7 ms·

Related to this, I had trouble finding examples of pre 1996 web design. The internet archive has a lot from 1997 onwards. The oldest live examples of sites from

Related to this, I had trouble finding examples of pre 1996 web design. The internet archive has a lot from 1997 onwards. The oldest live examples of sites from that era, that I know of are: http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T... http://oreilly.com/gnn/gnnhome.html http://oreilly.com/gnn/gnnhome.html http://www.trincoll.edu/zines/tj/tj12.02.93/tjcontents.html http://www.trincoll.edu/zines/tj/tj12.02.93/tjcontents.html The BBC also donated its Networking Club to the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bbcnc.org.uk-19950301 https://archive.org/details/bbcnc.org.uk-19950301

lbhnact 9y ago
If you want to go all the way back, UNC still hosts ibiblio.org, which has links to the first website at CERN http://info.cern.ch/ http://info.cern.ch/ and TBL's first page.
hmhrex 9y ago
That O'Reilly GNN site is beautiful. I miss this simplicity.
- WrtCdEvrydy 9y ago
  Need 3MB worth of JQuery and some swooping in animations.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    It probably predates the blink tag, but I still think it needs it. Some marquee might help.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    And a couple-dozen home-phoners, but try to keep the number of per-click and scroll trackers down to under 10.
- observation 9y ago
  It loaded so fast!
- liveoneggs 9y ago
  I genuinely like the graphic + nav
adventured 9y ago
There's always the famous Dole Kemp '96 campaign site (a fair representation of mid 1990s web design): http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm And this one from CNN (still 1996, but appropriate representation of that 1995/96 era when design had changed a bit from the earlier plain white backgrounds & basic text layouts): http://edition.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/ http://edition.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/
- davehtaylor 9y ago
  I absolutely adore that CNN 1996 site. Man, designs like that were great.
  - mod 9y ago
    I agree--I think that design is wonderful. The credits link & page are pretty bad, otherwise no complaints. And hey, it still works well on small screens. Not flawless, but close.
- macintux 9y ago
  Oh, man. Dole/Kemp was definitely designed in the "Make sure everything fits on a 640 × 480 display, and downloads reasonably fast on a 14.4k modem" era.
- mynameishere 9y ago
  I actually watched the debates and couldn't believe Dole closed out his first debate with Clinton imploring youngsters to "tap into" his "homepage" (the above link) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZhyS5OtPto&t=89m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZhyS5OtPto&t=89m55s
rayiner 9y ago
God I miss when the web was designed for people who could read.
- ChrisSD 9y ago
  Then you'll "love" Microsoft's 1994 page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/
  - mars4rp 9y ago
    "If your browser doesn't support images, we have a text menu as well." coool
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    "WWW.MICROSOFT.COM is running Microsoft's Windows NT Server 3.5 and EMWAC's HTTPS" EMWAC supported TLS 1.2 already back then. Amazing!
    - ChrisSD 9y ago
      Ha, well it is a recreation and obviously not the original. They didn't have the original code so they had to work out how it was made. There's a readme which explains the process: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/readme.html https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/readme.html
      - voltagex_ 9y ago
        I get infinite redirects to profile.microsoft.com for that link if I load it in a browser with live.com cookies. Kinda sad, really.
    - jwilk 9y ago
      I guess HTTPS stood for HTTP Server.
  - stordoff 9y ago
    Is microsoft.com currently not loading for anyone else? I'm getting ERR_SSL_UNRECOGNIZED_NAME_ALERT in Chrome, but I'm not seeing it mentioned anywhere else (e.g. Twitter).
davehtaylor 9y ago
I think it's fascinating the change in how we view site navigation. Another commenter gave a link to an old Microsoft site that had links all over the place. But for the most part, it seemed like sites started to standardize on navigation vertically on the left side. Now, we generally see them horizontally on the top, or in hamburger menus. But it's interested how that paradigm shifted. It seems like vertical side navigation would be more prevalent now, given how much wider monitors are.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  With wider monitors, my browser is actually narrowed. I split the screen in half and devote one half to the browser and the other half to a text editor and terminal. I used to have two monitors to do that, but now just one is fine, but the side effect is that I browse in a pretty narrow window. A narrow window also makes reading somewhat nicer on some sites, since it's harder to read very long lines of text.
  - at-fates-hands 9y ago
    >> A narrow window also makes reading somewhat nicer on some sites, since it's harder to read very long lines of text. Curious to know how this works with ad-heavy sites. Do responsive sites display differently then too? Been flirting with going to a single 32" monitor for a while. Just wondering if you think it's worth it with your experiences since I do development as well and have a similar setup (one monitor for editor and smaller laptop for browser/terminal) and would like to hear your input.
    - SwellJoe 9y ago
