From the article:
> Which side won? Like any good mutually-assured destruction, we all lost.
This is true on so many levels.
Under Construction (2015)
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#12From the article: > But the horrible truth is that this really was how these websites were. They all looked like this, every little one of the fuckers. Well, no. Many websites did not bother to include all that stuff. But these didn't bother to do a lot of styling at all. Original browser style. Very ugly, but at least informative and not nearly as distracting as the sites described in the article.
Also, some websites looked more like this:
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#13Just like enjoying the delight of using Cool Retro Terminal (for short bursts) ... you too can turn any web page into a mid-90's geocity-alike unpleasant mess here: http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/
Consider what it does to this HN discussion about Under Construction) http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=...
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#14I'd totally forgotten about the Book of Mozilla easter egg ('about:mozilla' in Firefox's url bar). Just re-checked, and yup it's still there, albeit a different text.
I've never heard of that.
Learn something new everyday :)
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#15I was just thinking about these the other day. The other thing that died off was "web rings". From back in the days when search engines were rubbish, so you'd have to find one site that was approximately what you were after, then click lots of links until eventually, at about 4 or 5 degrees of separation from the original search, you might find what you were originally looking for. I know, it seems barbaric now. Reci…
I also think a shift is that the web is very content driven now, so rather than linking sites together, you link content together.
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#16> "..this is one of those occasions where we should be thankful we've moved forward."
Have we _really_ moved forward?
In 20 years time, will today's parallax-scrolling, advert-laden, click-bait sites look any less ridiculous?
Rotating skulls have not gone away..they have just changed appearance!
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#17Article missed loads. Like the fact that a h1 would pretty much take up all the screen real estate back then because 800x600px resolution was luxurious back in the day. So no one used h1,h2 etc. They just bolded text instead for headings.
And used pixel fonts to get the font size down to a readable 10px to squeeze in text navigation where icons didn't cut the mustard.
Having said that the default grey background was there for a reason - it was a sane readable default. I find many modern sites still difficult on the eyes compared to their unstyled counterparts.
The lack of an underline and visited colour change on links disorientates me. It's all mystery meat navigation.
Mystery meat navigation is a whole other section of history missing. Some websites were made entirely in flash. Others just had a splash page. And many of these flash sites required you to hover and click about like a lunatic trying to find web content.
Oh the good old days...
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#18> "..this is one of those occasions where we should be thankful we've moved forward." Have we _really_ moved forward? In 20 years time, will today's parallax-scrolling, advert-laden, click-bait sites look any less ridiculous? Rotating skulls have not gone away..they have just changed appearance!
Oh yes, the 3MB click bait news article with practically zero content. To think you used to be able to fit an encyclopaedia on a floppy disk!
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#19Frames! The article missed them. Oh boy, did I love frames. That, and fixed backgrounds
Frames were brilliant. It's just they had a few unpleasant side effects, that could have been ironed out given the will. One html menu/navigation as a frame that was editable in one place without resorting to programming languages/constructs for file includes. Piecemeal content aggregation via frames may, just may have been a better approach to web page building.
Re: Under Construction (2015)
#20I was just thinking about these the other day. The other thing that died off was "web rings". From back in the days when search engines were rubbish, so you'd have to find one site that was approximately what you were after, then click lots of links until eventually, at about 4 or 5 degrees of separation from the original search, you might find what you were originally looking for. I know, it seems barbaric now. Reci…
Well, it's not only that. A lot of the web has shifted away from open parsable information to video and paid support content. You can't really quickly parse a video to know if you actually have content you need or if you've just loaded an advertisement for someone's video series. On top of that, SEO generated pages that just copy content from forums that have popular search terms have polluted a lot of searches and it's really hard to even know what to look for anymore if the product you want information on doesn't have its own support forum. Locking contant to PDFs, to videos, to image slideshows, the information just isn't easily parsable by the search engines, but they show up in keyword searches, and easily dupe users into clicking through.
Ads may have had a purpose to help content creators for awhile, but they have changed the landscape of the web for the worse overall. There are very few ad-driven enterprises/businesses that have an adequate content:advertisement ratio. Some youtube channels do it well - most do it very poorly. News articles have changed for the worse overall, with the actual articles weaving like a snake between advertisements, or people attaching auto-play advertisements to the bottom of articles, and so on. It's obnoxious, it affects the user's ability to actually access and interact with the content, and it results in a far less educated public.