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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)

#301

Post by pimlottc »

flir wrote: post #151
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…

> The agony of designing and splicing them in Photoshop and putting them in table cells... Wasn't there a Photoshop-adjacent tool that did the slicing for you? I remember a print designer on my first job feeding what was, essentially, a full-bleed leaflet design through it, and producing a "landing page" with hundreds of table cells.

Eventually, but not originally. The first designers who knew how to do it manually were basically considered to be wizards.

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

#302

Post by somat »

Magodo wrote: post #288
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 module…

Sure the language is a little iffy, but as someone who enjoys shell scripting I have used worse. I think what I don't like is managing the logic two steps removed from where it is used.

I tend to write my web apps in what is referred to today as server side rendered(Which sounds stupid to me, I am not rendering anything, I am outputting html for the html terminal to render) as such, all my logic is on one end, and mixing in logic, in a different language, for the other end feels really ugly.

I have recently tried to be a better person and get more comfortable with javascript. What I have found that works is to completely invert the logic dynamics, give the browser a single static page that has nothing in it. only a single script tag that includes a javascript file. Then generate the whole page from that. Now all your logic is still in one language[1] and really javascript is a lot of fun to write, the language is still sort of crap, but now the dynamic stuff is really simple.

1. as a footnote, the great tragedy of the web is that (script language=) only works for javascript. wasm is an attempt to rectify this, but I think that while they are doing the best they can with the shitshow they have to work with. wasm is solving the problem at entirely the wrong layer.

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

#303

Post by arethuza »

deaddodo wrote: post #219
Izkata wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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. Even back then (possibly even back in the 90s? I know this existed in the 2000s) we had "VALIGN=MIDDLE" inside table cells.

Right, people seem to forget that table-based designs ruled the roost in the 90s and early 00s. All of the vertical align, layering, etc hacks came from people not wanting to use tables anymore and divs (and other block elements) finally becoming more usable. Those hacks were the growing pains of an entire shift in paradigm.

"table-based designs ruled the roost in the 90s and early 00s"

Have you checked how HN does layout?

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

#304

Post by whalesalad »

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…

https://www.weather.gov/dtx/

still use one almost daily for getting weather data in my area lol

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

#305

Post by angst_ridden »

Oh, and remember the glory of Frames!?

How many hours did I spend slicing images in Photoshop and coding tables with rowspans?

Funny that coding HTML email is still not far from that experience (table-based layouts) if you want it to work in email clients like desktop Outlook.

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

#306

Post by giantrobot »

atum47 wrote: post #298

DHTML stands for dynamic HTML, right? Never understood the name though, it was just JavaScript animating DOM elements. Maybe i was too young to understand the difference, but i remember using text inputs for animated contet, like a clock or a scrolling message. Anyways, I was about 10 or 11 when visiting a "big" city i saw this book about DHTML and I had my dad buying it for me.

Before DHTML JavaScript had limited ability to manipulate DOM elements after the page had loaded. JavaScript could happily edit the document (document.write) during the page load but not afterwards. If you wanted some output of a JavaScript displayed after the page load you had to put the output inside form elements or do an alert. You also could manipulate some parts of the browser with the navigator object and change the status and title.

Dynamic HTML was dynamic because the DOM could be manipulated after the page was loaded. JavaScript could directly manipulate DOM elements or even add and remove elements.

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

#307

Post by sosborn »

angst_ridden wrote: post #305

Oh, and remember the glory of Frames!? How many hours did I spend slicing images in Photoshop and coding tables with rowspans? Funny that coding HTML email is still not far from that experience (table-based layouts) if you want it to work in email clients like desktop Outlook.

For the life of me I cannot understand why email won't render grid or flex. Those two properties would make email templating so much easier.

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

#308

Post by blibble »

I think the most obscure thing I used was , which would generate a client key/cert pair, store the key locally in your browser certificate store and send the cert to the server with the form submission

I saw exactly one website use it and remember being very confused as to how it achieved that

https://web.archive.org/web/20160409081411/https://lists.wha...

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

#309

Post by beauzero »

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.

A person I know won a Microsoft contest when this was first announced and rolled out. Here's to you Scotty. A very smart person at a company full of them in the late 90's. I was one of the dumbest around in a place packed with talent. Never worked at a place as smart since.

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

#310

Post by monkeynotes »

sosborn wrote: post #307
angst_ridden wrote: post #305

Oh, and remember the glory of Frames!? How many hours did I spend slicing images in Photoshop and coding tables with rowspans? Funny that coding HTML email is still not far from that experience (table-based layouts) if you want it to work in email clients like desktop Outlook.

For the life of me I cannot understand why email won't render grid or flex. Those two properties would make email templating so much easier.

I'd be happy if we didn't have to inline all the CSS.
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