      I use an adblocker, so it's hard to know what ads do (though I disable it on some sites that I believe to be reasonably trustworthy about ads, and that I want to support, like reddit and some major newspaper sites; though I tend to pay for a subscription for sites that I really want to support and continue to block ads). But, generally, it's fine. Most sites are entirely usable. There's a few that are quirky, but generally, modern websites are designed to scale down to tablets and phones, so they don't act too weird for a narrow lapptop/desktop browser. I think the most common problem is sites that switch to hamburger menus at too high a resolution (so I get the mobile hamburger navigation on some sites, even though it's kinda silly looking and slightly less ergonomic). It's not super common, though. Most switch to hamburger a little lower than my browser width.
zafka 9y ago
See : zafka.com while a small amount has been added, it was designed around 1994.
cJ0th 9y ago
https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm ;)
- orbitur 9y ago
  There's even a Twitter account (created in 2013) that checks if it's still up, every 3 hours. https://twitter.com/SpaceJamCheck https://twitter.com/SpaceJamCheck
- Sleeep 9y ago
  http://youvegotmail.warnerbros.com http://youvegotmail.warnerbros.com
- 0134340 9y ago
  /r/abandonedweb. It's also ironically now a victim of time.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Sleeep 9y ago
Some good screenshots here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/how-25-popular-websites-looked-when-they-launched/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/how-25-popular-websi... CNN's original online coverage of the OJ Simpson murder trial (1995) is still online and mostly intact - http://www.cnn.com/US/OJ/ http://www.cnn.com/US/OJ/ Welcome to Netscape (94) - http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html It's later than 96 but I don't know who is still paying for hosting for a stadium that was demolished over 16 years ago http://www.3riversstadium.com/index2.html http://www.3riversstadium.com/index2.html
wiremine 9y ago
Ironically, I think you'll have much better luck looking at web design books from that era, instead of links on the web. I just pitched a bunch of my design books from that area, and they were full of "cutting edge" examples.
bahjoite 9y ago
A research project presenting pages from Geocities: http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/ http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/ Pages from 1996 start 102 pages prior to the last page (at present: http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/page/10743 http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/page/10743 )
koz1000 9y ago
You could try my site for Pinball Expo 1994. http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/expo/ http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/expo/ Did it by hand with MS Notepad, MS Paint, Apple QuickTake 100 camera, Chameleon TCP/IP, and Mosaic for PC. I did, however, drop the webmaster email address about 20 years ago.
- 1k2ka 9y ago
  As a student at liu who had no prior knowledge about lysator it's always interesting to see lysator links in the wild, they seem to pop up when least expected. How come the site is hosted at lysator and how come it's still up? Sidenote: The man hosting the site has a very on-topic profile page[0]. [0] https://www.ida.liu.se/~davby02/ https://www.ida.liu.se/~davby02/
  - koz1000 9y ago
    David was a pinball fan like myself and couldn't attend the expo in Chicago that year. I was commiserating on Usenet about not being able to find affordable hosting for the website. This was way before hosting-only companies were available or even Geocities. David stepped up and generously offered room on Lysator. As to why it's still up, I'm not sure. There was a short period where it looked like it was offline, but it's back now. Perhaps because Expo '94 is on a lot of "oldest websites that still work" lists.
- sdrothrock 9y ago
  Lysator is incredibly nostalgic for me; when I was just starting on the internet around 1994-1995, a lot of my favorite websites were on lysator, including the gigantic Wheel of Time Index.
akira2501 9y ago
The US Presidential office has archived the many iterations of it's 'White House' webpage. https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/archived-websites https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/archived-web...
rsync 9y ago
The Space Jam (film) website is a golden example and I find it amazing that it is still functional: https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm (1996)
- gitgud 9y ago
  The trailers still work! https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/cmp/jamcentral/trailerframes.html https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/cmp/jamcen... A good demonstration of how far video on the internet has come. 160px X 120px, 8 frames per second
keithnz 9y ago
My web page is still around http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~keithn/ http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~keithn/ it was mostly done pre 96 .... not that it was really well designed, I just spammed bezels and had a play with this new cool java thing. its an embarrassingly amusing slice of life :)
culot 9y ago
Hard to believe Softhome.net is still around, and has changed little since 1996: https://web.archive.org/web/19961226121720/http://www.softhome.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961226121720/http://www.softho... Also funny that my email address I signed up for in 1996 with them is still active, even though I dont check it for years at a time.

