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The Internet Was a Real Pile of ***** in 1996

msu.edu — Pepsi's website might be the best source of evidence to this claim.

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  • WriterSD, on 01/26/2008, -58/+24Ha! This one is absolutely hilarious!
    • Krinkov, on 01/26/2008, -0/+46heres a time capsule from 96 thats still up, inexplicably. Warner Brothers official site for 'Mars Attacks' the movie.
      http://marsattacks.warnerbros.com/

      • vornan19, on 01/26/2008, -5/+3Oops! I just saw an older post of what I had here! Digg me down!
        • nospinhere, on 01/26/2008, -4/+1Marsattack!! I just spent 5 minutes finding anything Natalie Portman and I found it:

          "NATALIE PORTMAN (Taffy Dale) received international acclaim for her motion-picture debut at the age of 11 in Luc Besson's "The Professional," opposite Jean Reno. She most recently appeared in Woody Allen's "Everyone Says I Love You." Earlier this year, she again captured the attention of audiences and critics with her scene-stealing role in Ted Demme's "Beautiful Girls," opposite Timothy Hutton. Portman's other film roles include Michael Mann's "Heat.""
      • 2h3px, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5the game on that site is ridiculously hard, i guess gamers were better back then
      • dorianh49, on 01/26/2008, -1/+9Apparently, in 1996 our states' borders extended into the ocean which, at the time, was made of purple-outlined ninja stars.
      • RobotChicken1, on 03/07/2008, -1/+5Can I use anything other than quicktime to play media in Firefox? Every time it updates or spits a message at me Firefox crashes immediately. And besides that, I hate quicktime... (Yes, I'm using Windows)
        • chedabob, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5Quicktime Alternative.
        • InspectorGadget, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2As chedabob said, use Quicktime Alternative available at: http://www.codecguide.com/download_qt.htm
          Make sure Firefox is closed when you install it, and make sure that you select the browser plugin for install. Configure it so that Quicktime only opens files that no other player you have can. To make it work with iTunes, install iTunes and regular Quicktime, uninstall Quicktime with iTunes closed, and then install Quicktime Alternative. To be on the safe side, don't install Apple Software Update when you install iTunes as it may bother you to upgrade Quicktime.
      • mattcoady, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Titled wallpaper for your desktop FTW!
    • tuce63, on 01/26/2008, -1/+25for more 96 style websites: http://drudgereport.com/
    • bbardlbradd, on 01/26/2008, -0/+152850pts on Sci-Fi Slots. Truly a remarkable game.
    • cheaptricks, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7Parody of old websites: http://welcometomyhomepage.ytmnd.com/
      • positron, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4The Third Eye Blind midi made clicking that link well worth the risk! Are we sure it's not just a copy of somebody's myspace page though?
    • altrego99, on 01/26/2008, -1/+5I fail to see the point. Is it any better now?
    • TheTaoOfBill, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5Man those websites sucked. I would have added more animated "Under construction" images and maybe a dancing hamster.
    • lucutus, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1ANyone notice the McDonalds home page hasn't gotten any better? It may actually be worse now.
  • badwithcomputer, on 01/26/2008, -18/+98and I thought I was bad with computers...
    • stackered, on 01/26/2008, -2/+24Was there a good site (by today's standards) back then? Show me one please.
      • MacEnvy, on 01/26/2008, -3/+34If you're just talking about the index page, Yahoo hasn't changed all that much. And Google is pretty close to the same as it was at launch in '98.
      • teradome, on 01/26/2008, -0/+14No, today's standards don't apply.
        It's the experimentation and learning-from-mistakes from that period that created today's standards.
    • Sharky35, on 01/26/2008, -11/+26We had to code by hand back then. I mean entirely by hand back then. A website designer was nothing more than a programmer back in the day. I used a txt editor to build everyone of my websites. That's it. Hell, the first cars had to be started by a hand crank. Does that make them ***** cars?
      • SiRwhilms, on 01/26/2008, -5/+79.... I still use a text editor to make websites. It's called "doing it right"
        • vawksel, on 01/26/2008, -17/+5Yeah, but only because the whole system is broken. In this day and age, you should be able to use a WYSIWYG tool to generate optimized layout that runs in any browser.
        • wolferz, on 01/26/2008, -36/+8oooo... you're so cool. You do things the hardest way possible and thats like, so cool. I bet all the girls in your class think you're so hot. News flash for hobby boy: the real world doesn't give a flying ***** how cool you are. It cares about profit.

