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Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

zachholman.com

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Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#381

Post by dhimes »

Overnight, the entire internet converted into this sludge of a medium where text looked like links and links looked like text. You had no idea where to click

Ha! I am still pissed off about this. I remember my first days on StackOverflow, going to a 'moved' question (thanks alot, Google) and not knowing where the hell it was moved to nor how to get there. Am I expected to move my mouse slowly over the page until it changes? Look at the source code of the page? Read a FAQ or something?

PS Also pissed off about these new cars that I can't figure out how to start- nor turn off!

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#382

Post by rmc »

dalke wrote: post #317
Fomite wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unknown author wrote Beowulf , an odd synthesis of pagan storytelling and christian piety. Charlemagne. Fucking Charlemagne . Seriously, Western Europe emerging as a political entity. The various Viking invasions, which end up having a major impact on European trade and English history (and thus by extension, American history). The 9th century was kind of a big deal.

"The word 'bank' is derived from the Italian word 'banco' signifying a bench, which was erected in the market-place, where it was customary to exchange money. The Lombard Jews were the first to practise this exchange business, the first bench having been established in Italy a.d. 808." - http://chestofbooks.com/finance/banking/English-Manual/Chapt... In 867, the Macedonian dynasty took over Byzantium and started its…

Yes, there were political changes. The question was "name a generation that hasn't seen groundbreaking technological changes".

My thesis is that the rate of technological breakthroughs has been very high for the last 200 years.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#383

Post by jfc »

chimeracoder wrote: post #153
pvnick wrote: post #11

> HTML For Dummies doesn't cover the tag until chapter four? Ah yes, HTML For Dummies . For me, the book that started it all. Reading that book during my elementary school Pokemon craze led me to create my first serious website from scratch, Mew's Hidden Lair [1]. Except back then it was Dummies 101: HTML [2]. And I do remember how magical it was to type in that command and see an image of Pikachu show up on my scree…

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…

Geocities was awesome. I used it for an upcoming events website while I was in school. I remember thinking how cool it was when I bought a domain name for the site. When good ol' Geocities went away, it was really sad. Kind of felt like the end of an era.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#384

Post by kalleboo »

baby wrote: post #248

Oh man. I was a "web developer" back then. - I'm surprised he didn't mention tables. That's the first thing that came to my mind. We didn't use CSS but tables to make a layout. And I have to admit I miss them. Yes we have grid systems like bootstrap now but still, tables were damn easy. - What about those counters that were displaying how many visitors had came since the website creation - Those "in construction" pag…

How about "WELCOME TO MY SITE" scrolling in the browser statusbar?

Apparently that still works in Safari http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/cut11.shtml

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#385

Post by ja27 »

I was a "webmaster" in the early days. A friend of mine raytraced a bunch of colored spheres and cones to use as images for bullet lists and he eventually found them on dozens of popular site layouts. I remember the day Yahoo went to two columns and I discovered that tables could be used for layout. Or the day Mosaic got support for transparent GIFs. Then came the blink tag ...

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#386

Post by robmcm »

ceejayoz wrote: post #319
antics wrote: post #231

A couple months ago, I decided to write a very short tutorial/introduction to the program `telnet`. I ended up deciding to use the tag to make a cursor that blinks similar to how it blinks in the terminal. Hilariously, I discovered that is actually no longer implemented in Chrome. The one legitimate use! I ended up mocking it with JavaScript. EDIT: it's here if you want to see how the cursor turned out! http://blog.n…

> Hilariously, I discovered that is actually no longer implemented in Chrome. There is a solution! http://cheese.blartwendo.com/web21-demo.html

Do you mean is no longer implemented in blink?

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#387

Post by [deleted] »

nikatwork wrote: post #335
jordanlev wrote: post #314

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,…

[deleted]

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#388

Post by dalke »

rmc wrote: post #382
dalke wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The word 'bank' is derived from the Italian word 'banco' signifying a bench, which was erected in the market-place, where it was customary to exchange money. The Lombard Jews were the first to practise this exchange business, the first bench having been established in Italy a.d. 808." - http://chestofbooks.com/finance/banking/English-Manual/Chapt... In 867, the Macedonian dynasty took over Byzantium and started its…

Yes, there were political changes. The question was "name a generation that hasn't seen groundbreaking technological changes". My thesis is that the rate of technological breakthroughs has been very high for the last 200 years.

The question was "name a generation over the last few centuries which hasn't seen the birth of a dozen groundbreaking technologies."

Notice the part about "last few centuries"?

12 is more than a few. If you're going to bend the rules then so will I. :)

The development of adobe building technology is both literally and metaphorically groundbreaking. These are still known as the pueblo dwellers because of that technology.

A new writing system and a new banking system are also technological developments.

My thesis is that social impact of the technological developments in the 50 years around 1900 was more than the development of the last 50 years. As supporting evidence, I propose that return0's statement "how often can one live through the birth of a groundbreaking technology" reveals that there are not that many new groundbreaking technologies these days. Someone from 100 years ago could name a dozen such changes.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#389

Post by krisgee »

jfc wrote: post #383
chimeracoder wrote: post #153

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…

Geocities was awesome. I used it for an upcoming events website while I was in school. I remember thinking how cool it was when I bought a domain name for the site. When good ol' Geocities went away, it was really sad. Kind of felt like the end of an era.

Luckily the title of babies first scripts as well as annoying autoplay, flashing gifs and terrible layouts had been taken over by tumblr. If you ever feel the need to know why 99% of professional devs aren't 12, check out a couple of "custom" tumblr styles.

Re: Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

#390

Post by panzi »

Kluny wrote: post #237
powrtoch wrote: post #21

Can anyone explain the bit about 1x1.gif being the only way, to this day, to vertically center elements? AFAIK there's still no way to vertically center a dynamic height element without javascript, so if invisible gifs can do it I'd at least like to know how.

I don't know that it works in every use case, but I usually use a container with equal left and right margins.

powrtoch was talking about vertically centering.
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