Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Building a website like it's 1999

localghost.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#81

Post by jonathanoliver »

user3939382 wrote: post #52
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…

> FrontPage           

I only had Notepad (the default Windows text editor). I longed for Microsoft Frontpage and HoTMetaL and Dreamweaver. Looking back, I'm glad gained experience on the native experience rather than through the editor abstractions because it forced me to learn.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#82

Post by madeofpalk »

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…

> whereas surely something like this written by me or 99 percent of the users in HN can never get such traction

Do you not think the author is one of the "99 percent of users" of HN?

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#83

Post by ineedasername »

Apart from the style & aesthetic, there was this great & glorious period of time on the web from around 1997 to 2004 (rough estimate) where broadband was was still rare enough the web designers had to assume slow dialup connections and at least try to keep page size low.

During this time, if you had broadband and a moderately fast computer, browsing the web lightning fast.

Then came the frameworks and, especially after smartphones, the adaptive web for small mobile-first(ish, or second or whatever) screen sizes and the bloat began. Previously you only had to worry about pages that dumped flash ads or used flash for every UI element, they were still slow. Then everything became about as slow as before.

I still think browsing is a bit faster than the dialup days, but not as fast as the golden age from '97-'04. It seems now that page loads sizes & javascript CPU load expand at roughly the pave of computing power & bandwidth availability.

Which means it's a pretty awful experience for anyone on a low end computer w/ broadband that barely meets the definition.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#84

Post by wiredfool »

Late 90's, I was using a website framework in a no-sql object database, with an outliner for coding.

There was a three pass rendering system, and I was writing with CSS, but in the final filter I was string replacing font-face in in place of the classes because or poor support in browsers.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#86

Post by actuallyalys »

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 think the comparison to outside art is very apt, although I think the boundary between professional and amateur was porous. Professionals wrote the tools amateurs used, they wrote the books and references at least some of those amateurs consulted, and I imagine they originally wrote at least some of the snippets that got copy and pasted endlessly. In theory, a return of the old web (aesthetically and socially) could involve people copying snippets like these. As you mention, the current web's complexity makes that unlikely, unfortunately.

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#87

Post by rafale »

jonathanoliver wrote: post #81
user3939382 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FrontPage           

I only had Notepad (the default Windows text editor). I longed for Microsoft Frontpage and HoTMetaL and Dreamweaver. Looking back, I'm glad gained experience on the native experience rather than through the editor abstractions because it forced me to learn.

I longed for Flash but I learned DHTML instead. I bet many young readers haven't heard of that "technology".

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#88

Post by Soulsbane »

user3939382 wrote: post #52
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…

> FrontPage           

LOL, also spacer.gif(Not so much FrontPage but it reminded me of the times).

Re: Building a website like it's 1999

#90

Post by nickthegreek »

mysterydip wrote: post #65
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

HotDog Professional, anyone? https://archive.org/details/tucows_194462_HotDog_Professiona...

Hotdog Pro was everything to me. Going from Notepad to Hotdog opened my eyes to the future of the Internet. It set me down a path where I would eventually get my first paid tech gig working at my local newspaper in high school maintaining the photo departments daily web presence.
Post reply on HN