
Ancient Abandoned Websites That Still Work - jamesbritt
http://mentalfloss.com/article/53792/17-ancient-abandoned-websites-still-work
======
bane
There's absolutely nothing wrong with websites that use basic HTML and styling
from 199x. If anybody remembers, the power of the web is that it
_democratizes_ publishing so anybody can have a global presence. Putting
hosting, styling and development requirements on that are simply barriers that
fewer and fewer people can cross.

Keeping things simple, even if they aren't the latest js framework running on
the latest hosting backend is actually totally fine.

------
chrismonsanto
Get ready for these to be deleted too! :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6672029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6672029)
-> [http://nypost.com/2013/11/05/microsoft-com-is-stuck-in-
the-1...](http://nypost.com/2013/11/05/microsoft-com-is-stuck-in-the-1990s/)
->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6681746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6681746)

~~~
jamesbritt
I hope not. Seems silly.

------
dexen
One of my faves: Acme Klein Bottles:
[http://kleinbottle.com/](http://kleinbottle.com/) , a novelty glassware shop
ran by astronomer, author and glass blower Cliff Stoll. They sell hats and
Moebius scarves just as well :-)

Despite the looks, the website is very much active and grows over time.

~~~
CliffStoll
Yep, same guy (my first time posting to Ycombinator - smiles to all!).

To my amazement, people still want Klein bottles (in 1995, my wife told me
that nobody would buy these things) For the past five or ten years, I update
m'website mainly to add content.

Someday I'll drag its code into the 21st century - remove the old cruft and
maybe even use css. But flash just tires my eyes.

As my friends (online and off) can attest, I make Klein bottles mainly for
fun. It's a zero-volume home business, small enough to be run from one room;
the warehouse occupies the crawlspace under our house.

Of course, the best part of Acme Klein Bottles is meeting people: via email,
occasional visits, talks at schools & math colloquia, and chattering about
physics & LTE & coding with friends at my day-job (Hi Newfield People!). Which
is to say, it'll be a while before I recast my kleinbottle website - I'm
having too much fun doing other things.

------
petercooper
One of my favorites was the set of galleries Microsoft put together in 2007 to
show off CSS in its infancy:
[http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/entrance.htm](http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/entrance.htm)
..
[http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/4.htm](http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/4.htm)
etc.

~~~
Lagged2Death
1997, even.

Some (most?) of the samples in there work in IE11 but not in FF25. Some of
them don't even work correctly in IE11. That's a taste of the good old days,
right there.

~~~
petercooper
Oopsie, yeah. In fact, I just noticed one of them is even 1996! :)

------
CoolGuySteve
Zombo.com's parody is strangely timeless.

~~~
huskyr
If you don't want to run Flash:

[http://html5zombo.com/](http://html5zombo.com/)

------
bowlofpetunias
My 1995 "homepage" is still online. I haven't had access to it since '96, and
the company that hosted it seized to exist round the turn of the century.

I have no idea where exactly it is, and why on earth it is still online, but
I'm fully expecting to celebrate it's 20 year anniversary soon.

~~~
aviraldg
_ceased_

------
sebcat
Another one that's quite bone chilling is
[http://www.heavensgate.com/](http://www.heavensgate.com/)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I suspect that the ISP deliberately keeps it up for historical reasons.

------
bfe
The "Welcome to Netscape" page
([http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html](http://home.mcom.com/home/welcome.html))
also still has working links to "What's New" on the Internet from June 1993
through October 1994:

[http://home.mcom.com/home/whats-new.html](http://home.mcom.com/home/whats-
new.html)

... and a page on the team:

[http://mosaic.mcom.com/highres/bios.html](http://mosaic.mcom.com/highres/bios.html)

------
aestra
If you want to see some horrible UI designs in 2000 this site has not been
updated since then.

[http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/index.php?file=shame.htm&mode=or...](http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/index.php?file=shame.htm&mode=original)

EDIT: MY mistake. Apparently this is a mirror of the original.

------
cclogg
It would be really funny if at the end, Craigslist was there.

(in terms of looks)

~~~
code_duck
I actually thought I was seeing Craigslist when Strawberry Pop-Tart
Blowtorches came up.

------
riffraff
[http://www.timecube.com/](http://www.timecube.com/) is present on the
internet archive since 1998, but I think it's been out there from before.

------
jason_wang
One of the first sites I created with a friend in junior high for the
ThinkQuest competition:
[http://library.thinkquest.org/12632/intromap1.html](http://library.thinkquest.org/12632/intromap1.html)

Be prepared to be amazed by the animated gifs, HTML maps and statements like
"this site is best viewed in Netscape 3.0"

------
qwerta
[http://www.google.com](http://www.google.com) has not changed much since
1999.

Here is old version:
[https://web.archive.org/web/19991129021746/http://www13.goog...](https://web.archive.org/web/19991129021746/http://www13.google.com/)

~~~
mdturnerphys
The size has increased by over an order of magnitude.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4647834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4647834)

------
Dogamondo
Oh my, the .htm extension visible in the address bar... The nostalgia kicks
in!

------
salient
Well this one had a nice story on it:

[http://toastytech.com/evil/ieisevilstory.html](http://toastytech.com/evil/ieisevilstory.html)

~~~
ghc
> Web Browsers really make poor client application runtimes for all but the
> most basic of things.

Little did he know that we'd have Microsoft to thank for the innovation
(XMLHttpRequest) that would eventually bring the era of desktop software to a
close.

~~~
betterunix
Translation: we can thank Microsoft for creating a world where you need to run
whatever arbitrary software some website sent you just so that you can click
on some underlined text and go to a different website.

(Also the fact that at least half the websites I see these days manage to
break basic browser features like "Back," "Forward," "Bookmarks," etc.)

~~~
weland
Yep, this is a good summary of it. I'm seriously contemplating lurking on
Gopher again, just to get rid of all this crap.

------
mynameishere
I've actually been to the dole/kemp website because I thought it was hilarious
that he closed his presidential debate with a mention of it. Yeah, Bob, the
"Young people of America" are going to go to your webpage in droves. Kodos had
a better chance.

(Penultimate sentence)
[http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-6-1996-debate-...](http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-6-1996-debate-
transcript)

------
alextingle
I think I've got one like that, still hiding on my web-server somewhere.

