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Restoring/fixing the original ZZ proposal webpage from 2006

edward_9x

Member
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May 31, 2023
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231
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Inside your monitor
Greetings, SSF.

Some of you may know the archive.org page of nooks_zz.htm, the original ZZ method proposal webpage from all the way back in 2006, though you probably don't know that it was also supposed to contain animated cube applets, which served to showcase example solves, F2L algs and a huge table of last layer algs. These cube applets, based on AnimCube (a Java applet), used to work on old browsers, but modern ones such as Chrome or Firefox no longer support them. Therefore, if you were to load up the page's archive today, it would look broken and empty.
Today, I sat down for 5 hours and got to work fixing the applets, painstakingly replacing every AnimCube applet with a new, AnimCube3.js applet by hand (a total of 209 applets!) (it was a lot of manual work, until I got tired of it and just wrote a Python script to do the rest once I got halfway through the first alg table). I have now finished this task, and the resulting file is attached to this post. All you have to do in order to see the page in its full, original glory is:
  • Download the attached nooks_zz_new.txt, and rename it to nooks_zz_new.htm (the forum won't let me upload it as .htm)
  • Download AnimCube3.js, and put it in the same folder
  • Open the first file in your browser of choice
(Note: I also made it render just a bit nicer on mobile).
Now, there are still some things left to fix: On the page, there is currently a reference to an unknown missing file called ang_flag.gif, and an EOLine trainer applet written by Zborowski that wasn't archived anywhere, as far as I'm aware.

EDIT: Maybe it should just load AnimCube3 from an external source, and not a local file. I'm too lazy to fix that right now
 

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Today, I sat down for 5 hours and got to work fixing the applets, painstakingly replacing every AnimCube applet with a new, AnimCube3.js applet by hand (a total of 209 applets!)

It sounds terrible. I am sorry for your inconvience.

These cube applets, based on AnimCube (a Java applet), used to work on old browsers, but modern ones such as Chrome or Firefox no longer support them.

Actually, good news (see this page for various Java applets). CheerpJ can be used as a Chrome extension, so last time I checked all Java applets from AnimCube documentation page were loaded and displayed correctly in desktop Chrome with CheerpJ applet runner extension.

However, AnimCubeJS is a way to go :)
 
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The encoding of the polish chars on this page looks broken/corrupted on my (mobile) device, it should be ISO-8859-2.
Anyway, glad this was helpful :]
Changing it to UTF-8 in VS Code solved the problem on my side. Let me know if it works for you.
 
those applets in unstyled tables sure bring back some nostalgia!

Right. Also notice some unconventional notation from today's perspective:
  1. meaning of Y and Z cube rotations being swapped (and in upper case)
  2. 'a' and 's' modifiers being used (which are actually coming from the Singmaster notation)
 
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Right. Also notice some unconventional notation from today's perspective:
  1. meaning of Y and Z cube rotations being swapped (and in upper case)
  2. 'a' and 's' modifiers being used (which are actually coming from the Singmaster notation)
The rotation thing is pretty common to use either z or y as the vertical. Depends on the country and software being used
 
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