7 ms·

Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia

jvalencia 6y ago
This takes me back to the days when so much of web apps was tied to non-web things. Skeupomorphisms were pretty good UX, but also the fact that layouts looks like ads or newspapers, trying to conserve room and increase information density. The websites themselves weren't much in the way of a destination, rather they tied you into other real world things: family, computers systems, hobbies. They were relevant only as much as they enriched real life. Now the website is the full app and experience. No need to go anywhere else. In fact it's desirable that you stay on one property, such as Facebook for as long as possible. It's like a big box store. But back to the point I wanted to make originally: the work has fundamentally changed. I remember coding a backend to get old scientific python scripts to run from commands via Sharepoint buttons. The web couldn't do anything so you had to tie it to systems that could. Now you have to get it all running in Javascript --- not sure how many people saw that coming :-D. I wonder if anyone has any thoughts along those lines?
- slimsag 6y ago
  It's also become much less accessible to your average every-day person. I remember in 2001 my brother's community college in rural America taught HTML and Flash development. Not only could you learn to make websites quickly, but you were learning technology that was exactly what you would be using when working at a company. You could argue the technology is better these days, but it's certainly not more clear to newcomers. I recently described to my younger sister that she should learn React through FreeCodeCamp in order to make websites - but suddenly you are dropped into a world talking about declarative programming paradigms, unidirectional data flows, and lots of other foreign concepts described as magic (the virtual DOM, Babel, etc.) If my experience had been this growing up I would have never gained interest in learning the specifics / details of what was going on when writing HTML/CSS/JS code. I would've chalked it up to "there are layers upon layers of magical things I don't understand, I guess I only need to interact with them and slap them together." I also think the incentives have changed - it's less about making something cool and sharing it with your internet friends these days because there is money to be made - it's about buffing your GitHub profile to get a job, creating a startup that extracts $$$ from people, etc. I feel it is very similar to early days YouTube vs. YouTube these days, and that saddens me.
  - WWLink 6y ago
    There isn't really anything stopping people from making simple HTML/CSS/JS code, and I think it'd be nice if more people did that. Instead of thinking about how one could grow something, it'd be nice to think about how simple and efficient one can make something.
    - egeozcan 6y ago
      Totally agree. People jump into extreme abstractions (React, Vue, Angular, when even jQuery is too much at the beginning) when they never experiment with the fundamentals. Using just HTML/CSS is so much fun, even better with the latest advancements, why not enjoy them while learning, instead of getting depressed in totally abstracted frameworks?
      - mvonballmo 6y ago
        People want to be able to create stuff that looks just as good and is as smooth as what professionals are making without learning anything that they basically don't already know. That has definitely changed. In the old days, it didn't matter how _good_ you were; basically, your site was going to look more or less like the site created by someone who just started and tried really hard for a few days. You could copy/paste HTML from other people's sites _and just have it_. Now, nothing works because there are tokens and authorization and APIs everywhere. I don't see anyone complaining that you can't just build a car from scratch in your garage. That would be crazy, right? Yet, somehow, anyone should be able to learn how