7 ms·

Websites got a lot less fun at some point too. A lot of the designs seem dated now, but I really miss the days when websites had brightly colored text over load

Websites got a lot less fun at some point too. A lot of the designs seem dated now, but I really miss the days when websites had brightly colored text over load backgrounds. Obviously modern sites are more usable, but I want <blink> tags back.

FussyZeus 8y ago
That and 2/3rds of websites are just Shopify templates, etc. I suppose this is the natural progression as a given thing becomes more accessible, that the things themselves lose personality and flair because literally anybody can do it now. It reminds of cars, actually, how back in the early days every car was unique because when you bought a "car" what you received was a chassis, engine, wheels, etc. and then you'd take that to a coach builder who'd finish the job to your liking. Then as time went on, things got standardized (for cars, it was manufacturers and models, for websites, it's companies like Shopify, Wordpress, Joomla, etc. and then slowly everything gets paired down into what is generally agreed upon as the "correct" set of features, and they all just look a bit the same. And then of course you occasionally have a teenager who fits a great stereo to a Mazda or something, but by and large, everything is pretty much standardized. I know it's more efficient, but it's terribly boring.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > things themselves lose personality and flair because literally anybody can do it now. I'd argue that fewer people can do it now (relative to the Internet population) than previously, because free webspace is dead, the desktop is dead (the laptop close behind it), ftp is dead, DMCA, GDPR, hackers are scary, HTML is much more complex (e.g. responsive design). The web is a playing field for larger corporations now and most people and small entities have given up and just maintain a FB/IG presence.
  - gsich 8y ago
    Desktop isn't dead, neither is (by extension) laptop.
    - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
      All the people getting online around the developing world overwhelmingly own only phones. Their phones are the only electronic device they have. Even in developed countries it is becoming extremely common now for people whose don't create much text content to only use a phone or tablet. Desktops and tablets are something they maybe only see at work.
      - Retric 8y ago
        In the early days aka pre 1990 very few people where online or had access to computers worldwide. In the 90’s access kept increasing but mostly in the developed world which is ~1/6 of global population. New PC sales makes it look like access is dropping, but the reality is people simply use older Computers on average. A 10 year old desktop in 1998 is relatively ancient, but in 2018 it’s not that far behind the curve. On top of that tablets and smartphones often replace secondary computers. If you have a powerful gaming desktop and a tablet then a laptop is less useful.
      - Pigo 8y ago
        But there is a lot of people at work right now, on their desktop and laptop.
      - rjf72 8y ago
        This is going to vary by area. In various locations I've lived, all in the developing world, phones are used for mindless social media and games, desktops are used for everything else. There are some cultural things that might make the numbers look misleading or just generally be very difficult to measure. For instance internet cafes tend to be ubiquitous in many parts of the world which provide easy and extremely comfortable access to high end computers which people in many cases use effectively as their own. With prices that start at some pennies per hour, it also often makes more economic sense in many cases. Another big issue is that 'computer malls' are also still a thing. Think something like Fry's, but 6 stories tall and full of nothing but independent shops. These places drive two confounding issues. The first is that they build [lots] of computers a la carte. PC sales figures only come from major distributors like Dell, HP, etc. So even though there are millions of PCs sold at these malls, it'd count as 0 by most metrics. And another factor is that people tend to repair/refurbish/upgrade their computers rather than buy new ones. These malls again facilitate such things at very affordable prices. I can count the number of tablets I've seen on one hand.
  - IWeldMelons 8y ago
    Actually, PC sales increases in 2018. https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/13/17567760/pc-sales-growth-idc-gartner-july-2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/13/17567760/pc-sales-growth-...
    - ghaff 8y ago
      The devices are still sold. However, they're increasingly just used as browsers. I was just saying to someone that it's something of an irony that Chromebooks seem to have settled into something primarily for the K-12 education market when they're really all the PC that most people need. I actually travel on business with one a lot of the time but will probably replace it because no one really makes the hardware I want.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        > they're increasingly just used as browsers So what? A browser is all you need to make a website.
        ghaff 8y ago
        Historically, when people have talked about desktops and laptops they have generally been thinking in terms of a stateful device that ran applications locally. Increasingly they're just a convenient form-factor to run a browser. They're effectively functioning as a modern-day thin client. When people say the desktop/laptop is largely dead. That's what they mean. [ADDED: That, and that web access is increasingly through a phone.]
      - WillPostForFood 8y ago
        It's Larry Ellison's Network Computer idea finally realized, 20 years later. https://www.cnet.com/news/oracle-to-debut-500-network-computer-1/ https://www.cnet.com/news/oracle-to-debut-500-network-comput...
        ghaff 8y ago
        Yep. The browser + web has effectively evolved into what all the deliberate attempts to create thin clients mostly failed at. (Just as app stores largely do what application virtualization was supposed to.)
  - CalRobert 8y ago
    All those things are dead, and what's worse, replaced by devices whose primary focus is consumption rather than ceation
