Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014) • Hacker News Board

True story. I am the worlds worst web programmer, that is I am not a web programmer, I am a sys-admin that occasionally makes web based tooling. And as such my web skills are stuck in the early 2000's. On top of that I have this terrible aversion to javascript(I am already writing a code generator in one language to create a second language, now you want me to throw a third language on top of that... no thanks). On one of my recent tools I needed to do some basic operations involving points on a picture. it probably would have been 5 lines of javascript, the only 5 lines of javascript in the whole infernal thing. No thanks, I won't be having any of that in my program, I am going with server side image maps... in 2023... yeah. So now instead of 5 lines of JS I now have 50 lines of python managing state and a special case in the request handler to handle the screwball fragment syntax.

I cringe a little, but am also strangely enough, a little proud of getting the thing to work at all.

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

#284

Post by TravisCooper » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #230

> DHTML, which stands for “distributed HTML” > Sites like Dynamic Drive meant that instead of thinking through creative solutions for problems you face, you could just copy and paste this 50 line block of code and everything would be fixed. DHTML in this context stood for Dynamic HTML, not “distributed”, hence the Dynamic of Dynamic Drive.

So, so much time spent on DynamicDrive. It was the future. Thanks for the reminder!

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

#285

Post by TravisCooper » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

Another great memory was writing "broken" HTML comment tags so you could disable "auto-inserted" ads from Geocities and Angelfire (and other) sites so you could look cool with your premium, ad-free site.

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

#286

Post by romanhn » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

I remember all of these fondly. Though IMO the real hacks came with trying to get IE6 to comply when the rest of the world moved on. Basic things, like getting transparent PNGs to be, you know, transparent...

  img {
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(...);
  }

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

#287

Post by fuzzfactor » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 3:17 PM UTC

sen wrote: post #114

Spare_account wrote: post #98

Not a single use of the word 'webmaster' in the whole article. Was Zach even around in the 90s? ;-)

Still got my “Webmaster” business cards from the late 90s. No one will ever understand how “cool” it was to have that title back then. Now even I cringe when looking at them but so many good memories.

Yes, that's as far as you should have to go when it comes to somebody ultimately responsible for a whole website ;)

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

#288

Post by Magodo » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 3:21 PM UTC

somat wrote: post #283

The server side image map. True story. I am the worlds worst web programmer, that is I am not a web programmer, I am a sys-admin that occasionally makes web based tooling. And as such my web skills are stuck in the early 2000's. On top of that I have this terrible aversion to javascript(I am already writing a code generator in one language to create a second language, now you want me to throw a third language on top…

> only 5 lines of javascript in the whole infernal thing. No thanks, I won't be having any of that in my program

I feel exactly the same way. HTMX is a godsend. That and a Tailwind UI purchase can make anybody very dangerous at frontend. I'm curious for other viewpoints though: what exactly about js gives that icky feeling. For me it's just the inconsistent syntax. With TS, on the other hand just seeing a node modules folder makes me nauseous. The whole thing gives me a feeling of a lack of control over what's happening and has thrown me off front end for many years until now

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

#289

Post by hbarka » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 3:25 PM UTC

Can we also talk about Active Server Pages? *.asp has endured the test of time.

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

#290

Post by anentropic » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 3:28 PM UTC

consp wrote: post #164

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…

> Tables were also used to make divs and buttons with rounded corners, but that was true into the 2000s as well. The agony of designing and splicing them in Photoshop and putting them in table cells... Wasn't an image with a click easier? I wasn't old enough to write very complicated html pages so my experience is lacking here.

> Wasn't an image with a click easier

it's solving a different problem

it's referring to using a 9-cell table to make an element where the corner sizes stay static, while the middle column and middle row stretch horizontally and vertically respectively to match the size of the central cell (which e.g. has variable length text)

then with background image tiling in the left/right and top/bottom middle cells you can get an effect like a drop-shadowed panel that sizes responsively

you'd probably set the flexible cells to width=100% and then have a 1-pixel gif in the edge cells to enforce the desired min-width

I was sad the article didn't mention anything about the 216-colour "web safe" palette, but perhaps the author wasn't old enough to remember having to support users with 600 pixels (the max possible: 640, minus browser default page margin, minus scroll bar)...