to code professional internet software with little effort and understanding. If you want to use React, I don't understand what's so hard about the [introductory documentation](https://reactjs.org/docs/add-react-to-a-website.html https://reactjs.org/docs/add-react-to-a-website.html)? It's almost pure HTML and has [a lot of help](https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html#try-react https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html#try-react) for extending it from there. This is honestly a lot easier than what we had at the beginning, where even documentation for HTML tags wasn't so easy to find. Maybe this is still too complicated, but the lower bar is there, whether you like it or not. If I don't know how to use scissors, I'm going to be a shitty barber.
- nix23 6y ago
  Checkout neocities, i really fell in love with it.
dwohnitmok 6y ago
The "No Javascript? :( Click here" link directs to a 404.
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  Same issue, though at least the author cares more to at least think of those who whitelist scripts enough to mention it. Half the large companies today will present you with a blank screen instead of writing one line of a <noscript> tag.
  - Moru 6y ago
    It's a lot about not even knowing the <noscript> tag exists. I mean, who would block javascript, the whole web depends on it. (I block javascript since it came around the first time...)
    - shakna 6y ago
      JavaScript doesn't have to blocked to be unavailable. So many accessibility devices that don't have the capability to run it, and read noscript allowed, etc...
- onion2k 6y ago
  The Flash plugin in Experiments doesn't work either. :)
- xisnextbigthing 6y ago
  Oh, fixed, thanks. I thought I made sure that link is working before posting here, since there are many frequent users that have their JS disabled. :)
WD-42 6y ago
I had a very similar homepage that is still up! I love the desktop in a webpage aesthetic. http://toxiccode.com/ http://toxiccode.com/
- nmfisher 6y ago
  Nifty, I like it.
- rozab 6y ago
  The header looks exactly like a bandicam watermark... which does capture a certain aesthetic
  - WD-42 6y ago
    I believe I was going for the Bluecurve look, which was the default GTK theme for Redhat 8. The first linux distro I ever installed. http://toastytech.com/guis/rh8.html http://toastytech.com/guis/rh8.html
    - nix23 6y ago
      I buy'd RedHat 9, and i walked home with that big package under my arm knowing that nobody knows what that is..a Unix a Operationsystem!! I felt like the a hero, everything was fine until i realized that i had a win-modem...
      - WD-42 6y ago
        Yes! What an experience. My dad brought me to circuit city somewhere near San Mateo to buy red hat 8. I remember holding the shrink wrapped box and thinking about how cool it was. I don’t think I figured out how to get internet access working for a month. I’m glad you’re still sticking with it!
- mjcohen 6y ago
  In Brave in os X, "about" has vertically overlapping lines with the end of lines having the last few characters not visible.
jaffathecake 6y ago
Ohh if we're doing this, here's the intro to my personal site from 2007. Only the intro works, and requires Flash of course https://cv-ppguyzgojs.now.sh/ https://cv-ppguyzgojs.now.sh/
slmjkdbtl 6y ago
My favorite part is you can drag the portfolio image around when focused (this particular interaction feels pretty modern tho, reminds me of some fun interactions found on https://cargo.site/In-Use https://cargo.site/In-Use)
hestefisk 6y ago
I think this is remnants from the days when an interactive web site was called “DHTML”.
tus88 6y ago
My eyes :D
- Tarsul 6y ago
  ^^ the best part is that the first sentence starts with "This is home of user friendly [...]". That color-scheme is everything but that ;)
byteface 6y ago
there was a cool Desktop UI thread on here a few weeks ago... https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops
mjcohen 6y ago
"standards" is misspelled "standarts".