    - asark 8y ago
      If I could only have one consumer computing device to make a movie, or a drawing, or a anything involving photos, I'd pick one of those "consumption" devices over a desktop or laptop without hesitation. Even a phone, for anything involving the camera. The form factor and extra/better sensors make them great for all kinds of things. I'd also rather have an iPhone helping me out in the workshop than a laptop or desktop, for a bunch of reasons. I can use it as a measuring device, a level, a note-taking/shopping-list machine (hands free, even!), a youtube how-to player, an instruction manual finder, and so on, and it fits in my pocket and reasonable amounts of sawdust and liquid won't hurt it. That's creation. People spend most of their time on "real" computers consuming, too, by a huge margin. I still wouldn't say their (computers') primary focus is consumption. Anyway, the premise is kind of nonsense as consumption is a major part of many creative processes.
      - CalRobert 8y ago
        This is all true. But the barrier to go from consuming to creating is a lot higher now. Making silly little programs in BASIC or Perl is a lot tougher on an iphone, and that's what sparked the interest for a lot of people (though maybe I'm wrong and it's getting easier?)
        asark 8y ago
        For the specific case of creating software, then? I'd say the Swift Playground is (much) easier to get started with and also more compelling than hacking around with Perl on (at first) Win98 was.
  - Pigo 8y ago
    This was my point, though you put it much more articulately. People used to make websites because they were enthusiastic about The Smashing Pumpkins, Fight Club, or their EverQuest guild. Now they make sites for a business. Business ruined eBay, and then it spread to the rest of the web. If you have a passion you want to building for, you have to accept a terms of service of a big platform and build with their tools. It might be easier, but it sure has been less fun to view.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    > free webspace is dead Nope, it's better than ever. You have non-profit providers like https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/, regular shared hosting with free plans, and stuff like Github pages and Netlify for those with a bit more tech skills. Way better than the times when you had Geocities and such injecting ads into your site. > the desktop is dead (the laptop close behind it) No need for those to build a website. Any cheap Android phone can do it. > ftp is dead Nope, the previously mentioned shared hosting providers still offer it. > HTML is much more complex (e.g. responsive design) Old-school HTML pretty much works the same, and is actually quite fine on both desktop and mobile screens. -- Frankly, I don't think the problem is that making your own site has gotten any harder, it's that there was no FB/IG back then. Had there been FB pages from the start of the web, you'd probably would have never seen so many custom sites in the first place.
    - hedora 8y ago
      > Had there been FB pages from the start of the web, you'd probably would have never seen so many custom sites in the first place. I’m not sure about this. AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe all had vibrant online communities. However, what you could do was much more limited than the federated web, and they were silos. Without the competition of “I’ll host my own server, and search engines will index it”, I wonder if FB and it’s predecessors would have been able to figure out what to build.
      - FussyZeus 8y ago
        Well Facebook was built on the failures of MySpace which in turn was built on the failures of Friendster, and so on. People who wanted their own space were always making their own space, and the rest would go to whichever social network was the most relevant at the time.
        mtberatwork 8y ago
        Facebook wasn't built on MySpace's failures, they were both operating at the same time. People moved to Facebook because it was more intimate and less commercialized while MySpace turned into a dodgy spam heap.
  - Crinus 8y ago
    Half of those you call dead (desktop, ftp, simple html) are things i use all the time :-P. And i'm sure free webspace isn't dead as i used one about 3 years ago which was the first hit on google among many and i doubt all of them vanished so fast.
fredley 8y ago
I miss the times when websites weren't being designed by designers, and even when they were the practice of web-design was in its infancy so the well-trodden tropes of today's internet were not established yet. It was creatively speaking a very exciting space - there were almost no rules yet, and you could do whatever and people wouldn't be turned off because your site looked weird or unusable, because all sites looked weird and were equally unusable. There are many upsides to the web we have today: accessibility, ease of use, ease of discovery, rich content, but that creative space has gone and something with that fresh creative scope combined with massive, new audience may not exist again in my lifetime (or even ever - the internet was the first time you could throw up a page and have people all over the World see it - a larger network of eyeballs can never exist).
- sverige 8y ago
  I agree with everything you said except the part about rich content today. Maybe I'm nostalgic, but I think there's a much lower percentage of that today. Unless celebrity gossip and political self-promotion is considered rich content.
  - fredley 8y ago
    I know exactly what you mean - when I said rich content though I was talking more about images, animations, video, games. In the early web over a 28.8k (or slower!) modem you'd have to make every non-text asset count and compress it (3-phase loading jpegs, anyone?), now you can put 10Mb of javascript executable in there and no one bats an eye.
    - sverige 8y ago
      I misread your comment, of course! Yes, pictures were a calculated luxury. If you asked me to click to download a picture and it wasn't worth the five minute wait, you went on a certain list.
fma 8y ago
