Nearshare.net

Nearshare.net was a 100% client-side static web application for transferring files between stations on a LAN. The approach was simple, but relied on technologies that are now obsolete. The site no longer exists, and finding the source code would require that I do some archaeology.

The approach was:

1. A single web page on the entire site, index.html, would display an intially-empty table of files available for transferring as well as the hosts that are making them available.
2. A java applet with no UI would load on the single page the site presented. This applet would:
3. Send periodic broadcast messages to the client's LAN, announcing its presence and list of files it is making available.
4. Receive similar broadcasts from any other instances on the LAN, updating the table of available files/hosts.
5. Update the table presented to the user based upon the broadcasts it received.
6. Host a tiny web server for sharing its files.

That last point was, in my opinion, the cool part. It ran a web server inside the browser.

To share a file, a user would use an html form at the top of the page and use a file upload control to select a file to share. The form would interact with the embedded java applet (instead of actually uploading anything) and the applet would begin advertising the file.

The table would simply make each file in the table a link to the embedded web server in the browser on the host presenting the file.

The site ran for a few years but as the technologies were obsoleted it worked on fewer and fewer browsers, so I eventually let it die.