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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)

#201

Post by fault1 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #55
RedShift1 wrote: post #33

> The absolute first thing we did with CSS was use it to stop underlining links. I don't know how this trend came to be. I fought it for as long as I could, links are underlined and when you hovered them the underline would go away to make it extra clear this is an interactive element. I considered it a staple of good design. Why did we remove the underline?

In a word: print designers. Traditional print designers started doing web design without investing the time to understand the important differences in the (new) paradigm. Sadly, that root problem too often persists to today.

Agreed. I mean, the whole web page thing is literally a metaphor for people shuffling pages on their office desk.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#202

Post by fault1 »

nunez wrote: post #176
DerekBickerton wrote: post #65

1x1 pixel GIFs are still in use on places like Amazon where the 1x1 GIF image is overlayed on top of another (larger) image. It's to stop people right-clicking and saving the larger image to their device (because copyright). Anyways I can just press F12 and 'steal' the image from devtools, so it's not hard to overcome.

I believe that tracking pixels (1x1) are still very popular for mining browsing activity

Yes. Facebook literally calls it the Facebook Pixel for this reason.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#203

Post by forgotmypw17 »

I call mine p.gif.

I still use one today, because, in order to maintain the Any Browser promise, I use an XHR request for pre-XHR browsers, which just sets the src of the spacer gif.

If any return values are needed, they're populated into the src attribute with a redirect. :)

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#204

Post by Rodeoclash »

I got my start cutting HTML in the late 90s. I worked for a development company that had partnered with various design agencies. The design agencies would produce the mock-ups of the website in Photoshop and throw them across to us at the development agency to turn into websites.

I would get the templates, use the guides tool to mark out where where the slices would be for the tables then get to cutting. You got quite adept at being able to look at a design and figure out where the spacer gifs would go, where repeating background images would go etc. Everything was laid out using nested tables (and I started with Dreamweaver but at some point just stopped using the "split" view that it had and used it only as an IDE).

Once converted to HTML templates it was then plugged into a custom CMS along with any additional programming that might be needed for it. We actually hosted a payment gateway for credit card payments that customers could use. Almost a prototype version of Stripe.

The whole process was very assembly line driven:

PSD Designs > HTML templates > CMS integration > Custom development > Deployment

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#205

Post by throwanem »

cmg wrote: post #160

I'll always have a fond memory of window.status, which still exists but doesn't do anything on the majority of browsers anymore as they don't have status bars to modify the text of. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/stat...

I hadn't thought about status bar marquee scripts in a hot minute! Thanks for that.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#206

Post by masswerk »

ArtWomb wrote: post #3

Between flash and html5, there was a brief moment where DHTML games looked viable. I remember building something like a space invaders clone. Literally repositioning DOM divs each setInterval tick. There were a few full fledged experiments out there. The beauty is since its just DOM, they are playable forever if still hosted ;)

You mean, something like https://www.masswerk.at/JavaPac/LostInMaze.html ? :-)

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#207

Post by mixmastamyk »

cmg wrote: post #160

I'll always have a fond memory of window.status, which still exists but doesn't do anything on the majority of browsers anymore as they don't have status bars to modify the text of. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/stat...

A casualty of the forced segregation to 16:9 monitors early in the century.

Re: Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

#209

Post by lozenge »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #172

Forgot page counters. /cgi-bin ColdFusion Absence of alpha-channel on gifs so having to match the background color. But yes, it was the wild-wild-west of security holes out there! The amount of genius it takes to create a new web exploit these days is astonishingly high compared to 1994.

I made a one-page website for my neighbour's band and we set the counter to 174 so that it would look like people had visited. He called me as soon as I got home excited that the counter had gone up. Yeah, it does that when you look at it...
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