This takes me back to the days when so much of web apps was tied to non-web things. Skeupomorphisms were pretty good UX, but also the fact that layouts looks like ads or newspapers, trying to conserve room and increase information density. The websites themselves weren't much in the way of a destination, rather they tied you into other real world things: family, computers systems, hobbies. They were relevant only as much as they enriched real life. Now the website is the full app and experience. No need to go anywhere else. In fact it's desirable that you stay on one property, such as Facebook for as long as possible. It's like a big box store. But back to the point I wanted to make originally: the work has fundamentally changed. I remember coding a backend to get old scientific python scripts to run from commands via Sharepoint buttons. The web couldn't do anything so you had to tie it to systems that could. Now you have to get it all running in Javascript --- not sure how many people saw that coming :-D. I wonder if anyone has any thoughts along those lines?

slimsag 6y ago
It's also become much less accessible to your average every-day person. I remember in 2001 my brother's community college in rural America taught HTML and Flash development. Not only could you learn to make websites quickly, but you were learning technology that was exactly what you would be using when working at a company. You could argue the technology is better these days, but it's certainly not more clear to newcomers. I recently described to my younger sister that she should learn React through FreeCodeCamp in order to make websites - but suddenly you are dropped into a world talking about declarative programming paradigms, unidirectional data flows, and lots of other foreign concepts described as magic (the virtual DOM, Babel, etc.) If my experience had been this growing up I would have never gained interest in learning the specifics / details of what was going on when writing HTML/CSS/JS code. I would've chalked it up to "there are layers upon layers of magical things I don't understand, I guess I only need to interact with them and slap them together." I also think the incentives have changed - it's less about making something cool and sharing it with your internet friends these days because there is money to be made - it's about buffing your GitHub profile to get a job, creating a startup that extracts $$$ from people, etc. I feel it is very similar to early days YouTube vs. YouTube these days, and that saddens me.
- WWLink 6y ago
  There isn't really anything stopping people from making simple HTML/CSS/JS code, and I think it'd be nice if more people did that. Instead of thinking about how one could grow something, it'd be nice to think about how simple and efficient one can make something.
  - egeozcan 6y ago
    Totally agree. People jump into extreme abstractions (React, Vue, Angular, when even jQuery is too much at the beginning) when they never experiment with the fundamentals. Using just HTML/CSS is so much fun, even better with the latest advancements, why not enjoy them while learning, instead of getting depressed in totally abstracted frameworks?
    - mvonballmo 6y ago
      People want to be able to create stuff that looks just as good and is as smooth as what professionals are making without learning anything that they basically don't already know. That has definitely changed. In the old days, it didn't matter how _good_ you were; basically, your site was going to look more or less like the site created by someone who just started and tried really hard for a few days. You could copy/paste HTML from other people's sites _and just have it_. Now, nothing works because there are tokens and authorization and APIs everywhere. I don't see anyone complaining that you can't just build a car from scratch in your garage. That would be crazy, right? Yet, somehow, anyone should be able to learn how to code professional internet software with little effort and understanding. If you want to use React, I don't understand what's so hard about the [introductory documentation](https://reactjs.org/docs/add-react-to-a-website.html https://reactjs.org/docs/add-react-to-a-website.html)? It's almost pure HTML and has [a lot of help](https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html#try-react https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html#try-react) for extending it from there. This is honestly a lot easier than what we had at the beginning, where even documentation for HTML tags wasn't so easy to find. Maybe this is still too complicated, but the lower bar is there, whether you like it or not. If I don't know how to use scissors, I'm going to be a shitty barber.
nix23 6y ago
Checkout neocities, i really fell in love with it.

dwohnitmok 6y ago

The "No Javascript? :( Click here" link directs to a 404.

DarthGhandi 6y ago
Same issue, though at least the author cares more to at least think of those who whitelist scripts enough to mention it. Half the large companies today will present you with a blank screen instead of writing one line of a <noscript> tag.
- Moru 6y ago
  It's a lot about not even knowing the <noscript> tag exists. I mean, who would block javascript, the whole web depends on it. (I block javascript since it came around the first time...)
  - shakna 6y ago
    JavaScript doesn't have to blocked to be unavailable. So many accessibility devices that don't have the capability to run it, and read noscript allowed, etc...
onion2k 6y ago
The Flash plugin in Experiments doesn't work either. :)
xisnextbigthing 6y ago
Oh, fixed, thanks. I thought I made sure that link is working before posting here, since there are many frequent users that have their JS disabled. :)

WD-42 6y ago

I had a very similar homepage that is still up! I love the desktop in a webpage aesthetic. http://toxiccode.com/ http://toxiccode.com/

nmfisher 6y ago
Nifty, I like it.
rozab 6y ago
The header looks exactly like a bandicam watermark... which does capture a certain aesthetic
- WD-42 6y ago
  I believe I was going for the Bluecurve look, which was the default GTK theme for Redhat 8. The first linux distro I ever installed. http://toastytech.com/guis/rh8.html http://toastytech.com/guis/rh8.html
  - nix23 6y ago
    I buy'd RedHat 9, and i walked home with that big package under my arm knowing that nobody knows what that is..a Unix a Operationsystem!! I felt like the a hero, everything was fine until i realized that i had a win-modem...
    - WD-42 6y ago
      Yes! What an experience. My dad brought me to circuit city somewhere near San Mateo to buy red hat 8. I remember holding the shrink wrapped box and thinking about how cool it was. I don’t think I figured out how to get internet access working for a month. I’m glad you’re still sticking with it!
mjcohen 6y ago
In Brave in os X, "about" has vertically overlapping lines with the end of lines having the last few characters not visible.

jaffathecake 6y ago

Ohh if we're doing this, here's the intro to my personal site from 2007. Only the intro works, and requires Flash of course https://cv-ppguyzgojs.now.sh/ https://cv-ppguyzgojs.now.sh/

slmjkdbtl 6y ago

My favorite part is you can drag the portfolio image around when focused (this particular interaction feels pretty modern tho, reminds me of some fun interactions found on https://cargo.site/In-Use https://cargo.site/In-Use)

hestefisk 6y ago

I think this is remnants from the days when an interactive web site was called “DHTML”.

tus88 6y ago

My eyes :D

Tarsul 6y ago
^^ the best part is that the first sentence starts with "This is home of user friendly [...]". That color-scheme is everything but that ;)

byteface 6y ago

there was a cool Desktop UI thread on here a few weeks ago... https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops

mjcohen 6y ago

"standards" is misspelled "standarts".