This predates my own web developer journey by a good 15 years, and I found one feature that I'm unsure about how it ever worked.

Navigating to "Virtual Field Trips" takes you to http://satftp.soest.hawaii.edu/maps/butbar.map . At this page you're greeted with what I take is instructions to paint out a frameset?

```

rect index.html 0 0 79 49

rect navnew/navigator.html 80 0 159 49

rect virtual.field.trips.html 160 0 239 49

rect http://radlab.soest.hawaii.edu/satlab 240 0 319 49

rect feedback.html 320 0 399 49

```

It's obviously "shape src x y width height" (or swapped around).

I'm having issues finding a resource that explains what this is and why it seemingly worked in a browser in the 90's but not now - i.e. when it was deprecated and to what degree it was supported prior. Does anyone know more?

Clicking on the rect link goes 404. At first I thought image map, but looking at the MDN article makes me think not.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ma...

I thought it was an earlier syntax for the <map> area but apparently not. The earliest syntax is already identical to the current syntax: https://www.actionpa.org/internet/html_extensions_3.html

Where is that link from? I get an actual HTML page when I go to virtual field trips.

Anyway, it looks like an image map.

Is it VRML or something related?

The syntax seem to differ, so I don't think so

Fascinating. I wonder what machine is processing the requests...

Server: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) OpenSSL/1.0.2k-fips mod_fcgid/2.3.9 mod_wsgi/4.9.0 Python/3.6 PHP/7.4.33

That PHP version has been EOL for quite some time. I hope they aren't exposing any vulns.

I was hoping this would be a digital nomad program :-/

There are (or at least were) several incubators on different islands; they'd probably be happy to get strong proposals?

Historically it's been useful to argue you need to be out there to do your network protocol research :-)

I have signed many guestbooks of that kind of websites :)

HTTP only too! It is missing the visitor counter that I immediately looked for upon seeing the design.

Yup, I remember that too! Back in the day, about 30 years ago, people actually interact a lot online, even in those guest books, and more sincerely.

How do sites like this stay up??

Low-fi university sites are often maintained by professors who have been around a long time and have a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude.

In this case, it appears the author is still active at the university. https://www.higp.hawaii.edu/index.php/people/peter-j-mougini...

Or a "I'm too busy to spend any more time on it now that it is working, and it's not even worth the risk of turning it over to a TA"