Pretty accurate, except for one major thing: all the pages load instantly. In 1999 you pretty much expected each web page to take at least 10 seconds to load, mostly for the images to gradually...fade...into.....view.
Surf the web like it's 1999
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Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#52Doesn't have a modem/ethernet icon in the tray to connect/disconnect and see traffic? I always looked for the blinking... and only now realized that I haven't had that for years. When did that go out of style?
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#53Pretty accurate, except for one major thing: all the pages load instantly. In 1999 you pretty much expected each web page to take at least 10 seconds to load, mostly for the images to gradually...fade...into.....view.
In terms of load speed, the period between introduction of broadband and the rise of SPA was heaven.
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#54Very nice! The first brief I give my students when teaching web development is similar - Web design like it’s 1999
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#551999? I was ready to get off the web in 1999. How about surfing the web like it's 1994!
I agree, Mosaic was groundbreaking but when Netscape 0.9 launched in the fall of 1994 was like waking up in another century.
Or we could go back to 1991 with IRC, Archie+FTP, and Telnet BBS's on Wyse terminals or SparcStations. I'm very nostalgic for that era.
IMO Netscape 3.04g was the peak browser experience - and by far peak performance.
I remember when a friend who ran a business out of his basement got a T1 installed in 1997. Myself and several other friends were there the day Verizon hooked up the local loop. I did the first test on a desktop windows95 machine with Netscape 3. I typed "cnn.com", hit enter and BAM! the entire page loaded and rendered instantly before you could blink an eye. I fell out of my chair. On dialup it would take about almost a minute to download all the images.
Once Netscape 4 hit it was a slow downhill path of bloat. I have not been able to replicate that instant rendering experience since then.
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#56Pretty accurate, except for one major thing: all the pages load instantly. In 1999 you pretty much expected each web page to take at least 10 seconds to load, mostly for the images to gradually...fade...into.....view.
I first used the net at work in the mid 90s, where we had a T1 and pages were light by modern standards. It was peppy with a Mac IIci.
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was this just like s/ftp accounts? Or something more complex like a 1996 dropbox? It was a mounted filesystem in your machine?
It was a drive letter mounted on your Windows machine or a mount point on Linux. I forgot what protocol was used and I never personally used it as I had my own SFTP servers. On Windows people would run an app but I think it was just mounting a SMB drive. I only handled the backend storage, HP-UX servers and DNS for them. Other people managed the Windows servers and their company managed the applications.
Neat. I was 10 back then but I remember having to deal with IPX networking to play Warcraft 1-2 with my dad, and over Mplayer, or some sort of online game service IIRC. Never really thought about how you'd do a mounted network share back then. IPX was a pain but we had no idea what we were doing back then.
edit: Oh duh, battlenet.. sigh, my how blizzard has changed.
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was this just like s/ftp accounts? Or something more complex like a 1996 dropbox? It was a mounted filesystem in your machine?
It was a drive letter mounted on your Windows machine or a mount point on Linux. I forgot what protocol was used and I never personally used it as I had my own SFTP servers. On Windows people would run an app but I think it was just mounting a SMB drive. I only handled the backend storage, HP-UX servers and DNS for them. Other people managed the Windows servers and their company managed the applications.
I'm going to take a guess this was FUSE.
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#59Missed a detail! It should be an IE4 (or so) window half obscured by a stack of junk "toolbars".
Re: Surf the web like it's 1999
#601999? I was ready to get off the web in 1999. How about surfing the web like it's 1994!
I agree, Mosaic was groundbreaking but when Netscape 0.9 launched in the fall of 1994 was like waking up in another century. Or we could go back to 1991 with IRC, Archie+FTP, and Telnet BBS's on Wyse terminals or SparcStations. I'm very nostalgic for that era. IMO Netscape 3.04g was the peak browser experience - and by far peak performance. I remember when a friend who ran a business out of his basement got a T1 inst…
My nostalgia is mostly for the Bitnet chatrooms from the mid-80s. Especially the "hot tub channel". I didn't know it was possible to be that lascivious in plain text!