[HN Gopher] Future Blues - Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)
___________________________________________________________________
Future Blues - Emily's Cowboy Bebop Page (1999)
Author : tm2t
Score : 411 points
Date : 2023-04-16 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (futureblues.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (futureblues.com)
| pmarin wrote:
| Winamp skins!
|
| https://futureblues.com/skins.shtml
| stubybubs wrote:
| Wow, those skins really whip the llama's ass.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| When MySpace was popular, you could sometimes stumble upon
| profiles that looked like this. MySpace's HTML/CSS customization
| was a great feature.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It was the gateway to a career in software for several people
| that I know. It's a pity we don't trust users with freedom like
| that anymore.
| simulo wrote:
| Indeed! Great article on that:
| https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2019/01/30/html-css-
| and-... "many of us without a computer science background are
| here because of the ease of starting to write HTML and CSS."
| herodoturtle wrote:
| One thing I love about Cowboy Bebop is how each episode's name
| matches the genre of the episode's music. It only occurred to me
| the second time I watched the anime, and it was a whole new
| experience. A great work of art in more ways than one.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The second domain I ever registered was for my ex-wife's cartoon
| fan site for a particular Disney cartoon series back in '98. Her
| drive to digitize stills from the show and write character bios
| and episode summaries was something I never understood, but she
| was certainly dedicated.
|
| I'd imagine all of that kind of compulsion ends up on Wikia sites
| and such today, but back then it was do-it-yourself. She was
| writing HTML in Notepad, making graphics in Paint Shop Pro, and
| uploading to the shared hosting site w/ FTP.
|
| (Had she kept it going into the 2000's I'd imagine she would have
| gotten a cease-and-desist from Disney.)
| rilindo wrote:
| > a particular Disney cartoon series back in '98
|
| Gargoyles?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| TaleSpin.
| simplicio wrote:
| I remember in the early wikipedia days, Jimmy Wales complaining
| (in a good natured way) how a bunch of anime series had more
| pages devoted to them on wikipedia then World War II.
| dharmab wrote:
| It used to be a popular (and true) joke that word count of
| the article on Jedi Knights was significantly higher than the
| article on historical knights.
| whstl wrote:
| I'm not sure how good natured it was. Eventually Jimmy
| founded Wikia/Fandom.com and later a lot of well-sourced
| fiction-work pages was expelled from Wikipedia, with
| Wikipedia admins (or whatever they are) bullying people into
| moving content to Fandom, in deletion discussions. Some
| remain due to some people putting up long fights. The
| difference in quality from the content we had in the 2000s in
| Wikipedia to the content we have today in Wikia/Fandom is
| abysmal. No sources, bad categorized, terrible interface.
| This was terrible for the internet.
|
| I never particularly cared about those articles, but
| Fandom.com is such a terrible website that this whole move
| made me vow to never donate to Wikipedia or to anything
| involving Jimmy Wales ever again.
| voz_ wrote:
| This is a huge issue with Wikipedia. The "importance" bar
| is silly when a page is basically free to host. Yet,
| despite this, they often remove or delete articles because
| they do not deem it worthy of an encyclopedia. I never
| understood this - it's not a physical tome. If the
| knowledge is well sourced who cares what it's about?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Notability is one piece of the puzzle, but the other is
| ensuring that Wikipedia content is not written "in-
| universe". Fandom has no such restriction, and in fact
| skews the other way, with content being _assumed_ to be
| referring to fictional people, places, and events as if
| real, unless otherwise noted.
|
| I think this is a valid barrier for Wikipedia, and the
| desire to describe fictional worlds this way is a good
| signal that that content is a better fit for a more fan-
| oriented forum.
| thefringthing wrote:
| The bar for notability also somehow ended up a lot lower
| for the kinds of things that appeal mostly to the
| Wikipedia editor demographic, although there has been
| some improvement on that front in recent years.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| Ha, this remind me of a time when I did google(?) searches to
| find specialized sites of RPGs, Anime, etc.
|
| Every site was different and had a sense of wonder and discovery
| associated to it.
|
| Back then, I used to go to page 10 of my search engine and still
| find interesting gems.
|
| Nowadays days I just append "site:reddit.com" to try to dodge the
| SEO fulled blogspam hell, gobble the information and move on with
| my day.
| mhd wrote:
| > Ha, this remind me of a time when I did google(?) searches to
| find specialized sites of RPGs, Anime, etc.
|
| I still think fondly of browsing lspace.org (Discworld) and the
| Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5.
