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Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

zachholman.com

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Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One pedantic point [what, here on HN??!!] about your statement "layout divs and lists also aren't semantic"... the difference is that divs are never semantic, and they're not supposed to be. Whereas table are semantic and impart meaning on what the kind of content is. So, yeah, divs aren't semantic and that's exactly why they're more appropriate than tables for layout.

I hear the argument that s should only hold tabular data, but (a) that is a convention not a rule and (b) frankly content and layout are so horribly muddled in HTML that I believe in a pragmatic approach with clean, minimal, backwards-compatible code and no fragile hacks. If that means using a couple of layout tables then so be it. What really grates is that the same people will then often use a to make a hover menu,…

Try loading that website in a text only browser. All of a sudden those ul>li navigations start to make sense.

Accessibility anyone?

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#372
post #51

There was also a plugin called Java so that you could animate bouncing heads in your web page. I wonder whatever happened to that Java stuff.

It kept being installed on millions of consumer PC's despite there being no practical reason to anymore, resulting in millions of malware-infected PC's. :p

... unfortunately a practical reason still exists and it's called "Minecraft".

Minecraft is single-handedly teaching the next generation that having Java installed is somehow useful. For real. I can't teach them "just deinstall that shit", because they can't play Minecraft.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#373

> 1x1.gif let you push elements all around the page effortlessly. To this day it is the only way to vertically center elements. False, dynamic vertical centering has always been possible with tables: dynamically vertically centered This is something CSS still can't seem to do dynamically except with table-emulation, which, you know, kind of defeats the whole fucking purpose of CSS (and isn't backwards compatible anyw…

-- Here's something else CSS still can't do AFAIK:

--

-- fixed"

-- dynamic

--

Actually, it can. I did it for you:

Image: http://i.imgur.com/l5GPLNC.png

Source: https://gist.github.com/Imdsm/9226944

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so, so, so sad that Yahoo! shut down Geocities, because they took with them the Pokemon fan website that I made when I was just learning this whole 'HTML' thing for the first time. I even remember the exact full URL of the website[0]. But between the demise of Geocities and the demise of my 386's hard drive, that piece of nostalgia is gone forever. I remember dedicating a page to all of the different "strategies…

This reminded me of my pokemon fan site (Poketown) from 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20000510132913/http://poketown.o... Looks like I was a pattern of grid design (ala tables) back then.

That's awesome! I remember most pages looked like that back in the day actually. I even offered it as a 'service' to Dragonball Z websites. It existed of just a background image with all the borders/effects in it, and transparent tables on top of it with a content structure just like yours. Good times.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#375
post #270

I remember using images that looked almost identical to in place of an actual tag. Plus the million variations (you didn't have a real site until you have a image that matched your theme). I remember the 1x1 transparent pixel with great affection---it was the output of my first significant CGI script (in Perl, of course) that I used as a site counter. Winsock! Fuck yeah! I remember when a web page and a gopher site l…

So many memories on this list. Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.11, dialing into a small mom and pop ISP in my town in Tennessee (I think they were pretty much all mom and pops back then). Then fire up Netscape and surf as well as you could at 2400 baud. Which actually worked pretty well because everything was slow and you just kind of expected it. Or learning cool HTML tricks by looking at the source, then practicing it…

MUDs are doing just fine, I'm still playing one.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#376
You inspired me to go and look to see if my old Digimon fansite was still on Tripod. Turns out it was. [0]

Showing off my classy classy Jasc Paint Shop Pro 5 skills, my marquee tags, pixel fonts, badly repeating background, 88x31 buttons for affiliates, links with underline and OVERline hover.

I am truly sorry, internet.

[0]: http://digiauk.tripod.com/index2.shtm

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#379
The biggest change I noticed from web pre-1999 to modern web is ... Times New Roman. (And bright blue links, obviously.)

Every time I've knocked together some markup and haven't written any CSS yet, I get a big old dose of nostalgia when I boot it up in the browser and see those ass-ugly serifs everywhere.

I can only imagine what traditional designers thought of 'the future' back then. "OK, space cadet, let me introduce you to a radical new concept called 'typography'..."

IIRC, my own Geocities site was yellow TNR on a background tiled with the cover of Tool's Aenima, and had no particular theme, except a lot of curse words and teenage acting out.

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