
Captain Marvel throwback site - ChrisArchitect
https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel
======
codetrotter
I think they did a great job of capturing the essence of the late 90’s and
early 00’s homepages web with this.

The technical implementation details not being historically accurate don’t
matter IMO.

It’s about the aesthetics and the spirit.

I feel at home.

See also Prof. Dr. style which is related though a bit more toned down.
[http://contemporary-home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/](http://contemporary-
home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/)

~~~
Aloha
I think its because both <blink> and <marquee> no longer work in modern
browsers consistently.

Also, fun thing I noticed, if you google for <marquee> a part of the results
page scrolls side to side, like marquee would!

~~~
kokokokoko
<blink> and <marquee> tags can be targeted in a CSS stylesheet in modern
browsers. So you can still have <blink> tags that blink without JavaScript.

I imagine you might be able to pull off <marquee> tags without additional
markup, but I'm not sure.

[https://nippy-candle.glitch.me](https://nippy-candle.glitch.me)

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monocasa
In case anyone hasn't seen the original Space Jam website.

[https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm](https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm)

~~~
SwiftyBug
I'm glad monitors back then didn't have the contrast they do now. It literally
hurts my eyes.

~~~
toyg
CRTs were very bad for your eyes - literally. There are laws for “monitor
operators” here in Europe that used to be very strict about breaks every hour
or so, with mandatory eye-healthchecks every few months and subsidies for
glasses. Without the switch to flatscreens, I expect I would have been almost
blind by now - the improvement was massive and noticeable.

~~~
burk96
I believe it, I used a CRT for the first time in years the other day and I
couldn't believe how much I felt the eye fatigue. I don't want to know how
much damage I did back in the day on those things.

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CM30
Interesting how even this throwback apparently requires JavaScript to run.
Guess your devs couldn't stay away from the SPA setup for a single site then?

~~~
svantana
Wasn't javascript the main way to get moving elements in webpages? Here
they're using css animations, which definitely weren't around in those days.
So I guess the style is throwback, not the implementation...

~~~
mrweasel
No, it was all gifs, blink and marquee tags.

~~~
rubyfan
Don’t forget about Java applets

~~~
kitsunesoba
I remember applets as often being fun but also a huge source of instability.
On my family’s Mac in the mid-late 90s, any time we started playing Java
applet games, Netscape and/or System 7.5 would inevitably seize up and we’d
have to reboot. Applets and “Sorry, a system error has occurred” were almost
synonymous.

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classichasclass
Outstanding, but it would be even funnier if it actually _did_ render on
Netscape Navigator 3.

~~~
burk96
The Browse Happy upgrade your browser thing was admittedly disappointing to
find in the source

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bane
I kept scrolling down to find the "Marvel Web Ring" and found the hidden Stan
Lee instead.

~~~
giorgioz
I also found the tiny gif of Stan Lee in the long empty footer. It appears if
you pass over it with the mouse. Does it do anything else?

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minimaxir
Interesting way to do a throwback but still maintain modern web-design
standards (OG tags, responsive, SEO, etc.)

Viewing a real 1995 site on a mobile device is not as pleasant.

~~~
archgoon
Also unicode.

Я0XX0ЯZ!!1

I seem to recall that Western or Latin-1 encoding was more common (or at
least, Netscape would assume) than UTF-8 in 1995. This resulted in some sites
not displaying Russian characters correctly when you visited a site that
didn't specify the encoding. Manually setting the encoding at times would be
required.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1)

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kokokokoko
I always enjoy these old school style sites. DHTMLConf had a fun one a while
back[0].

What is a little strange is that I'm starting to see these sites as fun and
refreshing as opposed to annoying and obtrusive. I wonder if we are getting
close to a flip in design tastes away from making UX as minimal as possible.

[0] [http://dhtmlconf.com](http://dhtmlconf.com)

~~~
gambiting
What's strange to me is that younger Marvel fans(say a 12 year old born in
2007) would probably have no idea why this is amazing.

~~~
klez
I was born in 1987, but I think I can appreciate a throwback to the early 80s
or the 70s when I see one.

~~~
gambiting
Yes, but as an adult I can also appreciate why things alluding to the time
before I was born are funny. Marvels current target audience will probably not
because most of them(not all) lack the required maturity at this stage in
their lives.

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craigkerstiens
This is amazing, reminds me of a colleague's personal site:
[http://bitfission.com/](http://bitfission.com/). He built it as a bit of de-
stressing after a really long work week many years ago dealing with a major
AWS outage. I believe he even combed through the geocities archives to be
historically accurate.

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discopicante
Solid 90s. Would have been even more authentic if upon viewing the source code
I would have seen more <table>, <center>, and <font> tags.

~~~
drchiu
Absolutely. First thing I did when I landed was view source code. Regardless,
nice piece of work.

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lukifer
Complete with <blink> tag, re-implemented with CSS3 animations. Well-played,
Marvel.

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ancarda
There's no "under construction" GIF. I'm very disappointed.

~~~
balivandi
Nor a page hit counter!!!

