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FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

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Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#181

Post by sqrt17 »

MrRadar wrote: post #118
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…

> 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. You have to remember how primitive web technologies were in those days. CSS was released in December 1996 but didn't get good, consistent browser implementations until the early 2000s. Besides CSS your layout and styling op…

> don't forget to test your site at 640x480 with 256 colors.

Don't forget: you couldn't (or shouldn't) bring your own 256 color palette, because the actual palette would be a compromise between all the applications open - so you were forced/encouraged to use the "Web palette", which contained a fixed set of 216 colors.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#182

Post by rustcharm »

scarface74 wrote: post #87
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...

I love how they laid it on the line. “If you want to do web development, you need to actually learn web technology” Now if someone would tell web developers that if you want to write desktop/mobile apps, you need to learn native frameworks..... What are newer FrontPage alternatives? The Internet and the web have changed drastically since the days when FrontPage was a very common website editor. Almost every modern we…

Don't forget the first program in this space: Adobe Pagemill.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#183

Post by rustcharm »

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.

Here's an article stating that Netscape charged $49. It was in PC Magazine October 22, 1996

https://books.google.com/books?id=sjA_WJ82CSsC&lpg=PA102&dq=...

@dang can you edit/delete the parent comment? No need to spread lies here!

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#184

Post by LastZactionHero »

arayh wrote: post #142
cntlzw wrote: post #95

You can say what you want but these were great times! Everyone could make their own little ugly homepage and it was exciting. People didn't really judge each other or bragged about how this tech is better than that. I kinda miss it.

Ah, the good old days where guestbooks and webrings were commonplace. I remember it was an exciting time to be on the Internet. I felt far more connected to people's personal pages back then.

Anyone interested in starting a modern webring?

I've wanted to move my blog content off Medium, but then no one would ever see it.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#185

Post by FelipeCortez »

LastZactionHero wrote: post #184
arayh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the good old days where guestbooks and webrings were commonplace. I remember it was an exciting time to be on the Internet. I felt far more connected to people's personal pages back then.

Anyone interested in starting a modern webring? I've wanted to move my blog content off Medium, but then no one would ever see it.

Here's a modern webring: https://github.com/XXIIVV/webring

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#186

Post by franze »

brightball wrote: post #126

People laugh, but this is how I learned HTML back then. I did something in Frontpage and then checked the code it generated to see how to do it with the tags.I still remember the Dreamweaver vs Frontpage vs Notepad arguments. I'm getting old.

Me, too. Use FrontPage (later DreamWeaver), check code. Delete bit by bit what wasn't needed. Unserstand what the rest was doing. Iterrate on it.

For those who laugh: we didn't have any proper html dev dokus at that point. search engine still sucked. we learned html by copy&pasting&deleting&iterrating.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#187

Post by VyperCard »

degenerate wrote: post #102
cntlzw wrote: post #95

You can say what you want but these were great times! Everyone could make their own little ugly homepage and it was exciting. People didn't really judge each other or bragged about how this tech is better than that. I kinda miss it.

I made some groovy table-based sites by setting up the table layout with the FrontPage GUI and then editing the raw HTML it generated. It taught me HTML and opened the doors to web development for me. Same story using Visual Basic and my segway into programming.

Me too

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#188

Post by clon »

I skimmed this entire article thinking it is a clever tongue-in-cheek piece, and found it hilarious, only to realise that it was from 1997 and written sincerely.

Wow, I wish I could get back those hours drawing complex tables and placing 1x1 pixel images in strategic places.

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#189

Post by th0ma5 »

I think WebDAV was of course the best thing about FrontPage and I still use it whenever I can. FP made web development accessible to more people which is fine, but I don't miss all the cruft it added, although, arguably we're in a crazier mess now perhaps :P

Re: FrontPage 98: Elegant and Exquisite (1997)

#190

Post by tresil »

cntlzw wrote: post #95

You can say what you want but these were great times! Everyone could make their own little ugly homepage and it was exciting. People didn't really judge each other or bragged about how this tech is better than that. I kinda miss it.

Really? While I developed many sites in FrontPage, it was always looked down on by most people I knew. Many hosts outright refused to do full integration with it or run its extensions. The Generated HTML was far better than Word would generate, but it still was wonky unless you really knew what to avoid or were doing something incredibly simple.
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