What should I add to my '90s website?
What should I add to my '90s website?
So I'm currently toying around with NeoCities, and decided to trial it by building your classic mid '90s Geocities/Tripod/Angelfire pastiche website.
Some of the most important elements are already in place.
Tile background? Large font? Heading in bright pink with a shadow? Unusual colour choices? Random cat gifs? Under construction gif? Check! Check! Check!
In the true spirit of the '90s DIY web, some more pages (including the links page) are coming soon.
(I'm thinking of adding a page dedicated to either Britney or a nu-metal band.)
You can see the page so far here: https://that90ssite.neocities.org/
There are a few things that I want to add to make it complete, and I'm looking for suggestions.
The first, is to embed a midi file that plays automatically. Any suggestions on the best way of doing this?
Second, it's just not going to be complete without a guestbook.
Third, any webring suggestions?
Fourth, what's the best way of adding a java chat room in 2024?
Finally, anything else that really needs to be a part of a great '90s website?
UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback! I've added more annoying GIFs, a guestbook, a links page, and a cyber cat hangout.
UPDATE 2: And added even more gifs, an amazing Amiga demo, and a ton of links.
147 replies
You 100% need a visitor counter at the bottom.
maybe even a fake gif one, that speeds up more and more until it explodes
And a guestbook, though thats a bit trickier nowadays with bots everywhere.
Holy shit it's been a while since I've seen that gif
I just teared up a little.
Why are there no sparkles that follow my mousepointer?
Remember that JS file that rendered a text besides your mouse pointer and when you moved your mouse, the text would follow it letter by letter?
😀
I remember feeling like a webdesign master when I figured out frames. I was always more of a backend guy (perl + CGI = ❤️), but frames enabled me to produce pretty decent looking websites.
<frame>😠<?php include?>😒<?php include_once?>🥳Honestly, ikr lol
Visitor counter
Absolutely needs a hit counter.
Guestbook, hit counter, a midi file playing in the background, and a dead hyperlink to another page of the same website.
Edit: omg I can't believe I forgot about marquees. Do that too.
Are you in a webring with other 90's websites?
I second this, they need a webring, it's what I went looking for.
@HobbitFoot I'm not yet, but if there's a good one then I'd be happy to add it...
other ’90s* websites
Typography matters too
Remember
<marquee>? And maybe add some dancing hamsters?Visitor counter
This! I remember putting one on a site I built way back then
I had a song from Scooter playing on my page back then :D (in MIDI)
It's readable on mobile. You need to unfix that immediately. The font must not appear bigger than 5px. Responsive layout is forbidden.
Also, no popups. That's both retro and not retro enough. (Or were those introduced for the first round in the early 2000's? I don't know, I'm too young)
I was fully prepared for the experience from my teens. My first thought was "that loaded way too fast."
Iframes with more iframes inside.
Regular frames, not iframes. We didn't have iframes back then!
And a "Break out of frames" link
That is a memory I have suppressed.
Ironically still common today, just subtle. Open up any Google Drive picker and look at the page DOM
Needs 300% more skull trumpet.
My favorite version of the skull trumpet: Makes a man go doot doot
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Makes a man go doot doot
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Every link should open a separate pop up window. Add an under construction gif of a dude digging.
You can find some here: http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/
Signed the guestbook :)
I think it could do with a very literal under construction image, with some sort of machinery- every website seemed under construction at the time!
there is a website for a pizza place in seattle whose website does this, maybe you can get some inspiration. dinos
Sorry but were you alive in the 90s? That tile background is way too big. Take it down to 128 x 128 anything bigger than that takes too long on my 56k. Also I don't see one frame or table border.
Man, how did I forget those abominations?
Saved so much time and bandwidth reloading several kilobytes of headers and menus.
Blinkies - those small gifs that blinked to give the impression of glitter.
iframes - precursor to divs, but definitely added that "only works in IE" feel.
More contrast between font color and background image - it's too easy to read.
12pt Times New Roman font - gotta squint to read and default font for everything
Flashy gif banner at your header and footer - bonus points if they're the same image
All urls default to underlined blue and purple.
Mouse cursor with trails. The more sparkles, the better.
Clip art. Clip art everywhere.
For the authentic experience, you need two versions of the site: An Internet Explorer version, and a Netscape version. The two browsers didn't support the same features back then, so a lot of sites would have two different versions.
Also run it on your own server and limit the transfer speed (can set a rate limit in the Nginx config) so it loads slowly :D
Uppercase all of your html elements in the markup. Image mapped links. A background that doesn't quite tile properly. Max width 800px
And like a gif of a skull opening his mouth that shows a flame "E-mail" materialize from it or something.
Page view counter!
You need a dancing baby.
I just signed the guestbook leaving that exact suggestion and then read your comment, lol.
Don’t forget at least one banner ad across the top, flashing obnoxiously
Awards! Everything had awards back then!
Use of marquees is a violation of the Geneva convention. You monster.
do you have a click counter at the bottom
Seems like it's missing one of those section break bars that's an animated rainbow
Your text is too readable, I think it needs to be aliased a lot more. It also wasn't uncommon to see a black box around text. Your text looks good on the background, it shouldn't. There should be something between the text and background.
some text
@neidu2 Done :)
I don't exactly remember, but it's possible to have the embed start automatically and not show the player. I would suspect that is at least partially correct or similar.
