Dreamcast Website Development Research

[rizzoislandgame]

Hey ya'll!

I'm currently working on a small archive on Dreamcast website development. As such, if anyone has any useful links, I'd appreciate it. Another part of this, is resources thread for hosting and general development. A lot of modern hosting sites use TLS 1.3, which is incompatible with the Dreamcast Browsers. As such, I need to crowd source hosting options for people who don't want to web-host themselves. I'll keep updating this thread with new stuff as we find it. I'm also searching for one particular website that has the entire list of Planetweb specific HTML tags. I lost it quite awhile ago.

WIP is being made on the dreamcast wiki in order to consoldate this info

Known Working Webpage Builders:
- Microsoft Frontpage 2000 and Below (must turn off all addtional addons such as DHTML and CSS)
- Dreamweaver 4 and Below

Web Development Resources:
- DC Design (dreamcast.planetweb.com)
- PlanetwebMaster
- Dreamcast Arena (Javascript Dreamcast Scripts)
- BlueSwirl Dreamcast Tools
- DC Browser Reverse Engineering Project

Known Compatible Hosting Sites:
- Hostgator
- Dreamhost

[Falco Girgis]

I think this is a FANTASTIC idea. I've seen a lot of gems on the wayback machine (archiving VMU resources) going into explicit details on some of the web browsers' really deep features like invoking a custom Javascript script from the VMU, but I was too dumb to save it.

This is a really good cause, and if anyone else has any information, please share. Notice that the BlueSwirl site that has been around this scene for a VERY LONG TIME is now gone. Somebody is going to need the references and resources to hopefully build a new one some day... and we are actually working on WebAssembly support for the next EVMU release, so you can embed that and play minigames in the browser directly...

[Xiden]

Hey ya'll!

I'm currently working on a small archive on Dreamcast website development. As such, if anyone has any useful links, I'd appreciate it. Another part of this, is resources thread for hosting and general development. A lot of modern hosting sites use TLS 1.3, which is incompatible with the Dreamcast Browsers. As such, I need to crowd source hosting options for people who don't want to web-host themselves. I'll keep updating this thread with new stuff as we find it. I'm also searching for one particular website that has the entire list of Planetweb specific HTML tags. I lost it quite awhile ago.

Web Development Resources:
- DC Design (dreamcast.planetweb.com)
- PlanetwebMaster

Known Compatible Hosting Sites:
- Hostgator

This site (now defunct) had some neat html tags you could use with dreamcast
https://web.archive.org/web/20181029115 ... e-friendly

[-drez01-]

Blueswirl is still around:
https://bswirl.kitsunet.org/

This page has some good info:
https://www.angelfire.com/pa3/VAMPMAN/krypt_dcinfo.html

[Falco Girgis]

Blueswirl is still around:
https://bswirl.kitsunet.org/

Yeah, but try to upload or download something from it.

Also good job on the other links! Omg the Angelfire one is good!

[Falco Girgis]

This site (now defunct) had some neat html tags you could use with dreamcast
https://web.archive.org/web/20181029115 ... e-friendly

OMG this site is defunct? Man, I must be getting old...

[Flatfire]

Man, thanks so much for putting this together. Seems like the Blueswirl page is toast at this point, but I think that Angelfire page might be the single most useful thing in this journey. Its inclusion of the dreamcast specific application tags is extremely useful. DreamAnimator is a nice add too.

I've always preferred putting together webpages myself, but I may try using Dreamweaver 4 just for fun here. Seems like it's probably easiest to target browser 2.0 and onwards, given the added support for JS 2.0. Though it seems like there's a lot of need to confirm some of these browser features.

Anyone know if there's been anything else discovered since this was posted?

[rizzoislandgame]

Anyone know if there's been anything else discovered since this was posted?

Unfortunately not, but I do have a backup of all the info websites on my PC. Might upload them to the wiki. Someone needs to find the time to flesh out the web development page, but I've been too busy with other projects.

One thing of note, is that since CSS isn't supported, you'll need to use tables for all your formatting. It's complex and stupid, but it works

[OatBob]

Here are my notes from working with this stuff for one year. My focus has been Japanese webpage restoration.

I'm using hostinger.com . HTTP and javascript functions. VMI downloads function. PHP is a premium feature and requires a more expensive subscription. HTTPS settings on by default, but can be disabled.

VMI/VMS downloads:
Download prompt may trigger, but the download will fail in DreamPassport and DreamKey. The MIME type needs to be enabled in HTACCESS. For some reason PlanetWeb is immune to this issue, obfuscating the problem. Add these 2 lines to HTACCESS to make downloads available to all.

Code: Select all

addtype application/x-dreamcast-vms-info VMI
addtype application/x-dreamcast-vms VMS

Source: speud

---

Webpage builder recommendations (for Japanese websites):

Claris Homepage 3.0
Final version of Claris before being discontinued in 2001. This version supports Mac and Windows.

Adobe Go Live 4.0
Appropriate for 2000. I have ver 4.0J installed in Win11(64-bit) and everything seems to work but the quicktime function. I need to explore more, but the language barrier makes it a pain to learn on. I believe earlier versions of this software are Mac only.

IBM Homepage Builder
IBM Homepage Builder 2000 (v4) seems to be everywhere I look. The 2001 version is v5 and may also be suitable. 2001 version supports i-mode (for J-phone) I need more information on this version.... V6 tries to keep up with some new standards not compatible with older firefox clients, so later versions may be unsuitable.

I really can't understate how ubiquitous IBM Homepage Builder is for the Japanese webscape, so let's hit some facts:

• It has been No. 1 in sales for more than 13 consecutive years since October 1999 as a package software for web authoring tools,
• According to a 2006 IPA survey, more than 68% of Japanese sites using web authoring software were created with Homepage Builder.
• In a 2008 Sourcenext "Survey on the Usage of Website Creation", 71.7% of all respondents used Homepage Builder.

Source: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ホームページ・ビルダー

For simple hypertext editor, I use notepad++ for most SHIFT-JIS encoded pages. For the rare EUC-JP page, I switch to Adobe GoLive 4.0J.

---

Character encoding for Japanese webpages around 2000 is mostly SHIFT_JIS and occasional EUC-JP. Japan was both innovators in new standards for media technology like home entertainment and personal phones, but they also were slow to change established standards. The ISO committee unfriendly when establishing UTF-8, and there was no rush to adopt at that time. FYI, 2ch still uses SHIFT_JIS in 2025 so that ASCII-style cat art culture remains alive.

Importantly, PlanetWeb does not support these 2 character sets.

I have more to say about browsers but I'm tired. Mojibake is an entire subject, and I have polished up some gems from the old "DC browsers group" form yahoo groups.

[Flatfire]

Anyone know if there's been anything else discovered since this was posted?

Unfortunately not, but I do have a backup of all the info websites on my PC. Might upload them to the wiki. Someone needs to find the time to flesh out the web development page, but I've been too busy with other projects.

One thing of note, is that since CSS isn't supported, you'll need to use tables for all your formatting. It's complex and stupid, but it works

Lol, what else is new? Honestly, not having CSS might be a breath of fresh air as far as formatting is concerned. Should keep things linear. I can probably code most of a site using some form of Markdown to HTML tool at that point. Though I'll need to make sure it fits the HTML4 standard. Nevermind, seems PlanetWeb 3.0 supports at most HTML 3.2 per their in-browser FAQ here:



My goal is just to put together something small, but easily served. No forms/submissions due to the lack of HTTPS support in most browsers.