          If you want to use some ***** ass notepad or notepad clone to do html, css, java, and whatever else thats all well and good for hobby work. Professionals however have deadlines to make, mouths to feed, and a wife that wants to be ***** occasionally. Most of them would prefer a web authoring app with features like automatic syntax checking and in-editor preview to reduce time and effort needed to turn out high quality websites on time.

          Further more these tools produce websites that are every bit as good and usually better than what can be done in notepad. Not all web authoring apps are Frontpage clones. If you were the hot ***** you think you are you would know that.
          • Seifey, on 01/26/2008, -2/+9Go cry somewhere else.
          • dezmo, on 01/26/2008, -0/+10it might take some time at first, but after you get some experience, you can usually work pretty fast with just notepad. Personally, i use notepad to write the html/php and then i use a simple CSS editor like TopStyle which allows me to edit CSS attributes and see the results instantly. I think this is the best way to do it.
          • tazx, on 01/26/2008, -2/+15I make my living doing web design.

            I hand-code all my sites in html, css, and php, using text editors such as BBEdit and TextMate.

            WYSIWYG programs are for 2nd rate hacks who don't care about usability, standards compliance, or browser compatibility.


          • theblt, on 01/26/2008, -1/+10"News flash for hobby boy: the real world doesn't give a flying ***** how cool you are. It cares about profit."
            The real world cares about a quality product, something you can't produce using a tool like Dreamweaver. As tazx said, you use a WYSIWYG you run into all sorts of problems ranging from usability, standards, compatibility because they simply don't care.

            "f you want to use some ***** ass notepad or notepad clone to do html, css, java, and whatever else thats all well and good for hobby work."
            Very few actually use Notepad. Powerful editors such as BBEdit, TextMate, Aptana Studio, and Eclipse speed up the development process considerably. Not only that, but when you know how to code properly you know exactly what the results are going to be. With a WYSIWYG, you have no clue what you're really gonna end up with.

            "Most of them would prefer a web authoring app with features like automatic syntax checking and in-editor preview to reduce time and effort needed to turn out high quality websites on time."
            Aptana Studio does all that. But most of us don't need a syntax checking tool. We code it right the first time. As for the preview window, Dreamweaver's preview is notoriously aweful. I'm not sure about CS3 but I believe it was using IE5's rendering engine. Also with the preview, if you're coding in PHP or some other dynamic scripting language you can't get a proper preview unless you look at it through a browser.

            "Further more these tools produce websites that are every bit as good and usually better than what can be done in notepad."
            Do you even design/develop websites? Post a portfolio up.

            And for those of you developers that would like to try a new editor, I suggest you check out Aptana. I just heard about it from a friend and it's actually really impressive.
            http://www.aptana.com/
          • InspectorGadget, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2wolferz is just ***** because the article used his website as one of the examples.
          • voyvf, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1I use vim for template and css editing, eclipse (with viplugin) for coding the backend. Honestly, I'd rather shoot myself than use a WYSIWYG editor for development. You must either really love frustration, or not give a damn about the end product.
        • ganlet, on 01/26/2008, -3/+3my 2 cents and they arent worth too much since im an application programmer by trait not website programmer. I would think that programs like dreamweaver would be nice to generate bulk of the code that you'd then go back and review/"clean up" I dont like how any of these programs generate the code "especially some of the comment tags" but to me it seems easier to make small changes than to write it all by hand.

          I know, application programmers utilize tools all the time for things like refactoring, generating getters and setters, formating, and a dozen other things.