| Steuard wrote:
| Oh, man, the Lurker's Guide was just such a fantastically
| good site. Organized, comprehensive, solidly good look: great
| stuff!
|
| I feel like it's often harder to find high-quality focuses
| resources like this at this point. I'm not sure whether
| that's because people have stopped making them, or whether
| they're just competing for clicks with exponentially more
| common (and more SEOified) junky fan-wiki sites, or what. (I
| still get a steady trickle of traffic to my Tolkien Meta-FAQ
| (http://tolkien.slimy.com/), but I gather that Google tends
| to de-prioritize sites that aren't being constantly updated.)
| kingstoned wrote:
| For people who like these kinds of websites, there is a classic
| search engine: https://wiby.org/
| LobsterJohnson wrote:
| As soon as I saw the page, I started wondering how Emily designed
| this effect of the menu merging with the image back then. Turns
| out it's just cropped images carefully placed together - check
| the source code yourself. Only then was I able to start noticing
| the imperfections of this implementation, but it really puts in
| perspective how our web design has changed over the years.
| whstl wrote:
| I remember some webdesigners specializing in cutting those
| layouts before there were good tools available. Sure, before
| that there were image maps, but with cut-up layouts you could
| do on-hover effects and add small animations here and there.
|
| It wasn't exactly useful per se but then again it was done
| mostly for marketing purposes, to stand out, so it did the job.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| Keep in mind there weren't many screen resolutions, it was all
| 4:3
| zwaps wrote:
| Yeah this is how we used to do it :-)
| matthuggins wrote:
| We also used to use image maps for this kind of thing, at least
| once that tag became available.
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ma...
| Youden wrote:
| Does anyone know what the author is up to now? I'm curious
| whether the people who made things like this back then for fun
| generally ended up in tech or went on to pursue other things and
| other careers.
| swayvil wrote:
| CB delivered a truly potent and high-quality vibe-in-the-round. A
| fully featured artifact.
|
| Best modern equivalent: Chainsaw Man.
| kokonoko wrote:
| Chainsaw Man is wasted potential. Feels very wrong directly
| comparing these two.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Huh I hadn't thought of comparing the two, but I think you're
| onto something.
|
| I'd always equated chainsaw man with FLCL, due to the similar
| themes of chaos, beauty and youth nihilism
| grungydan wrote:
| The evolution of the internet has been straight down since the
| 90s.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| We've had this mentioned here many times before, but if you love
| these types of pages, make sure to check out
| https://search.marginalia.nu/. A search engine made for this type
| of stuff.
| creamyhorror wrote:
| I browsed a few random sites[1][2][3] from
| https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random - it's a nice way
| to preview many random things. Bookmarked. Seeing these
| interesting sites makes me wish I could RSS-subscribe to them
| (or add them on social media, ironically).
|
| [1] https://2bit.neocities.org/ - Zoomer makes impressive
| faux-'90s webpage.
|
| [2] https://annotations.lindylearn.io/ - A collaborative social
| layer for annotating all webpages. Something I've thought about
| over the years, and finally run across.
|
| [3] https://fed.brid.gy/ - Connects a website to Mastodon/the
| fediverse, with two-way post flow.
| menzoic wrote:
| This reminds me of the flash sites
| neilv wrote:
| I couldn't wait to see a guestbook again...
|
| > _Error The administrators or owner of this guestbook are not
| allowed to link the guestbook via HTTPS (SSL) unless they have a
| premium account. [...] NOTE: If you are still seeing this message
| after clicking the link above, then you are using a non-default
| setting or plugin that is causing HTTP links to be upgraded to
| HTTPS. This is not a standard way of surfing the web. Please
| change your settings or try with another browser. You will
| otherwise have problem accessing 20% of all websites._
|
| Even the third-party dependency has a nostalgic feel, of some
| random person with a Perl CGI script running on a beige PC under
| their desk, who could just do their thing on the Internet, their
| own way.
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| Whenever Bebop comes up it hits right in the feels.
|
| The future sure panned out different than how I imagined it would
| be when I was a kid staying up late watching this timeless
| classic.
|
| At the time I just thought it was cool and conceptual, never
| realizing how much the vibes were on point.
|
| I get it now. See You Space Cowboy.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03qBqP2I4p8
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I feel we are getting closer and closer to a cyberpunk future,
| but without all the stuff that made it cool.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Dystopias aren't that fun to actually live in.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I'd prefer many aspects of cyberpunk fiction that we didn't
| get. Our "cyberdecks" turned out smaller and more
| omnipresent than in fiction. They are also much more locked
| down and nobody is hacking anything with them. They ended
| up mostly attention control machines for the corpos. We
| didn't get impressive cities with mega buildings/arcologies
| but instead more sprawl of cookie-cutter town houses. No
| steamy backalleys in which to eat ramen under neon lights.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > We didn't get impressive cities with mega
| buildings/arcologies but instead more sprawl of cookie-
| cutter town houses. No steamy backalleys in which to eat
| ramen under neon lights.
