Coding Horror: Revenge of Codename: Snowball

September 29, 2005

Revenge of Codename: Snowball

What would the world be like if Windows 95 and Windows NT has been cancelled? You'd be surfing the web right now in Windows for Workgroups 3.11:

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 browsing Google

I absolutely love the fact that we get a javascript error on the Google homepage. Not unreasonable, considering WFW 3.11 was well on its way to total obsolescence before Google even made it out of a Stanford dorm room in 1998.

I never browsed the intarweb through any version of Windows 3.x. Most people are surprised to find that there was a Windows 3.x version of circa-1999 Internet Explorer 5. By the time the web caught on in late '95, most of the early adopters I knew had already transitioned to Windows 95. I distinctly remember using the first version of IE under Windows 95-- the one that didn't understand the <table> tag or animated gifs!

As for the title of this post, according to the canonical list of Microsoft code names, Snowball was the internal Microsoft codename for the WFW 3.11 project. If you want to rock your own WFW 3.11 virtual machine, you can download the OS from peteweb. And don't forget DOS 6.22 like I did! Set it up following the great instructions from Virtual PC guy:

There's a huge collection of old 16-bit Windows software on the 10 year anniversary of Windows 3.1 page. It's a sketchy looking website, but if you follow the yahoo briefcase download instructions closely, the software is all still present and downloadable.

You may find WinImage helpful here for creating floppy disk images from collections of files. Virtual PC only understands non-compressed (.IMA) floppy images, so be sure you avoid the default compressed (.IMZ) floppy images.

Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions

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Comments

I'm surprised it renders Google that well.

David Grant on September 30, 2005 02:20 PM

Holy crap that brings back some memories. I designed my first web page in Windows 3.11. It was my first windows box, and only the second computer my family had ever owned.

I remember IE for 3.11, but I much preferred netscape back then.

Marty Thompson on September 30, 2005 03:38 PM

Ha-ha. What's with all this nostalgia? I just went thru this. Here's some more screen shots:
<a href="http://geekswithblogs.net/jwatson/archive/2005/08/30/51586.aspx">http://geekswithblogs.net/jwatson/archive/2005/08/30/51586.aspx</a>;
<a href="http://geekswithblogs.net/jwatson/archive/2005/08/31/51790.aspx">http://geekswithblogs.net/jwatson/archive/2005/08/31/51790.aspx</a>;

John Watson on September 30, 2005 04:38 PM

Maybe, just maybe, we would be using something that wasn't produced in Redmond. I think even the most diehard Windows fanatic would prefer a recent (from the last 5 years or so) version of Linux over WFW.

Søren Mors on October 1, 2005 02:12 PM

With Windows 3.11, not just would you have the Javascript bug in Internet Exploder, you will be able to experience Windows File Mangler, must be the world most used program with a Y2K bug.

In File manager if you have a file made in eg. 2005, the file date will show as 19:5. It must be that 19 was hardcoded and ':' is the ASCII char after 9, sort of the digit for '10'.

Back in 1989 or 1990, while working for a small engineering company I remember that we made sure that we made sure the library functions for textual date representation would be correct also for dates after 2000. I find it lacking that a company the size of Microsoft did not manage to do the same several years later.

RIF on October 1, 2005 03:37 PM

Tut tut, Jeff, it's "teh intarweb". Never "the".

TristanK on October 4, 2005 04:12 AM

So, what were those JavaScript bugs?

Roie M on October 11, 2005 01:33 PM

"There's a huge collection of old 16-bit Windows software on the 10 year anniversary of Windows 3.1 page. It's a sketchy looking website, but if you follow the yahoo briefcase download instructions closely, the software is all still present and downloadable."

No, there isn't. I opened the page and looked, and couldn't see a briefcase, so I did a text search on the page and it wasn't there.

Mark Tuson on July 17, 2006 06:11 AM

Sorry, Mark, looks like that's a dead link now..

Jeff Atwood on July 17, 2006 09:32 AM

Windows 3.11 for life!

surrealdeal on February 26, 2008 05:37 AM