lbhnact 9y ago

If you want to go all the way back, UNC still hosts ibiblio.org, which has links to the first website at CERN http://info.cern.ch/ http://info.cern.ch/ and TBL's first page.

hmhrex 9y ago

That O'Reilly GNN site is beautiful. I miss this simplicity.

WrtCdEvrydy 9y ago
Need 3MB worth of JQuery and some swooping in animations.
- KGIII 9y ago
  It probably predates the blink tag, but I still think it needs it. Some marquee might help.
- rhizome 9y ago
  And a couple-dozen home-phoners, but try to keep the number of per-click and scroll trackers down to under 10.
observation 9y ago
It loaded so fast!
liveoneggs 9y ago
I genuinely like the graphic + nav

adventured 9y ago

There's always the famous Dole Kemp '96 campaign site (a fair representation of mid 1990s web design): http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm And this one from CNN (still 1996, but appropriate representation of that 1995/96 era when design had changed a bit from the earlier plain white backgrounds & basic text layouts): http://edition.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/ http://edition.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/

davehtaylor 9y ago
I absolutely adore that CNN 1996 site. Man, designs like that were great.
- mod 9y ago
  I agree--I think that design is wonderful. The credits link & page are pretty bad, otherwise no complaints. And hey, it still works well on small screens. Not flawless, but close.
macintux 9y ago
Oh, man. Dole/Kemp was definitely designed in the "Make sure everything fits on a 640 × 480 display, and downloads reasonably fast on a 14.4k modem" era.
mynameishere 9y ago
I actually watched the debates and couldn't believe Dole closed out his first debate with Clinton imploring youngsters to "tap into" his "homepage" (the above link) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZhyS5OtPto&t=89m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZhyS5OtPto&t=89m55s

rayiner 9y ago

God I miss when the web was designed for people who could read.

ChrisSD 9y ago
Then you'll "love" Microsoft's 1994 page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/
- mars4rp 9y ago
  "If your browser doesn't support images, we have a text menu as well." coool
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  "WWW.MICROSOFT.COM is running Microsoft's Windows NT Server 3.5 and EMWAC's HTTPS" EMWAC supported TLS 1.2 already back then. Amazing!
  - ChrisSD 9y ago
    Ha, well it is a recreation and obviously not the original. They didn't have the original code so they had to work out how it was made. There's a readme which explains the process: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/readme.html https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/readme.html
    - voltagex_ 9y ago
      I get infinite redirects to profile.microsoft.com for that link if I load it in a browser with live.com cookies. Kinda sad, really.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    I guess HTTPS stood for HTTP Server.
- stordoff 9y ago
  Is microsoft.com currently not loading for anyone else? I'm getting ERR_SSL_UNRECOGNIZED_NAME_ALERT in Chrome, but I'm not seeing it mentioned anywhere else (e.g. Twitter).

davehtaylor 9y ago

I think it's fascinating the change in how we view site navigation. Another commenter gave a link to an old Microsoft site that had links all over the place. But for the most part, it seemed like sites started to standardize on navigation vertically on the left side. Now, we generally see them horizontally on the top, or in hamburger menus. But it's interested how that paradigm shifted. It seems like vertical side navigation would be more prevalent now, given how much wider monitors are.

SwellJoe 9y ago
With wider monitors, my browser is actually narrowed. I split the screen in half and devote one half to the browser and the other half to a text editor and terminal. I used to have two monitors to do that, but now just one is fine, but the side effect is that I browse in a pretty narrow window. A narrow window also makes reading somewhat nicer on some sites, since it's harder to read very long lines of text.
- at-fates-hands 9y ago
  >> A narrow window also makes reading somewhat nicer on some sites, since it's harder to read very long lines of text. Curious to know how this works with ad-heavy sites. Do responsive sites display differently then too? Been flirting with going to a single 32" monitor for a while. Just wondering if you think it's worth it with your experiences since I do development as well and have a similar setup (one monitor for editor and smaller laptop for browser/terminal) and would like to hear your input.
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    I use an adblocker, so it's hard to know what ads do (though I disable it on some sites that I believe to be reasonably trustworthy about ads, and that I want to support, like reddit and some major newspaper sites; though I tend to pay for a subscription for sites that I really want to support and continue to block ads). But, generally, it's fine. Most sites are entirely usable. There's a few that are quirky, but generally, modern websites are designed to scale down to tablets and phones, so they don't act too weird for a narrow lapptop/desktop browser. I think the most common problem is sites that switch to hamburger menus at too high a resolution (so I get the mobile hamburger navigation on some sites, even though it's kinda silly looking and slightly less ergonomic). It's not super common, though. Most switch to hamburger a little lower than my browser width.