Modern browsers have dropped support for the marquee tag, so you’ll have to reimplement it in JavaScript.
Design is too mobile responsive
The great irony is: websites in the 90's would have been made to cater to resolutions of 640x480. Fancy monitor resolutions went up to 1024x768.
So, viewing it on a mobile screen should be nicer than what a full computer in the 90's could offer.
’90s websites would have had terrible touch target sizes
Don’t forget the creepy dancing baby
While the blink html element is no longer supported you could probably sprinkle some JS to toggle the visibility state on the marquee element to really bring back the same feel. It's just not the 90s without blink. Also, there needs to be a page that is just a bunch of links aligned using low res images and tables.
cursor trail!
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy Add a Web ring link … even if it’s just a link back to your site
There is not enough contrast or too much contrast between your text and the background.
What I’m trying to say is that is too easy on the eyes to read the text. 😂
Yes, the background pattern and colours should be chosen to actively interfere with reading any text on the page. For example, it's great if there's large patches of black in the background and the text is also black.
Flashing is also key. A lot of text should be flashing and there should be unreadable ticker tape text at random places.
My wife just added that it should have some background music.
Heres a site in the similar vain, https://anarchymeanything.com/
Guest book,
Webring
Visit counter
Good luck, i like the older internet so much nostalgia
Fun idea. ASCII Art!
CSS Snowflakes
You need this image:
http://hwg.org/images/lo-025.gif
You can even go all out and actually join legitimately: http://hwg.org/services/logo/
Needs a blink tag and some old style Microsoft Word art.
You might get some useful ideas on ![email protected] (although it seems abandoned now)
Can we have a globe please that magically spins?
Custom curors that animate at rest and during loading so you're not sure which part of the curors clicks, and also not sure sure if something is being loaded or not. Bonus points if the cursor changes to yet another ambiguous animated one as you hover over a tiny button which would pause the midi track.
Background audio player that automatically plays some crusty grunge midis
use html tables with large borders ... or that is how I feel the old times look
My bank still uses HTML tables in some parts of their website. Im sure its fine but it makes me cringe a bit whenever I see it.
The midi file doesn't play automatically, but I see that's a thing your working on.
Also need gifs of Bart Simpson saying "Don't have a cow man"
Guestbook didn't work, after recaptcha it just said POST failed. Oh and you need a visitor counter!
You need some “important” data that’s in an unstyled bulky table. You also need some horizontal rules on the page to split up content.
That site would have been considered remarkably beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. As such it's not quite realistic.
Much too legible. I recommend less contrast for the text.
I don't see you playing with alignment? I would like more centered text personally. And long lines of text without breaks.
Why not throw in some "lorem ipsum" placeholders.
Are you using a WYSIWYG editor?
Where are your dancing hampsters?
Also is this before or after it became trendy to copy/paste all sorts of scripts into the html? Remember scrolling text on the status bar, how about those ascii things that follow your mouse around?
I'd keep an eye on your page's size, remember we would be loading this on 56k dialup modems... if we were lucky!
Also remember the nearest comparison to building a website, was a book, magazine, or newspaper. So just plop those text and images down as if it was a book, only ever intended to be viewed at one fixed resolution (say, 800x600). No smartphones yet. No apps to inspire us. No web 2.0. No emphasis on minimalism or dynamic content.
Unexpected and unpleasant things should happen with different browsers, window sizes, etc.
Comic Sans MS
Adobe flash.
Nah that was a 2000s thing. It existed, under different names and owned by different companies in the 90s up until 2005 when it was bought by Adobe but you wouldn't likely have seen flash elements on webpages. I think it was more of a vector drawing tool around that time.
Internet Explorer had an API called ActiveX, which let you run native code in the browser. Flash was an ActiveX object, but there were others available too. Adobe Shockwave was already available for Internet Explorer 3 in 1996 (https://news.microsoft.com/1996/06/03/microsoft-and-macromedia-deliver-shockwave-and-activex-to-millions-of-web-customers-and-developers/), and in the 90s you'd usually see either Shockwave or Java.
A precursor to Flash (FutureSplash) was already available in the 90s too, but it wasn't quite as popular yet.
ah nuts. I could only remember seeing it post 2000s and then I thought, before saying it wasn't really a thing in the 90s I should double check that that's actually true so I did a very quick bit of research which seemed to indicate it wasn't really around or used in the manner it's most well known for on websites and assumed that cursory research would be enough. Goes to show you need more than lip service to fact checking.
Macromedia player. Used to play a lot of cartoon network games online back in the day with net zero and win 98 back in 1999
I had to go dig up the link again. Was looking for this folding license plate step thing I saw once, and found the sellers website. Looks like it is also straight out of the 90's
http://markthree.com/custom_vans_license_plate_steps.htm
Add a visitor counter like this one - https://retrowptheme.com/retro-visitor-counter/
for more vintage gif's check this website - https://gifcities.org
BOOTSTRA.386 (okay, on second thought, that's more the 80s and doesn't really fit.)
