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The Return of the 90s Web

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Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#21

Post by waltbosz »

What I miss most from the early days of the Internet is the content. It was all created with love.

My theory is that the high barrier to entry of online publishing kept all but the most determined people from creating content. As a result, the little content that was out there was usually good.

With today's monetized blogs, it is often content for content's sake. People don't try, or they write about topics which they are not really interested in, but did just to have a new post. Or often the writing is bad.

Maybe today's problem isn't the blogs, but the SEO that puts the crap blogs at the top of the search results. Or maybe I'm misremembering and the old content was crap too, or maybe my standards are higher than they were in my teenage years.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#22

Post by themodelplumber »

dewey wrote: post #10
purerandomness wrote: post #5

I recently watched the "Helvetica" documentary that was posted here a few days ago [0], where they briefly mention "Grunge Typography" [1], a seemingly dead-end branch of typography that, for some strange reason, became pretty popular for a short period of time. After some years however, consensus amongst designers formed that what they've created was a pile of illegible garbage, and realized that there was no other…

I have fond memories of creating images with Grunge fonts in some pirated copy of Photoshop and then positioning them with HTML tables and Dreamweaver.

Those were good times in a lot of ways!

Also I may be an outlier, but IMO grunge as a textural expression still benefits lots of contemporary design projects. In fact if you know how to work within broader principles of design, maybe you stop caring as much about what's current, because that's just one of many outcomes that may or may not be appropriate for the message...

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#23

Post by binarytox1n »

dewey wrote: post #10
purerandomness wrote: post #5

I recently watched the "Helvetica" documentary that was posted here a few days ago [0], where they briefly mention "Grunge Typography" [1], a seemingly dead-end branch of typography that, for some strange reason, became pretty popular for a short period of time. After some years however, consensus amongst designers formed that what they've created was a pile of illegible garbage, and realized that there was no other…

I have fond memories of creating images with Grunge fonts in some pirated copy of Photoshop and then positioning them with HTML tables and Dreamweaver.

This is how I learned web development. Don't forget photoshopping the glossiest buttons possible. Not sure if that fad was before or after the grunge.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#24

Post by dndvr »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #16
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm missing something, the article isn't very clear. One of the reasons why we have front end apps pulling from an API is because it allows for interoperability. The same API that serves data to the web browser can serve that data to mobile apps and to third parties as well. The idea of bringing HTML rendering back on to the server just doesn't seem useful to me.

That's if you're making an application, sure, but on the web I view all sorts of sites and most of them are just styled text containers, maybe with an optional way to mutate things. HN, Reddit, News, recipes, forums, galleries, these are things I regularly consume that don't need APIs to return content. For applications, like Facebook, it's understandable, but if you don't spend all of your time in Social Media, then…

You must use old.reddit.com

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#25

Post by yagodragon »

I really hope personal blogging becomes popular again!. Speaking of which, I still haven't found a really good alternative to the "horrible" WordPress for blogging. It has:

- Integrated API, RSS

- Tons of plugins

- Accessibility, translations

- Easy and powerful editor(Gutenberg)

- Comments sections and forms w/ complete ownership and moderation

- Easy data imports from multiple platforms.

- Users and roles

- 100% open source w/ GPL. You own your data

- Extremely easy and cheap to host and move around.

I love modern tooling and git based workflows for all my project but my "static" 11ty/Gatsby.js blog doesn't provide all these features out of the box. Instead of writing, you end up reimplementing basic cms features.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#26

Post by pgm8705 »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm missing something, the article isn't very clear. One of the reasons why we have front end apps pulling from an API is because it allows for interoperability. The same API that serves data to the web browser can serve that data to mobile apps and to third parties as well. The idea of bringing HTML rendering back on to the server just doesn't seem useful to me.

Having both is still an option with minimal effort. In Rails it can be as simple as adding .json to your request and you get the data, otherwise the HTML.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#27

Post by hoorayimhelping »

purerandomness wrote: post #5

I recently watched the "Helvetica" documentary that was posted here a few days ago [0], where they briefly mention "Grunge Typography" [1], a seemingly dead-end branch of typography that, for some strange reason, became pretty popular for a short period of time. After some years however, consensus amongst designers formed that what they've created was a pile of illegible garbage, and realized that there was no other…

>We recently deployed an entire SaaS only using server-side rendering and htmx [2] to give it an SPA-like feel and immediate interactivity where needed. It was a pleasure to develop, it's snappy and we could actually rely on the Browser doing the heavy lifting for things like history, middle click, and not break stuff.

I'm glad we're coming back to server side rendering with some JavaScript for interactivity, but from about 2005 - 2015 this was simply known as web development. You didn't need to worry about breaking the back button or middle mouse or command clicks because they just worked.

I feel like with React, we made the actual JavaScript code simpler at the expense of everything else in the system becoming way more complex.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#28

Post by mtgp1000 »

waltbosz wrote: post #21

What I miss most from the early days of the Internet is the content. It was all created with love. My theory is that the high barrier to entry of online publishing kept all but the most determined people from creating content. As a result, the little content that was out there was usually good. With today's monetized blogs, it is often content for content's sake. People don't try, or they write about topics which the…

I think what you're saying about reduced barriers to entry has lowered the standard of all popular media.

It used to be expensive to publish anything - especially the further back in time you go. So classics for example typically represent particularly bright writers, as having something published before the printing press, and widely disseminated, was simply unlikely to happen.

But today anyone can create an account on YouTube or stream on twitch and it doesn't matter if the content is of any particular quality or veracity, so long as the common man sees what he wants to see.

I think there's a major secondary effect, in that now that we are surrounded by low quality media, the average person's ability to recognize merit in general is lessened.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#30

Post by izietto »

waltbosz wrote: post #21

What I miss most from the early days of the Internet is the content. It was all created with love. My theory is that the high barrier to entry of online publishing kept all but the most determined people from creating content. As a result, the little content that was out there was usually good. With today's monetized blogs, it is often content for content's sake. People don't try, or they write about topics which the…

My theory is that the more companies you throw in the less humanity you can find
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