I hacked up a small .tcz package that allows you to set the proxy during boot time:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/setproxy.tcz.infoThe problem you experienced is based on the fact that the environment variables can be only set for the current process, and will be copied to any child process during the time of creation. (There's also the option to set the environment variables for a child process only during creation.) So running
export http_proxy=http://proxy:port (return)
appbrowser
should also get you an appbrowser that connects through the proxy. The first line set the environment variable for the current shell (and it's childs, that's what the "export" is for), and the second one creates the child process. If you write
http_proxy=http://proxy:port appbrowser
it starts the child process with that environment variable set for just this one call. What you can't do is enter
export http_proxy=http://proxy:port
in a shell and then expect the appbrowser started via the wbar to use that variable, since it's not a child of your shell. (And the variable wasn't set before or during the start of wbar either.)
If you want to have the proxy in all processes that are launched with the desktop, drop back to command line, and run
http_proxy=http://proxy:port startx
Now the environment variable will be exported to all child processes of the process running the desktop.
I hope that brings the understanding in the background what happend there.