4 ms·

Stumble upon used to do this. It was really cool.

justusthane 3y ago
StumbleUpon was amazing. I feel like that was really peak internet, at least for me. I found so many weird, awesome things.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  It really could only work around the time it existed I feel. The internet was a lot weirder back then. One big difference then from now is that you basically need a PhD in the Canvas API (or WebGL or whatever) to accomplish something a 5 year old could do in Flash. Web design was a lot more accessible. You didn't have to worry about responsive designs and fluid layouts. You could just position:absolute everything and that was kinda fine.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    I think you might have some nostalgia goggles on at the moment. There's nothing holding people back from making "weird" web pages today, they can even make them nice and responsive. One of the better concepts around HTML and CSS was separation of data and layout. It's trivial to have a "weird" position:absolute design with a break for mobile that switches to a more fluid layout. Desktop users can have their "weird" layout but I can still read the page on mobile and you can readily crawl and index it. People moved away from design tools like DreamWeaver that helped make "weird" stuff and instead installed WordPress or some CSS/JavaScript framework that just bakes in all the "boring" fluid layouts. You're not necessarily wrong about Flash in terms of design or creation but your search engine wouldn't be terribly practical if everyone was still using Flash for everything. Flash allowed content packed inside SWFs but also allowed fetching external resources. You wouldn't be able to index any of that unless your crawler executed the Flash and/or inspected all the URL references for external resources. Flash created an inaccessible deep web just like today's JavaScript website-is-an-application "sites". Don't get me wrong, I love the old web with quirky table-based layouts, "unofficial" fansites, and personal homepages hosted on forgotten university servers in a closet. There was a vibrancy that's largely missing from today's web. I think a big change has been tools have become more geared for boring than the creative and people treat content on the web as a side hustle. Google et all haven't helped by favoring recency over other relevance factors.
    - counttheforks 3y ago
      Is it trivial enough that a 5 year old could do in a point and click editor?
      - giantrobot 3y ago
        It could be. But modern tools don't bother. Then again, Flash's usability by a 5 year old is being a bit oversold here.
- themodelplumber 3y ago
  There are quite a few interesting alternatives these days. Bored Button is one. There are some that are even more like it but I'm away from grep and my notes at the moment. Reddit even has some kinda-similar subs.

StumbleUpon was amazing. I feel like that was really peak internet, at least for me. I found so many weird, awesome things.

marginalia_nu 3y ago
It really could only work around the time it existed I feel. The internet was a lot weirder back then. One big difference then from now is that you basically need a PhD in the Canvas API (or WebGL or whatever) to accomplish something a 5 year old could do in Flash. Web design was a lot more accessible. You didn't have to worry about responsive designs and fluid layouts. You could just position:absolute everything and that was kinda fine.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  I think you might have some nostalgia goggles on at the moment. There's nothing holding people back from making "weird" web pages today, they can even make them nice and responsive. One of the better concepts around HTML and CSS was separation of data and layout. It's trivial to have a "weird" position:absolute design with a break for mobile that switches to a more fluid layout. Desktop users can have their "weird" layout but I can still read the page on mobile and you can readily crawl and index it. People moved away from design tools like DreamWeaver that helped make "weird" stuff and instead installed WordPress or some CSS/JavaScript framework that just bakes in all the "boring" fluid layouts. You're not necessarily wrong about Flash in terms of design or creation but your search engine wouldn't be terribly practical if everyone was still using Flash for everything. Flash allowed content packed inside SWFs but also allowed fetching external resources. You wouldn't be able to index any of that unless your crawler executed the Flash and/or inspected all the URL references for external resources. Flash created an inaccessible deep web just like today's JavaScript website-is-an-application "sites". Don't get me wrong, I love the old web with quirky table-based layouts, "unofficial" fansites, and personal homepages hosted on forgotten university servers in a closet. There was a vibrancy that's largely missing from today's web. I think a big change has been tools have become more geared for boring than the creative and people treat content on the web as a side hustle. Google et all haven't helped by favoring recency over other relevance factors.
  - counttheforks 3y ago
    Is it trivial enough that a 5 year old could do in a point and click editor?
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      It could be. But modern tools don't bother. Then again, Flash's usability by a 5 year old is being a bit oversold here.
themodelplumber 3y ago
There are quite a few interesting alternatives these days. Bored Button is one. There are some that are even more like it but I'm away from grep and my notes at the moment. Reddit even has some kinda-similar subs.