|
| Haven't visited myself but Asian metropolises should be
| much closer to the cyberpunk vibe you're looking for.
| kleiba wrote:
| Why is this on here? Sorry, I'm missing the context.
| Kamq wrote:
| 1. This is a site for weird internet nerds, which has a healthy
| overlap with people who like cowboy bebop.
|
| 2. The site is an excellent example of a small web 1.0 site run
| by a single person. This is a (possibly a painful) reminder for
| some that the web doesn't have to be SEO optimized corporate
| BS, and of a time when the internet was full of wonder and the
| possibilities seemed endless.
| tm2t wrote:
| Just thought it was interesting--from a design and content
| perspective--as the site hasn't changed much since 1999 and it
| still feels like "ye ol' web".
| kerkeslager wrote:
| But how will we ever monetize this!? /s
| kleiba wrote:
| Ah, okay thanks for clarifying! I thought perhaps there's
| some special significance to this site that I wasn't aware
| of.
| aikinai wrote:
| I appreciated the intent right away. Thanks for sharing.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Yes, a fine specimen.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Just reminiscing of what the web was before we destroyed it
| with ad based monetization and responsive design.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| You're on Hacker News and hacker culture has had a significant
| overlap with anime fandom since at least the 1980s.
| pmarin wrote:
| Fan made websites were very popular in the nineties. This one
| is really well made and recently updated which is really cool.
| This particular anime has also a cult follwing in the west.
| mxmbrb wrote:
| The modern internet is deprived of ornamentation in the same way
| modern architecture is. Tiktok allready upped the speed and made
| a lot of the established web seem terribly boring. I truly hope
| that AI generated content is putting the final nail in the coffin
| and we start to see more creative and individualistic media
| landscapes thrive again. Hope dies last.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There was an HN article[1] a few weeks ago lamenting how
| everything looks uniformly boring, beige and average, including
| houses, cars, fashion, movies, books, and so on. Nobody is
| doing anything bold or creative anymore. Everything looks like
| it's been homogenized down to target some global ISO standard
| average consumer.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35355703
| jstarfish wrote:
| Only in the west. We do not value art or aesthetics; we
| defund it at every opportunity and now have computers
| generating approximations of art for consumption from our
| digital troughs.
|
| We're androgynous blobs driving gray cars, eating
| reconstituted gray McMuck and scrolling through gray websites
| while living in our gray apartments and planned communities.
| Kids can't play outside; we paved the green spaces to put in
| more parking lots. Kids belong in their beige bedrooms
| anyway.
|
| Japan might be to your liking. If you appreciate art, I
| highly recommend a visit if you need a reminder that
| creativity and artistic beauty are still alive (in spite of
| their own homogeneous culture!).
| binjooou wrote:
| I think this is why I'm so bored with modern video games -
| they all look the same - Unreal Engine, lots of same type of
| foliage and rubble and "background art" everywhere - take a
| random screenshot from a random aaa game and I couldn't tell
| one from the other.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I'm personally offended this isn't a hugo site with firaCode font
| and hash marks denoting blog items about rust, this is 2023, have
| some class.
| [deleted]
| MagicalEmi wrote:
| Oh, hello. This is my website. I'm Emily. I saw the influx of
| (nice, thank you!) comments on the guestbook, so I checked to see
| what was up. Yes, I keep the site running and haven't changed
| very much about it (mostly out of laziness) but I do periodically
| update it when something new (music, tv. merch, game,
| etc)happens. So I guess it is only still being updated because
| the franchise keeps popping up with random new things over the
| years. I do still have a lot of unfinished areas of the site that
| I tell myself I need to get done, but it has been 20+ years now,
| so you can see how well that's going (I see you, episode summary
| sections). I designed this for 800x600, lol. I am, frankly,
| terrified to actually look at the site on my phone. Back then I
| was really into making anime fan sites, and Bebop had such a nice
| aesthetic. Anyway, thanks for visiting my site and signing the
| guestbook. I am equally amazed that my old guestbook service is
| still operating.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| The website looks fine on my Palm Phone (720 x 1280 pixels in
| portrait mode, so slightly less wide than your original 800 px
| width). Need to pinch to zoom in some parts, but that's
| standard for any website really.
