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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)

#321

Post by drivers99 »

> Have you ever shoved a into a tag?

If you did, it would blink on Netscape, and it would be a marquee in IE, but not both (in the 90s!). Netscape had blink and IE had marquee and did not support the other[1][2], at least in the 90s.

[1] blink: "some, such as Internet Explorer, never supported the element at all" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_element

[2] marquee: "the first time I tried Netscape 7, in 2002. Netscape 7 and its close descendent (sic) are, as far as I can tell, the only web browsers to support both and ." https://danq.me/2020/11/11/blink-and-marquee/

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

#322

Post by joquarky »

DecoySalamander wrote: post #183
CM30 wrote: post #48

Let's not forget frames, the original 'solution' to the problem of having to edit the navigation bar on every page. Unfortunately, you then had to figure out what to do if someone accessed the frame page directly, since search engines could still index these parts of the page seperately. And they always felt jarring and awkward too, since the cutoff between sections was always obvious...

There has also been the reverse problem of someone embedding your entire site in their frames to place ads on top of your content.

We called those "para sites"

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

#323

Post by digging »

rekoil wrote: post #75
thrdbndndn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays I just ask ChatGPT to write the CSS for me for that, and amusingly, it seems to be able to produce at least a dozen of solutions (often came with redundant rules, too: like having 5+ rules when 2 or 3 of them are enough). It's hilariously stupid.

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

No, but the next breakthrough might...

Why do so many hackers have so much difficulty seeing that the current state of public LLMs is not the pinnacle of AI technology? Nobody ever even claimed that they were.

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

#325

Post by bandyaboot »

xnorswap wrote: post #3

> DHTML, which stands for “distributed HTML” Is this a joke I don't understand?

> DHTML, which absolutely stands for “distributed HTML” because that’s the name and this isn’t obvious bait for the no fun crowd at Hacker News…

I’m confused by this discussion…was the above quoted bit added later or something? Because as it stands, it seems pretty clear that making this very discussion happen is the punchline.

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

#326

Post by atum47 »

giantrobot wrote: post #306
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 chan…

Nice. My comment was about the author saying DHTML stands for distributed HTML, which i find odd

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

#327

Post by SpaceNoodled »

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.

Wow, he really did find the No Fun Crowd here.

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

#328

Post by somat »

dylan604 wrote: post #312
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 s…

If it were anything other than tagging features in a picture I probably could and would have.

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

#329

Post by brnt »

CM30 wrote: post #48

Let's not forget frames, the original 'solution' to the problem of having to edit the navigation bar on every page. Unfortunately, you then had to figure out what to do if someone accessed the frame page directly, since search engines could still index these parts of the page seperately. And they always felt jarring and awkward too, since the cutoff between sections was always obvious...

216 web safe colors anyone?

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

#330

Post by clownbaby »

jeswin wrote: post #17

I don't remember if this was a common technique, but before XmlHttpRequest (came in 2000, i think) we used to do "Ajax" by loading data into an invisible iframe and reading the contents. Worked well iirc.

I also don't know how widespread this technique was back then, but I'm shocked this was left out of the article. This phenomenon was literally the method that transformed a "websites" into "webapps" in the early days. We would use pools of invisible iframes to constantly update different parts of the page for a "reactive" experience. The author mentions various important hacks that define the early days, but missing this one seems like a blunder to me.
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