~~~
pedrocx486
Except there is? Right under watch trailer at the top.

~~~
balivandi
Haha! You’re right - I missed it as I was instinctively jumped to the bottom
of the page. Now where is my “Back to top” link?

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rayiner
Still better than many modern sites.

1) You can clearly tell what's a link or a button.

2) It doesn't break scrolling or the back button.

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ian0
First the "make your sites pages instant" snippet and now this. How lovely it
is to click on a link and not wait :)

The last time I can remember that feeling is when I first arrived at college.
The LAN network in the college was connected to the largest backbone link in
the country. We had download speeds of 1mb / second. It blitzed through
geocities sites.

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irrational
Be sure to scroll down to the comments at the bottom. Hilarious in jokes.

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oakmad
Oh how this made me realize just how much I miss the internet of the 90s.

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nazri1
Blank space at the bottom - just so when you page down through the page and
reach the end, the last readable content would correctly shift up the same
amount as the previous shift.

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raydev
The most impressive part, to me: they've compressed the images in a way that
makes them look like they were rendered when I used IE4 on my Windows 3.11
machine.

What sort of compression is it where all the colors are comprised of
cross+star shapes? How would you compress these images to look like this in
2019?

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akhilcacharya
I'm not sure if I should dislike it for trying to hard or liking it even more
for trying too hard.

~~~
minimaxir
From one of the developers: "We built this in FrontPage and host it [on]
Angelfire"

[https://twitter.com/loriabys/status/1094032684630925312](https://twitter.com/loriabys/status/1094032684630925312)

------
gourneau
If you want to see another stunning tribute to the internet times of yore
checkout [https://www.cameronsworld.net/](https://www.cameronsworld.net/)
(make sure to turn on the sound)

PS: Plz join my webring ;)

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aerovistae
Don't really understand the relevance of the site's throwback style to the
film itself. Anyone care to explain?

~~~
berberich
It takes place in the 90's.

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AzzieElbab
Nice. Only thing missing is Geocities logo

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BooneJS
Load times are through the floor. I bet you could fetch this thing over dial-
up in under 10 seconds.

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mhd
Base href is "i.annihil.us". Let's hope the Sony lawyers don't read source.

~~~
ktsmith
They've been using that as an image hosting domain since at least 2015.

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Balgair
What!? No Konami Code easter egg!? What a missed opportunity!

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beamatronic
They nailed it! Great job! I miss this era so much.

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jftuga
Love the broken image icon :-)

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nkydr0i0
the speed is amazing

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stesch
When I was reading Captain Marvel it was either a man (Marvel Comics) or a
little boy on crutches (DC Comics).

~~~
Apocryphon
Captain Marvel seems to be a reoccurring cosmic title like Green Lantern, it
seems:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(Marvel_Comics)...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_\(Marvel_Comics\)#Publication_history)

The version in the upcoming film is also called Ms. Marvel.

~~~
crooked-v
The order of events is roughly:

\- National Comics (the predecessor to DC) made Superman comics

\- Fawcett Comics made Captain Marvel comics, inspired by Superman

\- Fawcett's Captain Marvel and spinoffs became more popular than Superman

\- National sued Fawcett, and in the lawsuit it came out that some Captain
Marvel stories were direct copies of Superman stories with the characters
swapped

\- Fawcett settled the lawsuit and shut down Captain Marvel production

\- Over a decade later, Marvel Comics started publishing their own Captain
Marvel (a different character aside from the name) and got the trademark on
the name

\- DC, as successor to National, licensed and later bought out the Fawcett
Captain Marvel, then added him to their own universe alongside Superman

That's how you get to a Marvel movie titled "Captain Marvel" featuring Captain
Marvel, and a DC movie titled "Shazam!" featuring the other Captain Marvel,
even though the now-DC one came first.

~~~
twic
There's a fork in this history arising from the British publishing of Captain
Marvel - i had a go at summarising the wikipedia entry [1], but gave up,
because it's too bananas.

The gist is that when Captain Marvel was shut down, the British publisher came
up with a knockoff called Marvelman, who then went through a comparable set of
rights battles and name changes, becoming Captain Miracle, then Marvelman
again, then Miracleman, then Man of Miracles (when eventually bought up by
Marvel, weirdly enough).

Along the way, there was a really disturbing run in the '80s written by Alan
Moore, which was out of print for years because of the rights battles, and
also bits from Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison. Oh, and a villain called Young
Nastyman, who turns up in a Tenacious D song.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvelman#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvelman#History)

~~~
crooked-v
Man of Miracles is actually another tangent, where Todd McFarlane, the guy who
make the Spawn comics, incorrectly believed he'd purchased the Miracleman
rights and featured the character in his comic, then had to pivot and retcon
the character into something else entirely when sued by a new company formed
by Gaiman to arrange republishing of the Moore/Gaiman/Morrison stories.

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mixmastamyk
Needs JS to render, which barely existed in the early 90's. ((sad trombone))

"Is anyone else concerned about Y2K?!?" :D

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superkuh
Hardly. This site is as modern web crap as modern web crap gets. It literally
displays nothing without javascript enabled.

