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Neopets HTML Guide

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Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#11

Post by bstamour »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #10
aylmao wrote: post #3

Low key, this guide is how I got into programming and probably plays a big role in why I’m now a Software Engineer. Throwback.

I never saw the Neopets guide. For me, it was Joe Burns' site: HTMLGoodies[0]. It was indispensable for me. That and a lot of help from FrontPage Express[1] & viewing the source code of whatever I'd just made. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/19990429010831/http://www.htmlgo... [1] http://www.jegsworks.com/lessons/web/html/fpx/fpx.htm

I remember HTMLGoodies. Before coming across it I learned the basics from a site called Lissa Explains [0].

[0] http://www.lissaexplains.com/

Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#12

Post by wccrawford »

napsterbr wrote: post #2

This is so nostalgic... I remember spending several days of my youth playing and, er, "boosting" my scores to earn more neopoints. Usually modifying the POST request with something like TamperData did the trick :)

I actually went beyond that. There was a fun game that involved overlaying tetris-like shapes on a board to cycle images through a set. It started out easy, but soon got rather hard. I wrote a program to help solve them easier, and did quite well at first. Eventually, I think other people did the same, but better. That, or they were really, really savants at that kind of problem.

Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#13

Post by erikrothoff »

This got me into programming as well! The biggest problem I had was when I wanted to expand and build a forum, and tried to understand why Geocities didn't run my .php file (which was from a tutorial). Answer: PHP support was paid option AFAIK

Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#16

Post by gertlex »

I too used this, and more generally credit Neopets as a source of a lot motivations to learn by solving interesting problems. I reproduced a couple of the site's games in my first couple high school programming classes, and then eventually had a minimal logic but very reliable "Battledome" fighting script using autohotkey partway through undergrad. That autohotkey experience was helpful senior year in very quickly automating data collection from a non-automatable program for estimating atmospheric radiation dispersal.

Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#17

Post by zoba »

Neopets is the reason I’m a software engineer. Along the way looking for “cheat codes” for Neopets, I discovered some people hacking the games. I eventually ran a forum on hacking Neopets, made money from ads, got into PC World Magazine, and had a great time along the way.

Sorry to Adam and Donna for any headaches I caused during my teenage years. <3

Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#18

Post by ravenstine »

zoba wrote: post #17

Neopets is the reason I’m a software engineer. Along the way looking for “cheat codes” for Neopets, I discovered some people hacking the games. I eventually ran a forum on hacking Neopets, made money from ads, got into PC World Magazine, and had a great time along the way. Sorry to Adam and Donna for any headaches I caused during my teenage years. <3

One of the first "real" programs I wrote was a thing in Visual Basic 6 that would navigate to the giving tree page and quickly snatch up stuff. It was extremely primitive, requiring me to manually sign in to Neopets through an IE webview, and most of my code was ripped from other projects on planetsourcecode.com(that site was epic to my 12 year old self), but somehow I made it work for a short while. Trust me, I didn't really understand what was going on or even what a GET request was.

Also, pushing the limits of the HTML and styling you could have on a store page helped me learn those things, and I'm sure some of the knowledge I use for my career in web development today came from those days on Neopets.

I wonder if I came across your site back then.

Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#19

Post by cnees »

Every once in a while I run into another programmer who started on Neopets, and it makes me happy. :) When I interviewed for my job, they asked me my “programming story.” I remember struggling to make my petpages compatible with Firefox, Safari, and IE5. I remember learning Dreamweaver so I could apply to adopt cool Neopets. I wrote tens of thousands of lines of HTML in TextEdit to make an interactive Lite Brite, and more recently I built Neopets-compatible Minesweeper. (http://www.neopets.com/~wire) These are the projects that made me give CS a shot even though I had no idea what it would be like and even though I was nervous to enter a field with a bad reputation for its attitude towards women. I’m so glad I did.

So many people learned the joy of coding from that site. Sadly, it can’t be that for the next generation because its code filters are almost as obsolete as this guide. HTML5, CSS3, multiple classes on an element, and the word “position” in a stylesheet aren’t supported. TNT, if you’re reading this, please take some time to invest in the part of your site where people learn and create.

Re: Neopets HTML Guide

#20

Post by fenwick67 »

a_t wrote: post #15

And for when you wanted to dive a bit deeper and make your shop really pop, there was the Funky Chickens HTML Help Page ( http://www.funkychickens.com/main.asp )

11-year-old me used the hell out of Funky Chickens HTML Help.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who used this.

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