock Music article. Fantastic work.

gitgud 2 days ago | parent

Nice! Here’s the permalink for “Rock Music” (it’s funny how this is implemented)

https://benwinding.github.io/encarta_95_web/#/article/Rock%2...

alexwrich 2 days ago | parent

NICE - thank u

bananaflag 1 hour ago | parent

The text looks very weird on my PC, see: https://imgur.com/a/vAMVHc7

Cilvic 57 minutes ago | parent

isn't that how it looked at the time?

otagekki 1 hour ago | parent

Wait, it even features a windows 95? nice easter egg

notpushkin 36 minutes ago | parent

It is loading a Windows 95 VM (using https://copy.sh/v86/) and runs an actual copy of Encarta 95 there, yeah.

p_l 18 minutes ago | parent

and includes AoE 2 :D

est 49 minutes ago | parent

The mouse hijack feels really weird

Brendinooo 49 minutes ago | parent

Straight to Mind Maze for me!

(Mouse is VERY touchy though)

rahidz 49 minutes ago | parent

Immediately jumped straight to MindMaze.

wafflez 46 minutes ago | parent

What a throwback. Right back to writing "book reports" in middle school.

0x10ca1h0st 29 minutes ago | parent

The very first program I ever used on my father's PC, and would constantly get stuck playing Mind Maze for hours.

xacky 25 minutes ago | parent

CD ROM encyclopedias were only really viable when dial up speeds limited the amount of multimedia content on the internet. Both Microsoft and Britannica were victims of internet encyclopedias. And now static internet based encyclopedias are themselves under threat of personalised AI content as well. The pursuit of knowledge keeps changing what knowledge itself looks like.

phantomathkg 19 minutes ago | parent

the problem i have is the mouse control is weird.

haunter 16 minutes ago | parent

I still have my boxed copy of Encarta 2001. The interactive world atlas was the best feature! Miles ahead of everything at the time. Multiple layers of stats from population to weather to languages etc https://youtu.be/zsbShjlh6xk?si=4U47LILUmKPfXgPY&t=320

I_am_tiberius 11 minutes ago | parent

This makes me raise the question whether it's possible to view wikipedia as per ...? I know i can go back per article - but can I browse wikipidea as it was in 2005?

sevenseacat 9 minutes ago | parent

Mind Maze yesssssssssssss