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Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

futureblues.com

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Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#141

Post by Steuard »

mhd wrote: post #28
arepublicadoceu wrote: post #24

Ha, this remind me of a time when I did google(?) searches to find specialized sites of RPGs, Anime, etc. Every site was different and had a sense of wonder and discovery associated to it. Back then, I used to go to page 10 of my search engine and still find interesting gems. Nowadays days I just append “site:reddit.com” to try to dodge the SEO fulled blogspam hell, gobble the information and move on with my day.

> Ha, this remind me of a time when I did google(?) searches to find specialized sites of RPGs, Anime, etc. I still think fondly of browsing lspace.org (Discworld) and the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5.

Oh, man, the Lurker's Guide was just such a fantastically good site. Organized, comprehensive, solidly good look: great stuff!

I feel like it's often harder to find high-quality focuses resources like this at this point. I'm not sure whether that's because people have stopped making them, or whether they're just competing for clicks with exponentially more common (and more SEOified) junky fan-wiki sites, or what. (I still get a steady trickle of traffic to my Tolkien Meta-FAQ (http://tolkien.slimy.com/), but I gather that Google tends to de-prioritize sites that aren't being constantly updated.)

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#142

Post by RamblingCTO »

whstl wrote: post #48
RamblingCTO wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like this site is simple, it's noisy and crowded. It doesn't aid me in finding what's provided to me. Although it looks very cool I'm quite glad we simplified designs and put UX on top of the priority list vs showing off what we can do.

I agree with the sibling saying that no website owes you anything, but what you say is not even true in the first place. In general we didn't really "simplify designs", and the "good UX on top" is often negated by modern website cruft. As an example: the modern replacement for this kind of fan-site would be a Fandom.com site, which has an interface full of cruft, focused mostly on ads and "engagement" stuff. Only a s…

Sorry but I totally disagree, not only with you but all the other commenters and down-voters. We got rid of flash, gifs, auto play videos with hideous sound, and blinking shit. We got reader mode, focusing on good UI/UX (given you're using ad blockers). In the times of myspace every website tried to pull fancy shit on us and I'm glad it's over. Just because there's still enough shit around doesn't mean that the internet got more readable in the mean time. Maybe I'm not using these shitty sites like you do, by MY experience is better than it was in these days.

/edit: and browsers and plugins are our saviours, hail reader mode and not auto-playing videos! I consider that part of the UI/UX development as well.

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#143

Post by RamblingCTO »

xwdv wrote: post #26
RamblingCTO wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like this site is simple, it's noisy and crowded. It doesn't aid me in finding what's provided to me. Although it looks very cool I'm quite glad we simplified designs and put UX on top of the priority list vs showing off what we can do.

Why does it have to aid you in finding anything? We’re so obsessed with efficiency and “productivity” these days. Let’s be honest, when you came to this site you weren’t looking for anything in particular. Instead the site invites you to simply look around, embrace the excitement of clicking randomly and not really knowing what you’re going to get, and not really caring either. Just be a thoughtless child, wandering…

> We’re so obsessed with efficiency and “productivity” these days.

I consider the internet something like a library. I want to find relevant stuff, not sift through shit to get to something interesting.

I didn't even know what it had because I was overwhelmed with colors and unusual styles that I clicked around and left. Sure, it's a nice reminder of the old days and some people find it pretty, but it's bad at conveying information imho.

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#144

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

cooperadymas wrote: post #110
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m into a casual fan and it was rough to try and watch the first episode. They could’ve made that contrast of high and low budget simultaneously work, if it wasn’t for the extreme miscasting and needless changes. I can only imagine what a super fan would’ve thought.

I'm an occasional casual anime fan who had never experienced the original but watched the Netflix show and mostly loved it. I was sad there won't be another season.

Do yourself a favor though. Go get the original. It holds up well with the exception that animation has come a long way.

