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Building a website like it's 1999

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Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#41

Post by marginalia_nu »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #11

I bet you some people got really annoyed when written language was standardized and people couldn't simply spell things willy nilly using "their creativity". Every time you read a book you are looking at thousands of years of typographical standardization, but you don't lament the fact that they "all look the same". In fact, if you took a book out of the library shelf and saw it was written in a weird font (i.e. papy…

I'd argue the inconsistency in design is not limited to old websites. If anything, it's far worse with modern websites, since they aggressively re-style interface elements and frequently invent their own paradigms. Scrolling may re-arrange the content of a document, sometimes a desktop website has mobile paradigms like hamburger button causing a laggy menu to appear, often with buttons with no label that are decorated with minimalist line-art icons that are about as easy to parse as Linear B. Links are replaced with buttons, which are never natively styled and rarely clear that they are buttons. You have to click and find out. Sometimes clicking in a blank area causes something unpredictable to happen. Scrolling up or moving the mouse cursor to the edge of the window may cause pop over-elements to cover the text. The design is constantly shifting and moving around as ads are loaded randomly within whatever you're reading. Resizing the window may cause UI elements to move around, or to appear, or be hidden. Clicking a link may cause the ephemeral state of the document to change. The back button doesn't work after this happens. Sometimes scrolling down breaks the back button as well.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#42

Post by lnxg33k1 »

nonesuchluck wrote: post #39

This is fantastic, but not fully in the spirit of the old web. Personal pages looked like they did because they were essentially outsider art: the product of experimentation by teenagers and rank amateurs, who had no idea what we were doing. In 1999 we were using Netscape Composer and FrontPage Express, because they came with our browsers and were fun to explore. Only a web professional could use these tricks today t…

I used coolpage :D http://web.archive.org/web/20010517033954/http://www.klimane...

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#43

Post by Waterluvian »

nonesuchluck wrote: post #39

This is fantastic, but not fully in the spirit of the old web. Personal pages looked like they did because they were essentially outsider art: the product of experimentation by teenagers and rank amateurs, who had no idea what we were doing. In 1999 we were using Netscape Composer and FrontPage Express, because they came with our browsers and were fun to explore. Only a web professional could use these tricks today t…

The beautiful result of copying and pasting html from your favourite sites. No CSS so the styles came along.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#44

Post by masswerk »

chrisco255 wrote: post #33
masswerk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this layout, which is really how I remember the late-1990s web: https://anioni.com/pauli/site1999/work/nurminen1-01.html A well considered arrangement of structure, content and design. Something we do not get to see that much anymore.

It's so much harder to pull it off with the huge range in screen sizes and resolutions. Back then you could make an 800x600 (or maybe even up to 960 width) design and it would work on 99% of the monitors (rarely did anyone have more than 1024x768).

While numerous websites settled for a fixed width indeed (I think, this was mostly a US school of thinking), responsive designs were somewhat doable with table layouts. What you couldn't do was a general change of element order etc. (However, you could respond in JS using `document.write()` on first render.)

E.g. (this was a demo installation for a brandable horoscope service, not exactly 1999, but from 2000): https://www.masswerk.at/demo/easyphone/

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#45

Post by achairapart »

Alpi wrote: post #6

Ok you got me, I feel nostalgic. What strikes me most is that those people from 90th were putting their creativity into something only handful of people will ever see, they were effectively shouting to void. I would love to be still able to discover low-ranging websites like this. I remember somebody shared some alternative search engine?

Also: https://millionshort.com/

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#46

Post by geraldwhen »

thanksgiving wrote: post #9

Side rant: I have probably looked up more about this CLS (cumulative layout shift) thing that now I hate the word "just". "Just" do this, "just" do that. Bollocks. Tomorrow it will be something else. There are already at least three ways to handle image width and height. It is easy they say. Use the first approach if the image is an important of the main subject of the page. Use the second approach if the image is pu…

Moreover it’s a site of images. It’s not meant to be accessible to anyone who can’t browse images.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#48

Post by la64710 »

Frankly speaking I do not understand why a blog like yours is getting so many hits , whereas surely something like this written by me or 99 percent of the users in HN can never get such traction. I understand the reason for this is that you are somebody whereas we are nobodies. That’s why I don’t think that outside this niche of people who appreciate this idea it wound really take off. We are not going to wake up tomorrow to see the internet filled with 90s style websites. Those days are gone my friend.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#49

Post by chrisco255 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #36
chrisco255 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so much harder to pull it off with the huge range in screen sizes and resolutions. Back then you could make an 800x600 (or maybe even up to 960 width) design and it would work on 99% of the monitors (rarely did anyone have more than 1024x768).

That's solvable with vw/vx-units in CSS. I think the range in aspect ratios is the bigger problem. It's hard to get around without resulting in a nasty reactive design where everything keeps shuffling around as you resize the window.

Sure, very solvable nowadays with media queries, flex box, grid, screen width and height units, etc. These features didn't exist in 90s CSS.

But even though the tools exist today, it is still challenging to do well. Agreed that aspect ratio variability is a bigger problem (we can no longer count on 4:3 as the standard).

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#50

Post by [deleted] »

la64710 wrote: post #48

Frankly speaking I do not understand why a blog like yours is getting so many hits , whereas surely something like this written by me or 99 percent of the users in HN can never get such traction. I understand the reason for this is that you are somebody whereas we are nobodies. That’s why I don’t think that outside this niche of people who appreciate this idea it wound really take off. We are not going to wake up tom…

[deleted]
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