4 ms·
IIRC "smileys" were what you got from fonts like Wingdings, and I believe those were short-lived. You could type :) and MS Word or Outlook, for example, would "
by badc0ffee 7mo ago
IIRC "smileys" were what you got from fonts like Wingdings, and I believe those were short-lived. You could type :) and MS Word or Outlook, for example, would "helpfully" give you the Wingdings happy face, which would show up as a J for anyone who didn't have that font.
:-) and friends were "emoticons" for decades.
- allenu 7mo agoYou're probably right about the terminology being around for a while, but I think most people just called them smileys (i.e. ;) would be called a "winking smiley"). I remember seeing the term used maybe in the early- or mid-90s either on a BBS or Usenet and thinking "Ah, that's what they're called" and as a nerd being annoyed that nobody used that term colloquially.
- butlike 7mo agoI completely forgot about "J" and the discourse it causes amongst my friend group.
- Kwpolska 7mo agoMicrosoft Office used Wingdings, but forums (based on e.g. phpBB) or IMs would replace :) with an image.
- joshuaissac 7mo ago> short-lived Outlook was doing this even 3-4 years ago.
- badc0ffee 7mo ago3-4 years ago I hope it was actual emojis, and not Wingdings.
- joshuaissac 7mo agoIt was Wingdings. But they do use Unicode emojis now.