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Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

zachholman.com

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Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#251

Post by Andrex »

conradfr wrote: post #10

> To this day it is the only way to vertically center elements. Not true anymore (edit: didn't see the 2014) but the productivity cost of not being able to just "vertical-align: middle;" inside divs for the last 30 years must be billions of dollars. Also does anyone remember the fade of the overline style on :hover links? It must has been around the IE4 or IE6 era. Tables were also used to make divs and buttons with…

> not being able to just "vertical-align: middle;" inside divs for the last 30 years must be billions of dollars.

One of my favorite CSS hacks, it doesn't always work in every single situation though...

div { display: table-cell; vertical-align: middle; }

Feels dirty at first but separation of concerns is still enforced, and I can't see any other downsides.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#253

Post by plagiarist »

davedx wrote: post #142
conradfr wrote: post #10

> To this day it is the only way to vertically center elements. Not true anymore (edit: didn't see the 2014) but the productivity cost of not being able to just "vertical-align: middle;" inside divs for the last 30 years must be billions of dollars. Also does anyone remember the fade of the overline style on :hover links? It must has been around the IE4 or IE6 era. Tables were also used to make divs and buttons with…

It's still a huge PITA and requires all sorts of subtle understandings. Even in tailwindcss it's not simple, you need to think about what kind of element is it (block or not), is it text or not, what layout is on the parent, yada yada yada.

Here's a puzzle I had from the olden days: how do you do webpages with header and footer such that the footer is always at least as far down as the window height, but if the content is less than enough to push the footer below the fold it should be centered.

I remember that being far harder than it needed to be. I was a child though so maybe I just didn't get CSS well enough.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#254

Post by rekoil »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #169
rekoil wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hilariously stupid. No no, it's going to take our jobs! /s

You joke, but I am pretty sure, that in some heads that idea is already spinning. When can they hire fewer people and make those fewer people simply use ChatGPT or some other model. We might see an even further decline in web quality as a result, as we get even more copy&paste devs.

Great for me, I work in IT security, and that's gonna tank even harder if people start seriously using ChatGPT in the manner you describe!

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#256

Post by mleo »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #169
rekoil wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hilariously stupid. No no, it's going to take our jobs! /s

You joke, but I am pretty sure, that in some heads that idea is already spinning. When can they hire fewer people and make those fewer people simply use ChatGPT or some other model. We might see an even further decline in web quality as a result, as we get even more copy&paste devs.

Increased productivity and doing certain tasks in less time or with less people has been going on forever and certainly last 30 years in web development. The growing businesses use the extra capacity to expand in other directions whether new products or new features. The stagnant companies continue to struggle with less.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#257

Post by CM30 »

rezonant wrote: post #174
throwaway744678 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and went way into the 2010s. Unfortunately, it is still used for html formatted emails

This continually blows my mind. Even Gmail is this way. If they just put a flex box in there it'd be mostly fine.

If I had to hazard a guess, it'd be that HTML email is probably one of the lowest priority things on the roadmap over at Google or Microsoft. The vast majority of regular folks sending emails send mostly plain text, and even many company sent emails also on the basic side (though with these limitations, it's probably self reinforcing there).

Add this how more complex emails could potentially lead to security issues for their webmail clients and waht not...

And well, "eh, good enough" is probably the order of the day.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#258

Post by brazzy »

moondev wrote: post #201

> DHTML, which stands for “distributed HTML”, Um excuse me? This kills the credibility of the article for me. It's "dynamic html" and as a card carrying member of the dhtmlcentral forums we are the authority on the DHTML subject and lifestyle.

Pretty sure that was intentional, given the tone of the article.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#259

Post by alamsterdam »

chasd00 wrote: post #238
alamsterdam wrote: post #222

Using vi to update the .html directly on the production server (and this wasn't a personal website)... simpler times :)

lol yeah, ssh to the server, find the www dir, edit, :w, hit reload, :q when it works :)

I could deploy to production 30 times a minute! haha :)

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

#260

Post by pkorzeniewski »

I recommend The Geocities Gallery [1] to go back in time and experience the 90s web yourself, there is something beautiful about all these personal web pages. Each one has a distinct look that alone can tell a lot about the author's personality, usually contains some bio info together with several random personal pictures, lists of recommended links with short descriptions, loose talk about their hobbies and so on - it's just so personal and calming, a striking contrast to today's social media where each profile page looks the same (bland and boring), with overwhelming, ever growing amount of content and a pressure to maintain a certain image of one's life.

[1] https://geocities.restorativland.org/

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