
Yuji Oshimoto: Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4+ or Explorer 4+ - da02
http://www.04.jp.org/
======
makmanalp
Here is my favourite from the "DHTML" era:
[http://www.ozones.com/](http://www.ozones.com/)

I can't believe that people don't even remember that word anymore. Just
getting this crap to work at all, let alone look good, or work cross-browser,
was a miracle. This is the before browsers had developer tools at all and
often you'd have to guess what was wrong when you had layout or styling
issues. Years later, firebug came and fixed a bunch of that. Script errors
were arcane and horrifying.

Sigh. We needn't have suffered through so much in the dark ages of the web :-)
I don't miss any of that at all, aside from the cool looking websites.

~~~
justkez
I lost countless hours trying to replicate the DHTML effects from ziggen.com
(Sigurd Mannsaker) - that site repeatedly demonstrated an utter mastery of
Dynamic HTML (without making your mouse cursor have a trail...)

Some similar era sites that evoke memories...

* k10k.net ([http://www.cubancouncil.com/work/project/kaliber-10000](http://www.cubancouncil.com/work/project/kaliber-10000))

* [http://www.chapter3.net/imperium/](http://www.chapter3.net/imperium/)

* [http://www.zeldman.com](http://www.zeldman.com)

* Joshua Davis' Dreamless.org and Praystation

~~~
tclancy
Man, k10k and Joshua Davis' stuff were the first stops for every designer
looking for inspiration at my old job circa 2000-2004.

~~~
justinator
[http://swanky.org](http://swanky.org)

------
mattkevan
Bitmap fonts!

Out of a sense of general nostalgia I have to post my favourite website of all
time: [http://superior-web-solutions.com](http://superior-web-solutions.com)

Play on a Flash-capable browser, turn up the sound and definitely do _not_
skip the intro.

Whoever built this was an insane Flash genius, the like of which we'll never
see again. Thankfully.

~~~
flavio81
Hahaha!! That site was hilarious!!

But seriously, since we had "Responsive Web Design" as a "Good Thing", most
web pages look the same these days!!

~~~
abritinthebay
They don't _have to_ and mostly that's a function of dominant business using
similar styles because _they work_.

Plenty of creative site designs out there but we aren't in the creative wild
west for _business_ designs anymore.

Sad, but it's also a sign of maturity.

------
themodelplumber
This reminds me of lots of old sites. For example:
[http://www.forrestwalter.com](http://www.forrestwalter.com)

I've been sentimentalizing lately about that old space-conserving style with
very rigid boundaries (really for conservative monitor support) as nowadays we
are all over the page and the typical site is often a mess in many ways.

------
butchler
Totally unrelated, but I found this entry on his blog really interesting:

くしゃみをする度に 頭の中で何かが 海ぶどうを噛み潰したような プチっと弾ける感触があって その後 頭皮の下を暖かい感覚が じんわりと広がっていく
それはたぶん ゆっくりと死んでいるのだ。

Rough translation:

"Every time I sneeze, it feels like something goes POP inside my head and
bursts like a sea grape, and afterward a warm sensation starts slowly
spreading from under my scalp. I think this means I'm slowly dying."

It's the last post on the blog, from 2010...

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neals
I'm a bit 'out of the loop' here I'm afraid. I Googled a little and he seems
to be a designer? Of fonts, apparently?

Some one help me out here?

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tjr225
I found a lot of websites like these to be very inspirational back in my early
computing days (think 2002 or so). The illustration and design community
seemed to be very alive back then...I remember getting my hands on Adobe
Photoshop 6 and digging tutorial after tutorial. Maybe in another life I would
have been a graphic designer.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Ah, the screenshot changes on refresh.

Seems to all be various Famicom/NES games. I've spotted Castlevania, Donkey
Kong Jr., Kung Fu, and Spy vs. Spy so far.

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watersb
Oh my. I was a contractor at Netscape in the summer of 1997, one of two who
worked out of the Mountain View campus. JavaScript. Layers. Embedded custom
Java widgets.

Does this mean I have 20 years of JavaScript experience? Feels more as if the
first ten years have cancelled out the past ten years, mutually annihilating,
leaving weird traces in the fog chamber I use for a brain.

