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Bootstra.386 – A Bootstrap theme from the 1980s

kristopolous.github.io

21–30 of 114 posts

Re: Bootstra.386 – A Bootstrap theme from the 1980s

#23
post #7

It might be more accurate to call this a simulation of vga text mode -- more early 90s than 1980s. Still, very cool.

Indeed, it looks deliciously like Ceefax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax I might get up at 5am and stare at it while listening to some easy-listening music.

Nope, that would be the rather unique text mode of the BBC Micro, which allowed you to do things like double-height letters. AFAIK, only Ceefax and the BBC Micro supported that.

This is definitely based on the standard EGA/VGA text mode (originally 80x25 characters) used by DOS. Mode 0x10 IIRC.

This is also using the standard codepage 437, which includes the characters for single and double borders. You could also rewrite the symbol table to make custom characters, which is what Norton Utilities and others did.

Re: Bootstra.386 – A Bootstrap theme from the 1980s

#24
I love this so much. Everything about the text mode of PCs (that is, what we used to call "IBM compatibles") is burnt into my brain at the deepest levels. Seeing this is like a jolt of electricity.

If you ask me to picture "what does a byte look like?", I am not going to think of binary or hex, I am going to instantly imagine the "extended ASCII" of code page 437.

Re: Bootstra.386 – A Bootstrap theme from the 1980s

#25
post #15

It looks old, it looks comical, but I KNOW WHAT TO DO! Less pixels, and less colours, means greater usability! This is the greatest application of Bootstrap I have ever seen. It is a shame that more websites don't look like this (in all seriousness).

This is undeniably neat but I am curious if you "know what to do" because you have a lot of experience using applications that looked this way largely by necessity. I don't think the average computer user would favor this type of aesthetic on any level.

When I was growing up with computers, interfaces like this were on their way out. So to me it just looks clunky and messy. Other than inspiring nostalgia and impressing me with the amount of work that surely went into creating it, I don't think this theme has much real world application.

These themes that attempt to replicate the look and feel of a GUI are pretty gimmicky in nature (ever been to a terrible blog that tries to look like the OS X GUI or worse... one of the Windows GUIs?). This one just happens to be really high quality.

Re: Bootstra.386 – A Bootstrap theme from the 1980s

#26
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it looks deliciously like Ceefax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax I might get up at 5am and stare at it while listening to some easy-listening music.

I remember being in Germany a few years ago, and my friends' parents still used this (something equivalent in Germany) on their TV. It was effective.

This is called Teletext[1] (or in german: Videotext). It still widely used i guess. Even me sometimes used it to get informations about the sheduled TV-Program if not cellphone/tablet is in reach ;)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

Re: Bootstra.386 – A Bootstrap theme from the 1980s

#27
post #7

It might be more accurate to call this a simulation of vga text mode -- more early 90s than 1980s. Still, very cool.

What makes this VGA rather than CGA text mode? (VGA is from 1987, by the way. :) )

I think it's actually EGA, but it's definitely not CGA. CGA only supports 4 colours and you can tell immediately from the dark blue that it's not CGA, because that's not one of the 4. There are also at least 5 colours shown, all of which happen to be from the standard EGA palette.

VGA generally used the same text modes as EGA and very few people actually had an EGA, so referring to it as a VGA mode is an understandable mistake.

There were actually some VGA-specific text modes (80x30 mode for example) as well as SVGA modes, but they weren't really used much because the EGA modes were good enough, more widely compatible, and IIRC the 80x30 mode was noticeably slower.

Also IIRC, 80x30 mode used a slightly different font than this one, which is why I think it's the usual 80x25 EGA rather than one of the other modes.

Re: Bootstra.386 – A Bootstrap theme from the 1980s

#29
post #18

Where is the turbo button?

LOL, the turbo button when the front of the PC displayed the number of MHz the computer was operating at, and you could slow it down so you could play old games. Good times.

As a kid I was fascinated by the fact that turbo button was actually a brake button but there was a perverse incentive to call it turbo because of the psychological effect.
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