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FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

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Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#91

Post by scarface74 »

benibela wrote: post #81
Svip wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decen…

Born in 89, I made a webpage for my mother at that time. She still likes it :/ Check the generator tag on the frameset page http://www.roswithavanderzander.de/index_EN.htm

It loads fast. It’s easy to navigate. With just a little bit of work, it would be more appealing than most “modern” web page.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#92

Post by scarface74 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #80
OskarS wrote: post #36

You know, good design principles weren't invented in 2006. There was plenty of good design in the 90s in other industries (publishing, newspapers, magazines, advertising, academia, ...), but apparently fucking nothing of that filtered down to webdesign. I mean: yes, technology was limited. I get that you couldn't have free range with things like typography and that CSS wasn't a thing yet. But for the love of god: a t…

I think the novelty of the medium is what drove websites to have terrible design. To paraphrase Jurassic Park: > Your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should

Just like the early days of desktop publishing.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#93

Post by rangibaby »

Vinnl wrote: post #76
pjc50 wrote: 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...

> and it has an optional upload mechanism that requires IIS on the server side. So much time spent, as a small kid, looking for a free webhost that supported FrontPage extensions...

It wasn’t that hard to upload the whole thing with Cute ftp (I figured it out when I was 10...)

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#94

Post by rangibaby »

ddtaylor wrote: post #43
maaaats wrote: 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.

Similar story for me, but with a Dragonball Z fan site. Internet, I'm sorry.

Me too. Midis and comet cursor. Sorry

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#96

Post by BillyBreen »

archergod wrote: post #77
pjc50 wrote: 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...

Well, they works best in IE because at that time there was IE only. Netscape navigator the other browser charge user, Firefox was just a beginning, as they want to take down IE because of their Navigator failure. It was great because it support some dynamic content. It was the first step to software like Dreamweaver as it bring concept in place. Having said that it was ugly design and I never like them even back then…

Netscape never charged users. Perhaps you’re thinking of Opera.

The reasons IE won over Netscape are many, but bundling with dominant OS and embracing/extending standards such that sites only worked in IE was a big part of it. Heck, there was a whole antitrust case about just that.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#97

Post by pavlov »

oxplot wrote: post #62

I don't get it. Maybe someone can explain why these style and many other at the time were so hedious given that in print for a century preceding it, we had beautiful color, font and layout.

It wasn’t obvious at the time that web design should have anything to do with print. Its immediate predecessors were a bunch of online systems like BBSes, Compuserve, Prodigy that either ran inside a terminal emulator with garish ANSI colors at best, or shipped with their own custom GUI app for access.

There was a lot of activity in the late ‘90s around what “authentic to the medium” web design could look like, but I don’t remember people being very interested in emulating traditional print design — which itself was in turmoil thanks to digital publishing systems. Open a 1996 issue of Wired and you’ll probably think the designers were on crack: purple text on garish background images, cut-up barely readable fonts, that kind of thing.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#98

Post by jkabrg »

I'm wondering how many of the complaints here are to do with FrontPage itself, or the very idea of WYSIWYG web design.

To me, it seems that web design is a visual thing. And if so, then a WYSIWYG editor is the appropriate thing to use. I'm suspicious that some people here don't think visually, and don't see the value in thinking visually.

I don't know what people mean when they say "bad markup". I imagine it might include things like positioning elements using absolute coordinates. But I'm sure this is solvable by previewing the webpage on different resolutions, browsers and device types.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#99

Post by Aardwolf »

olalonde wrote: post #72
Anonymous4C54D6 wrote: post #71

I miss this. Web pages were just data not programs.

Why?

Because you could just read the text and view the images without being disturbed by 3 floating elements you have to close first, then when you scrolled 25% down some new thing popping up in your way, then when you scrolled 50% down some other annoying thing happening, and when at the end of the article suddenly it changes into another one, all while some video starts autoplaying but not without first having a wait during which you cannot pause it, and without following you around in a tiny window at the bottom that automatically appears again when you scroll, even if you tried to pause it. All while some small floating elements on the sides somehow appear on top of small parts of the text you are trying to read left or right.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#100

Post by dep_b »

BillyBreen wrote: post #96
archergod wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they works best in IE because at that time there was IE only. Netscape navigator the other browser charge user, Firefox was just a beginning, as they want to take down IE because of their Navigator failure. It was great because it support some dynamic content. It was the first step to software like Dreamweaver as it bring concept in place. Having said that it was ugly design and I never like them even back then…

Netscape never charged users. Perhaps you’re thinking of Opera. The reasons IE won over Netscape are many, but bundling with dominant OS and embracing/extending standards such that sites only worked in IE was a big part of it. Heck, there was a whole antitrust case about just that.

> Netscape never charged users. Perhaps you’re thinking of Opera.

No Netscape would officially cost you US$49 until 1998.

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