| pleasejustdont wrote:
| So much of the "good ol' web" has disappeared into oblivion
| because people couldn't bother keeping their _personal home
| page_ online after moving onto other interests, and they can 't
| be blame for that.
|
| Your website has that "handmade touch" that we took for granted
| back then and that has completely disappeared from the "modern"
| web. Stumbling upon your page, one can't help but feel
| nostalgic about what the web was back then, compared to what it
| has become. "Back in the days", the web was human. Now it's
| just a stream of unending, same-looking, ad-infested, seo-
| optimized noise.
|
| Thanks for keeping this site online : it reminds us that
| another web _was_ possible.
|
| P.S : I looked at your other websites, and they all have that
| nostalgic-retro-looking warm-and-fuzzy-inducing design. I love
| it !
| creamyhorror wrote:
| Nice header text designs and effects, you're good at Photoshop!
| We should start a webring on Xoom or Tripod.
|
| But seriously, it's nice to see old-school fans still maintain
| websites independent of the big platforms and social media
| (Neocities being a recent bright spot). Webrings were a nice
| community-organic way to navigate to related sites/homepages,
| and we've lost that to the Social Algorithms feeding us what
| they think we should see.
|
| Bring back Web 1.0 New and Improved, please. The Wild Web.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Another classic Cowboy Bebop fanpage that's still up is The Jazz
| Messengers [0], which primarily focuses on all the fantastic
| music used throughout the series.
|
| 0: http://www.jazzmess.com/
| jasoneckert wrote:
| Aside from the Cowboy Bebop nostalgia hit, this site is a great
| example of how clear, creative, and fun sites were in the late
| 1990s. While I struggle to identify the many reasons why I think
| sites looked better back then, I think being simple and content
| focused are two of them.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Most sites were designed for 640x480 displays too so you really
| had to keep things concise to fit on the first screen/page.
| hgs3 wrote:
| These days you only see creative interfaces in video games.
| josephd79 wrote:
| Winamp skins!
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Responsive websites pretty much killed this type of aesthetic.
| It would be an absolute nightmare to get this sort of design to
| work well while supporting mobile.
|
| It's a real pity, because the hybrid designs we get now all
| looks like a bunch of uninspired rectangles.
| moron4hire wrote:
| This site works fine on mobile
| scotty79 wrote:
| Mobile design was something created for old phones that
| didn't have quite the resolution of computer monitors.
| Modern phones don't really need mobile designed sites.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Kinda doesn't though. Mobile most of all needs
| concessions for the much more limited input precision.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Personally I prefer pinch zoom for input precision
| instead of overly mobile design.
| cantaloa wrote:
| You need text to scale and reflow to device width if you
| want text to be readable. This is one of the main reasons
| for mobile web design. Else you're stuck panning around
| the screen to read the text zoomed in.
|
| Once you decide to scale text to device size so that it's
| readable, you are stuck doing the rest of mobile web
| design (fluid layout).
| kbelder wrote:
| You need to allow users to scale text as desired, as the
| original web intended. You shouldn't make a site targeted
| to mobile; you should make a site that allows the user to
| display in their client as they wish.
|
| The problem will fix itself.
| cantaloa wrote:
| To solve that, you have to move from the easier static
| made-for-one-width design (what we think of as desktop-
| first design) and move to fluid, reflowable design which
| we tend to call mobile-friendly design.
|
| Unfortunately, it tends to take more thought because we
| usually want widescreen components, like sidebars, that
| are easier to build when you can hard-code a device
| width, and hard-coding width is what breaks zooming and
| text size changes.
| moonchrome wrote:
| If by fine you mean I need to zoom and pan to read it then
| I guess it does, but I doubt anyone would call that
| "working well on mobile".
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| I would take
|
| >need to zoom and pan to read
|
| over every time I forbidden to pan and zoom by the site
| author.
|
| Especially when I'm behind 43" 4k monitor and the site
| decide
|
| WHAT TEN LINES
|
| PER SCREEN
|
| IS EVERYTHING
|
| I WISHED FOR
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| It works way better for me on mobile than most new sites
| do.
|
| Developers assume everyone has the latest iPhone or
| Pixel. So they take like a minute to load, heat my phone
| up, drop the battery by 10%, and have a 20% chance of
| OOM-ing my browser.
|
| The Guardian is the absolute worst at this. I don't know
| why, it brings mobile Firefox to its knees.
|
| Basically, fancy "mobile friendly" JS is no good if it
| makes my phone stutter and go catatonic.
