vga256

in 1996 the university of alberta let departments manage their own homepages

mwah. šŸ¤Œ

#smallWeb #1990s #worldwideWeb #webpreservation

Mar 1 at 11:29amWeb
Show threadJosh JusticeMar 1
@vga256 connecting some maybe obvious dots: is the iPhone what made responsive design a must and therefore killed unique looking web sites?
Show threadvga256Mar 1
@CodingItWrong partly, I think. a much bigger killer was Wordpress and other CMS packages with themes.
Show threadJosh JusticeMar 1
@vga256 ah yeah true, especially with how much of the web that WordPress itself runs
Show threadabadideaMar 2

@CodingItWrong @vga256 thereā€™s no reason a responsive design canā€™t be unique or quirky. Itā€™s just that the web became vastly more corporate.

(my own Classical Chinese website is based on a responsive template but customized to make it more artistic https://厄.net/classicalchinese/ )

Introduction - Classical Chinese for Curious Nerds

A free online textbook of Classical Chinese for beginners, written in a modern style.

Show threadDouble AAMar 2
@vga256 @Radgryd Itā€™s beautiful. šŸ„²
Show threadRadgrydMar 2
@doubleaa @vga256 I miss the magical stage of the DIY web.
Show threadKevin Karhan Mar 2

@Radgryd @doubleaa @vga256 well, one can still have simple webdesignā€¦

Show threadRadgrydMar 2
@kkarhan @doubleaa @vga256 Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about. Back then the web in general looked different, and charming. It was the norm, which it isn't anymore nowadays. Now it's just niche.
Show threadKevin Karhan Mar 2

@Radgryd @doubleaa @vga256 yeah, but we can at least build stuff like that still.

I mean, I prefer my sites slim, efficient and without bloat.

  • That doesn't mean they've to look like 1990s webdesign...
Show threadTodd KnarrMar 2
@Radgryd @doubleaa @vga256 I miss when Web developers/designers actually knew how to write HTML.
Show threadOblomovMar 2

@tknarr @Radgryd @doubleaa @vga256

was that ever the case? My memory of the late nineties was a lot of Flash and sites made in that horrible ā€œdesignerā€ (Publisher? what was the name?)

Show threadPetra van CronenburgMar 2

@Radgryd The times when Geocities was not yet sold to Yahoo but a quirky vivid community of "I make my web"!

@doubleaa @vga256

Show threadMichael GemarMar 2
@vga256 @nev ā€œGraphic design is my passionā€ said some grad student.
Show threadvga256Mar 2
@michaelgemar šŸ˜…
Show threadDeborah Preuss, pcc šŸ‡ØšŸ‡¦Mar 2
@michaelgemar @vga256 @nev ā€¦ in 1997.
Show threadineffective altruistMar 2
@vga256 in 2026 you could post that graphic as a meme and people wouldn't be able to tell the difference
Show threadAnnaMar 2
@vga256 Teacher here. "Make me 1 slide to tell me about yourself" is a go-to start of the year activity. This year, yr7 (age 11), every slide looked like this....
Show threadPetra van CronenburgMar 2
@vga256 Ah, the good ol'times šŸ˜‚ of heavily blinking letterboxes and animated gifs!
Blue was science, official, we private "designers" used checkered paper or wood imitations as backgrounds. And later came the sensation of all innovations against the typographic disaster: Comic Sans! #ironyAlarm
Show threadChris SiebenmannMar 2

@vga256 @nev Now I'm sad both that web.archive.org only goes back to 1997 for my department's home page and that the 1997 web page was much more boring and was mostly text (but it did have those little images for list markers that used to be all the rageĀ¹).

Ā¹ https://web.archive.org/web/19970327174654/http://www.cs.toronto.edu/

Show threadvga256Mar 2

@cks aw. yeah, unfortunately WBM snapshots start in late 96.

i do love that UT CS page though. those red/green/purple gifs were used *everywhere* in 96