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The Return of the 90s Web

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Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#41

Post by yoz-y »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #27
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 fr…

Depends on what you build. I find a REST server + client side rendered frontend quite simpler to grok than a server side rendered page. Mostly because the separation between UI and data is really clear and all of the CLI interfacing comes free as well. There is certainly a way to split this well with SSR, but it's also easier to fall into the trap of tightly coupling the parts.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#42

Post by trimbo »

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…

> After some years however, consensus amongst designers formed that what they've created was a pile of illegible garbage

Really? Citation needed?

I guess I have never heard graphic designers say anything about David Carson except that he's one of the most innovative and influential designers in the past 30 years. IMO his graphic design was amazing and perfect for the context (music and surf magazines). I loved getting my monthly issue of Raygun and marveling at what neat designs they had done this time.

The decline of it is pretty easy to explain: the same thing that killed print altogether also killed print music magazines (i.e. the internet).

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#44

Post by brandonhorst »

sidpatil wrote: post #34
binarytox1n wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gloss was a trend in the mid 2000s, if I remember correctly—around the same time that AJAX started becoming really popular

Web 2.0. Such a bright outlook in those days :)

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#45

Post by julianeon »

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 had just started college and I remember going to the computer lab and clicking around for hours at a time, at night. Just going from blog to blog, reading interesting stuff. You didn't have to have a particular goal in mind - one blog would lead to another interesting blog would lead to another one, endlessly. They would all be engagingly written, to a high standard of quality.

Like you, I know things have changed, but I still can't imagine I could do that today, going from blog to blog, without running low on material within ~60 minutes.

EDIT: I see the webring links here now, I may try them.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#46

Post by lawik »

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've spent a lot of time thinking about getting back to what I find a healthier set of trade-offs in development and healthier product. I lile this idea that the current pushback against modern JS trends is simply backing up and setting out again in a new, hopefully better direction.

I'm invested in Elixir and there are some interesting, different trade-offs being made there for highly interactive things with Phoenix LiveView. And there is the Lumen compiler to potentially in the future not need JS as one could write Elixir to get WASM for the interactivity needed.

My bet is still mostly on server side rendering and static as much as possible. Current JS does have the JAMstack ideas that I find a healthier direction.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#47

Post by tomc1985 »

kickscondor wrote: post #38
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…

People are still creating great stuff along these lines - you just won't find it through Google or Facebook or most of Reddit. Complex, interesting hypertext creations and web sites are still everywhere. But try typing "interesting hypertext" into Google or Facebook and see where it gets you. You can't search for something that's off the beaten track. This is where directories come back in. Check some of these out: *…

If DMOZ could have held on for a few more years...

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#48

Post by simias »

I'm not a web developer but my girlfriend needed a website to show her photography work so I decided to make it for her.

It's the simplest thing in the world, basically just three columns with photo thumbnails and the only javascript is some simple image viewer to display the images full screen when you click the thumbnails.

It's really, really basic but I was impressed with the feedback I received from it, many people were impressed by how slick and fast it was. And indeed, I went looking for professional photographer websites and indeed, what a huge mess most of them are. Incredibly heavy framework for very basic functionality, splash screens to hide the loading times etc... It's the electron-app syndrome, it's simpler to do that way so who cares if it's like 5 orders of magnitude less efficient than it should be? Just download more RAM and bandwidth.

Mine is a bunch of m4 macros used to preprocess static HTML files, and a shell script that generates the thumbnails with image magic. I wonder if I could launch the new fad in the webdev community. What, you still use React? That's so 2019. Try m4 instead, it's web-scale!

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#49

Post by kickscondor »

tomc1985 wrote: post #47
kickscondor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are still creating great stuff along these lines - you just won't find it through Google or Facebook or most of Reddit. Complex, interesting hypertext creations and web sites are still everywhere. But try typing "interesting hypertext" into Google or Facebook and see where it gets you. You can't search for something that's off the beaten track. This is where directories come back in. Check some of these out: *…

If DMOZ could have held on for a few more years...

I'm not certain DMOZ is the way to go. The big centralized directories are too hard to keep current. They get slammed with submission. And you end up with so many editors that no one has a sense of ownership.

I mean - maybe it's possible. Perhaps a really focused team could figure it out. (The 'awesome' directories have kind of figured that out, by having specialized directory.) But these personal directories are really sweet because they don't have to cover a topic. They can just be a collection of good stuff, who knows what.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#50

Post by nextaccountic »

kickscondor wrote: post #38
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…

People are still creating great stuff along these lines - you just won't find it through Google or Facebook or most of Reddit. Complex, interesting hypertext creations and web sites are still everywhere. But try typing "interesting hypertext" into Google or Facebook and see where it gets you. You can't search for something that's off the beaten track. This is where directories come back in. Check some of these out: *…

What we really need is a new Google, built on open principles (decentralized / peer to peer, fully free software, backed by a nonprofit), and focused on indexing the long tail of insightful content that is neglected by Google because it lacks SEO, popularity, links, and other metrics that Google find interesting but we don't necessarily do.
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