|
| Whereas if people just wrote old school "CSS Zen Garden"
| sites, or even this old table stuff, any ancient phone
| could handle them easily.
|
| But no, I need to go pay a kid to dig up more coltan.
|
| I can scroll. It's ok. What I can't do is will my phone
| faster, without shelling out more stupid cash.
| tokai wrote:
| People should just stop making web pages for mobile. So many
| times I have had to force the desktop version of a page to
| actually get what I'm there for.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I think this is already happening. People are realizing
| that not every site needs to work (or more often, become a
| horrible vertically-scrolling soup) on mobile. The only
| laggard is Google which is still stuck in 2009 and
| downranks mobile-unfriendly pages (even on desktop
| searches)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think the real dead end is making websites for both
| mobile and desktop. They are simply too different to ever
| have any real hope of producing something that translates
| well to both without hopelessly crippling one of them.
|
| Mobile-only sites, sure. Desktop-only sites, why not. If
| you want both, do both instead of making a hideous web
| design Cronenberg pleading for the relief of death.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Back when mobile exploded I got a bee in my bonnet that I
| had to have an app for my website. I spent a couple
| thousand dollars to have a highly recommended mobile
| website designer do this for me. The result was HORRIBLE
| and I decided to just live with what I had. Turns out my
| native website on mobile looks GREAT, far better than on
| a computer screen. Go figure.
| tomcam wrote:
| > hideous web design Cronenberg
|
| Deep cut
| whstl wrote:
| I find that responsive design works well for simpler
| webpages. But for more complex pages or apps, yeah: it
| totally falls apart.
|
| However... whenever I see an app or site that has two
| separate websites, I know I'm in for trouble: sometimes
| one version will miss some features, and I'll invariably
| have to request the desktop website. The worst of them
| was my previous health insurance provider, that only had
| one very important feature in the mobile version.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| The handset is a dead concept and yet here we are carrying
| them around it's sad. I can't remember the last time I put
| a phone to my face yet that is exactly what the form factor
| was made for. It's all but guaranteed Apple cannibalizes
| the phone handset market for a new mobile platform.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >I think being simple and content focused are two of them.
|
| You mean you don't like newsletter subscription pop-ups? Or a
| virtual assistant chat window on the corner? Or auto-playing
| videos that follow you when you scroll down? Or a choice
| between "Accept all cookies" and "Learn more?"
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Hey now, don't say anything bad about cookie consent popups,
| the Europeans will be waking up soon and they'll downvote you
| to hell.
| codersfocus wrote:
| I think someone should put up a counter of how many lives
| the EU parliament has taken by summing the collective time
| every cookie banner has taken from human cognition / lives.
| Maybe it'll be enough to charge them with crimes against
| humanity.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Well it's impossible to have anything better than that. I
| mean, it's not like the worst solutions would win out and the
| entire planet would tacitly go along with it to prevent
| having to do something harder but better.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Block unvetted JS and that bullshit disappears. Your browser
| will be faster and you won't have to navigate around
| distractions hiding the content.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| You can close the auto-playing video by simply waiting 10
| seconds for the "x close" button to appear, which is 5px high
| and 12px wide.
| mhfu wrote:
| "which is 5px high and 12px wide"
|
| And that is just the visible part, actual clickable area is
| 1px by 1px so even when you correctly click on the "x", you
| don't actually close it.
| procarch2019 wrote:
| Reddit mobile site does this when you tap a post. It
| drives me nuts. Then you have to hit back, which
| refreshes Reddit and brings you back to the top. I think
| it's intentionally designed to get people to switch to
| the app.
| geuis wrote:
| Completely honest here, I use old Reddit on mobile web.
| Under settings scroll down a bit and you'll see the
| option.
|
| The cookie or whatever seems to expire every week or so,
| then I'm unceremoniously dumped back into the mess that
| is their "modern" design.
|
| Despite that, the layout of old Reddit is much more
| information dense. Just use the phone in landscape and
| it's perfectly fine.
| xattt wrote:
| > I think it's intentionally designed to get people to
| switch to the app.
|
| This might also be a dark pattern to exploit attention
| spans compromised by chronic content consumption.
|
| A user sees new content at the top of the page, forgets
| the content they wanted to see, sticks around to look at
| novel material.
|
| THEN the user either goes back and gets distracted again,
| or at the very least, goes back to their intended page.
|
| Also to note, Reddit disabled i.reddit.com (the old
| mobile site that was snappy) within the last month.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if old.reddit.com was next on the
| chopping block.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The day old.reddit.com goes so do I
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you get value from Reddit, it might be worth trying to
| migrate that elsewhere. Better to have some control than
| none.
