4 ms·

> Thirdly was the user interface. Usenet looked dull. In a world of animated GIFs and MySpace colour schemes, Usenet didn't even have avatar images! Sure, the s

> Thirdly was the user interface. Usenet looked dull. In a world of animated GIFs and MySpace colour schemes, Usenet didn't even have avatar images! Sure, the spartan nature meant that you could focus on a conversation - but it didn't feel as modern and exciting as the web did. NNTP software was fragile. Forté Agent was a masterpiece. Change my mind.

nerdbert 3y ago
> Usenet didn't even have avatar images! Now let's not forget my 40-line ASCII-art sigfile.
- jghn 3y ago
  alt.fan.warlord would like a word
  - UncleSlacky 3y ago
    and BIFF.
senko 3y ago
> Forté Agent was a masterpiece. Yes. Also, my social network feeds could benefit from a killfile feature ...
- pierat 3y ago
  https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moderating/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moderating/ There's a wide variety of ways to self-moderate content. Andd you can block whole servers from your account as well. And if stuff is terrible, you can report to your instance's admin (if you're not running your own). And barring that, you can also report to their instance's admin. Given enough harassment or badness, servers can block harassing servers.
mmcgaha 3y ago
Around the time frame of the beta versions of agent coming out in early 1995, the Windows world really surpassed unix for internet usability. Obviously netscape was netscape but agent vs tin, mirc vs ircii, or eudora vs pine, the windows software getting churned out was peak usability as far as I am concerned.
rbanffy 3y ago
There was also Outlook Express. It could do NNTP feeds integrated with e-mail, an outgrowth of previous work on IE3-era Windows News and Mail (which was an architectural masterpiece - a Windows Explorer view of a folder full of messages, populated from the mail and news feeds) I wish we had something like that in Gnome - processes that sync my IMAP mails to local Maildir-like folders (dynamically populated, with download-on-open, perhaps) and a view that shows e-mails. Same for iCal feeds - make it a way to view specific kinds of content.
- u801e 3y ago
  > There was also Outlook Express. It was the one client that never fixed their quoted text wrapping bug IIRC.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    Oh well... It's not like they tried hard.
bhaak 3y ago
>> Thirdly was the user interface. Usenet looked dull. In a world of animated GIFs and MySpace colour schemes, Usenet didn't even have avatar images! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Face I think there was even a color version of x-face? Oh yeah, found it. A 48x48 base64 encoded PNG image. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusFace https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusFace I don't know what other Usenet clients supported that. The x-face header was already not widely supported.
clsec 3y ago
Agent was the very first piece of software I paid for. That and my Extra Newsguy subscription opened an amazing world for me. Then yEnc came along!

nerdbert 3y ago

> Usenet didn't even have avatar images! Now let's not forget my 40-line ASCII-art sigfile.

jghn 3y ago
alt.fan.warlord would like a word
- UncleSlacky 3y ago
  and BIFF.

senko 3y ago

> Forté Agent was a masterpiece. Yes. Also, my social network feeds could benefit from a killfile feature ...

pierat 3y ago
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moderating/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moderating/ There's a wide variety of ways to self-moderate content. Andd you can block whole servers from your account as well. And if stuff is terrible, you can report to your instance's admin (if you're not running your own). And barring that, you can also report to their instance's admin. Given enough harassment or badness, servers can block harassing servers.

mmcgaha 3y ago

Around the time frame of the beta versions of agent coming out in early 1995, the Windows world really surpassed unix for internet usability. Obviously netscape was netscape but agent vs tin, mirc vs ircii, or eudora vs pine, the windows software getting churned out was peak usability as far as I am concerned.

rbanffy 3y ago

There was also Outlook Express. It could do NNTP feeds integrated with e-mail, an outgrowth of previous work on IE3-era Windows News and Mail (which was an architectural masterpiece - a Windows Explorer view of a folder full of messages, populated from the mail and news feeds) I wish we had something like that in Gnome - processes that sync my IMAP mails to local Maildir-like folders (dynamically populated, with download-on-open, perhaps) and a view that shows e-mails. Same for iCal feeds - make it a way to view specific kinds of content.

u801e 3y ago
> There was also Outlook Express. It was the one client that never fixed their quoted text wrapping bug IIRC.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  Oh well... It's not like they tried hard.

bhaak 3y ago

>> Thirdly was the user interface. Usenet looked dull. In a world of animated GIFs and MySpace colour schemes, Usenet didn't even have avatar images! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Face I think there was even a color version of x-face? Oh yeah, found it. A 48x48 base64 encoded PNG image. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusFace https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusFace I don't know what other Usenet clients supported that. The x-face header was already not widely supported.

clsec 3y ago

Agent was the very first piece of software I paid for. That and my Extra Newsguy subscription opened an amazing world for me. Then yEnc came along!