I think this question is more and more relevant as html5 consumes too much resources and old pure html4 browsers are not able to cope with current https protocols. html5 is one of the main internet killers. The same page, same look 50x more ram and cpu used - I don't want that. CSS have shown in advance what would happen, but w3c pushed further thinking that developers will shift to reason miraculously and stat making efficient pages... Either the page will work with html4 rendering or I probably don't need to see it. I survived with disabled javascript for more than a decade when it started damaging the web.

I want pure html4 browser that would be able to connect to current servers. Ofc it would be best if it could work like in the applet days when one only opened this or that piece of java or flash, leaving rest of the web developer phantasmagoria untouched - but html5 is developed to not support such approach. Disabling media autoplay is solution to rather small fraction of the problem. Thus user lost control over his resources again and this time in a very big way.

I see a way in building an old browser with new crypting protocols, but that would proly be a bumpy road.