| jjulius wrote:
| I doubt they'll care. By that time, they'll be confident
| that whatever loss they incur by killing old. will be
| worth it for them. If there was an actually significant
| user base using old., I imagine "regular" Reddit would
| look a bit different than it does.
| mr_woozy wrote:
| [dead]
| jjulius wrote:
| Except for when you go to try and click that tiny x, only
| to find that there was an intentionally coded delay for
| another ad just above it that pushed the x lower on the
| page, so you end up clicking that other ad.
| plagiarist wrote:
| It looks like you have an ad blocker! Click here to disable
| it for this site.
|
| Log in to continue reading this article.
|
| And, oh, you don't want advertising cookies? Here's a list of
| a dozen categories you have to manually deselect one-at-a-
| time. To help with this there's a bright-colored button that
| says, "accept all" and a drab text link that says, "use my
| selection."
| kvark wrote:
| Especially annoying when this shows up in Firefox on iOS
| which doesn't even support plugins (uBlock) to begin with
| (since it's on WebKit there).
| pimeys wrote:
| Consent-O-Matic lets you to select which cookies you want
| in a site, and then automatically clicks the selections to
| popups if they appear. Has been working pretty well for me.
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-
| mat...
| mfext wrote:
| For me, what was great back then were splash pages. The more
| creative your splash page, the better. It was l33t if someone
| centered their site, like one would center their splash page.
| This site does that.
| api wrote:
| Lack of ads, lack of SEO.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Sites from the late 90s had ads and SEO. Some pretty terrible
| ads like flashing banners, popups, and later Flash. In fact
| Flash bad reputation wasn't because the tech was bad, far
| from it, but because of how it was used, particularly in ads.
| Popup blockers were the ad blockers of the time, and the
| situation with popups was so bad that popup blocking became a
| standard feature of most browsers. As for SEO, it was crude,
| like the search engines of the time, but it was there,
| keyword stuffing, link farms, etc...
|
| _Some_ sites from the 90s, like the one linked here were ad-
| free, SEO-free and usable on a browser that is not Internet
| Explorer, but far from all of them were. I still like their
| simplicity, especially now that we have modern hardware and
| broadband connectivity, I don 't miss the 56k modems that
| were part of late 90s experience.
| pkaeding wrote:
| SEO from that era involved putting a bunch of "keywords" in
| the same color text as the background at the bottom of the
| page.
|
| Good times...
| zwaps wrote:
| To be fair, for 1999, this is an all around fantastic site.
| Forge36 wrote:
| It was updated for the Netflix series. So it's still
| maintained
| neffo wrote:
| And she's not even watched all of the anime yet.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I honestly liked it more than the anime.
|
| /me ducks
| tm2t wrote:
| I think he's talking about the look of the site. If so, it
| hasn't changed much (apart from the content) since 1999
| AFAIK.
| ape4 wrote:
| The html is in lowercase so that slightly helps to
| calculate a date. (Older websites were all uppercase)
| freedomben wrote:
| I was strongly opinionated that upper case html tags were
| better and more readable, and I still believe that it
| should have won. Building sites in '96 nearly everyone
| upper cased.
|
| Now that there is syntax highlighting though the
| readability benefit is minimal so not a big deal. I still
| think SQL keywords should be capitalized though...
| rbanffy wrote:
| I think making everything lowercase hurts reading code. I
| really liked reading Pascal code where all keywords were
| uppercase.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Consistent updates for 24 years. Makes me feel bad I never
| stuck with anything that long in my life.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| My website started in 2004 and after 18+ years the only
| thing that's changed is the images are larger.
| stubybubs wrote:
| Sorry, but there's no webring membership on this site. The
| webmaster clearly does not deserve their title.
|
| 0/10
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I don't feel like this site is simple, it's noisy and crowded.
| It doesn't aid me in finding what's provided to me. Although it
| looks very cool I'm quite glad we simplified designs and put UX
| on top of the priority list vs showing off what we can do.
