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Does anyone remember websites?

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Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#301

Post by username223 »

gboudrias wrote: post #203
username223 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

> hiding the position=fixed garbage Oh wow, I literally never want this behavior! Do you have a generic trick? "Inspect element" is tedious.

I use this bookmarklet: javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#303

Post by vinw »

ggus wrote: post #254
log_base_login wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They (Google) have a feature built-in to the search engine so that if you put all the terms you want to absolutely see in quotes, for example: "tomato seeds grow", it won't return results without any of those terms. Note that it will only return results with pages that have those terms in that order.

if you wrap each word in quotes it works the intended way. eg. "tomato" "seeds" "grow"

Another way to do this is start your search with "allintext:"

    allintext: tomato seeds grow

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#304

Post by klibertp »

jasode wrote: post #53
inetknght wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful? I would argue that it's actually a lot less useful today.

I grew up with 1980s dial-up modems (slow 300 baud!) to dial directly into BBS systems and USENET. I then continued dialup access into the early internet (GNN not AOL) in 1995. I now have Verizon fiber optic. To me, the modern web today is better in virtually every way compared to 1990s web surfing. + Google search engine is better than Alta Vista and Excite. + Google Maps with smooth scroll, 3D streetview, and satel…

I won't deny that the current Web is much more useful, on average, than it was back in the nineties when I started using it.

On the other hand, during that time the technology became immeasurably better - my first dial-up connection was 9.600 kbps if I remember correctly, now I have 4 Mbps; I didn't have a math co-processor back then and now we have multicore monsters of CPUs - and so on.

The question (to me) is not if the current Web is more useful, but if the increase in usefulness is anywhere near the technological progress?

At some point, the technological limits - like no YouTube because both the necessary download speeds and compression algorithms were not there - were replaced by something else. Back then we could believe that, in time, seeing the rate of progress, we'll get everything we ever wanted. The tech advanced and now we could have all these things we dreamed about, but don't - because of political and economic factors.

Yes, the Web improved drastically, despite a couple missteps (like IE6) along the way. But I believe the improvement is much lesser than the current technology would enable were it not for non-technological factors.

On the brighter side, once developed, technology is here to stay, so if we deal with all the current problems we'll be free to advance the Web further. But that's a pretty big "if"...

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#305

Post by halr9000 »

I'm "old" and I remember websites, and Bulletin Board Systems too, for that matter. But technology changes, and you gotta keep up, man. Don't let the kids bother you--they're just running through your yard to the next house over. It's a cool house, maybe check it out someone.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#306

Post by zapperdapper »

Couldn't agree with you more!

Now sites seem to be spread out across the behemoth sites like Medium and of course all the social media platforms. A lot of the fun and sense of adventure that was present in the early days of the web is gone. Now it's "just business" - that blows! When did everyone get so obsessed with boosting their "online presence" in order to make a quick buck?

I will also give a big thumbs up to Neocities. It's brilliant. There's a great retro feel to many of the sites there. People are having fun creating sites with HTML and a dash of CSS - for free.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#307

Post by boomlinde »

fiala__ wrote: post #38

> 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…

> People just gradually realised proper and standardised web design makes the Web better for everyone, by making it more usable and accessible.

Then gradually forgot about it? These days we have our WingDings (FontAwesome), popups ("please subscribe to our newsletter" modals), best viewed in Netscape Navigator 4 ("you are using an outdated browser"), best viewed in 800x600 ("please rotate your device"), auto-playing General MIDI music (auto-playing videos), slow load times (not due to a 28.8k modems, but bloat) and other ridiculous practices that don't really have any 1998 equivalents (hijacking scrolling, pop-in-pop-out menus, hijacking the browser history or giant banners that follow you around as you scroll (without using frames, so good practice!)). Often for no good reason. Where we had we now have pop-in chat bots, subscription reminders, social media sharing links using a third of the screen, nonsensical page transitions etc.

It's all exploiting what could be very useful technology, and I'm not saying it's much better or much worse, but at least in the 90s the regression you'd experience by not running any scripts was that there wouldn't be any asterisk snowflakes falling around christmas, not that the plain text article you were about to read suddenly became unreadable or unnavigable. It seems the lessons consistently learned from the past are the most trivial and are ignorant of the cause of the original criticisms. Don't use tables for layout (instead implement your convoluted page layout using pyramids and CSS hacks!), don't use frames (use "position: fixed;" to waste screen real estate instead, and use JS to break navigation!)

Web people were for a brief moment enthused with the idea of proper human- and machine readable content markup respecting established standards. But we're not there any more if we ever were, developers preferring to serve the most simple content using 500k of JavaScript and 200k of CSS browser workarounds over plain (X)HTML with simple styling.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#309

Post by Blahah »

pluma wrote: post #293
userbinator wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything they want within seconds. Almost anything popular and rather insipid, yes. Try to find more detailed information on very specific topics, however, and you'll discover that search engines like Google have been optimising more and more for the former content, making it harder to find the latter. I don't think that's a good thing at a…

Oh god yes. The other day I saw a marabou bird in a wildlife documentary and was surprised by the hair-like stuff on its gular sack (the pink bag hanging from its neck). Wikipedia doesn't mention it and if you search for "marabou feathers" you only find that the world apparently obsesses about the fuzzy white crest on its neck that inspired fashion some decades ago. "Marabou hair" and "marabou hair feathers" likewise…

In case you didn't find the answer to your question, those feathers are called 'filoplumes' [1]. Relatively obscure anatomical detail like this is more easily discoverable in the scientific literature than on the web. I found the answer by searching Google Scholar for "marabou stork", browsing the results for a paper about the "gular sac" (although it has other names), then reading the most promising looking paper - the answer was in the second paragraph [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather#Classification

2. Akester, A. R., Pomeroy, D. E. and Purton, M. D. (1973), Subcutaneous air pouches in the Marabou stork (Leptoptios curmeniferus). Journal of Zoology, 170: 493–499. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7998.1973.tb05063.x https://sci-hub.io/http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.111...

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#310

Post by JohnBooty »

ikurei wrote: post #299
JohnBooty wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. The only way I can find product buying advice is: 1. To find a community of enthusiasts and see what they have to say about products in that space. This works pretty well for products that actually have enthusiasts. 2. Go to Amazon and read a product's bad reviews. The good reviews are nearly useless. But, with bad reviews, you have to weigh the number of bad reviews against the product's popularity. If…

Do you mean this [Cool Tools]( http://kk.org/cooltools/ ) ( http://kk.org/cooltools/ )?

Yeah! It's pretty good IMO, are you a fan? The links are Amazon referral links (same with Wirecutter) so I still try to be heathily skeptical but I've found both to be reliable...
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