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Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)

zachholman.com

111–120 of 407 posts

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

#111
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...

> since the cutoff between sections was always obvious... and not exactly the same across different browsers. Yes kids, there was a time when not everybody was using the same browser.

Well, actually, there was only a short time, when more than one had been widely used. Something like Mosaic - Netscape - IE - Mozilla/Firefox/The Browser Now Known As Vivaldi/... - Chrome

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

#112
post #9

Don't forget image slicing and image maps! https://www.creativebloq.com/adobe/image-slicing-photoshop-6... (2014)

My favorite workflow was to make a totally l33t render with 3dsmax, put it in Photoshop to draw UI buttons, and then use Imageready to slice it and autogenerate the html slices and maps. Instant fancy website that made me a cool kid as far as I was concerned

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

#113

> 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…

(2014)

so while "technically" flex was available at the time it wasn't really widespread yet.

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

#114

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.

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

#115

I miss MS FrontPage! I remember how shocked my friends looked whenever they came by and saw it open on my screen. They never understood why I spend hours on that thing instead of just playing games. The first time I thought about learning to code was when I visited Linkin Park's website. Sure, it took 10 long minutes to load but it was a masterpiece of its own. I'd just open the website and stare at it. And one day I…

Archive.org has some old copies, maybe you remember this one? Still loads slowly :) https://web.archive.org/web/20011202145112/http://linkinpark...

No, it was from around the launch of meteora iirc.

I tried to look it up, but the only copy that have a bearing resemblance to what I remember doesn't load very well as many files seem to be missing. And, the snapshots after that one just keep returning a 302 error :/

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

#116
post #44

I miss MS FrontPage! I remember how shocked my friends looked whenever they came by and saw it open on my screen. They never understood why I spend hours on that thing instead of just playing games. The first time I thought about learning to code was when I visited Linkin Park's website. Sure, it took 10 long minutes to load but it was a masterpiece of its own. I'd just open the website and stare at it. And one day I…

I remember using FrontPage quite a bit too. It had some... interesting quirks when it came to outputting HTML, but it seemed fine enough for me at the time. Which also reminds me; did anyone actually use the FrontPage Server Extensions they had for it? I remember the tool having a bunch of dynamic features like counters and guestbooks that relied on them being installed, and web hosts sometimes having these extension…

I remember adding counters to the bottom of my websites in FP, but not sure what technology I was using. Fun times indeed!

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

#117

One thing I miss from the 90s are the built in user/password dialog that enabled me to easily remember passwords. It still exists, but most sites prefer to use their own HTML based logins because it "looks ugly". Imagine if sites used the built in dialog; We would have a much more secure web. We would not have a need for dedicated password managers and would probably have found a low effort way of integrating auto ge…

Do you mean the one which popped up from the browser UI before anything on the page has loaded? (aka "HTTP authentication")

Wasn't this abysmal? You navigate to some page, and out of nowhere it asks you for login, before you even see any content of the page. (Kind of like logging via terminal)

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

#118
post #114

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.

[deleted]

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

#119
post #28
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.

> reading the contents Or having some javascript code in the page loaded by the iframe which could call some parent. function.

You could even do realtime stuff by leaving the HTTP socket open and writing out script tags when you needed to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(programming)

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

#120

I miss MS FrontPage! I remember how shocked my friends looked whenever they came by and saw it open on my screen. They never understood why I spend hours on that thing instead of just playing games. The first time I thought about learning to code was when I visited Linkin Park's website. Sure, it took 10 long minutes to load but it was a masterpiece of its own. I'd just open the website and stare at it. And one day I…

I used FrontPage to teach myself how to create websites (if you could call it that). I placed elements in the WYSIWYG editor and then looked at the code which elements etc were produced. Such an amazing time.
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