This is a legitimate question apropos of OP‘s web ring: Who qualifies as a nerd of the 90s? Is it nerds born in the 90s or people who were nerds during the 90s?
[deleted]
The Return of the 90s Web
101–110 of 357 posts
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#102I can't wait for server-side rendering to take its place in the sun again. There are many use cases for which a client-side framework like React is eesential. But I feel the vast majority of use cases on the web would be better off with server-side rendering. And... There are issues of ethics here. You are kidding yourself to an extent when you say that you are building a "client-side web app." It is essentially an a…
https://nextjs.org/ is a react wrapper framework that has some nice SSR features. It makes a ubiquitous dev experience where the majority of the app can be rendered server or client side. Last time I worked with it about a year ago it was only the first page load that was rendered server side though but the first one the one that arguably affects the user experience the most.
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#103Earlier 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: *…
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.
wiby.me can be useful for finding sites.
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#104I was totally expecting the content of this post to be "return to html leading to JAMstack"
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#105I can't wait for server-side rendering to take its place in the sun again. There are many use cases for which a client-side framework like React is eesential. But I feel the vast majority of use cases on the web would be better off with server-side rendering. And... There are issues of ethics here. You are kidding yourself to an extent when you say that you are building a "client-side web app." It is essentially an a…
There’s an exponentially growing recruiting, training, and hiring industry based on developers who only know how to write fat JS frontends. I think everyone has probably experienced high growth in their company’s frontend team. Many developers choose to write them not out of expertise but to have them in their resume and for job security.
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a long time I assumed that google indexed pretty much everything it, and it was only a question of providing a specific enough set of search terms to drag up older content. But what you hint at might be more correct these days. They are running a reverse wayback machine in that anything not changed in the last year gets removed. If you click the advanced search its "updated within" and the max timeframe is a year…
> They are running a reverse wayback machine in that anything not changed in the last year gets removed. Sometimes I wish that were true! Try Googling for, say, PostgreSQL documentation and the top result will often be for a 10-year-old version of the software.
Nitpick, that's kind of a non example because the official Postgres docs let you swap versions more or less seamlessly. IME I will click the top result then click the correct version for my Postgres SE queries. 2 clicks, 0 scrolling.
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think what you're saying about reduced barriers to entry has lowered the standard of all popular media. You're more right than you know. When there were only a handful of television channels, the content was higher quality than what we have now. When there were only a couple of dozen cable channels, the content was higher quality than the endless reruns we have now. When publishing a book went through the big publi…
> When there were only a handful of television channels, the content was higher quality than what we have now.
As someone who watched TV in the 1970s, before cable was a thing, I have to disagree here. I think we look back today and see "MASH" and "Columbo" still holding up great after 40+ years and think of it as representative. But nearly all TV was formulaic dreck back then, just like it is now. And even if the average quality level is worse now (which I'm not convinced is the case, but let's assume) the quantity is much higher and there's a large amount of really good stuff to choose from on the right side of the bell curve.
It's true that content can only be created so fast, but it can also only be consumed so fast. Once you have access to enough high-quality content to fill all the spare time you want to spend watching TV or reading or gaming or whatever, having more of it to choose from doesn't improve your experience much.
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#108What 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 miss the lack of ads.
But they had all those annoying pop ups and pop unders.
Nowadays, Google just tracks you everywhere you go. Even when you’re browsing incognito.
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't quite follow - if low quality media is everywhere, doesn't high quality media stand out? Perhaps you're saying that so much low quality media drowns out the high quality media - such that it can't be found. The ratio is off, right?
>if low quality media is everywhere, doesn't high quality media stand out? You would think so, but more often than not, most people don't want high quality. What happens is that the media that panders to the lowest common denominator stands out the most, since that what the majority focus on.
The psychology of the "hot take" on twitter is a prime example of this. Is it less friction to read a 3 page blog post that critically analyzes a subject and takes into account different viewpoints that all have merit, or to read someone's 280 character reaction?
I am guilty myself, I often find myself jumping to the comments section even here on HN to understand what people are taking away from an article without even finishing it.
Re: The Return of the 90s Web
#110I'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 peop…
Hah, I still have some m4 html macros lying around, it's certainly the quickest way to make HTML less painful.