I think back in the day people created websites really for fun and can do whatever they want. Now you are judged against the best websites. Probably the only remnants of the old web are professors who publish academic websites and are based on content rather than design. I do remember when I was about to graduate there was talk of standardizing all the professor websites. I would agree all websites would need accessibility, mobility etc but like you I miss the old web where you could just explore. Having said that, the new Captain Marvel website is awesome. I don't think the page counter is real though :( https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel/ https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel/
- EamonnMR 8y ago
  Nothing makes me trust a site more than a ~ in the url somewhere.
- godshatter 8y ago
  Nice. Captain Marvel's website wouldn't load without enabling javascript for three domains, and then wanted four more after it loaded. It looks retro, but it's the same modern web crap.
badsectoracula 8y ago
There, i made that a couple of days ago, have fun :-P http://runtimeterror.com/games/dino/ http://runtimeterror.com/games/dino/ (and i think the main runtimeterror.com site has a bit of a late 90s/early 2000s style, but it is just that i prefer it that way)
neovive 8y ago
Perhaps the novelty of the Internet faded away and access is now viewed in the same light as "dial-tone" was in the decades before--it's just there when you need it. The web platform evolved into a much more complex space. In the early days (late 90's) you could spend an hour in "HotDog Web Editor" and build a page that looked somewhat close to a mainstream website. Those days are long gone and most people now opt for platforms, templates and/or site builders, which make total business sense and are the right decision for most, but they lack the fun and excitement experienced by the early Internet "webmasters".
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
As bad as many sites were in the 90s, modern sites somehow manage to be worse. Just yesterday I visited somewhere on my phone and about 2/3rds of the screen was occupied by slide-in banners (top and bottom!) informing and or asking me for some shit I of course didn't read because I went there to see the actual content. I'd take spinning flaming guitar gifs, gaudy tiled backgrounds, and <blink> over that crap any day.
raxxorrax 8y ago
They might be more usable if they weren't plastered with ads. If you disable your adblock, many sites are far worse than sites from 20 years ago.
tibbon 8y ago
I personally miss personal sites, and "under construction" signs.
roland35 8y ago
You can't forget about the marching ants too!
IgorPartola 8y ago
Check out apps like Snapchat. It is the modern day equivalent of a blink tag.
geddy 8y ago
I think the word you're looking for is "personality". Sure half the sites were blinding and had background music and blinking crap and were pretty terrible, but it perfectly reflected the person that built it, however shoddily. Now, everything is sterilized. Run through a million filters to be picture-perfect, work on everything beautifully, etc. This is great for the bulk of the web (businesses and web apps and what-not), but personal websites disappearing was a _huge_ blow to the personality of the internet. Heck, MySpace pages were a disaster, letting users run arbitrary HTML and CSS everywhere, and when Facebook came along everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief that _finally_ we'd be free of those horrendous MySpace pages. Now, looking back, I miss the crap out of those pages. I also ditched social media entirely but I consider everything I just mentioned as playing a large role in that. No charm, no personality. Rigid. Walled gardens. It's like a microcosm of the state of technology in 2019. And I mentioned personal sites disappearing, and I still stand by it - yes, of course there are blogs and what-not, but they're not the same. They're hosted, fast, efficient, and typically use approved themes. If you want to get down and dirty and actually make your own site, it'd be looked at as a gigantic waste of time. Technology has come too far for it to be practical to build a fancy site out of pure flat HTML files that looks like the worst 90s sites. Why do that, when you could just have an out-of-the-box Wordpress or Tumblr site? Plus, no one would visit it anyway. If it's not spammed or marketing, no one's visiting anything these days. It's just too saturated. The average internet user visits a tiny fraction of the number of websites they used to. Typically, aggregators. Reddit and Facebook and whatever. Worse yet, aggregators that pull in only things they agree with, shared by people they agree with. And that is their version of the internet, and not to mention, the world. No dissenting opinions, nothing original. It's depressing and I hate it. I grew up learning to build websites from copying source code into Notepad and running it locally. It was a hot mess, but so much fun and super rewarding. The 90s web, even early 2000s until ~2006 or so (when I personally consider it went "too mainstream" to put on my hipster hat, and everyone was suddenly on it), I miss it all. Sorry for the rant but this all hits close to home and, as a web developer who got started in the mid-90s, I'm subjected to the "modern web" for many hours a day, and I'd give anything to see it regress.
- unimpressive 8y ago
  >And I mentioned personal sites disappearing, and I still stand by it - yes, of course there are blogs and what-not, but they're not the same. They're hosted, fast, efficient, and typically use approved themes. If you want to get down and dirty and actually make your own site, it'd be looked at as a gigantic waste of time. Technology has come too far for it to be practical to build a fancy site out of pure flat HTML files that looks like the worst 90s sites. Why do that, when you could just have an out-of-the-box Wordpress or Tumblr site? I still write my website by hand. I use a static site generator to do things like make a blog index and stuff, but I don't use any templates. Everything you see is designed by me. http://www.jdpressman.com/ http://www.jdpressman.com/
pmarreck 8y ago
http://fredericiana.com/2012/11/04/html5-blink-tag/ http://fredericiana.com/2012/11/04/html5-blink-tag/ Blink is easily implemented in pure CSS these days if you still want it. You can even customize its behavior!
prithee 8y ago
Check out the recent game release, "Hypnospace Outlaw."

