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I miss MS FrontPage! I remember how shocked my friends looked whenever they came by and saw it open on my screen. They never understood why I spend hours on th

I miss MS FrontPage! I remember how shocked my friends looked whenever they came by and saw it open on my screen. They never understood why I spend hours on that thing instead of just playing games. The first time I thought about learning to code was when I visited Linkin Park's website. Sure, it took 10 long minutes to load but it was a masterpiece of its own. I'd just open the website and stare at it. And one day I just decided that I'm going to make one myself. I'm trying still...

8organicbits 3y ago
Archive.org has some old copies, maybe you remember this one? Still loads slowly :) https://web.archive.org/web/20011202145112/http://linkinpark.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20011202145112/http://linkinpark...
- ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
  No, it was from around the launch of meteora iirc. I tried to look it up, but the only copy that have a bearing resemblance to what I remember doesn't load very well as many files seem to be missing. And, the snapshots after that one just keep returning a 302 error :/
  - rezonant 3y ago
    Meteora is such a great album. I got the special edition on CD back in the day, the album art is fantastic.
CM30 3y ago
I remember using FrontPage quite a bit too. It had some... interesting quirks when it came to outputting HTML, but it seemed fine enough for me at the time. Which also reminds me; did anyone actually use the FrontPage Server Extensions they had for it? I remember the tool having a bunch of dynamic features like counters and guestbooks that relied on them being installed, and web hosts sometimes having these extensions listed in their features, but I never saw any sites actually using them.
- ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
  I remember adding counters to the bottom of my websites in FP, but not sure what technology I was using. Fun times indeed!
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  I was thinking this exact thing just the other day, as in, within the last week.
  - rezonant 3y ago
    It's the nerd's roman empire. I thought about it this morning.
ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
I also remember finding out about scripting with either VBScript or JScript (which was different from JavaScript). Shortly after, I discovered that there's a function capable of listing folders and files from the visitor's hard drive. No permissions needed. The browser just had full access to the hard drive. Naturally, I wrote a script and loaded it on the homepage of my website. The goal was to save, on a file, the contents of visitors hard drives' contents. For some reason that never worked. But yeah, the internet back then was a very scary place.
- rezonant 3y ago
  > JScript (which was different from JavaScript). It was just Microsoft's name for JavaScript because they didn't want to deal with Sun's trademark, but they did add a sprinkle of their own extra stuff in there without talking to any other implementers about it. That was par for the course for Microsoft of the day though.
Franzeus 3y ago
I used FrontPage to teach myself how to create websites (if you could call it that). I placed elements in the WYSIWYG editor and then looked at the code which elements etc were produced. Such an amazing time.
- rezonant 3y ago
  Nowadays you can just get half correct tutorials from W3 schools written in an extremely authoritative tone. Or have ChatGPT give you the same quality of learning, and with the same authoritative tone.
autoexec 3y ago
Frontpage was notoriously horrible. It'd make pages that usually looked the way people wanted them to, but the source was a total mess. It was full of redundant and unnecessary tags. You could spend ages cleaning up HTML written in frontpage but if you put in the work you could decrease pageload times and file sizes significantly. Personally, I avoided it at all costs and stuck to text editors. Frontpage was so terrible that it made me resist using Dreamweaver at first out of fear that it'd be just as bad.
rezonant 3y ago
> I'm trying still... Don't worry, you got this. Web development has become a lot simpler since then, after all.
- sysoleg 3y ago
  Easier, yes, but not simpler.
  - rezonant 3y ago
    It's unmarked sarcasm. I don't think it's become easier or simpler in all seriousness. This isn't a bad thing- as things become more important, more concerns rise above the surface, and as more concerns rise above the surface, dealing with them all makes it harder.
_kb 3y ago
FrontPage was good and all, but you can pry Macromedia Dreamweaver from my cold dead hands.
- throwaway167 3y ago
  Dreamweaver 3. It was downhill from 4.
- andruby 3y ago
  Dreamweaver was glorious and the tool that introduced me to html.
- madaxe_again 3y ago
  The PHP code generation it did was hilarious - I remember my designer partner trying to make a dynamic form, and it ended up with 1400 lines of code where 14 would have done.

