With the rise of these retro-looking websites, I feel it's possible again to start using a browser from the '90s. Someone should make a static-site social media platform for full compatibility.
Not so much. While a lot of these websites use classic approaches (handcrafted HTML/CSS, server-side includes, etc.) and aesthetics, the actual versions of those technologies used are often rather modern. For example, TFA looks like a page I'd have browsed in IE5 as a kid, but if you look at the markup, it's using HTML5 tags and Flexbox (which became a W3C WR in 2017), while a period site would have used an HTML table to get the same effect. Of course, you wouldn't want to do it that way nowadays, because it wouldn't be responsive or mobile-friendly.
(I don't think this detracts from such sites, to be clear; they're adopting new technologies where they provide practical benefits to the reader because many indieweb proponents are pushing it as a progressive, rather than reactionary, praxis.)
> For example, TFA looks like a page I'd have browsed in IE5 as a kid, but if you look at the markup, it's using HTML5 tags and Flexbox (which became a W3C WR in 2017), while a period site would have used an HTML table to get the same effect.
Are they going out of their way to recreate an aesthetic that was originally the easiest thing to create given the language specs of the past, or is there something about this look and feel that is so fundamental to the idea of making websites that basically anything that looks like any era or variety of HTML will converge on it?
I think it’s the former. Many of these retro layouts are pretty terrible. They existed because they were the best at the time, but using modern HTML features to recreate bad layouts from the last is just missing the point completely.
I loaded up Windows 98SE SP2 in a VM and tried to use it to browse the modern web but it was basically impossible since it only supported HTTP/1.1 websites. I was only able to find maybe 3-4 websites that still supported it and load.
Having studied, and attempted to build, a few taxonomies / information hierarchies myself (a fraught endeavour, perhaps information is not in fact hierarchical? (Blasphemy!!!)), I'm wondering how stable the present organisational schema will prove, and how future migrations might be handled.
Yes, the seeming hierarchy in information is bit shallow. Yahoo, Altavista and others tried this and it became unmanageable soon. Google realized that keywords and page-raking is the way to go. I think keywords are sort of same as a dimensions in multi-dimensional embeddings.
Information, is basically is about relating something to other known things. A closer relation is being interpreted as location proximity in a taxonomy space.
This is cute, but I absolutely do not care about buying a omg.lol URL for $20/yr, and I'm not trying to be a hater because the concept is fine, but anybody who falls into this same boat should know this is explicitly "not for them"
I don't think pointing out "this is a web directory full of links submitted by people willing to spend $20/yr" is being cheap, per se, the same way I don't think paying to be "verified" on Twitter means your content is worth paying attention to
There was a time where "willing to pay for access" was a decent spam control mechanism, but that was long ago
Sadly it's the same for Sci-Fi art. I had a link to submit, but you need to sign up and it's $20. Fair enough if they want to set some minimum barrier for the site to filter out suggestions from every Tom, Dick, and Harry (and Jane?), but I don't feel so investing in this to give them $20 to provide a suggestion.
(I don't think this detracts from such sites, to be clear; they're adopting new technologies where they provide practical benefits to the reader because many indieweb proponents are pushing it as a progressive, rather than reactionary, praxis.)
Are they going out of their way to recreate an aesthetic that was originally the easiest thing to create given the language specs of the past, or is there something about this look and feel that is so fundamental to the idea of making websites that basically anything that looks like any era or variety of HTML will converge on it?
(Whether for this or comparable projects.)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_classification>
Information, is basically is about relating something to other known things. A closer relation is being interpreted as location proximity in a taxonomy space.
Even if it was $10/year, people would still cry foul.
There was a time where "willing to pay for access" was a decent spam control mechanism, but that was long ago
https://www.simonstalenhag.se/
^ The link is for the sci-fi art, not the hookers.