zafka 9y ago

See : zafka.com while a small amount has been added, it was designed around 1994.

cJ0th 9y ago

https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm ;)

orbitur 9y ago
There's even a Twitter account (created in 2013) that checks if it's still up, every 3 hours. https://twitter.com/SpaceJamCheck https://twitter.com/SpaceJamCheck
Sleeep 9y ago
http://youvegotmail.warnerbros.com http://youvegotmail.warnerbros.com
0134340 9y ago
/r/abandonedweb. It's also ironically now a victim of time.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Sleeep 9y ago

Some good screenshots here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/how-25-popular-websites-looked-when-they-launched/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/how-25-popular-websi... CNN's original online coverage of the OJ Simpson murder trial (1995) is still online and mostly intact - http://www.cnn.com/US/OJ/ http://www.cnn.com/US/OJ/ Welcome to Netscape (94) - http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html It's later than 96 but I don't know who is still paying for hosting for a stadium that was demolished over 16 years ago http://www.3riversstadium.com/index2.html http://www.3riversstadium.com/index2.html

wiremine 9y ago

Ironically, I think you'll have much better luck looking at web design books from that era, instead of links on the web. I just pitched a bunch of my design books from that area, and they were full of "cutting edge" examples.

bahjoite 9y ago

A research project presenting pages from Geocities: http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/ http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/ Pages from 1996 start 102 pages prior to the last page (at present: http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/page/10743 http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/page/10743 )

koz1000 9y ago

You could try my site for Pinball Expo 1994. http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/expo/ http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/expo/ Did it by hand with MS Notepad, MS Paint, Apple QuickTake 100 camera, Chameleon TCP/IP, and Mosaic for PC. I did, however, drop the webmaster email address about 20 years ago.

1k2ka 9y ago
As a student at liu who had no prior knowledge about lysator it's always interesting to see lysator links in the wild, they seem to pop up when least expected. How come the site is hosted at lysator and how come it's still up? Sidenote: The man hosting the site has a very on-topic profile page[0]. [0] https://www.ida.liu.se/~davby02/ https://www.ida.liu.se/~davby02/
- koz1000 9y ago
  David was a pinball fan like myself and couldn't attend the expo in Chicago that year. I was commiserating on Usenet about not being able to find affordable hosting for the website. This was way before hosting-only companies were available or even Geocities. David stepped up and generously offered room on Lysator. As to why it's still up, I'm not sure. There was a short period where it looked like it was offline, but it's back now. Perhaps because Expo '94 is on a lot of "oldest websites that still work" lists.
sdrothrock 9y ago
Lysator is incredibly nostalgic for me; when I was just starting on the internet around 1994-1995, a lot of my favorite websites were on lysator, including the gigantic Wheel of Time Index.

akira2501 9y ago

The US Presidential office has archived the many iterations of it's 'White House' webpage. https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/archived-websites https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/archived-web...

rsync 9y ago

The Space Jam (film) website is a golden example and I find it amazing that it is still functional: https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm (1996)

gitgud 9y ago
The trailers still work! https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/cmp/jamcentral/trailerframes.html https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/cmp/jamcen... A good demonstration of how far video on the internet has come. 160px X 120px, 8 frames per second

keithnz 9y ago

My web page is still around http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~keithn/ http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~keithn/ it was mostly done pre 96 .... not that it was really well designed, I just spammed bezels and had a play with this new cool java thing. its an embarrassingly amusing slice of life :)

culot 9y ago

Hard to believe Softhome.net is still around, and has changed little since 1996: https://web.archive.org/web/19961226121720/http://www.softhome.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961226121720/http://www.softho... Also funny that my email address I signed up for in 1996 with them is still active, even though I dont check it for years at a time.