~~~
da02
Have you written about your experiences @ Netscape or any other company from
the 90s? I would love to read the good/bad/ugly aspects of that period.

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didymospl
How about some HTML 2.0?
[https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm](https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm)

------
microwavecamera
[http://i.imgur.com/exGePCA.png](http://i.imgur.com/exGePCA.png)

~~~
thought_alarm
Ditto

[http://i.imgur.com/UJFM9vA.png](http://i.imgur.com/UJFM9vA.png)

I was hoping to see some awesome <layer> tag action, but it wasn't to be.

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davesque
Is it time to whip out Cameron's World again?

[http://www.cameronsworld.net/](http://www.cameronsworld.net/)

------
jtth
I miss this web.

~~~
Maro
I actually do not, even though I was around back then and had a page like
this.

I find the site impossible to see, navigate, understand. We've come such a
long way towards more usable, user-friendly sites.

~~~
arghwhat
I'd argue the exact opposite. Our sites these days are sluggish at best. Ads
do their best to stop you from doing whatever you went to the site to do.
Designs focus on flashy effects and pictures rather than content.

Whenever I click a link, I wonder what kind of crap I'll be greeted by this
time, hoping that It'll be plain text and nothing else.

~~~
elmigranto
Almost all text is a GIF with all-caps monospaced 8px font. Yeah, okay, I get
nostalgia, minimalism and all that, but arguing it is actually readable or
accessible, well…

~~~
arghwhat
Yeah, that specific one has the old "all text as image" thing (still big in
Asia).

I am arguing against "we have come so far", as I do not find the current web
pretty nor pleasant.

------
aw3c2
Remember that those old sites were designed for CRT monitors which had
different characteristics.

~~~
Theodores
Such as 800 x 600 pixels, interlaced at 60Hz and arranged on a curved 17"
screen. Designing for 1024 x 768 would be pushing it, had to play safe with
800 x 600 for common sense usability reasons.

~~~
projektfu
On a 14 inch monitor, 800x600 pixels gave about 72dpi, while 1024x768 gave a
much less legible 90dpi. At the time, a point would equal a pixel. So the
average user in 1995 had a 14 inch monitor and ran at 800x600.

However, I've never seen interlaced 800x600.

------
robbyt
Reminds me of current websites that only work with Chrome.

------
Semaphor
What I like most, is that per default it barely looks different than many
other modern pages for me. It's blank as the iframe (for modern pages some
required js) is loaded from a different domain [0] and uMatrix blocks that.

[0]: [http://dsg4.com/04/](http://dsg4.com/04/)

------
zeitg3ist
OT, but there was a great site from this era (2005 or so) that I cannot
remember the name of. I think it was the portfolio of another japanese
designer, or at least I think it had a japanese name. The whole website was in
Flash, and it consisted of literal hundreds of small demos (labeled with a
progressive number), for example I remember a series of different clocks with
creative design and animations, or many pseudo-games where you moved your
mouse or click on abstract shapes and stuff happened. I think at some point it
also had a page where users could move a pointer with the mouse and all other
online users could see all the movements in real time, or something like that.
Does it ring a bell for anybody? I've been thinking about it for years but I
absolutely cannot remember what it was called...

~~~
rootsudo
Oh, man, I do.

------
monological
Here's my fav old school site: [http://www.bionic-
systems.com/archive/portfolio2001/](http://www.bionic-
systems.com/archive/portfolio2001/)

------
yellowboxtenant
If anyone can find a web archive of Eddie Designs I've been looking forever
for it. I can't remember the URL.

------
meerita
The link section is a world of nostalgia for me. Lots of websites that were
truly amazing in 1997-2000

------
nmk
Man, this brings back memories: I was visiting this and k10k.net daily for
inspiration.

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amatera
threeoh.com (link from 04.jp.org) works much better in modern browsers ;)

~~~
analogmemory
I'm impressed it's still archived there.

------
PedroBatista
I remember visiting this site when I was a kid!

Those bitmap fonts <3

------
maxpert
Nostalgia!