8organicbits 3y ago

Archive.org has some old copies, maybe you remember this one? Still loads slowly :) https://web.archive.org/web/20011202145112/http://linkinpark.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20011202145112/http://linkinpark...

ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
No, it was from around the launch of meteora iirc. I tried to look it up, but the only copy that have a bearing resemblance to what I remember doesn't load very well as many files seem to be missing. And, the snapshots after that one just keep returning a 302 error :/
- rezonant 3y ago
  Meteora is such a great album. I got the special edition on CD back in the day, the album art is fantastic.

CM30 3y ago

I remember using FrontPage quite a bit too. It had some... interesting quirks when it came to outputting HTML, but it seemed fine enough for me at the time. Which also reminds me; did anyone actually use the FrontPage Server Extensions they had for it? I remember the tool having a bunch of dynamic features like counters and guestbooks that relied on them being installed, and web hosts sometimes having these extensions listed in their features, but I never saw any sites actually using them.

ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
I remember adding counters to the bottom of my websites in FP, but not sure what technology I was using. Fun times indeed!
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
I was thinking this exact thing just the other day, as in, within the last week.
- rezonant 3y ago
  It's the nerd's roman empire. I thought about it this morning.

ahmedfromtunis 3y ago

I also remember finding out about scripting with either VBScript or JScript (which was different from JavaScript). Shortly after, I discovered that there's a function capable of listing folders and files from the visitor's hard drive. No permissions needed. The browser just had full access to the hard drive. Naturally, I wrote a script and loaded it on the homepage of my website. The goal was to save, on a file, the contents of visitors hard drives' contents. For some reason that never worked. But yeah, the internet back then was a very scary place.

rezonant 3y ago
> JScript (which was different from JavaScript). It was just Microsoft's name for JavaScript because they didn't want to deal with Sun's trademark, but they did add a sprinkle of their own extra stuff in there without talking to any other implementers about it. That was par for the course for Microsoft of the day though.

Franzeus 3y ago

I used FrontPage to teach myself how to create websites (if you could call it that). I placed elements in the WYSIWYG editor and then looked at the code which elements etc were produced. Such an amazing time.

rezonant 3y ago
Nowadays you can just get half correct tutorials from W3 schools written in an extremely authoritative tone. Or have ChatGPT give you the same quality of learning, and with the same authoritative tone.

autoexec 3y ago

Frontpage was notoriously horrible. It'd make pages that usually looked the way people wanted them to, but the source was a total mess. It was full of redundant and unnecessary tags. You could spend ages cleaning up HTML written in frontpage but if you put in the work you could decrease pageload times and file sizes significantly. Personally, I avoided it at all costs and stuck to text editors. Frontpage was so terrible that it made me resist using Dreamweaver at first out of fear that it'd be just as bad.

rezonant 3y ago

> I'm trying still... Don't worry, you got this. Web development has become a lot simpler since then, after all.

sysoleg 3y ago
Easier, yes, but not simpler.
- rezonant 3y ago
  It's unmarked sarcasm. I don't think it's become easier or simpler in all seriousness. This isn't a bad thing- as things become more important, more concerns rise above the surface, and as more concerns rise above the surface, dealing with them all makes it harder.

_kb 3y ago

FrontPage was good and all, but you can pry Macromedia Dreamweaver from my cold dead hands.

throwaway167 3y ago
Dreamweaver 3. It was downhill from 4.
andruby 3y ago
Dreamweaver was glorious and the tool that introduced me to html.
madaxe_again 3y ago
The PHP code generation it did was hilarious - I remember my designer partner trying to make a dynamic form, and it ended up with 1400 lines of code where 14 would have done.