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Surf the web like it's 1999

billsworld.neocities.org

121–130 of 177 posts

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#123
Websites were so easy to read and navigate back then.

It just worked. Some of the websites might be a bit rock and roll but there is a strange clarity to the whole thing.

I actually found https://www.seat61.com/ recently and it is this one dude who runs the greatest train website on the planet and he has been doing it since 2001. Site looks ancient but it is so useful.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#124
post #105

For you younger members of the audience, this page is a great demonstration of how animated GIFs were originally used on the web and why a lot of us were so surprised when they made a big comeback in a totally different style in the 21st century.

this is exactly how GIFs should have remained. The new generation calls these "stickers" which are all over Tiktok and Snapchat, and they're all Canva-made identikit garbage. It's sad to think that GIFs that still remain are movie/TV scenes that are clipped to use as reactions to online comments.

Thanks for finally explaining stickers to me.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like https://oldweb.today ... actually emulates old OS/browser combinations and proxies stuff from archive.org

This really captures how slow the web, and everything else, was back then.

Not necessarily. I was living in Stockholm and had a 10/10Mbit connection. Not too bad for a 15 year old kid.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#128

Websites were so easy to read and navigate back then. It just worked. Some of the websites might be a bit rock and roll but there is a strange clarity to the whole thing. I actually found https://www.seat61.com/ recently and it is this one dude who runs the greatest train website on the planet and he has been doing it since 2001. Site looks ancient but it is so useful.

Nothing but desktop computers were intended to display these, and so they could take advantage of the screen width. No desire to have them be an app either.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#129

If you set your HTTP proxy to "theoldnet.com" with port 1999, and add an exclusion for "web.archive.org", then all your web pages will come from 1999, via the Wayback Machine. You can pick a different year by changing the port. Edit: It may have been hugged to death...

See also https://olduse.net/ for a 42 year delay on USENET. All I had to do was put this in my ~/.emacs file:

    (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "olduse.net" (nntp-port-number 11942)))
Then I typed `M-x gnus` and used the `^` key to see a listing of newsgroups.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#130

If you set your HTTP proxy to "theoldnet.com" with port 1999, and add an exclusion for "web.archive.org", then all your web pages will come from 1999, via the Wayback Machine. You can pick a different year by changing the port. Edit: It may have been hugged to death...

I like https://oldweb.today ... actually emulates old OS/browser combinations and proxies stuff from archive.org

I never get over the weird feeling seeing something like Windows 95 which was released with such spectacle, Jay Leno and millions of dollars in launch events, requiring the latest available PC equipment to boot the same day, and of course the looming threat of the SPA sending you to PMITA prison if you didn’t pay your $209.95 being reduced to a small square on my mobile phone still running faster through a million layers of framework. Seemed like serious shit at the time.
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