FussyZeus 8y ago

That and 2/3rds of websites are just Shopify templates, etc. I suppose this is the natural progression as a given thing becomes more accessible, that the things themselves lose personality and flair because literally anybody can do it now. It reminds of cars, actually, how back in the early days every car was unique because when you bought a "car" what you received was a chassis, engine, wheels, etc. and then you'd take that to a coach builder who'd finish the job to your liking. Then as time went on, things got standardized (for cars, it was manufacturers and models, for websites, it's companies like Shopify, Wordpress, Joomla, etc. and then slowly everything gets paired down into what is generally agreed upon as the "correct" set of features, and they all just look a bit the same. And then of course you occasionally have a teenager who fits a great stereo to a Mazda or something, but by and large, everything is pretty much standardized. I know it's more efficient, but it's terribly boring.

lazyjones 8y ago
> things themselves lose personality and flair because literally anybody can do it now. I'd argue that fewer people can do it now (relative to the Internet population) than previously, because free webspace is dead, the desktop is dead (the laptop close behind it), ftp is dead, DMCA, GDPR, hackers are scary, HTML is much more complex (e.g. responsive design). The web is a playing field for larger corporations now and most people and small entities have given up and just maintain a FB/IG presence.
- gsich 8y ago
  Desktop isn't dead, neither is (by extension) laptop.
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    All the people getting online around the developing world overwhelmingly own only phones. Their phones are the only electronic device they have. Even in developed countries it is becoming extremely common now for people whose don't create much text content to only use a phone or tablet. Desktops and tablets are something they maybe only see at work.
    - Retric 8y ago
      In the early days aka pre 1990 very few people where online or had access to computers worldwide. In the 90’s access kept increasing but mostly in the developed world which is ~1/6 of global population. New PC sales makes it look like access is dropping, but the reality is people simply use older Computers on average. A 10 year old desktop in 1998 is relatively ancient, but in 2018 it’s not that far behind the curve. On top of that tablets and smartphones often replace secondary computers. If you have a powerful gaming desktop and a tablet then a laptop is less useful.
    - Pigo 8y ago
      But there is a lot of people at work right now, on their desktop and laptop.
    - rjf72 8y ago
      This is going to vary by area. In various locations I've lived, all in the developing world, phones are used for mindless social media and games, desktops are used for everything else. There are some cultural things that might make the numbers look misleading or just generally be very difficult to measure. For instance internet cafes tend to be ubiquitous in many parts of the world which provide easy and extremely comfortable access to high end computers which people in many cases use effectively as their own. With prices that start at some pennies per hour, it also often makes more economic sense in many cases. Another big issue is that 'computer malls' are also still a thing. Think something like Fry's, but 6 stories tall and full of nothing but independent shops. These places drive two confounding issues. The first is that they build [lots] of computers a la carte. PC sales figures only come from major distributors like Dell, HP, etc. So even though there are millions of PCs sold at these malls, it'd count as 0 by most metrics. And another factor is that people tend to repair/refurbish/upgrade their computers rather than buy new ones. These malls again facilitate such things at very affordable prices. I can count the number of tablets I've seen on one hand.
- IWeldMelons 8y ago
  Actually, PC sales increases in 2018. https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/13/17567760/pc-sales-growth-idc-gartner-july-2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/13/17567760/pc-sales-growth-...
  - ghaff 8y ago
    The devices are still sold. However, they're increasingly just used as browsers. I was just saying to someone that it's something of an irony that Chromebooks seem to have settled into something primarily for the K-12 education market when they're really all the PC that most people need. I actually travel on business with one a lot of the time but will probably replace it because no one really makes the hardware I want.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      > they're increasingly just used as browsers So what? A browser is all you need to make a website.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Historically, when people have talked about desktops and laptops they have generally been thinking in terms of a stateful device that ran applications locally. Increasingly they're just a convenient form-factor to run a browser. They're effectively functioning as a modern-day thin client. When people say the desktop/laptop is largely dead. That's what they mean. [ADDED: That, and that web access is increasingly through a phone.]
