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A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

cameronsworld.net

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Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#91

Post by samwillis »

jszymborski wrote: post #21

Ok, this is a long shot, but if any forum is likely to know, it's HN. I first got my start in web development when I was around 8 (early 2000s) thanks to a very large (or at least it was to an 8 year old) purple book on HTML. There was one passing mention of how animated GIFs might be added to websites with an IMG tag. The example of the animated GIF they showed (they exploded the frames) reminded me of this image [0…

Similar entry to making websites for me. Late 90s and this book “Creating Cool HTML 4 Web Pages”

https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Cool-HTML-Web-Pages/dp/07645...

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#92

Post by Kye »

throwaway_isms wrote: post #89
elbigbad wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. The hairpin of emotions from excitement when I saw something promising like acquiring the expiring geocities trademark from the USPTO to yet another shit crypto project was disheartening. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Perhaps something can do something of value with it when the new trademark expires.

>Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Perhaps something can do something of value with it when the new trademark expires. Please expand upon this, give me your idea of victory and value. The plan was to turn the IP over to community governance, so people like you who seem to care could have a voice in governing how the property is used. On one hand it seems like you might want a voice in how the IP is used, yet…

I see no mention of an intention or plan, very different things, to hand it over in the original comment.

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#93

Post by dfxm12 »

chasing wrote: post #5

This is amazing. I miss the days when the web truly felt like a vast tapestry of people energetically letting their freak flags fly. Pave paradise, put up... an algorithm to maximize engagement.

You think the Web still isn't full of people letting their freak flags fly?

You can still see this on twitch, YT, tiktok, etc. Just like Geocities represents amateur or even naive web development/web design, there are the same types of people trying to create video content. Even Twitter (including the "weird Twitter" genre of tweets) and other social media sites are full of amateur commentators, writers, comedians, musicians, etc.

Web development/web design, including the tools and techniques available to the hobbyist has just gotten much more mature. People no longer feel like a kid in the candy store in terms of adding blinking text and rotating gifs, and tutorial websites are no longer showing these examples.

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#94

Post by BigTuna »

Any old heads remember using HoTMetaL to write HTML? It was literally just a glorified text editor that inserted tags for you. I eventually learned HTML well enough from it that it became faster to just write pages in Notepad.

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#95

Post by aposm »

throwawaycities wrote: post #62

It’s become the norm for big tech to acquire and kill off beloved products over the objections of passionate communities of users. For me that first experience was Yahoo acquiring and killing GeoCities, not to mention deleting 10’s of millions of websites from the early web in the process like it never existed paving the way for social media. I’ve spent the better part of a decade waiting, and in 2020 Yahoo’s tradema…

You clearly know that snatching up the trademark for a beloved name and reusing it for a crypto project is going to be unpopular, given you took the time to make a throwaway account. So then why did you brag about your trademark, registered to your real name, which can be found in 30 seconds?

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#97

Post by wawjgreen »

_zetta wrote: post #57
taejavu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got you fam: https://www.amazon.com/Yourself-Publishing-Professional-Refe...

Duuude!!! thanks!!! I read this when I was 10 or 11 and I haven't stop making web since then.

now the authors have updated your purple book in 2016: https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&fiel...

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#98

Post by throwawaycities »

aposm wrote: post #95
throwawaycities wrote: post #62

It’s become the norm for big tech to acquire and kill off beloved products over the objections of passionate communities of users. For me that first experience was Yahoo acquiring and killing GeoCities, not to mention deleting 10’s of millions of websites from the early web in the process like it never existed paving the way for social media. I’ve spent the better part of a decade waiting, and in 2020 Yahoo’s tradema…

You clearly know that snatching up the trademark for a beloved name and reusing it for a crypto project is going to be unpopular, given you took the time to make a throwaway account. So then why did you brag about your trademark, registered to your real name, which can be found in 30 seconds?

> given you took the time to make a throwaway account.

This account is more than a year old. I make lots of HN accounts and typically stop using them after 500karma.

Like I said web3 is not popular on HN, you don’t even know the project (nor do others) but show disdain anyway because it is “crypto”. That’s not a reflection on me and what I’m doing with GeoCities, but the a reflection on people that dislike a project not knowing what it is.

FYI you’re on a platform that invests in startups, one of the most successful being a cryptocurrency exchange that went public and is responsible for the growth of cryptocurrency with the masses.

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#99

Post by jszymborski »

taejavu wrote: post #39
jszymborski wrote: post #21

Ok, this is a long shot, but if any forum is likely to know, it's HN. I first got my start in web development when I was around 8 (early 2000s) thanks to a very large (or at least it was to an 8 year old) purple book on HTML. There was one passing mention of how animated GIFs might be added to websites with an IMG tag. The example of the animated GIF they showed (they exploded the frames) reminded me of this image [0…

I got you fam: https://www.amazon.com/Yourself-Publishing-Professional-Refe...

This looks _really_ familiar. Will see if I can find a copy and verify! (Will also post the seal if I find it.)

UPDATE: So I found the book on Internet Archive [0] and I really think it's the real thing. Only caveat: no seal. There's a whole section on creating animated GIFs (which I recall the book I had having), but the example to create a GIF is not a seal bouncing a ball but rather just a bouncing ball sans seal (pg. 261). I'm pretty sure the seal was a false memory at this point.

I've thought of this book often, and I'm thankful to you for sending this my way. I'm 99% sure it's the book given the page count, cover, chapters, and year it was published. Even if it isn't though, it's a wonderful example of the sorts of references at the time.

Thanks again!

[0] https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780672314087/isbn_97806723...

Re: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites

#100

Post by civilized »

baisq wrote: post #75
civilized wrote: post #6

Five notable good things that happened after 1999: 1. Obergefell 2. First Black President 3. Wikipedia 4. .....idk, maybe CRISPR? Deep Learning? Avatar: The Last Airbender? I'm drawing a blank here

This comment needs to be accompanied by a soyjak.

Sorry, what was that? I have a job and a wife and kids so I'm not always up on the latest internet memes.
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