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Surf the web like it's 1999

billsworld.neocities.org

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Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#171

Post by Clubber »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #34

1999? I was ready to get off the web in 1999. How about surfing the web like it's 1994!

Gotta find someone with a WinSock disk and a browser for your Windows 3.11 for Workgroups install first. Fortunately I was in college at the time, so there were plenty.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#173

Post by nrb »

irrational wrote: post #115
nrb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the nostalgia misplaced?

Nostalgia is for good things. I surfed the web for the entirety of 1999. It wasn't good.

I have plenty of fond memories of browsing the web in the late 90s as a teenager: things like huddling around the glow of the CRT with a friend playing Yahoo pool, printing out absurdly long gamefaqs for the RPGs of the era, and keeping up with the latest happenings in Ultima Online on UO Stratics.

The technology was not the best, but there were a ton of great things on the web of that era. I don’t yearn for a return to that ecosystem but reserve the right to remain sentimental about it.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#174

Post by account42 »

egeozcan wrote: post #69
AdamH12113 wrote: post #5

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.

I'm also amused by the fact that the file format GIF became a name for a snippet of animation, and you usually get a webp when you search for a GIF (for good reasons too, but funny nevertheless).

> and you usually get a webp when you search for a GIF (for good reasons too, but funny nevertheless).

It's really unfortunate because animated webp is a shit format that should never have been created. There is no excuse for it lacking the same intra-frame compression present in the webm format it is based on.

Much better would have been to let the tag and css pictures use (silent) video files and then add the missing features (loop flag, alpha, lossless compresion) to webm.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#175

Post by account42 »

doublerabbit wrote: post #97
ape4 wrote: post #74

Sadly nobody says "surf the web" any more

Nor the "world wide web", ask the younger ones what www stands for and they get really confused. If you notice nowadays all websites use just https:// rather than https://www .

And good riddance, there was never a good reason for using www. in the first place and with SRV records to direct other services to different IPs if needed it makes even less sense.

Re: Surf the web like it's 1999

#177

Post by account42 »

HeckFeck wrote: post #119
irrational wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia is for good things. I surfed the web for the entirety of 1999. It wasn't good.

I'm not convinced that it is much better in this decade: - paywalls & 'login to see more' - autoplaying videos that follow you whn you're just trying to read an article - cookie banners - artificial loading throbbers - horrible intrusive tracking - an advertising corporation also has the near-monopoly on browsing - we have more bandwidth but apparently need 5Mb of javascript just to render text - mobile first design,…

- content farms that wreck the signal to noise ratio, getting much much worse with "AI" now

- unchecked astoturfing and referral-laundering "reviews"

- everyone being on walled gardens that restrict what can be hosted (both content and format)

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