    - WillPostForFood 8y ago
      It's Larry Ellison's Network Computer idea finally realized, 20 years later. https://www.cnet.com/news/oracle-to-debut-500-network-computer-1/ https://www.cnet.com/news/oracle-to-debut-500-network-comput...
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Yep. The browser + web has effectively evolved into what all the deliberate attempts to create thin clients mostly failed at. (Just as app stores largely do what application virtualization was supposed to.)
- CalRobert 8y ago
  All those things are dead, and what's worse, replaced by devices whose primary focus is consumption rather than ceation
  - asark 8y ago
    If I could only have one consumer computing device to make a movie, or a drawing, or a anything involving photos, I'd pick one of those "consumption" devices over a desktop or laptop without hesitation. Even a phone, for anything involving the camera. The form factor and extra/better sensors make them great for all kinds of things. I'd also rather have an iPhone helping me out in the workshop than a laptop or desktop, for a bunch of reasons. I can use it as a measuring device, a level, a note-taking/shopping-list machine (hands free, even!), a youtube how-to player, an instruction manual finder, and so on, and it fits in my pocket and reasonable amounts of sawdust and liquid won't hurt it. That's creation. People spend most of their time on "real" computers consuming, too, by a huge margin. I still wouldn't say their (computers') primary focus is consumption. Anyway, the premise is kind of nonsense as consumption is a major part of many creative processes.
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      This is all true. But the barrier to go from consuming to creating is a lot higher now. Making silly little programs in BASIC or Perl is a lot tougher on an iphone, and that's what sparked the interest for a lot of people (though maybe I'm wrong and it's getting easier?)
      - asark 8y ago
        For the specific case of creating software, then? I'd say the Swift Playground is (much) easier to get started with and also more compelling than hacking around with Perl on (at first) Win98 was.
- Pigo 8y ago
  This was my point, though you put it much more articulately. People used to make websites because they were enthusiastic about The Smashing Pumpkins, Fight Club, or their EverQuest guild. Now they make sites for a business. Business ruined eBay, and then it spread to the rest of the web. If you have a passion you want to building for, you have to accept a terms of service of a big platform and build with their tools. It might be easier, but it sure has been less fun to view.
- icebraining 8y ago
  > free webspace is dead Nope, it's better than ever. You have non-profit providers like https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/, regular shared hosting with free plans, and stuff like Github pages and Netlify for those with a bit more tech skills. Way better than the times when you had Geocities and such injecting ads into your site. > the desktop is dead (the laptop close behind it) No need for those to build a website. Any cheap Android phone can do it. > ftp is dead Nope, the previously mentioned shared hosting providers still offer it. > HTML is much more complex (e.g. responsive design) Old-school HTML pretty much works the same, and is actually quite fine on both desktop and mobile screens. -- Frankly, I don't think the problem is that making your own site has gotten any harder, it's that there was no FB/IG back then. Had there been FB pages from the start of the web, you'd probably would have never seen so many custom sites in the first place.
  - hedora 8y ago
    > Had there been FB pages from the start of the web, you'd probably would have never seen so many custom sites in the first place. I’m not sure about this. AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe all had vibrant online communities. However, what you could do was much more limited than the federated web, and they were silos. Without the competition of “I’ll host my own server, and search engines will index it”, I wonder if FB and it’s predecessors would have been able to figure out what to build.
    - FussyZeus 8y ago
      Well Facebook was built on the failures of MySpace which in turn was built on the failures of Friendster, and so on. People who wanted their own space were always making their own space, and the rest would go to whichever social network was the most relevant at the time.
      - mtberatwork 8y ago
        Facebook wasn't built on MySpace's failures, they were both operating at the same time. People moved to Facebook because it was more intimate and less commercialized while MySpace turned into a dodgy spam heap.
- Crinus 8y ago
  Half of those you call dead (desktop, ftp, simple html) are things i use all the time :-P. And i'm sure free webspace isn't dead as i used one about 3 years ago which was the first hit on google among many and i doubt all of them vanished so fast.

