4 ms·

You'd have had to live through the nineties to understand it. That was cool at the time; 90% of web pages had animated images like that (the other 10% had anima

You'd have had to live through the nineties to understand it. That was cool at the time; 90% of web pages had animated images like that (the other 10% had animated "under construction" gifs; and 100% had visible visitor counters and a link to a guestbook, before "web 2.0" comment threads was a thing). By the way, the puppy and the cop Clippy were remnants of the failed experiment "Microsoft Bob", which attempted to create user-friendly environment by imitating a whole house, instead of just a "desktop with windows". Those were wild times, full of possibilities, when (almost) no one had much idea of how personal computers ought to be used.

kayamon 8y ago
OP here. I also wrote an article on the delights of things being Under Construction. :) http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/under-construction/ http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/under-construction/
- mattkevan 8y ago
  Great article, thanks for sharing. The first web page I made in about 1995 proudly sported an ‘under construction’ traffic cone gif. It was pretty classy. There’s a sort of ugly/beautiful charm to the early web, a gigantic piece of outsider art.
mattkevan 8y ago
Oh I lived through the 90s. Just used Amigas then Macs. It was surprising that something meant for business could lookso childish. Whereas the closest the Mac got, a ‘toy’ OS that couldn’t be used for Real Work was Clarus the Dogcow.
- whywhywhywhy 8y ago
  > Whereas the closest the Mac got, a ‘toy’ OS that couldn’t be used for Real Work was Clarus the Dogcow. Hang on now lets not forget the leather Calendar app, the reel to reel Podcasts app and flying through space in Time Machine.
  - mattkevan 8y ago
    I was thinking of classic Mac OS, in all it's Platinum glory. Hyper-skeuomorphic interfaces were all iOS 6 and below. At that time I think Calendar was still called iCal on OS X and rejoiced in a brushed-metal finish. I agree about the spacey time machine though - the animation used to judder like crazy on my anglepoise iMac.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Cool at the time? A comment often heard in the nineties was that XP was a joint venture with Fisher Price. Win 98 style UI was getting tired for sure, but there was plenty of laughter for XP's UI. I think 90% of those under construction icons were on geocities weren't they? :)

kayamon 8y ago

OP here. I also wrote an article on the delights of things being Under Construction. :) http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/under-construction/ http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/under-construction/

mattkevan 8y ago
Great article, thanks for sharing. The first web page I made in about 1995 proudly sported an ‘under construction’ traffic cone gif. It was pretty classy. There’s a sort of ugly/beautiful charm to the early web, a gigantic piece of outsider art.

mattkevan 8y ago

Oh I lived through the 90s. Just used Amigas then Macs. It was surprising that something meant for business could lookso childish. Whereas the closest the Mac got, a ‘toy’ OS that couldn’t be used for Real Work was Clarus the Dogcow.

whywhywhywhy 8y ago
> Whereas the closest the Mac got, a ‘toy’ OS that couldn’t be used for Real Work was Clarus the Dogcow. Hang on now lets not forget the leather Calendar app, the reel to reel Podcasts app and flying through space in Time Machine.
- mattkevan 8y ago
  I was thinking of classic Mac OS, in all it's Platinum glory. Hyper-skeuomorphic interfaces were all iOS 6 and below. At that time I think Calendar was still called iCal on OS X and rejoiced in a brushed-metal finish. I agree about the spacey time machine though - the animation used to judder like crazy on my anglepoise iMac.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Cool at the time? A comment often heard in the nineties was that XP was a joint venture with Fisher Price. Win 98 style UI was getting tired for sure, but there was plenty of laughter for XP's UI. I think 90% of those under construction icons were on geocities weren't they? :)