          id think this would be simular for website programmers. anyways my 2 cents
        • zoom1928, on 01/27/2008, -0/+3The problem with that is that programs like Dreamweaver intentinally corrupt the HTML so you always have to use the same tool to change the file from that point on. Dreamweaver, PageMill, FrontPage, and their ilk will sometimes double or triple the size of a web page. They'll also chane your line spacing to make it harder for you to edit. The jerk-offs at the companies that make these products want to lock you into their product forever. Never open a file you ever want to edit again by hand with something like Dreamweaver.
        • potofgravy, on 01/27/2008, -1/+1I used Textedit. It highlights things. I don't think highlighting existed in 1996. :(
      • grawity, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1I coded my website by hand, using pico and notepad2. Look at it and tell me if it's *****.
      • Mirag3, on 01/26/2008, -0/+12WYSIWYG is crap - it creates human unreadable code that violates standards, costs way more, and basically sets you up for more work in the end. The only way in which modern web programming is different from programming (aside from having simpler algorithms) is that you preview your sites using Tomcat or Apache, which means you'll be using either Eclipse or a text editor. That being said, I am a comp sci major with an emphasis in comp security, c, python, and java programming, and a little history with J2EE. The only difference between then and now is quicker computers (high performance apps can be run), large resolutions, and broadband internet. You make do with what you have.
        • Speed, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Did anyone actually use Java Applets back when it was released in 95? It lags my computer enough as it is right now, I can't imagine what it'd do to a 1995 computer. (I didn't use the internet much when I was 6)
      • theblt, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7It's not like there weren't WYSIWYG tools back then. I remember doing some of my first sites in HotDog HTML Editor and Netscape Composer. Incidentally, those 2 tools were the ones that literally taught me HTML by viewing the source. A bit of an obscure way to learn but I was only 10.
        • JeffD, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1I thought Hotdog was a text html editor with a built in split pane preview, or was that something else?
        • TeagueSterling, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1I still miss HotDog sometimes.
        • brettmurf, on 01/26/2008, -0/+0My few experiences with HotDog definitely make me glad I am not still using it. Pretty amazing at the time.

          Also, JeffD I think the WYSIWYG editor he was referring to was ***** Netscape Composer. I am not sure when the first iteration of frontpage came out, but I think it was around '96.
      • SpoBo, on 01/26/2008, -1/+4I'll tell you exactly why the internet used to suck that hard back in the days. It was written, invented and populated by geeks. And obviously every site was made and designed by a geek for fellow geeks. So, yeah ... they all used to suck pretty much.

        Well and then there is the fact that browsers just couldn't handle CSS properly and obviously internet connections played dead when any file larger then 10Kb was presented to them.
      • Tanktunker, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1I make sites with a stone tablet and a chisel, but no hammer.
    • magicaltrevor, on 01/26/2008, -1/+52PLEASE OPEN YOUR WINDOW TO THE WIDTH OF THIS LINE OF TEXT.
      • Audacitor, on 01/26/2008, -2/+23If I tried to do that in IE, the site would be covered by all the freaking toolbars.
        • wolferz, on 01/26/2008, -3/+11perhaps you should take better care of your computer
          • Speed, on 01/26/2008, -0/+8ActiveX or whatever it's called was a bitch. You couldn't go onto a computer without Comet Curser installing itself, while Bonzi Buddie popped up.
        • fichek, on 01/26/2008, -1/+13Or maybe use a good browser
          • Audacitor, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1I do. I use FF. Just getting my daily make-fun-of-IE out of my system.
    • poopz, on 01/26/2008, -12/+4oh god look at how hideous this piece of ***** was back then:
      http://web.archive.org/web/19981212024508/http://w ...
      now thanks to modern web design technology...
      http://drudgereport.com/
      • TheImmigrant, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1natalie's roadtrip... shes prolly 23 right now and staring in porn. go figure..
      • AmazingAndrex, on 01/26/2008, -1/+1I'm in your Digg, breaking ur links...
      • tech42er, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1w?
    • DarkSamus, on 01/26/2008, -18/+3click here if you don't know wtf shockwave is
    • MindTrigger, on 01/26/2008, -0/+48Unlike most of you, I actually had a job creating websites back then. Finding art to use on a site was almost impossible, and since the world didn't take the web seriously yet, no company was putting graphic design resources into it. Essentially the art was clip-art found in programs like Corel Draw. Hell, I remember getting on GOPHER trying to find resources for my clients. No digital cameras either back then, so you scanned every photo you wanted to display.

      HTML and browsers sucked then too. It was considered "advanced layout" if you used tables to arrange your site elements. Hell even the pictures you see here are advanced compared to the websites two years earlier. For a while there, the browsers did not even display background images. The background color of the websites was that old windows gray color.
      • LetsGoHawks, on 01/26/2008, -0/+36People also tend to forget that if you had a 56k modem in '96, you were really haulin' ass.

        Articles like this bug me. What they author is trying to say is "Boy, if I had been programming websites back then, I would have shown them how it's done!!! " Ummmm, no you wouldn't have, because you would have been just as new at it as everybody else and facing the same technical limitations they were.
      • teradome, on 01/26/2008, -0/+15Yeah, most people also forget that you used to be allowed only 30KB for the *home page* of a web site (and even less for sub-pages), to meet common modem speeds. On a 28.8 (then the average), that's waiting *8 seconds* for a page to load.

