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I was there, 3,000 years ago. I remember fights over whether or not navigation in frames was bad practice. Not iframes, frames. Who here remembers frames? I r
by donatj 1y ago
I was there, 3,000 years ago.
I remember fights over whether or not navigation in frames was bad practice. Not iframes, frames. Who here remembers frames?
I remember using HTTP 204 before AJAX to send messages to the server without reloading the page.
I remember building... image maps[1]... professionally in the early 2000. I remember spending multiple days drawing the borders of States on a map of the country in Dreamweaver so we could have a clickable map.
I remember Dreamweaver templates and people updating things wrong and losing their changes on a template update and no way to get it back because no one used version control.
I remember <input type=image> and handling where you clicked on an image in the backend.
I remember streaming updates to pages via motion jpeg. Still works in Chrome, less reliably in Firefox.
I remember the multiple steps we took towards a proper IE PNG fix just to get alpha blending... before we got the ActiveX one that worked somewhat reliably... Just for tastes to change and everything to become flat and us to not really need it anymore.
I remember building site navigations in Java, Flash, and Silverlight.
I remember spacer gifs and conditional comments and what a godsend Firebug was.
I don't know when I got old, it just happened one day.
1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/map https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
- deadbabe 1y ago3000 years ago, when Ancient Egyptians argued over how they should format Papyrus text.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SvenL 1y agoI think this is a reference to a LotR meme. https://youtu.be/Q63_FxegFsQ?feature=shared https://youtu.be/Q63_FxegFsQ?feature=shared
- bornfreddy 1y agoFor those who prefer not to visit yt, the quote "I was there, Gandalf. I was there three thousand years ago" refers to Elrond talking about the time when Isildur took the One Ring from Sauron.
- iforgotpassword 1y agoI made a webchat with frames; an infinitely-loading top part for the text, and the bottom an input box that received 204 to not reload when you sent a message. I guess that was the most elegant way to do it in the IE4+ days. The top part could also receive a small <script> that would reload the frame on the right, containing the user list. Fun times. Used it with a couple class mates around 2000 iirc.
- vanviegen 1y agoI managed to get real-time chat (and other real-time colab) working on IE4+ using long polling, by continuously adding <script> tags from JavaScript. The server would delay answering until there were new messages available, or some timeout. This was even before xmlhttprequest. Who needs websocket? :-)
- distances 1y agoSounds fancy! My solution back then was infinitely auto-updating a frame with a meta refresh tag. It would receive a new <script> block that would update the contents of other frames. This of course wouldn't give real-time functionality.
- pixl97 1y agoFun, until you had dial up so slow the refresh happened again before anything on the page fully loaded (mostly an issue with images)
- troupo 1y agoIt's still a way (with a frame autorefresh) to make chats on Tor, since many users will have JS turned off
- Sophira 1y agoA webchat that I used to go to back in the day implemented this too. I used to spend a lot of time there - it was my Internet home for several years. I miss it terribly.
- perilunar 1y agoBeen there, have done (most of) this. Never used Silverlight, but did use VRML, Java Applets, and Chromeffects. I remember writing image maps by hand, getting the point coordinates directly from the image in Photoshop. Re version control: learned very early on to make a backup of a website before making any changes. Our version control was /site/yyyymmdd/
- atemerev 1y agoSpacer gifs, OMG, the memories! <table> should be enough for everyone. What is the motion jpeg hack? I made my own streaming too before websocket... but I never heard of this.
- 42droids 1y agoStarted in 1998 with front page.
- xnx 1y agoFancy! Not even Front Page Express first?
- FranOntanaya 1y agoDon't remind me, Front Page Express' generated HTML was the stuff of nightmares.
- xnx 1y agoStill better than Microsoft Word.
- shawn_w 1y ago>Who here remembers frames? I visit a site with frames several times a week. Nobody's ever told the Open Group/POSIX people they're not supposed to use them these days.
