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FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

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Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#22

I read quite a bit of this but couldn't figure it out: is this writer sort of mocking their own purple prose in a sort of self-consciously over-the-top way? Or is that just their writing style? (It's hard to imagine anyone reading this style seriously. Even the subtitle, "elegant and exquisite" is a weird way to talk about software.) Do you think they're making fun of something?

It took me until he started showing the themes to realize it was a joke, but after that it becomes a bit more evident.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#23
post #5

"WebMaster". I see this term a lot in older sites. "WebMasters click here !" sort of links. What does it really mean? The term.

there was also this thing between webmasters, called banner exchange. that's how you got new traffic to your website. i remember when i did my first gaming review site up in high school i was trying to get my banner to as many other sites as i could and they would get the place on my site. i remember tweaking my banner in macromedia flash :)

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#24
post #5

"WebMaster". I see this term a lot in older sites. "WebMasters click here !" sort of links. What does it really mean? The term.

It's embarrassing to say but in my company, I'm still "the webmaster". And by reading your question I conclude that it's because no one has any idea about what I'm doing.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#25
post #7

Born in 91, I was the perfect age to be obsessed with Harry Potter. When I was around ten, an older kid in the neighborhood helped me make a Harry Potter themed website using FrontPage (the Express version I think it was named). Small, random event that end up having a big effect on my life. My hobbies, what&where I chose to study, the friends I got there etc. I can trace back to this.

Oh man, I had a similar experience around 2000. I built a Danish website about Goldeneye 64 in FrontPage. The first website I ever made. It used frames, but I feel it was quite pleasing on the eyes, because I avoided a lot of the 'fancy effects' that was common for the time.

I'll admit, being born in 87, most of the site was simply copied from other websites about the game, and translated to Danish. So it was a decent exercise - particularly for someone dyslexic as me - to both built a website and translate from English to Danish.

If only I knew where that website ended up...

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#26
My first programming job often consisted of us adding buttons and a javascript snippet to third party websites as part of the on boarding process (thinking embedding a webring script). Usually this was easy, but sometimes you'd get a FrontPage site and this simple edition would completely blow up the site.

Fortunately I usually didn't have to use front page to do it and could hand edit the HTML, if it blew up when they tried to edit it in front page again we could blame that on MS, which was believable with their software quality at the time.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#27
post #17

Oh god, the horror. Not just the ugly webpages, those were the ubiquitous style at the time. No, FrontPage pioneered deep ugliness, because like all Microsoft products of the 90s it regarded interoperability as a threat. It produces ugly HTML that works best in IE, and it has an optional upload mechanism that requires IIS on the server side. https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/frontpage/th...

At my current job I am rewriting a 25 year-old VB application into a web-based application, and the majority* of our documentation is written in FrontPage. The horror, indeed.

*: Well, sort of.. there are bits scattered everywhere, I had to dig into email archives to find some specifications.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#28
The whole domain is amazing.

Just look at this page, updated LAST YEAR: http://www.telecommanderhosting.com/ec/framed_Microsoft_OS.h... Look at the waving Win 95 logo! Not to mention the "office clipart guy" in the homepage...

I am just suprised that the obligatory "under construction" gif is missing!

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#30
> Microsoft FrontPage 98 also now provides support for the Channel Definition Format (CDF) which is a really keen way of broadcasting your web content to an end user's Windows desktop. You can "push" content to your visitors without having them seek you out daily for updates.

It looks like this used to be the precursor of RSS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Definition_Format

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