fredley 8y ago

I miss the times when websites weren't being designed by designers, and even when they were the practice of web-design was in its infancy so the well-trodden tropes of today's internet were not established yet. It was creatively speaking a very exciting space - there were almost no rules yet, and you could do whatever and people wouldn't be turned off because your site looked weird or unusable, because all sites looked weird and were equally unusable. There are many upsides to the web we have today: accessibility, ease of use, ease of discovery, rich content, but that creative space has gone and something with that fresh creative scope combined with massive, new audience may not exist again in my lifetime (or even ever - the internet was the first time you could throw up a page and have people all over the World see it - a larger network of eyeballs can never exist).

sverige 8y ago
I agree with everything you said except the part about rich content today. Maybe I'm nostalgic, but I think there's a much lower percentage of that today. Unless celebrity gossip and political self-promotion is considered rich content.
- fredley 8y ago
  I know exactly what you mean - when I said rich content though I was talking more about images, animations, video, games. In the early web over a 28.8k (or slower!) modem you'd have to make every non-text asset count and compress it (3-phase loading jpegs, anyone?), now you can put 10Mb of javascript executable in there and no one bats an eye.
  - sverige 8y ago
    I misread your comment, of course! Yes, pictures were a calculated luxury. If you asked me to click to download a picture and it wasn't worth the five minute wait, you went on a certain list.

fma 8y ago

I think back in the day people created websites really for fun and can do whatever they want. Now you are judged against the best websites. Probably the only remnants of the old web are professors who publish academic websites and are based on content rather than design. I do remember when I was about to graduate there was talk of standardizing all the professor websites. I would agree all websites would need accessibility, mobility etc but like you I miss the old web where you could just explore. Having said that, the new Captain Marvel website is awesome. I don't think the page counter is real though :( https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel/ https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel/

EamonnMR 8y ago
Nothing makes me trust a site more than a ~ in the url somewhere.
godshatter 8y ago
Nice. Captain Marvel's website wouldn't load without enabling javascript for three domains, and then wanted four more after it loaded. It looks retro, but it's the same modern web crap.

badsectoracula 8y ago

There, i made that a couple of days ago, have fun :-P http://runtimeterror.com/games/dino/ http://runtimeterror.com/games/dino/ (and i think the main runtimeterror.com site has a bit of a late 90s/early 2000s style, but it is just that i prefer it that way)

neovive 8y ago

Perhaps the novelty of the Internet faded away and access is now viewed in the same light as "dial-tone" was in the decades before--it's just there when you need it. The web platform evolved into a much more complex space. In the early days (late 90's) you could spend an hour in "HotDog Web Editor" and build a page that looked somewhat close to a mainstream website. Those days are long gone and most people now opt for platforms, templates and/or site builders, which make total business sense and are the right decision for most, but they lack the fun and excitement experienced by the early Internet "webmasters".