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| Why does it have to aid you in finding anything? We're so
| obsessed with efficiency and "productivity" these days.
|
| Let's be honest, when you came to this site you weren't
| looking for anything in particular. Instead the site invites
| you to simply look around, embrace the excitement of clicking
| randomly and not really knowing what you're going to get, and
| not really _caring_ either. Just be a thoughtless child,
| wandering a garden yanking leaves along the way. Now isn't
| that rejuvenating?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| "Whatever happens, happens."
| jstarfish wrote:
| As much as I want to agree with you, we're not kids
| anymore.
|
| When I need to find a store's operating hours so I can try
| to dash over after work and before dinner, I _don 't_ have
| time for the Scavenger Hunt in the Garden of Narnia
| Experience.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| > We're so obsessed with efficiency and "productivity"
| these days.
|
| I consider the internet something like a library. I want to
| find relevant stuff, not sift through shit to get to
| something interesting.
|
| I didn't even know what it had because I was overwhelmed
| with colors and unusual styles that I clicked around and
| left. Sure, it's a nice reminder of the old days and some
| people find it pretty, but it's bad at conveying
| information imho.
| whstl wrote:
| I agree with the sibling saying that no website owes you
| anything, but what you say is not even true in the first
| place. In general we didn't really "simplify designs", and
| the "good UX on top" is often negated by modern website
| cruft.
|
| As an example: the modern replacement for this kind of fan-
| site would be a Fandom.com site, which has an interface full
| of cruft, focused mostly on ads and "engagement" stuff. Only
| a small portion reserved for actual content. Unless there is
| a lot of customization, list pages are often alphabetical and
| have a terrible design that make it very difficult to find
| stuff. So you need to use their terrible search that is
| hidden in a tiny 30x30 button on the top among other buttons.
|
| Plenty of other examples there. For every website like Hacker
| News, there's dozens of forums whose design is more focused
| on useless ornamentation, monetization and increasing
| engagement through stupid tactics.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Sorry but I totally disagree, not only with you but all the
| other commenters and down-voters. We got rid of flash,
| gifs, auto play videos with hideous sound, and blinking
| shit. We got reader mode, focusing on good UI/UX (given
| you're using ad blockers). In the times of myspace every
| website tried to pull fancy shit on us and I'm glad it's
| over. Just because there's still enough shit around doesn't
| mean that the internet got more readable in the mean time.
| Maybe I'm not using these shitty sites like you do, by MY
| experience is better than it was in these days.
|
| /edit: and browsers and plugins are our saviours, hail
| reader mode and not auto-playing videos! I consider that
| part of the UI/UX development as well.
| whstl wrote:
| You started your message complaining about this specific
| website. Now, the things you complain of in this reply
| don't really apply to it. It's still better to use than
| the kind of website that replaced it. My browsing habits
| have nothing to do with it, I just picked an appropriate
| apples-to-apples example for comparison. I think it's
| unfair to compare this to Apple's website or something.
|
| Also, you mention auto play videos. Those are pretty much
| a staple of the current website era, with browsers
| themselves having to fight back [1]. Now, even Reddit's
| new version has it. Annoying animated gifs and annoying
| flash were mostly novelties in personal webpages.
|
| If anything, needing ad blockers, reader mode and and
| anti-autoplay in browsers, is an indication of how things
| aren't exactly great in the web anymore. And that website
| from 1999 doesn't need any of those.
|
| [1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay/
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| [flagged]
| pasquinelli wrote:
| i don't understand what you mean, the landing page is a table
| of contents.
| omoikane wrote:
| Part of it might be because everyone did their own thing back
| then. There weren't many frameworks or templates, and your
| content weren't delivered on top of massive social networks
| that enforced consistency, so individual websites looked unique
| and refreshing.
|
| You might say that old websites were more artisanal while
| modern websites are more mass produced.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| It's because so many websites have become generalized to become
| a platform to gain as large an audience as possible but that
| audience is splintering and decentralizing and there is nothing
| they will be able to do to draw them back to the gray zone
| esrauch wrote:
| Sites mostly didn't look this good though, they were even more
| garish colors and 'under construction' banners
| JasserInicide wrote:
| This is a great example of classic graphics design (at least
| I'm guessing she probably had some training in it) being
| directly translated to the web. It's just an image made
| entirely in Photoshop and the space for the links are carved
| there. Photoshop-designed websites definitely peaked in the
| early 2000s. Nowadays you'd be wild to start with PS for
| designing a website.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I kinda miss the dead simple near-pixel-perfection and
| freedom of font choice that could be achieved with tables-
| and-images web design. If you were smart with choice of
| color, image format, etc you could even make them load fast
| on slow connections despite the large number of images
| involved. Their source code was awful to look at but it's
| not like modern web design doesn't come with its own dump
| truck full of trade-offs.
