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Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

drquinnmd.com

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Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#31
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at 858 bytes, even if you were able to connect at a full 56k connection on your modem (many people could only get some lower fraction, like 33.6 or 28.8 because of line noise), it would still take almost an eigth of a second to download the button if your connection did nothing but that. Designing for the web in the 90's and early 2000's was so much more a matter of picking the right trade-offs to make. Shitty trade-…

In '98 not many would even have 56K - unless adoption was much quicker elsewhere than here (UK). The first units didn't hit the market until '97, and were not cheap, and the V90 standard followed in early '98. Also it was rare to see more than 48K in my experience, 40K on many lines. Memories of reconnecting and forcing a 36k6 symmetric attempt (anything standard above had upstream at half the rate if down) rather th…

My 56k modem often got used in 30whatevertheothernumberwas mode for stability of connection because of bad telephone wiring in my house.

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This website may be performant, but it's also fixed-width, and thus not the other kind of responsive. Almost unusable on my device.

What device? Works fine on Safari iOS with the double tap to zoom.

On my phone. The line lengths are too long, so zooming in to get a reasonable font size means scrolling back and forth for each line. And clicking links is a shot in the dark.

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#33

Somehow the Dole/Kemp site from 96 is still going: http://www.dolekemp96.org/main.htm Someone must have a decent list, some kinda of "Awesome 90s" list on GitHub or something?

While there are no cookie banners (or cookies at all) on this site, there is Elizabeth Dole's cookie recipe: http://www.dolekemp96.org/about/cookies/cookies.html

Ah, I miss the 90s.

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What device? Works fine on Safari iOS with the double tap to zoom.

On my phone. The line lengths are too long, so zooming in to get a reasonable font size means scrolling back and forth for each line. And clicking links is a shot in the dark.

Huh. The only slight irritation I notice is the scrolling isn’t soft-locked to just up and down so when I scroll it does a bit of horizontal drift.

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#35
Aside from not working well on devices that didn't yet exist when this was built, I'm having a hard time coming up with reasons why I don't like this design. I'm sure there are accessibility issues and other things that would be addressed now, but as for layout I still like it.

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#36
post #25
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing that motion-blurred animated GIF banner at the bottom gave me an intense nostalgia rush, I made a good living making those banners for a year or 2 back in the late 90s. $50-150 per banner ($25/frame), doing a few each evening, with a month or 2 backlog in the queue. It was a fun and easily-profitable era if you knew even the basics of web/graphics.

That motion-blurred animate GIF also remind me of some videogames from that era. Anyone with more knowledge can explain why that style was used in the late 90s? Was it about low resolution and small palettes?

Bandwidth and storage were more constrained.

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#37
post #6

OMG why is that button blurry? If I were a kid today I'd wonder why old people ever bothered watching television or browsing the internet at all. At the same time, I probably wouldn't even notice that famous Beatles recordings were recorded in mono.

There's a period of Beatles songs that were released in both mono and stereo and IIRC the mono productions are sometimes preferable. Some of those early stero productions are really busy and make use of the technology like they thought it would be a fad

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#39
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at 858 bytes, even if you were able to connect at a full 56k connection on your modem (many people could only get some lower fraction, like 33.6 or 28.8 because of line noise), it would still take almost an eigth of a second to download the button if your connection did nothing but that. Designing for the web in the 90's and early 2000's was so much more a matter of picking the right trade-offs to make. Shitty trade-…

In '98 not many would even have 56K - unless adoption was much quicker elsewhere than here (UK). The first units didn't hit the market until '97, and were not cheap, and the V90 standard followed in early '98. Also it was rare to see more than 48K in my experience, 40K on many lines. Memories of reconnecting and forcing a 36k6 symmetric attempt (anything standard above had upstream at half the rate if down) rather th…

If memory serves 56K was pretty widespread in _availability_ by 1998. I worked at a small local ISP in San Diego from 95ish to 97ish and they were available at the tail end of my time there.

You're right that it was rare to get full 56Kbps especially on the early modems and especially on the dreaded winmodems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem).

All that said, I also seem to recall that at least in major cities 56Kbps never really went anywhere as cable modems started becoming widely available.

Re: Dr. Quinn official website from 1998, still online

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my phone. The line lengths are too long, so zooming in to get a reasonable font size means scrolling back and forth for each line. And clicking links is a shot in the dark.

Huh. The only slight irritation I notice is the scrolling isn’t soft-locked to just up and down so when I scroll it does a bit of horizontal drift.

You must have good eyes then, or more likely you have a really big phone.
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