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Resurrect the Old Web

stevedylandev.bearblog.dev

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Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#131

Post by Gormo »

doublerabbit wrote: post #122
Bjorkbat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is crazy how much was lost when Apple killed Flash. Absolutely miss Newgrounds. It's still around of course, I'm reflecting more on the vibes when it was in its heyday. Unbelievable the games people were making with Flash back then and how it spawned the careers of a ton of indie darlings. Also, not Flash at all, but does anyone remember Exit Mundi? Absolute gold. Honestly, I kind of look back on blogging u…

Ruffle needs more love. The time and effort that's gone in to a browser extension to emulate flash, should be receiving that sponsorship from Cloudflare. https://ruffle.rs/

It's not just a browser extension -- it's also available as a JS library that can be added added to any site to restore seamless Flash support.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#132

Post by lockranore2 »

krapp wrote: post #91
superkuh wrote: post #81

The old web never went away, it never died. It was you who left. You who runs a corporate browser that can't even load HTTP pages anymore. You who only post on massive corporate run social media (like I am with HN). You who host your website on github or behind cloudflare or don't even bother and just have a mastodon or facebook page (both exclusively javascript applications). The old web is still there, almost invis…

What "corporate browsers" can't even load HTTP pages anymore?

I think this might be a reference to the barriers browsers place to hit sites not listed behind a TLS cert.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#133

Post by hossbeast »

lunias wrote: post #59

The "old web" to me was GeoCities and Angelfire, it was customizing your NeoPets shop, it was hosting a web server on your home network on port 8080. It was mailing a check to an address you found on a website in hopes that you'd receive a bootleg anime VHS in the mail a few weeks later. It was webrings, banners, and websites reviewing and promoting other sites through a "links" section. It was right-clicking to copy…

I once bought a SNES game that couldn't be found at local stores (final fantasy 2) by 1/ finding a guy on a message board with the cartridge, 2/ mailing that person a check, and 3/ waiting (probably weeks?) to receive the cartridge in the mail. The old Internet. I still have that game btw.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#134

Post by lockranore2 »

I was around for the leap from BBS systems to Fidonet; the bad old days when there were no such thing as graphics. I can absolutely sympathize with what's being said here, and for me, there are two primary reasons why I pine for the elder days. The systems then required some effort to gain access to which kept some of the signal to noise loss down (if you know the difference between CB radio and Ham radio, you know what I'm saying), and while commercialism's always been a part of these systems, more value was placed on content than advertising.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#135

Post by alwillis »

SXX wrote: post #124
alwillis wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really is crazy how much was lost when Apple killed Flash. Steve Jobs published "Thoughts on Flash" [1] in 2010; Flash was discontinued by Adobe in 2017. If Apple supposedly "killed" Flash, they sure took their time doing so. The iPhone had about 14% marketshare at the time, so it's not like Apple was in a commanding position to dictate terms to the industry. But if you read his letter, what he said made total s…

Getting rid of Flash was never ever about using HTML5 for Apple. It was always to obviously to make battery life better and ofc adding more experiences to their walled garden store. Safari is lagging on HTML5 features for decade far behind Firefox. And any features useful for "PWA" is just sabotaged. E.g like Screen Wake Lock API finally implemented in iOS 16 but to this day broken on Home screen. And like not quite…

> Safari is lagging on HTML5 features for decade far behind Firefox.

Really?

Safari was first to ship :has() in March 2022; Firefox couldn't ship until December 2023.

I listed a bunch of web platform features Safari shipped before Chrome and Firefox [1][2].

Even now, Firefox hasn't shipped Anchor Positioning, Scroll-driven animation, text-wrap: pretty, Web GPU, Cross-document view transitions, etc. but Safari and Chrome have.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074789

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44067706

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#136

Post by ibfreeekout »

mrweasel wrote: post #96

Something that was pointed out to me the other day: Firefox can show you "important dates" in the address bar, but they've yanked RSS support. You now need a plugin to get the RSS feed link for a site. I miss the old web, but I'm not sure it's coming back. You can still go on Usenet as well, not sure why anyone is spending time keeping the servers running, because I can not find an active newsgroups anymore. It was n…

Honestly, go for it! I started my own blog up and write everything myself, all the way down to the basic HTML and CSS. I don't use any frameworks or anything, whatever is there is just mine. Benefit is I'm not locked in to any one platform and migration is a piece of cake. Obviously won't work for everyone but I don't need much to put some words out there, but at least I can say it's all mine.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#137

Post by Terr_ »

HermanMartinus wrote: post #31
wiether wrote: post #3

I don't get HN's appeal for the bearblog platform? If anything else, if one wants to resurrect the "Old Web", one shouldn't do it on someone else's platform. Parts of the "Old Web" disappeared when the platforms hosting it stopped. The brutal shutting down of Typepad should be another reminder of this reality: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/one-time-wordpress-c...

Creator of Bear here. Suggesting that because one project fails, others will too is a bit of a fallacy. Fact is that whether you self-host or not, you're still using someone else's platform (unless you're a real self-hoster with a box in your closet, in which case, good on you and godspeed). I think as long as platforms have an easy way for people to backup and migrate, that's fair. Additionally, part of the appeal o…

> I think as long as platforms have an easy way for people to backup and migrate, that's fair.

Once one sees how much of the current tech-economy relies on lock-in and switching-costs, it's hard to unsee.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#138

Post by drnick1 »

The first step to "resurrect the old Web" would be to remove the fonts.googleapis.com dependency from your blog. It enables Google to track people across the Internet.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#139

Post by phendrenad2 »

I don't have a lot of nostalgia for an "old web". I like the new web. But there are some aspects of the old web that I'd like to see more of. To that end, I've been trying to find ways to make the new web adopt those principles. One of them is ownership: If your friend from school runs the website, you know your data isn't being siphoned up by Big Tech. Lowering the barrier to entry to make a "cool" website (such a small social media platform) is the goal. Back in the day, this meant setting up phpBB. These days, it probably means setting up a Mastodon node.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#140

Post by Kovah »

drnick1 wrote: post #138

The first step to "resurrect the old Web" would be to remove the fonts.googleapis.com dependency from your blog. It enables Google to track people across the Internet.

Bunny Fonts is a fully compatible, GDPR-compliant, drop-in replacement for Google Fonts. https://fonts.bunny.net/
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