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Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made By A 13 Year-Old In 1996
- dutchbrit 15y agoHN: http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=11&url=news.ycombinator.com http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...
- vibrunazo 15y agoEven better, take a look at this post. http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=2&url=http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3729243 http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...
- sreyemhtes 15y agoNope, I don't believe it. There aren't any Under Construction signs anywhere.
- dutchbrit 15y agohttp://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=8&music=11&url=news.ycombinator.com http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=8... ^^ gave me an under construction page :)
- woogychuck 15y agoChange the theme id to 5 :)
- arturadib 15y agoOh man, this is like seeing dusty old family pictures. So nostalgic!
- Yhippa 15y agoI am sad: not a single rainbow <HR> in sight.
- woogychuck 15y agoThis is pretty fantastic, I now need to find a way to sneak some of those animated gifs past our design team.
- mhd 15y agoI think it actually made http://yvettesbridalformal.com/ http://yvettesbridalformal.com/ look better. Hard to believe that not too long ago, frames and table-based layouts actually were improvements over the status quo.
- jakubw 15y agoWell, mine had falling snowflakes even when it was summer.
- dexen 15y agoIn related news: http://www.alcowebizer.com/news.ycombinator.com http://www.alcowebizer.com/news.ycombinator.com
- zalew 15y agodoesn't work for me
- powertower 15y agogoogle.com http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=3&url=google.com http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...
- drpancake 15y agoI thought it would come out the same.
- mistercow 15y agoIt doesn't notice and remove border-radius tags, which made the experience particularly weird.
- dutchbrit 15y agoI think you'll find it offers ultimate browsing experience in Netscape Navigator :)
- finne 15y agoI actually found myself quite liking the MIDI files....
- merryandrew 15y agoYeah, I got to hear a really sweet Alanis Morissette tune. :) :/ :(
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y agoAnd here's to thinking that the media companies were scared of MIDI files 'sounding' like the copyrighted tunes they have.
- RegEx 15y agoI got some Sheryl Crow action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1OfNKorIKA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1OfNKorIKA
- lucb1e 15y agoHey isn't that my website?! (Joke) Well, mine had #0F0 for the background color and some copy/pasted javascripts (i.e. clock moving with the cursor). But yeah, pretty much the same style :) Must say that I did improve over the years.
- jbigelow76 15y agoI saw this title and thought somebody must have found my posting on oDesk looking for UI work.
- randomdata 15y agoThis thread made me want to look for the website I made in 1996 as a 14 year old in the Wayback machine. Sadly, it was not available. I did find my website made as a 16 year old. Unfortunately all of the images were missing. From what I remember, it was actually a pretty nice design. I think I'd still be proud of it if I had built it today.
- kayoone 15y agoHm, i was 13 in 1996, now i am a fulltime web developer ;)
- devth 15y agoMe too! How strange. Sadly, SouthBeach/Breakers/3015 is no longer around.
- bjornsteffanson 15y agoI was also 13 in 1996 and am now a front-end web developer. This brings back fond memories.
- krausejj 15y agois someone going to be making this in ten years to show what websites looked like in 2012??? also - comic sans is classic. i predict a comeback.
- groovy2shoes 15y agoComic Sans didn't disappear. It's just been hanging out at Microsoft Research.
- kapitalx 15y agothe Chip background acts as a 3d stereograms which was a good reminder of the 90s.
- TeMPOraL 15y agohttp://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=1&music=10&url=http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=12&url=http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=3&music=3&url=http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=1&music=1&url=http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/ http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=1... Applied to itself 4 times. So meta, that we have to go deeper.
- fl3tch 15y agoThat is what Steve Jobs saw on acid.
- monsterix 15y agoWhile it might sound funny, people out there really do design their pages like this only: http://govindtiwari.blogspot.in/ http://govindtiwari.blogspot.in/ Yeah, even today! [edited]
- jiggy2011 15y agoIt's funny, these geocities sites were horrible but they provided a way for people to express themselves on the web. MySpace tapped into this also , allowing people to change their page background, have autoplaying music etc. The facebook/Twitter came along and spoiled it by prioritizing usability. Now basically everyone has an online presence that looks identical to the point of being sterile. Hell even 90% of wordpress sites look exactly the same.