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

As bad as many sites were in the 90s, modern sites somehow manage to be worse. Just yesterday I visited somewhere on my phone and about 2/3rds of the screen was occupied by slide-in banners (top and bottom!) informing and or asking me for some shit I of course didn't read because I went there to see the actual content. I'd take spinning flaming guitar gifs, gaudy tiled backgrounds, and <blink> over that crap any day.

raxxorrax 8y ago

They might be more usable if they weren't plastered with ads. If you disable your adblock, many sites are far worse than sites from 20 years ago.

tibbon 8y ago

I personally miss personal sites, and "under construction" signs.

roland35 8y ago

You can't forget about the marching ants too!

IgorPartola 8y ago

Check out apps like Snapchat. It is the modern day equivalent of a blink tag.

geddy 8y ago

I think the word you're looking for is "personality". Sure half the sites were blinding and had background music and blinking crap and were pretty terrible, but it perfectly reflected the person that built it, however shoddily. Now, everything is sterilized. Run through a million filters to be picture-perfect, work on everything beautifully, etc. This is great for the bulk of the web (businesses and web apps and what-not), but personal websites disappearing was a _huge_ blow to the personality of the internet. Heck, MySpace pages were a disaster, letting users run arbitrary HTML and CSS everywhere, and when Facebook came along everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief that _finally_ we'd be free of those horrendous MySpace pages. Now, looking back, I miss the crap out of those pages. I also ditched social media entirely but I consider everything I just mentioned as playing a large role in that. No charm, no personality. Rigid. Walled gardens. It's like a microcosm of the state of technology in 2019. And I mentioned personal sites disappearing, and I still stand by it - yes, of course there are blogs and what-not, but they're not the same. They're hosted, fast, efficient, and typically use approved themes. If you want to get down and dirty and actually make your own site, it'd be looked at as a gigantic waste of time. Technology has come too far for it to be practical to build a fancy site out of pure flat HTML files that looks like the worst 90s sites. Why do that, when you could just have an out-of-the-box Wordpress or Tumblr site? Plus, no one would visit it anyway. If it's not spammed or marketing, no one's visiting anything these days. It's just too saturated. The average internet user visits a tiny fraction of the number of websites they used to. Typically, aggregators. Reddit and Facebook and whatever. Worse yet, aggregators that pull in only things they agree with, shared by people they agree with. And that is their version of the internet, and not to mention, the world. No dissenting opinions, nothing original. It's depressing and I hate it. I grew up learning to build websites from copying source code into Notepad and running it locally. It was a hot mess, but so much fun and super rewarding. The 90s web, even early 2000s until ~2006 or so (when I personally consider it went "too mainstream" to put on my hipster hat, and everyone was suddenly on it), I miss it all. Sorry for the rant but this all hits close to home and, as a web developer who got started in the mid-90s, I'm subjected to the "modern web" for many hours a day, and I'd give anything to see it regress.

unimpressive 8y ago
>And I mentioned personal sites disappearing, and I still stand by it - yes, of course there are blogs and what-not, but they're not the same. They're hosted, fast, efficient, and typically use approved themes. If you want to get down and dirty and actually make your own site, it'd be looked at as a gigantic waste of time. Technology has come too far for it to be practical to build a fancy site out of pure flat HTML files that looks like the worst 90s sites. Why do that, when you could just have an out-of-the-box Wordpress or Tumblr site? I still write my website by hand. I use a static site generator to do things like make a blog index and stuff, but I don't use any templates. Everything you see is designed by me. http://www.jdpressman.com/ http://www.jdpressman.com/

pmarreck 8y ago

http://fredericiana.com/2012/11/04/html5-blink-tag/ http://fredericiana.com/2012/11/04/html5-blink-tag/ Blink is easily implemented in pure CSS these days if you still want it. You can even customize its behavior!

prithee 8y ago

Check out the recent game release, "Hypnospace Outlaw."