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Does anyone remember websites?
61–70 of 386 posts
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I used to enjoy picking a subject and then clicking all the DMOZ or Yahoo! links. I'd dig through webrings and and link aggregators with wild abandon. Yep, that's exactly what I used to do. That's really what "surfing the web" meant back in those days -- that you would spend hours just clicking links, seeing where they would take you. And of course, they would quite often take you to completely unexpected but cool…
Is that any different from spending an hour finding links on Wikipedia or HN or Reddit or Facebook or whatever you're into?
People don't seem to build personal websites in the same way anymore - back then they weren't doing it to generate clicks, page views, passive income, build their profile etc, and everything wasn't all slickly styled and presented on a modern blogging platform. As a result websites were more amateurish, idiosyncratic, original, and sometimes charming, and I think the essence of the creator's motivation or interests often came across more strongly. The web doesn't have the same magic it used to for me. My god though some things were crap about it back in the day. If only we could have have kept the old web preserved alongside the new.
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#63> Most websites were written with html, so they were all unique. Every single website on the internet always was, is and will be HTML (with various kinds of XML/SVG markup sometimes). People just gradually realised proper and standardised web design makes the Web better for everyone, by making it more usable and accessible. I don't see why I should feel nostalgia for an Internet plagued by ` `s, poorly-laid out flash…
> Every single website on the internet always was, is and will be HTML (with various kinds of XML/SVG markup sometimes). People just gradually realised proper and standardised web design makes the Web better for everyone, by making it more usable and accessible.
Unstyled HTML (optionally with user style sheets) is more usable and accessible than today's one-size-fits-the-designer design for the kind of content that used to dominate (and is still a large segment of) the web. (We've got better tools for making usable and accessible content, but they are mostly not used for that purpose.)
For interactive applications, its a different story.
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#64Last night I ended up, for some weird nostalgic reason, installing a Gopher client, just to see if there was anything still around. Amazingly, there's a bunch of blogs (called phlogs in Gopherspace) that people are updating regularly! Pretty amazing!
I check every couple of years and both Gopher and Usenet lumber on.
Yup! I still use my eternal-september account on a weekly basis!
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#65I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…
Stumbleupon ? :P
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#66[deleted]
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I used to enjoy picking a subject and then clicking all the DMOZ or Yahoo! links. I'd dig through webrings and and link aggregators with wild abandon. Yep, that's exactly what I used to do. That's really what "surfing the web" meant back in those days -- that you would spend hours just clicking links, seeing where they would take you. And of course, they would quite often take you to completely unexpected but cool…
Is that any different from spending an hour finding links on Wikipedia or HN or Reddit or Facebook or whatever you're into?
The stuff I submit to HN or comment on that wows people often came from me digging into websites you dont find with a quick Google. Esp academic web sites or just those made by smart folks with odd little organization schemes. Im guessing same was true for some of the more obscure, but valuable, stuff I see others submit or bring up.
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#68Yes I think I know how you feel. You might like reading books haha.
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#69I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything…
Browsing vs. searching. We don't seem to do much browsing anymore. We search and selectively pick what we consume. It's faster but, as you say, I don't think it is as fun. I used to enjoy picking a subject and then clicking all the DMOZ or Yahoo! links. I'd dig through webrings and and link aggregators with wild abandon. Now, I search a term and click on the first few results, at most. Sure, there are exceptions but…
> We don't seem to do much browsing anymore. We search and selectively pick what we consume. It's faster but, as you say, I don't think it is as fun.
Dunno, how much of this is also just getting older and set in our life routine? When was the last time I explored my own city on a bike like I would as a kid? Our interests and patience for browsing change.
How old are you now vs in this "golden era of the web"?
Most of those stories just sound like nostalgia to me. Like suggesting that games these days aren't as good as they used to be because look how less time you spend gaming these days.
Re: Does anyone remember websites?
#70See also the analysis (from 2015) of an Iranian blogger who got arrested in 2008 and got free in 2015 - he did not recognize the new web. (Ironically also posted on Medium...) According to him, hyperlinks turned into a social media stream. https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a4...
After blocking all the JavaScript and hiding the position=fixed garbage, that was an interesting article.
> So I tried to post a link to one of my stories on Facebook. Turns out Facebook didn’t care much. It ended up looking like a boring classified ad. No description. No image. Nothing. It got three likes. Three! That was it.
I write a blog, and publish links to posts on Facebook because doing so costs me nothing. It also gets me next to nothing. People click on those links about as often as Facebook asks me for my credit card to "boost" them.