They were the days! The oddest thing is I've Googled about 10 names from the late 90s Web design days and haven't found a single person. I can't imagine what they're all up to now but it doesn't seem to be the modern Web development industry, that's for sure. Were the late 90's "new media" bunch really a wackier, more diverse lot than we are now?
It was maybe not clean and professional but it felt fun. This also feels fun. It's clear that the person that designed this website found joy in the process.
While scrolling down the tabled, framed, left side "menu", I had a visceral feeling of reminiscence and nostalgia of roughly 1998, when I started playing with HTML.
damn, I think in 1995 I was barely discovering you could used EDIT.COM to craft a "website" with your bare hands. I'm smiling at how dreamy and powerful it made me feel.
ps: favorite part of your html is `<font size=+3>`
This is so awesome. This is what the web used to look like in the 90s when I was a kid learning to program, and it was glorious. Now everything top-10000 websites looks the same. Let's have more daughters design websites!
I spent countless hours on a website (I believe) was called htmlgoodies.com - all of his posts were in the style of "So You Want a X, Huh?" Boy, I loved this site. All the feels!
If Joe Burns, PhD reads this then THANK YOU! You had a profound impact on the 14-17 year old me.
I suppose I was lucky to be a teenager in the mid-90's with access to a computer with dial up internet. Untold hours using the View Source option in the browser and then trying to make my own stuff using Notepad (Windows). Hundreds of lines of black/white HTML snuffing out syntax errors. Trying to make images used bootleg versions of Photoshop. I recall when I started to see Javascript get popular in webpages and just being blown away people could write that stuff on their own.
Hand-coding a website using only rudimentary HTML tags (eg, <p> or <br>) and nothing else, resulting in a charmingly-ugly yet functional self-published site. Roughly speaking, like much of the internet was in the 90's.
many of us on HN have had a stint as a web designer at some time in the past, whether it was making a website for a relative or running a web design agency in the 90s. I'm sure there are some gems out there of Internet history!
reply