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Resurrect the Old Web

stevedylandev.bearblog.dev

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Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#191

Post by amatecha »

Aeolun wrote: post #186
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…

The old web to me was mostly just not populated by people trying to make money off of it. The whole transformation stems from there.

Yeah, I remember when searching and browsing the web meant finding tons of legit, information-dense content that had absolutely zero monetary interest behind it. Sites of university professors and students, random personal websites (countless band/game/movie/show fan sites), and even the company websites were usually quite sincere and simple. I feel VERY lucky to have been knee-deep in all of it since the beginning, certainly a unique time in the history of technology. Not sure when we'll see something like that again, if ever, since humanity cannot put that genie back in the bottle.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#193

Post by amatecha »

CapsAdmin wrote: post #80
2THFairy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, obviously, ads were the norm back in the day. The author had to be wearing several rose tinted glasses when writing that. But the author isn't entirely wrong. There were/are a lot of websites that simply did not run ads. Hosted not for money, but "for love of the game". This is something that was lost with the shift to exclusively platform-based hosting. A facebook page or subreddit simply is never going to be ad…

I may be wearing the same glasses here, but it felt like ads were more like "real ads" back then. Like when walking down a street, you may see some posters advertising something, but they are clearly ads, because they are noisy rectangles bunched up with other noisy rectangles. On the older internet, ads felt more like that, and seemed to stay in the corner away from the content. However, on the modern internet, ads…

Ads back then were pretty unobjectionable because they were like, a GIF or JPG on a page. It wasn't even until like 1998-1999 or something where they really started being JavaScript-driven from ad delivery shit like DoubleClick and so on. Suddenly I'm reminded of one of the early perpetrators of pop-up ads, X10 Technology[0] which was egregious enough to result in an early internet music artist, Kompressor, releasing a song about it, "We Must Destroy X-10"[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_Wireless_Technology

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8NK6eruUs

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#194

Post by amatecha »

alisonatwork wrote: post #44
krapp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod and the like all had banner ads. I think you could pay not to have them but for free accounts they were mandatory.

That wasn't the case in the beginning, on Geocities at least. It was a pretty big deal when they started introducing popups and mandatory banner ads.

That's exactly right. They were REALLY chill in the early days: "The only code that we require to be on all of your html pages is a reference back to GeoCities. This can be a reference to the main Neighborhood page that you reside in, or to the GeoCities Home Page. Please see the FTP Procedures Page for the preferred source code." from https://web.archive.org/web/19961220170537/http://www.geocit...

The other rules are actually pretty cool, too. Zero commercial use allowed. This probably singlehandedly ensured the most diverse and interesting content.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#195

Post by amatecha »

davey48016 wrote: post #7
onion2k wrote: post #4

No ads I don't know what "Old Web" the author is remembering but when I was first paid to make a website in 1997, it had banner ads on it.

Banner ads, pop up ads, pop under ads...If browsers added a feature, then websites used it to show you ads.

I remember when I saw less bullshit ads because I used a Mac and my browser literally didn't support the JavaScript features used to display pop-under ads. All my friends on Windows were plagued by this crap and the only effect I had was that I would get empty windows appearing sometimes, or pages just wouldn't work properly or would take forever to load. Way less ads. Sweet!

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#196

Post by amatecha »

philipkglass wrote: post #111
sumtechguy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 94/95 web had no banners. Because most of it was hosted on university servers or some random guy/company just wanted to bear the cost. I remember the big decision on if adverts should even be allowed... Well here we are. Users get free things. Advertisers pick up most of the bill. The second that model doesnt work sites pack it up. The 'before time' could be there but servers/bandwidth/people are not free. You ca…

I have been running my own web site for 20+ years without ads. The server and bandwidth costs are minute. I use a basic VPS. I started it when I was still a poor grad student. This is cheaper now than shared hosting was back in the early 2000s and it's easier too. But it's not cheaper than "free" and it's significantly more administrative work than just using a social network. The "people" costs (including my own tim…

Same yo, matecha.net live and ad-free since 2004. Not that I have ever had a ton of content, but I have my little slice of the old-school web and always will as long as I'm alive (and as long as the web is around, I guess!)

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#197

Post by amatecha »

Apreche wrote: post #25

The old web isn’t a platform, an aesthetic, or a technology. The old web is people creating and sharing because they are intrinsically motivated. Everything we hate about the current web comes from extrinsic motivations. Good luck removing them.

Yes, true, that describes it even better than "people weren't trying to make a profit".

Luckily there are lots of people who still just make and post cool stuff, for the purpose of creating and sharing.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#198

Post by al_be_back »

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…

> It was always to obviously to make battery life better

I don't think it was about saving battery power. Jobs was smart in convincing people to focus on web stack for apps - Flash was king of rich app experiences, and java [inc applets] for corporate apps. Apps went iOS native batteries got drained in other ways (large video & photos, prolonged use). Just think of the costs, energy and time spent over the next 15 years maintaining multiple code-bases to deliver one service. The web remained open, where as mobile went native and closed-in.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#200

Post by amatecha »

drnick1 wrote: post #143
Kovah wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This may be better than Google, but I don't understand why a blog needs a font CDN at all. Just use standard fonts or host them yourself if you really can't do without your SuperCoolFont.

For real - computers come with a shitton of nice fonts these days. Plus like, font styling allows fallbacks -- choose a nice font stack where all the fallbacks look nice, and you're good to go.
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