- unalone 15y agoYou know, this is a really interesting point to make. I always loved Facebook because it cut back on the bullshit and emphasized data over everything. I wanted to use these services keep in touch with people, not to see them try and express themselves. But when you see too much data fly by it all starts to blur and look the same. It's easy to get cynical about people when all you see is the surface data they express about themselves – by default the least interesting things they could possibly share. The legendary architect Christopher Alexander has a theory on how life flourishes: at its core is this idea that the world consists of overlapping "centers" – basically places where living things gather. Centers can overlap, so on Facebook your feed and your profile are each centers. By connecting centers, you encourage movement between them and a newer, greater center exists. I feel that Facebook and Twitter are excellent at encouraging this movement between centers of data. But they're not good at making that data matter. MySpace and Geocities were awful at communication (remember MySpace bulletins?), but they were always about creating something unique for yourself, not about connecting you to anybody else. Is there a way to do both at once? I'm not sure, but this is something I've been thinking about for a few years now. In high school I did some work for http://zoints.com http://zoints.com, which was trying to create a network of connected forums to allow for both personal expression and information density, but their tool was way too cerebral for anybody else to catch on. The closest I think I've seen any site come to this is Tumblr, because it both allows for uniquely designed blogs and a central aggregator, but Tumblr is so bad at conversation that it makes holding lengthy conversations ugly and frustrating. The theoretical solution to this would be to let users define their own centers: give them controls for looking at information in a unique way of their choosing. In a sense, this solution is the Internet, and things like email and RSS are how we connect disparate online entities, but those are very crude tools. The subtler interactions you allow for, the more you'll let people express themselves without getting in each others' ways – but it's hard to define just what these interactions ought to be. Looking back I'd say the pinnacle (for me) was Facebook's Graffiti Wall app, back when apps were just starting to be a thing. People interacting through pictures and illustrations lent to much more creative back-and-forth than text ever did. But that wasn't ideal either. I love capturing and organizing information, but I agree with you that something's been lost. Reclaiming it without sacrificing the new will be an enormous challenge.
- brudgers 15y agoI was not impressed with the conversion - until I scrolled down and saw Billzebub. http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=9&url=apple.com http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...
- hcarvalhoalves 15y agoSad but true.
- OliverD 15y agothat was an awesome time :D
- duck 15y agoA better title would be: Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made In 1996
- yakko 15y agoindecent :D
- philjr 15y agoHey, I was 13 years old in 1996! That made me nostalgic for a website I designed around 1998 and I was surprised to find it was still online... http://homepage.eircom.net/~nopatec/ http://homepage.eircom.net/~nopatec/ Dreamweaver special :) still can't find the geocities site I had in 1997 though...damn
- LinaLauneBaer 15y ago3) SuckingDiesel WebJex - 20 MB Space, 5 POP accounts. FTP access, cgi-bin. I like this quote... :-)
- bicknergseng 15y agoI don't know that it takes anything special to make nytimes.com look like it's from yesteryear. The only thing it's missing really is some <blink> elements and that dancing baby. Seriously though if they're going to stick with that column layout, they should look at how pinterest is presenting information.
- pepijndevos 15y agoI tried it on a website, but it did not change much...
- necenzurat 15y agoi really love Reposts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805452
- corford 15y agoAh memories :) Does anyone remember the javascript meme where you'd get people to click a form button and then it would pretend to format your C:\ drive?? My 1996/7 site had that :D And web rings! I miss the old internet :'(
- hluska 15y agoOh web rings!! And the format c:\ meme...what great memories! Do you remember the "Through an incredible amount of programming, I wrote a script that will show you what time my VCR is set to"? meme? The user would click a link to a page that contained: <blink>12:00</blink> The good old days....
- corford 15y agoHa I don't remember that one but lol! Everything was much more fun and innocent back then. It's definitely that that I miss the most from the early days of the web.
- brk 15y agoOne of my favorites: "I found this collection of files posted on a cybercrime website. Check and see if any of them are yours..." Then there was a link that went to file://c:\ so the user would be browsing their own hard drive...
- theycallmemorty 15y agoAs someone who was 13 in 1996, I wonder if in 2030 they'll have funny tools to "Make any webpage look like it was made by a 28 year-old in 2012"
- rtp 15y agoA while ago I made this bookmarklet to easily geocitize a webpage: https://gist.github.com/2141034 https://gist.github.com/2141034 The code is quite dumb but it works rather well.
- baxter 15y agoAs someone who was 13 years old in 1996, I take exception to this. It looks like it was made by an 11 year old in 1996.
- astral303 15y ago+1. Back then at 13, I already knew the dancing baby was not cool.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoTitle is redundant. If anyone other than 13 year olds were designing websites in 1996 there certainly wasn't any evidence of it back then.
- crisnoble 15y agobest badge: "made with notepad, the right way!"
- bretthardin 15y agoWhy is it when I type in drudgereport.com it looks the same.
- spinchange 15y agoThe wonder tonic guy gives great Internet. I love his shady URL redirection service: http://www.shadyurl.com/ http://www.shadyurl.com/
- Andrenid 15y agoJust seeing the footer, with the browser buttons and counter, gave me one of the craziest "chills up spine" nostalgia-flashbacks I've had in years. That alone was worth the click.
- rachelbaker 15y agoNo <blink> tag?
- instakill 15y agoOh the nostalgia.
- NanoWar 15y agoThe other way round would be a lot better: Make any Webpage from 1996 look like it was made in 2012! :)