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

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

#311

Post by Sharlin » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

curtisblaine wrote: post #228

Sharlin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not stupid, it's just redundancy to make sure it works on all browsers!

Not sure of sarcastic or not, but prefixed rules (per-browser prefixes) are a thing of the past in modern evergreen browsers.

Ironic. But I was not really talking per-browser prefixes, those are newfangled 2010s stuff. I'm talking way back in the day, when different browsers (well, mostly IE) sometimes had completely different ways of achieving something, in some cases requiring ~~unthinkable hacks~~clever and elegant solutions to avoid interference.

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

#312

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:23 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…

good gawd! you could do the same with some CSS with absolute positioned hot spots. i can think of plenty of other CSS ideas to make it responsive. not one line of JS required.

i get it. i hate being in charge of UI. i'm a backend type through and through. however, i do have to do it much more regularly than you. i refuse to use libraries. so i've kept up with the changes to CSS since the early 2000s, and you can do some amazing things with it. i think it fits your "get off my lawn" style and can't recommend enough teaching an old dog new CSS tricks.

Edit: left out enough which is totally the opposite of intended point

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

#313

Post by angst_ridden » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:23 PM UTC

Oh, and who can forget the “splash page flash movie” that you had to sit through? It was vital that the brand got to show you their vibe before you could access any actual information…

I knew a guy who bought several expensive sports cars as testament to his ability to do shockwave animations back in ‘97.

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

#314

Post by monkeynotes » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:24 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.

Some websites did do this. But adding actual text that can be indexed by Ask Jeeves doesn't work with this solution.

Macromedia had this crazy system where you could slice your art up in Fireworks, and then ask it to generate the HTML and Javascript, then you could fine-tune it in Dreamweaver.

It was a mess.

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

#315

Post by commandlinefan » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:29 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…

> I am the worlds worst web programmer

Hey there now, you can't just lay claim to my title without first beating me for it in a title match.

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

#316

Post by aimor » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

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…

This week I ran into a problem with vertical centering I couldn't figure out: Text in a flex item with overflow ellipses and vertical centering. Other people online have shared solutions that did not work for me, but I've since convinced myself it looks better as-is. Billions of dollar is not an exaggeration.

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

#317

Post by commandlinefan » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:33 PM UTC

Spare_account wrote: post #98

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

I worked with a woman who officially referred to herself a "webmistress". Not as a joke.

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

#318

Post by napolux » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:41 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #308

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...

Tried to make it work, guess support is gone for good in latest firefox/chrome

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

#319

Post by giantrobot » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #85

Speaking of the greatness of the 90s, does anyone have a good version of the classic "Under Construction" GIF? You know the one — it was in the style of a yellow road sign, and on it was a pixelated silhouette of a construction worker diligently shoveling. Long before Gmail had the smug audacity to leave "Beta" on their product name, you could use this GIF (or even a whole row of them!) to proudly announce to the wor…

The other replies might sort you out but if they don't, check out some of the shareware/CD-ROM collections on the Internet Archive. They have thousands of ISOs of magazine inserts, shareware discs, and all kinds of discs from the 90s. They're each like little time capsules so you may end up finding that image or ones like it on those.

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

#320

Post by tracker1 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:48 PM UTC

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #293

tracker1 wrote: post #263

Missing mention of Flash/Shockwave. That said I've missed all the things mentioned. And I don't miss it. Days where IE4, NN4 and a huge margins of stealing browsers existed all at once. Nobody was willing to take the literal hours to download a new browser over dialup. Hell, people rarely ran windows updates. I still remember IE 5.0 that was on the office 2000 and Windows 2000 disks (not ME). It broke the legacy inte…

>I still remember IE 5.0 that was on the office 2000 and Windows 2000 disks (not ME). It broke the legacy interface for manipulation of select controls. 5.0.1 fixed that, but it was too late. Do you happen to remember more details about this. In particular, what method worked for the IE 5.0 that was broken? I develop a framework that aims for universal browser support, and I'd like to account for this.

It was just IE 5.0.0.. there was an offer interface and the new dom interface. IE5 initially only supported the new one.

I honestly wouldn't even worry about it today. I don't even recall what the method was. Both probably still work in current browsers. The bigger manipulation and the older interface.