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#146

Post by whstl »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #142
whstl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sibling saying that no website owes you anything, but what you say is not even true in the first place. In general we didn't really "simplify designs", and the "good UX on top" is often negated by modern website cruft. As an example: the modern replacement for this kind of fan-site would be a Fandom.com site, which has an interface full of cruft, focused mostly on ads and "engagement" stuff. Only a s…

Sorry but I totally disagree, not only with you but all the other commenters and down-voters. We got rid of flash, gifs, auto play videos with hideous sound, and blinking shit. We got reader mode, focusing on good UI/UX (given you're using ad blockers). In the times of myspace every website tried to pull fancy shit on us and I'm glad it's over. Just because there's still enough shit around doesn't mean that the inter…

You started your message complaining about this specific website. Now, the things you complain of in this reply don't really apply to it. It's still better to use than the kind of website that replaced it. My browsing habits have nothing to do with it, I just picked an appropriate apples-to-apples example for comparison. I think it's unfair to compare this to Apple's website or something.

Also, you mention auto play videos. Those are pretty much a staple of the current website era, with browsers themselves having to fight back [1]. Now, even Reddit's new version has it. Annoying animated gifs and annoying flash were mostly novelties in personal webpages.

If anything, needing ad blockers, reader mode and and anti-autoplay in browsers, is an indication of how things aren't exactly great in the web anymore. And that website from 1999 doesn't need any of those.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#147

Post by cantaloa »

kbelder wrote: post #139
cantaloa wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need text to scale and reflow to device width if you want text to be readable. This is one of the main reasons for mobile web design. Else you're stuck panning around the screen to read the text zoomed in. Once you decide to scale text to device size so that it's readable, you are stuck doing the rest of mobile web design (fluid layout).

You need to allow users to scale text as desired, as the original web intended. You shouldn't make a site targeted to mobile; you should make a site that allows the user to display in their client as they wish. The problem will fix itself.

To solve that, you have to move from the easier static made-for-one-width design (what we think of as desktop-first design) and move to fluid, reflowable design which we tend to call mobile-friendly design.

Unfortunately, it tends to take more thought because we usually want widescreen components, like sidebars, that are easier to build when you can hard-code a device width, and hard-coding width is what breaks zooming and text size changes.

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#148

Post by whstl »

LobsterJohnson wrote: post #34

As soon as I saw the page, I started wondering how Emily designed this effect of the menu merging with the image back then. Turns out it's just cropped images carefully placed together - check the source code yourself. Only then was I able to start noticing the imperfections of this implementation, but it really puts in perspective how our web design has changed over the years.

I remember some webdesigners specializing in cutting those layouts before there were good tools available. Sure, before that there were image maps, but with cut-up layouts you could do on-hover effects and add small animations here and there.

It wasn't exactly useful per se but then again it was done mostly for marketing purposes, to stand out, so it did the job.

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#149

Post by binjooou »

ryandrake wrote: post #103
mxmbrb wrote: post #78

The modern internet is deprived of ornamentation in the same way modern architecture is. Tiktok allready upped the speed and made a lot of the established web seem terribly boring. I truly hope that AI generated content is putting the final nail in the coffin and we start to see more creative and individualistic media landscapes thrive again. Hope dies last.

There was an HN article[1] a few weeks ago lamenting how everything looks uniformly boring, beige and average, including houses, cars, fashion, movies, books, and so on. Nobody is doing anything bold or creative anymore. Everything looks like it’s been homogenized down to target some global ISO standard average consumer. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35355703

I think this is why I'm so bored with modern video games - they all look the same - Unreal Engine, lots of same type of foliage and rubble and "background art" everywhere - take a random screenshot from a random aaa game and I couldn't tell one from the other.

Re: Future Blues – Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)

#150

Post by mikeryan »

JasserInicide wrote: post #87
esrauch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sites mostly didn't look this good though, they were even more garish colors and 'under construction' banners

This is a great example of classic graphics design (at least I'm guessing she probably had some training in it) being directly translated to the web. It's just an image made entirely in Photoshop and the space for the links are carved there. Photoshop-designed websites definitely peaked in the early 2000s. Nowadays you'd be wild to start with PS for designing a website.

* Photoshop-designed websites definitely peaked in the early 2000s*

It lasted longer than that. Sketch wasn’t launched until 2010 and it probably took a good five years (at least) for people to switch to that

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