- chrismorgan 1y agoPlenty of modems/routers still use frames in their management interfaces.
- reconnecting 1y agoI explained the concept of frames to a developer born after the millennium, and their reaction was that it is a pure magic.
- jameslk 1y agoI remember meticulously using the photoshop slice tool To export gifs meant to be positioned perfectly in HTML tables For designs suited best for 800x600 All those moments lost in time, like tears in the rain
- skerit 1y ago> I remember meticulously using the photoshop slice tool I made so many newsletters using that tool back in 2009. I remember a new designer was appalled I used it, and did not write the HTML code manually... 70% of our receivers were using Outlook and the horrible Word-based HTML renderer. I'm not writing anything manual for that piece of crap.
- codingdave 1y agoThat is what Fireworks was great for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Fireworks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Fireworks
- HappMacDonald 1y agoI remember meticulously perfecting every trick that the slice tool eventually automated before it existed using Jasc Paintshop Pro: squeezing every kb for maximal presentation from pieces of a larger image into gifs or jpgs so that the parts of it which needed to animate or be interactive could do so and the large parts that didn't could remain as high quality as possible. And then I remember the slice tool appearing one day and being equal parts annoyed that they were biting my style and amazed that they did as thorough and well considered of a job as they did.
- reconnecting 1y ago2. <BGSOUND>
- andrelaszlo 1y agoI remember a website about Ski-Doo snowmobiles that my friend was obsessed about (both the website and snowmobiles) in 1998 or so. It was from Canada, and the bgsound was the website owner saying something in French. To us, it sounded like: fjänfny, hmmhmmhmm, dadadada. I only realized lately that the first word must be "bienvenue". It would be amazing to find it again on archive.org but unfortunately I dont remember more than this. :)
- jeffreygoesto 1y agoI remember cgi.pm and the magic of communicating two ways.
- b800h 1y agoI was expecting you to tell me that all of these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
- FeteCommuniste 1y ago"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..."
- mcswell 1y agob800h, meet jameslk (see post a few lines above yours)
- lanyard-textile 1y agoI remember when display flex was still new, experimental, and not universally supported :)
- Timwi 1y agoI developed web software with frames and I thought it was perfectly fine. To this day I still don't understand the issue with frames. People sometimes mention accessibility for screen readers, but nothing more specific than that, so I still don't know what the actual problem is.
- xnx 1y agoAll content on the web should have a unique, linkable, URL. Frameset breaks that.
- theandrewbailey 1y agoThat doesn't stop today's dynamically updating pages that also break the back button.
- roryirvine 1y agoFrames also broke the back button when they were first introduced! Together with the other early problems - ugly borders, proliferation of scrollbars, and limited browser compatibility - it meant that frames were seen as a usability disaster right from the start. They never managed to fully shake that reputation even as browsers improved in the later 90s.
- ComplexSystems 1y agoThat ship has long since sailed. We live in a world of web apps with dynamically created content, AJAX, and so on. The main entry point for the app has a URL, and then within the app all bets are off. Same with framesets.
- xnx 1y agoSPAs were a low point, but I've found consistent and linkable URLs has gotten better with developers recognizing the importance due to "SEO".
- zambal 1y agoDon't know if it was intentional, but your ramble reminded me of the lyrics of Losing my edge by LCD Soundsystem. However, as someone who also experienced most of this stuff, it was a fun read either way :)
- brazzy 1y agoMy personal website uses an image map for its main navigation menu. It still works just fine.
- ceautery 1y agoYou're in good company, Paul Graham's site does as well. https://paulgraham.com/index.html https://paulgraham.com/index.html
- rdrd 1y agoI remember working for a client who needed to support IE6 (with all the insane bugs/quirks/limitations) and I’d despair every time the designers would hand over a Photoshop design with rounded corners. They also needed it to be responsive (at the time mostly just different desktop sizes). Would usually require cutting the corners out and positioning them in table cells. There’s a certain amount of dev resilience you build having to do stuff like that by hand!