Needs an animated gif that doesn't properly render transparency, so the background is just a solid color.
Dont forget a crusty jpeg
That cat is way too high res
Spinning wordart!
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy iframes - you definitely need them
It should work at 640x480 and no other resolution.
I love it! Takes me right back. I was going to suggest adding a visitor counter but you already had it.
This is going on my bookmarks toolbar. Thank you!
http://theoldnet.com/
Line by line loading images, maybe an error message saying the connection dropped with the modem sound playing to restart the page.
You need to offer something banal for download with a spinning stiffy disk gif.
@ajsadauskas @linux Image maps? <marquee>? A digital view counter, or one of those gifs of a spinning odometer.
A link that goes to a clip art digger saying 'under construction' in 90s office clip art.
Absolutely, imagemap. Extra kudos if you use a pre-v1.0 GIMP, pen and paper.
Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: ![email protected]
Infinite popups, simulated of course now that most web browsers block popups.
https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Homer%27s_Web_Page
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy You need to change the mouse cursor to anything but an arrow. Bonus points if it leaves a trail. Like a peace sign cursor that leaves a rainbow trail, or a clock face where the numbers fall off when it moves.
The problem is the MIDI file doesn't automatically play.
It has a cat gif I don't think it needs anything else I'm sorry
Oh man -- you need a blink tag on some of that text. Support for the tag has been removed from all modern browsers.
So you'll need to add it in with javascript that updates CSS or something.
I think CSS animations are enough, no JS needed
Oh yeah, maybe so!
The world does need a bit less JS on websites :(
Put some more random badges on the bottom
This site has a lot of them: https://web.badges.world/
I recommend a "gallery" of photos of whatever topic you want, but probably something obscure like your favorite McDonalds playgrounds or of you holding up fish you've caught. The resolution on the pictures can't more than 640x480 tho.
@[email protected] @[email protected] I think I actually have a few of my 90s-era sites archived. One of them should have an auto play midi for the background music. I'll see if I can dig it up!
@[email protected] @[email protected] I actually started down this path a little while back and have since gotten sidetracked.
https://weblike99.com/
I think that maybe not knowing how to make the embedded midi auto-play is more authentic!
But I used to use Autostart=true in the Embed tag.
@[email protected] I was trying this with the HTML5 audio tag but not having any luck. It may be client browser specific.
Ah, sorry, I was only looking at what I did in the 90s!
Looking at the page, there's a console error that says something about "invoke Tone.start()" so I wonder if it needs some javascript to do that, maybe
<script type="text/javascript">Tone.start();</script>I think that it's including this player code?
https://www.npmjs.com/package/midi-player-js
But the docs there describe creating a new MidiPlayer object and calling play() instead of start(), so I'm probably not helping.
I don't work with javascript, so this is all pure guesswork.
@tokenwizard @asklemmy I'm thinking of eventually doing three websites.
One that's a '90s pastiche (that one), a minimalist personal website that takes some elements of the '90s web but tones them down a notch, and a blog.
@[email protected] @[email protected] I was thinking an old forum like Simple Machines or something.
You've got the under construction gif. Done.
Needs more dancing Jesus
@[email protected] @[email protected] uh, nice vibes!
≤blink>Under construction!
One of those Java applets at the bottom that looks like water reflecting the site background perhaps?
The cat art style doesnt look 90ish to me
You need to add some text with the RuneScape
glow1:wave:text effect@JimmyBigSausage I'm not sure if you're replying to the right comment here?
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy (Trying to remember my own GeoCities site from back then), Many had a “best viewed on Netscape” icon
I think mine had mostly my own song lyrics, with a different background for each page, with a menu page and forward/back links on each lyrics page.
Were frames 90s? Friend of mine used frames to make his site look like a console from Star Trek TNG
Yep frames were html 4.0 :o)
Nice project. I like the nostalgia. 👍
After some searching I learned that Tripod and Angelfire still exist today as web hosting providers. Your page could have a few more Under construction signs here and there.
Add a guest book a page vist counter and a web ring
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy Width doesn't fit properly on mobile, well done 🤣👍
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy Frames
Check out maya.land. especially webmentions.
I don't know how to tag a user on lemmy. Is maya still around?
I'm also a big fan of confusing landing pages.
EDIT: an RSS feed for any website, old or new
I miss midis.
@ajsadauskas @neil @asklemmy Looks amazing!
My only question is about whether drop shadows on text was prominent. I’m having trouble remembering how that effect would have been accomplished in the 90s, since I don’t think CSS got it until later. Would it have been something on the <font> tag only supported in Internet Explorer?
@ajsadauskas @neil @asklemmy As for chat, probably the best way to do that today is to use Web Sockets but style it to look like frames or a Java applet on the page.
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy neko cat website pet thing
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy
That's brilliant! Those were simpler times, that's for sure :)
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy
A little music player with a playlist that plays that eras music. Links to retro sites that no longer exist that actually work, that way we can bring the internet of the past back.
@ajsadauskas @asklemmy
The Netscape logo at the bottom killed me