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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)

#341

Post by ameen »

funstuff007 wrote: post #219
ameen wrote: post #138

A lot of old 90's "hacks" are still commonplace in current email design. Thanks to Outlook's reliance on a brain dead MS Word-based rendering system rather than using actual modern HTML5. And since Outlook is still the standard for email clients in the workplace, all other systems are impacted as well. It's interesting to see modern day developers struggle with email design and turn to folks like us :D

I came here to say the same thing. We use mjml to abstract away all this nonsense for us. Great library. https://mjml.io/

Thank you, will check it out.

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

#342

Post by zerocount »

DonHopkins wrote: post #312
sen wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love throwing unclosed into every guestbook and webring submission form I could find. Absolute chaos, in such an innocent and fun way. These days it'd probably get you arrested and imprisoned for hacking or something. The web was so FUN in the 90s.

You're unfortunately correct: if you live in one of the Neanderthal Red States that rejects all forms of science including Computer Science, you can get arrested for selecting "View Source" from the web browser menu. Be careful out there! https://mashable.com/article/missouri-governor-mike-parson-r... >Confused governor says looking at webpage's HTML is criminal hacking >Putting on my hacker hoodie and clicking "view…

I just lost all respect for you. What a piece of crap you are.

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

#343

Post by krapp »

samwillis wrote: post #44

They have missed out Perl CGI scripts from “Matts Script Archive”[0]! I remember much difficulty as a 13YO trying to get his “guest book” Perl script to work for the first time (with all its famous security holes). Oh, and “CGI Proxy”! Hosting that somewhere on a personal site so that we could get passed the filter on the schools internet. Anyone who knew how to host that had great power in the IT rooms! Edit: wow cg…

Matt's Script Archive is still live. God alone knows why, but it is. You can still download wwwboard (even though FF warns about an insecure connection), it was last updated in 2002.

... and if you search "wwwboard" apparently you can still find some in the wild.

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

#344

Post by kuschku »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #337
kuschku wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even HN, this very website, still uses spacer gifs. Sadly.

I don't understand why anyone would consider this sad.

Because it's not really reliable and breaks in many situations. reddits old nested divs work much better in contrast, and have a layout that matches the semantic situation better.

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

#346

Post by efreak »

piperswe wrote: post #313
ripdog wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once broke the "DRM" of a site which displayed images by downloading them obfuscated and using a big blob of JS to unfsck them and display them on a canvas. Grabbing the image should be easy, no? Just use `.toDataURL()`, right? Well, this site deleted all the methods on the canvas object which could be used to grab the image data, and then `.freeze()` (or maybe it was `.seal()`, this was a while ago) to prevent the…

You probably could've used `HTMLCanvasElement.prototype.toDataURL.call` on the canvas element

That's easier than my solution. I've got a user script that backs up some methods that runs before the page loads, and a corresponding bookmarklet to restore them.

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

#347

Post by efreak »

selcuka wrote: post #251
invalidusernam3 wrote: post #180

The author forgot making rounded corners using images! I kind of miss the creativity of old web development, especially before responsive web design. There was so much more variation and most sites didn't look like the default bootstrap template. But there were a lot of bad things about this era, particularly non standard browsers

Also rounded corners using a 3x3 table and 8 images (4 for corners, 4 for the sides scaled to 100%) were fully responsive.

This is still used today for building Android apps, it's called a nine patch.

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/graphics/drawable...

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

#348

Post by efreak »

throwanem wrote: post #205
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.

It's ok, there's a replacement. Now you put your marquee in the URL bar.

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

#350

Post by tentacleuno »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #278
GekkePrutser wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet this is what a word doc looks like under the hood. Especially if you see what kind of crap code something like frontpage produced. Lots of boilerplate muck and stuff cancelling each other out. We used to call it Strontpage at a place I worked. Stront means shit in Dutch. Dreamweaver was so much better and it embraced CSS instead of trying to avoid it. Though I liked coding in just an editor, for me as a non-gra…

Funnily enough you can see what a word doc looks like because the x in .docx is “XML” so save the word doc as .html and bask in the flaming dumpster fire of the font definitions at the top inline CSS.

I believe .pptx (PowerPoint) files are ZIP's, too. Try changing a .pptx file to .zip.
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