I love nostalgia posts. I think all of us who were "webmasters" all have a differed "what we are now", but if everything didn't start this way for me, I don't think I'd be doing what I am doing today regardless.<p>I remember making a ball bounce in Flash with some elasticity and people wanted it on their website no matter what their website was about. The 90's were such strange times. "Can you put that bouncing ball on my site?" I guess, but I'm not sure what it has to do with carpet cleaning....<p>I still get asked to disable the right mouse button, add background music, a counter, or make something blink or scroll, and every now and then... an animated gif (usually of a U.S. flag).<p>Luckily I've been doing this long enough now to say, no, please don't do this to yourself or your business. You've spent too much money and too much time to throw it all away with a tiny design disaster. But they insist. Ohhhh they insist.
OP here. This is a follow-up to my original essay: "This is a web page."<p><a href="https://justinjackson.ca/words.html" rel="nofollow">https://justinjackson.ca/words.html</a>
Do you have noticed that the most responsive web pages are sites without the CSS styles(or with just few rules)? I can run such web pages even on 10 year old mobile phone and also load a whole HTML document with a throttled connection to 10KB/s quiet quick. The sad thing is that modern webdevelopers tends to forget about it. Long time ago I realized the really good way of developing a webpage is just writing down some bare HTML (maybe just a grid and typography CSS) with only grayscale colors applied - if it will look bad then it is a bad design.<p>If we are speaking of memories of the "old-ways" of developing websites I remind mostly one thing - rounded corners. I remember how many web devs were trying to make a table (3x3) and put content in the center cell, and fill corners with some gifs. Nevertheless, it was not the only one method which some webmasters were using - a hacky VML file [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://code.google.com/archive/p/curved-corner/" rel="nofollow">https://code.google.com/archive/p/curved-corner/</a>
<i>>And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that.<p>>The world still needs some fucking webmasters. We might not all be making websites professionally anymore. But we should keep making websites. The passion, the freedom, the joy: we need to pass this on.</i><p>I appreciate the enthusiasm for wanting to empower people but the technology (e.g. simpler format of HTML, or open standards instead of walled gardens, etc) is not really the issue even though it looks that way. I've commented on this illusion before[1].<p>The underlying issue is the asymmetry between active participants and passive spectators. Most people <i>don't care</i> to make an HTML web page. On the other hand... Uploading a photo of a cat or plate of food to facebook or twitter? Or type a short response comment to a niece saying "love your new dress!"? Yes, a good percentage of people will conquer the threshold of complexity to do that... but it's still not the majority of users.<p>Even though I don't like it, I've come to terms with the fact that the human race is "wired" to make easy posts on Facebook rather than maintain an HTML web page on a server they control. Most people don't want to be "webmasters".<p>[1]<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010540" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010540</a>
>We need to remember that at its core a web page is simple. That's the beauty of it. And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that.<p>I absolutely agree.<p>People seem to forget that the fundamental nature of the web hasn't changed. Facebook hasn't destroyed the web, javascript and that framework you hate haven't destroyed the web, advertising hasn't destroyed the web (arguably, the web has destroyed advertising), the NSA hasn't destroyed the web (yet.) You can still open up the text editor of your choice and write some HTML and put it on a server. That still works, and it will probably always work - human readable, human writable, human accessible content. You can still write it all by hand if you want, you don't have to know how to code, you're not forced to conform to arbitrary standards, or use proprietary software.<p>In the end, no matter how much abstraction modern developers pile on to make it look and act like "legitimate" application programming, the web is just HTML, CSS, javascript and some embedded content, probably images, possibly of cats. Sometimes, in the midst of how homogeneous and corporatized the web can appear, I think it helps to be reminded of how revolutionary it still is because of its fundamental simplicity and accessibility.
A fun read and trip down memory lane, of the times sitting with an HTML book open on my lap and trying to write code that would display what I wanted. Being one of those artsy-fartsy types meant that I could experiment with design. Seamless frames! Links to other pages that actually work and reference each other! Hitting the 'Preview' screen from the editor to test things...over and over...<p>...and of course, the ever lovely habit of "View Source" which leads to interesting things. Like finding the large "Never Forget" at the top of the linked page. Fun times.<p>But for sure, there <i>was</i> a certain aura and power around being able to not only navigate the web (OMG .WAV SOUNDS FROM MOVIES!) but put up a sign that other people could see. Then get good enough to get paid for work doing such things. A good reminder type essay methinks.
Some people want to be left alone in their html `pages` club where they check for errors in the w3c validator. Some people want to make the browser usurp native applications and become the baseline for user interactions.<p>I don't look back at the 90's with rose-colored glasses. Web was often overlooked and we were considered 2nd rate citizens among `real` software developers. These days, the browser is a competitive alternative to native and it was years of struggle to get here. Over taking a decade of "web" understanding and convincing people that "web" is capable of more than just html.<p>The web is made up of people's decisions and their technology choices they choose to use. Which is basically written in every alistapart article since 1999. So let's not sit in nostalgia. Push forward with better technology because this thinking only makes it harder for those that invent and struggling for adoption from `thought leaders` who wish the world was just a series of hyperlinked XML pages.
The link to the "Sporks" website is hilarious, it even has an order form for "sporks gear":<p>> Do not do this. There are no shirts. This site is 20 years old. What's wrong with you?<p><a href="https://www.spork.org/spork-gear.shtml" rel="nofollow">https://www.spork.org/spork-gear.shtml</a><p>And this anti-IE site has some nice badges we can still add to our websites:<p><a href="http://toastytech.com/evil/buttons.html" rel="nofollow">http://toastytech.com/evil/buttons.html</a>
Well now blogs and feed based websites have mostly replaced the end-user need to craft their own websites.<p>The convenience does not come at zero cost, though. This is putting power in too few hands. A few people decide how the web looks like, what is possible and what is not.<p>Facebook is now the new Internet Explorer, an unavoidable entity that dictates what the web experience is like.
It's so refreshing to see good 'ol blue links, that are underlined and stand out accordingly from the rest of the copy. So many sites try to get too fancy with links nowadays and you can't even tell what is a link and what isn't.
Cool, but disappointed his name at the end links to Twitter - he just undid everything he just said.<p>His name should link to his homepage or about page, of which he has no links to from the article. These pages are IMHO a million times more interesting than the frankly awful mess Twitter has made of profile homepages. What with the big fonts on some tweets - I don't know why some tweets have large fonts. A good interface would instantly make it clear why.
This is exactly the reason I created minni - <a href="https://github.com/jyotiska/minni" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jyotiska/minni</a>, a static site generator I use to host my own blog. Link to the blog - <a href="http://jyotiska.github.io/blog/" rel="nofollow">http://jyotiska.github.io/blog/</a>. Simple, clean and content only.
I remember when bandwidth was at a premium and 1200 baud was fast. There were pleas everywhere to use simple html, white text on black. Images were links to download if you wanted to view them and encouraged only if they added to the content. Nobody was trying to make the web into television.
Wanted to check out his root site.
Not really sure if he is walking the walk <a href="https://justinjackson.ca/" rel="nofollow">https://justinjackson.ca/</a>
I can empathize with the message of this essay because I feel like it reflects the roots of my career, but I wouldn't share this with anyone I know because there is so much unnecessary cursing in this that gives it a really immature feel. You can totally get the message of this across without the crass language. It only detracts, not helps, in my opinion.<p>I'm saying this as someone who swears a lot, too.
Reminds me of this<p><a href="http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/" rel="nofollow">http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/</a><p>I wonder if it is the same guy.<p>Edit: Nope, @thebarrytone made mfw.com