4 ms·

Yeah, it is dynamic. But the author also mentioned putting spacer gifs in semantically appropriate containers, so I think it may have been a joke?

thayne 5y ago
Yes the whole thing is a joke, and is sarcastic. At least, that's the impression I got.
robbyking 5y ago
I worked at homeshark.com (later rebranded iown.com) in the 90's, and we absolutely did the spacer gif trick to size our tables.
- supermatt 5y ago
  Oh yeah, i think every one did - but they certainly werent used in "semantically correct containers".
  - kuschku 5y ago
    Even HN, this very website, still uses spacer gifs. Sadly.
    - stordoff 5y ago
      Spacer GIFs which are resized for narrow screens (300-750px) using CSS depending on the tag's width attribute. That's not a technique I've seen before: > img[src='s.gif'][width='40'] {width: 12px;} (from https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css)
    - mitchdoogle 5y ago
      I don't understand why anyone would consider this sad.
      - kuschku 5y ago
        Because it's not really reliable and breaks in many situations. reddits old nested divs work much better in contrast, and have a layout that matches the semantic situation better.
Calavar 5y ago
I think it is a joke. Also, as far as I can remember, you could never combine <marquee> and <blink> because only IE supported <marquee> and only the Netscape family of browsers supported <blink>. I think there is a lot of humor in this article that is maybe a little too subtle.
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  You could however nest horizontal and vertical marquee to make a diagonal marquee :)
- Kadin 5y ago
  My memory at this point is faded, but I thought that was the point? You used both of them to cover both the Netscape and IE cases. (Hence, the joke, that to combine the two made you a Great Web Developer, since you knew about such things. The bar was rather low in those days, to be honest.)
  - Calavar 5y ago
    I don't think so. <marquee> and <blink> do different things. <marquee> makes its content scroll across the page. <blink> makes it's content turn invisible and then reappear about once per second.

thayne 5y ago

Yes the whole thing is a joke, and is sarcastic. At least, that's the impression I got.

robbyking 5y ago

I worked at homeshark.com (later rebranded iown.com) in the 90's, and we absolutely did the spacer gif trick to size our tables.

supermatt 5y ago
Oh yeah, i think every one did - but they certainly werent used in "semantically correct containers".
- kuschku 5y ago
  Even HN, this very website, still uses spacer gifs. Sadly.
  - stordoff 5y ago
    Spacer GIFs which are resized for narrow screens (300-750px) using CSS depending on the tag's width attribute. That's not a technique I've seen before: > img[src='s.gif'][width='40'] {width: 12px;} (from https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css)
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    I don't understand why anyone would consider this sad.
    - kuschku 5y ago
      Because it's not really reliable and breaks in many situations. reddits old nested divs work much better in contrast, and have a layout that matches the semantic situation better.

Calavar 5y ago

I think it is a joke. Also, as far as I can remember, you could never combine <marquee> and <blink> because only IE supported <marquee> and only the Netscape family of browsers supported <blink>. I think there is a lot of humor in this article that is maybe a little too subtle.

theshadowknows 5y ago
You could however nest horizontal and vertical marquee to make a diagonal marquee :)
Kadin 5y ago
My memory at this point is faded, but I thought that was the point? You used both of them to cover both the Netscape and IE cases. (Hence, the joke, that to combine the two made you a Great Web Developer, since you knew about such things. The bar was rather low in those days, to be honest.)
- Calavar 5y ago
  I don't think so. <marquee> and <blink> do different things. <marquee> makes its content scroll across the page. <blink> makes it's content turn invisible and then reappear about once per second.