| mikeryan wrote:
| * Photoshop-designed websites definitely peaked in the
| early 2000s*
|
| It lasted longer than that. Sketch wasn't launched until
| 2010 and it probably took a good five years (at least) for
| people to switch to that
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Guilty as charged. Also don't forget about frames, marquee
| text, and that smoking skeleton wearing sunglasses gif. :)
| frob wrote:
| Frames were a great way to keep around nav before the
| sticky css attribute. However, they were horrible for
| linking.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Frames were the OG SPA
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Frames were quite useful at times, though, particularly for
| sites that acted as a directory of other sites. With how
| slow dialup could be it was sometimes nice to have the list
| of sites you might want to visit in a compact list frame to
| the left so you didn't have to hit back 5 times to get back
| to the directory or juggle multiple windows (because tabs
| didn't yet exist).
| krelian wrote:
| I've been thinking about this too. Why is it about these sites
| that they transmit that changes how we approach and experience
| them. The internet of the 90's had a sort magical feeling to
| it. It was new and different and felt very personal. In essence
| it wasn't yet devoured by capitalism. It felt honest and real.
| jstarfish wrote:
| It eschews convention.
|
| Convention had yet to be established in the 90s; anything was
| fair game.
|
| I suspect we are going to run into the same burnout with AI,
| and much quicker. Today, "holy shit anything is possible with
| this magic." Tomorrow, it's going to be as exciting as your
| average HR drone.
| nerdchum wrote:
| They looked original.
| omneity wrote:
| A beautiful site. It looks itself like a comic/anime.
| pkdpic wrote:
| Wow, the amazon links for the mangas still work and some sections
| have been updated to include reference to the live action netflix
| monstrosity (which I sincerely enjoyed). Way to go Emily!
| mgaunard wrote:
| Not really 1999, the website references other shows that were
| released much later.
| Giorgi wrote:
| Track 06: Yo pumpkin head - is amazing.
| sublinear wrote:
| > not allowed to link the guestbook via HTTPS (SSL) unless they
| have a premium account.
|
| Uhh...
|
| > you are using a non-default setting or plugin that is causing
| HTTP links to be upgraded to HTTPS. _This is not a standard way
| of surfing the web._ Please change your settings or try with
| another browser. You will otherwise have problem accessing 20% of
| all websites.
|
| the unencrypted conspiracy continues?... the decryptinati?! /s
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I love fast these old websites load on smartphones and stay in
| desktop mode.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Damn, this is hitting the feels, makes me want to bring back my
| cowboy bebop website. I did have the largest multimedia section
| until a phpBB came through and owned the site and forums. I
| didn't have backups at the time and that was all she wrote. Glad
| to see some of the others are still around.
| cyrialize wrote:
| If you like this site design you should check out neocities!
|
| There are many websites on there that have this style:
| https://neocities.org/browse.
| barroomhero wrote:
| With updates dating back to 1999!
| https://futureblues.com/what.shtml
| bhaney wrote:
| I'm more impressed that the updates continue to 2021
| aaronharnly wrote:
| And the guestbook is still live and astonishingly empty of
| spam!
| mhd wrote:
| And it's actually a service that still operates, does GDPR,
| anti-spam etc.
| kurthr wrote:
| The first is March of 1999, but the most recent are about the
| live action release at the end of 2021, and there's some
| developments for most of the 20 years in between!
| ta8903 wrote:
| It's funny how the site kept getting regular updates but
| stopped right in the middle of the owner watching the Netflix
| adaptation.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I'm into a casual fan and it was rough to try and watch the
| first episode.
|
| They could've made that contrast of high and low budget
| simultaneously work, if it wasn't for the extreme miscasting
| and needless changes.
|
| I can only imagine what a super fan would've thought.
| cooperadymas wrote:
| I'm an occasional casual anime fan who had never
| experienced the original but watched the Netflix show and
| mostly loved it. I was sad there won't be another season.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Do yourself a favor though. Go get the original. It holds
| up well with the exception that animation has come a long
| way.
| dagorenouf wrote:
| Congrats on the site creator for continuing to update it after
| all these years.
| zzzbra wrote:
| holy smoke, she keeps updating it!? did not expect to see content
| for the live action series
| einpoklum wrote:
| A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
|
| Its loveliness increases; it will never
|
| Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
|
| A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
|
| Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
| block_dagger wrote:
| It's time to get everybody and the stuff together! Ready? 3, 2,
| 1, let's jam!
| scotty79 wrote:
| I wonder if someone who just have seen google ad sense back then
| accurately predicted where it's gonna lead.
| Retr0id wrote:
| The earliest archive.org snapshot, from 2002:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20020605151248/https://futureblu...
|
| (it appears mostly unchanged!)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-16 23:00 UTC)