- layer8 1y agoAt least table rows didn't unexpectedly wrap to a new line like float-based layouts.
- rdrd 1y agoEven though it was a long time ago I still have IE6/7 workarounds burned into my brain, most of them float related but also having a whole stylesheet for that damn browser... <!--[if lte IE 6]>: https://code.google.com/archive/p/universal-ie6-css/ https://code.google.com/archive/p/universal-ie6-css/
- emfrosztovis 1y agoI’m only 20 but when I immediately recognized this I felt so old.
- davidmurdoch 1y agoFor some reason I actually really loved doing this. I remembering feeling disappointed when css got border radius.
- SoftTalker 1y agoOr just telling the designers "we can't do rounded corners for this client" (the client likely didn't care at all).
- mrweasel 1y agoWe worked with an internal design team, but basically just one UX specialist who has zero comprehension of how HTML, CSS or and web related technologies worked. At one point we where meet with "I don't like that the site blinks!" ... What do you mean by "blinks", we built it, it doesn't blink. Turns out she didn't like that that switching pages would cause the browser to load the next page and in turn there would be an ever so brief moment where the browser would show a blank page while loading the next page. This was in the initial ASP.NET and Ajax days, to the end result was "wrap the whole damn thing in an update panel". For those who doesn't know the ASP.NET update panel was basically HTMX before HTMX. The browser would do a background request and replace the content of the update panel with the html returned by the background request. Normally you'd just use if for a form submit, e.g. like a comment box. The user puts in their comment, the backend return all the comments, including the new one and the browser replace the current list of comments with the new one. We essentially put the entire site in to the update panel.
- connorgurney 1y agoOh, man, this takes me right back. Scary how time gets away from you.
- crabique 1y agoI remember WML <card> tag, essentially SPA 20 years before SPA even became a term.
- cardamomo 1y agoI've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gates. All those moments will be lost in time, like <blink> and <marquee>.
- neoberg 1y agoI remember building fluid views with rounded corners before border-radius.
- twhb 1y ago> spacer gifs Hacker News actually still uses these for comment indentation, check this page’s source code.
- rossant 1y agoMemories. Made my first website in 1998. In Notepad. I had fun with HTML but not many ideas about what I could create. So I learnt HTML by making, in HTML, an HTML tutorial website. I was 12.
- ddoeth 1y ago> Who here remembers frames? Don't worry, they are still alive, the swedish crime statistics website still uses them [0]. It's a great experience for everyone. [0]: https://statistik.bra.se/solwebb/action/index https://statistik.bra.se/solwebb/action/index
- pragma_x 1y ago> Who here remembers frames? I was there, writing sites professionally when this was rolled out. They're more or less deprecated, but I missing having a 1st-class building block that allows you to resize areas of the screen. Recommendations are to use anything but a <frameset>, but there's no replacement for that one feature. https://html.com/frames/ https://html.com/frames/ > I remember building site navigations in Java, Flash, and Silverlight. Don't forget ActiveX (actually, yes, we should all try to forget)
- iamthefury 1y agoI wish I could upvote this comment twice. Thank you for the walk down memory lane. I recall, in about 2010, hiring a young engineer to help with small marketing pages at an agency in New York City. His work was pixel-perfect at a time when we’d spend days just trying to get things looking reasonable in IE6. He was fast. It was incredible. He was gone for the day when a last-minute change came in, so another dev went to update his latest work. Turns out he had been exporting the entire designs (from Photoshop, of course, no Sketch or Figma back then) as a BACKGROUND IMAGE and then ABSOLUTELY POSITIONING form fields. I thought it was brilliant. No one else but the boss agreed. Testing for all of his work had been flawless cross-browser. It just didn’t work well on mobile. But he didn’t have to center things in a div - it was all smoke and mirrors. I miss those days sometimes.
- ianpenney 1y ago> Who here remembers frames? Low value comment: ME! Bonus - Server Side Includes changed my life.