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Article missed loads. Like the fact that a h1 would pretty much take up all the screen real estate back then because 800x600px resolution was luxurious back in

Article missed loads. Like the fact that a h1 would pretty much take up all the screen real estate back then because 800x600px resolution was luxurious back in the day. So no one used h1,h2 etc. They just bolded text instead for headings. And used pixel fonts to get the font size down to a readable 10px to squeeze in text navigation where icons didn't cut the mustard. Having said that the default grey background was there for a reason - it was a sane readable default. I find many modern sites still difficult on the eyes compared to their unstyled counterparts. The lack of an underline and visited colour change on links disorientates me. It's all mystery meat navigation. Mystery meat navigation is a whole other section of history missing. Some websites were made entirely in flash. Others just had a splash page. And many of these flash sites required you to hover and click about like a lunatic trying to find web content. Oh the good old days...

anexprogrammer 10y ago
Then there was webpagesthatsuck.com where you could see the latest mystery navigation idea from someone who should know better. Or some multinational site looking like a geocities homepage. I never could decide if the design of pagesthatsuck was deliberate satire or accidental, but it was always an ugly site itself. It used to be fun back then browsing sites like clientsfromhell, the similar programming one who's name I now forget, and pagesthatsuck over lunch. Nowadays that's much less satisfying. Time was you could kill 20 minutes looking at some awful sites and terrible VB code. The comments were usually most fun. Now they've all reduced content so much that you get about 1/4 the content in a long column that takes 1/5 browser width. Of course now a clean modern site with 3 mile long ad interstitials between each piece. Progress? Oddly haven't visited any of those for years now!
- douche 10y ago
  > the similar programming one who's name I now forget http://thedailywtf.com/ http://thedailywtf.com/ maybe?
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    That's the one! Seems to be more browsing friendly than last I remember it. Far better than the other two currently are.
    - douche 10y ago
      It used to be much, much uglier - I think they had taken inspiration from the default ASP.NET error pages...
- CM30 10y ago
  Web Pages That Suck still exists and gets updated every now and again: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/ http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/ And yeah, the ugly design is a deliberate thing. From the FAQ page: > Why does your site suck? I came here looking to learn good web design techniques. > I'm always puzzled — and a little bit scared by this question. After all, the domain is called "Web Pages That Suck" not "Web Pages That Don't Suck." > Actually, there was a version of this site back in 1998-1999 that was really nice (Michael Willis, my co-author created it), but I got rid of it because it looked too nice. http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/faq.html http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/faq.html So yeah. It sucks because hey, what better way to cover bad websites than on a website that's pretty bad in of itself?
kalleboo 10y ago
> Some websites were made entirely in flash. Others just had a splash page. Those were the best ones! http://html5zombo.com http://html5zombo.com

anexprogrammer 10y ago

Then there was webpagesthatsuck.com where you could see the latest mystery navigation idea from someone who should know better. Or some multinational site looking like a geocities homepage. I never could decide if the design of pagesthatsuck was deliberate satire or accidental, but it was always an ugly site itself. It used to be fun back then browsing sites like clientsfromhell, the similar programming one who's name I now forget, and pagesthatsuck over lunch. Nowadays that's much less satisfying. Time was you could kill 20 minutes looking at some awful sites and terrible VB code. The comments were usually most fun. Now they've all reduced content so much that you get about 1/4 the content in a long column that takes 1/5 browser width. Of course now a clean modern site with 3 mile long ad interstitials between each piece. Progress? Oddly haven't visited any of those for years now!

douche 10y ago
> the similar programming one who's name I now forget http://thedailywtf.com/ http://thedailywtf.com/ maybe?
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  That's the one! Seems to be more browsing friendly than last I remember it. Far better than the other two currently are.
  - douche 10y ago
    It used to be much, much uglier - I think they had taken inspiration from the default ASP.NET error pages...
CM30 10y ago
Web Pages That Suck still exists and gets updated every now and again: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/ http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/ And yeah, the ugly design is a deliberate thing. From the FAQ page: > Why does your site suck? I came here looking to learn good web design techniques. > I'm always puzzled — and a little bit scared by this question. After all, the domain is called "Web Pages That Suck" not "Web Pages That Don't Suck." > Actually, there was a version of this site back in 1998-1999 that was really nice (Michael Willis, my co-author created it), but I got rid of it because it looked too nice. http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/faq.html http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/faq.html So yeah. It sucks because hey, what better way to cover bad websites than on a website that's pretty bad in of itself?

kalleboo 10y ago

> Some websites were made entirely in flash. Others just had a splash page. Those were the best ones! http://html5zombo.com http://html5zombo.com