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FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

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Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#161

Post by icameron »

linsomniac wrote: post #154
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...

Didn't require IIS, you could run it on a Linux box with Apache. It would remind you at every step that you were a second class citizen and that you really should be running IIS, but you could do it. Those Cobalt RaQ and Qube boxes came with that support baked in, which was a nice feature until Cobalt died and we had to replicate the functionality on straight Linux boxes. It wasn't hard , it's just that a little part…

Did you know you can still run RaQ today, on a VM. Its called BlueOnyx now, its been slightly modernized, and we have a few sites running on it to this day. Its as rock solid as ever. Have some sites that are 20 years old and were migrated from original RaQs

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#163

Post by c-smile »

jkabrg wrote: post #98

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 in…

browsers do the following:

By given set of HTML and CSS produce bitmap on screen. That's perfectly determined task (modulo browser differences).

WYSIWYG editor does the opposite task:

With the given bitmap on screen produce set of valid HTML and CSS declarations.

The last task is undetermined mathematically speaking - with modern HTML and especially CSS there are too many ways of get the same rendering using completely different CSS tricks - absolute positioning, floats, display:grid and flexbox etc. etc.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#164

Post by kuschku »

tallblondeguy wrote: post #117
barrystaes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples?

This article from The Verge[0] cites some support Tweets: - AirBnb[1]: "We'd always recommend that you use Google Chrome to browse the site: we've optimised things for this browser. Thanks." - Seamless[2]: "Safari is not a good browser to use with our website. Google Chrome work better with our website or you can download the app." - DirecTV Now[3] - IDAT solutions[4] (some random thing I found while searching) - Cou…

Even my university’s enrollment system (HISinOne) complains on Firefox Mobile that it only supports Chrome.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#165

Post by dfox »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #128
gattilorenz wrote: post #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!

Don't worry, Ling's Cars will make sure you get your full fix of Geocities design. https://www.lingscars.com/

What is slightly weird is that the website actually uses HTML5, minified CSS and what not.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#166

Post by abricot »

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

I really dig your mom's erh.. organic art.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#168

Post by aavotins »

Wow, this was a trip down memory lane. In fact it was Frontpage 98 that inspired me to try out my hand at building the web, back in 1999. I was just 10 years old back then. However it sparked my interest, because I could create something. Creating a webpage about my then most favorite game Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, publishing it and receiving my first ever e-mail from someone in the UK about a spelling error resulted in an experience that struck me so deeply that I became a web developer. Almost 20 years later I still love what Microsoft FrontPage 98 allowed me to discover.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#169

Post by reitanqild »

scarface74 wrote: post #92
toomanybeersies wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And today in "modern frontend".

As a frontend developer I'm part of it, but at least I don't encourage it or defend it :-/

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