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The Return of the 90s Web

mxb.dev

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Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#111

Post by kickscondor »

reaperducer wrote: post #83
kickscondor wrote: post #39

Earlier 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? Because there is so much low-quality content, it's become nearly impossible to find the high-quality content. Needles in haystacks.

Well, yes - that's my second sentence.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#112

Post by koreth1 »

pphysch wrote: post #106
koreth1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, but 1 click and 0 scrolling would be better!

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#113

Post by mrfusion »

nextaccountic wrote: post #50
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: *…

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.

If you have all the other stuff you might not really need peer to peer. Or maybe work in peer to peer after getting established?

Also I like the idea of making search like Wikipedia where people can edit results. Obviously you’d need super genius level safeguards to protect against scammers but Wikipedia does it ok-ish.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#114

Post by mrfusion »

kickscondor wrote: post #81
renewiltord wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to Google for discovery is Reddit. Reddit is the modern web directory: - Directories are Communities defined by their link rules - Human-curated - Easy to start a new one - SSO across all communities - Built-in forum technology - Unified comment technology for every website You can get communities like reddit.com/r/Sizz for instance or larger ones like /r/esp8266 or massive ones like /r/sanfrancisco o…

Except: - Most subreddits are hostile to self-promotion of Web stuff. If you're unknown, you're going to have to be socially involved there enough that people know your name. (Though I agree that small subs like /r/esp8266 are begging for self-made content.) - Related: people don't know your name because it's in small gray text. You're just another comment. - You need upvotes. A personal directory requires only one u…

There’s no problem submitting blog articles though. Even your own.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#115

Post by abrookewood »

simias wrote: post #48

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 peop…

Can you give more details? I don't think I've ever heard of M4 before.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#116

Post by mamcx »

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 doing almost the same. Spit out regular html made by templating on the server side and spice it a little with vue. Is so little that I could change vue anytime.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#117

Post by mike503 »

I haven’t even adopted the more modern JAMStack type techniques yet, and now this guy is saying those are old?! I still consider those closer to the holy grail; clients scale indefinitely, servers you still have to pay for.

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#118

Post by JKCalhoun »

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 there was no "money in it" back then.

;-)

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#119

Post by spc476 »

basch wrote: post #59
nextaccountic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agree on the long tail. And maybe a way to exclude bigger sites, and newer results (the time range search doesnt really work anymore.) I had a search today, and 7 of the top 10 results were from today. What I was looking for was NOT news, it was historical. If I wanted news, I would click the news tab. Having 7/10ths of the results come from today makes using google to search all of the web ever near useless, as toda…

Here you go: https://millionshort.com/

Re: The Return of the 90s Web

#120

Post by gen220 »

julianeon wrote: post #45
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,…

I came of age in the early 2000s, and Wikipedia was this for me. Eventually, it ran out of meaningful depth to me and in college I hopped to surfing books. You can surf on books til the end of time.

I think hypertext as a medium has a lot going for it that books don’t, but I don’t think we’ve figured out distribution, quality control, and discovery sufficiently to make the internet so stimulatingly surfable.

There was a period of time a few centuries ago when adults looked at kids reading romance novels the way that adults today look at kids scrolling through TikTok. I think all mediums go through cycles.

On the other side (when the wild internet’s commercial viability wanes, and people can no longer make easy money hosting mediocre terrible, SEO-driven drivel), I think a lot of the good content will survive the great filter, and that’s when we’ll be able to appreciate it for what it is/was. The next 20 years might be rough, but the work of this generations’ Dickenses and Pushkins and Gogols will survive.

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