        Most blog pages these days can easily reach 2 MBs for their home pages, thanks to untrimmed text, ads, and images.

        Digg's home page, on a 28.8 modem, would take over 3 minutes to load.
        http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyz ...
        • AmazingAndrex, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Broken link is broken.
        • Verdanic, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1I still try to keep non-dynamic sites under 30, it usually works granted the client doesn't need a massive number of images.
    • juicebag, on 01/26/2008, -7/+5OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER.
    • Vektuz, on 01/26/2008, -1/+15It actually looks more usable than it was today. No flashing banners, no popup adverts, no slow ass loading due to malformed pages or stupid css tricks, no floating background... just the content you were after.
      I wish it went back.
      • theblt, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7The problem with that is that there is much more content on the web now. Also, us early adopters knew how to find what we wanted even in poor web design. Now that the Internet has a much larger user-base, we have to accommodate for those who can barely turn on their computer.

        Luckily though, new design trends suggest that simplicity is back, and hopefully here to stay.
      • lucutus, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Yep I agree. Take a look at mcdonald's website now it has poorly formed flash that overlaps and a wonderfull black background?
    • theblt, on 01/26/2008, -0/+9Oh boy:
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961020014044/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19981202230410/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961022174744/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961026164458/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961231044301/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961022175004/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19981111184324/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19970404064352/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961227062541/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19981212031129/www.mozi ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961220153812/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961025231757/http://m ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19961121235239/http://w ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/19971210171246/http://h ...
      http://web.archive.org/web/20040804092435/http://p ...
    • jdenial, on 01/26/2008, -10/+4thank god programmers stopped designing websites
    • TheChunt, on 01/26/2008, -0/+11I dunno, I'm pretty vibed on Coke's website. I can find a bunch of 2008 corporate websites that look a hell of a lot worse.
      I'm not sure if Coke has personally offended the author or he has lost a family member due to their product, but damn he's upset with them.
    • PathDaemon, on 01/27/2008, -0/+3I could make SO MUCH MONEY as a web designer if I had a time machine right now...
  • jdb762, on 01/26/2008, -13/+396In 1996, the Internet Archive began archiving the web for a service called the Wayback Machine. They've now archived 55 billion web pages. That's enough web pages that if you were to print them all out using your roommate's printer while he was at class and tape them end-to-end, you could reach the moon and back 28 trillion times.

    The moon and back 28 trillion times = 56 trillion one-way trips to the moon. I'll round down and give them the benefit of the doubt.

    55 trillion trips to the moon / 55 billion web pages equals 1000 trips to the moon per page.
    • chingy1788, on 01/26/2008, -8/+112That's enough web pages that if you were to print them all out using your roommate's printer while he was at class and tape them end-to-end, you could reach the moon and back 28 trillion times.

      hmmm
      your roommate must be in class for a long long long time
      • MrZop, on 01/26/2008, -0/+33or have a really fast printer.
        • SpoBo, on 01/26/2008, -1/+18or get killed while attending class
        • Mr.RX99, on 01/26/2008, -5/+3That might be the best combination of three comments (from Chingy on) I've ever seen. SpoBo's comment is so unexpected...
          • wellyuk, on 01/27/2008, -3/+6How do you manage to fit so many ***** in your mouth at once?
          • Scaryclouds, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Years of practice from stuffing ***** in his mouth.
    • MacSuxWindozSux, on 01/26/2008, -30/+4"They've now archived 55 billion web pages... you could reach the moon and back 28 trillion times."
    • koven, on 01/26/2008, -4/+59It was just a joke.
      Waits for whoosh comments...
    • moocow1452, on 01/26/2008, -4/+50uh... *whoosh?*
    • spudnic, on 01/26/2008, -2/+39http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole
      • santaliqueur, on 01/26/2008, -0/+8Also found by reading any headline at www.digg.com
    • ShaneMcDeath, on 01/26/2008, -3/+136Diggers. Big on maths and science. Not so big on humour.
      • azbmr, on 01/26/2008, -1/+28That's why there is xkcd, to bring them all together (diggers, math, science, and humor).
      • Audacitor, on 01/26/2008, -5/+3No, Diggers like them both, but like that little kid at the dinner table who can't stand his peas mixing with his gravy, we can't stand math and humor in the same place at the same time.
      • jdb762, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2I love humor when it's funny
    • reddikilowatt, on 01/26/2008, -3/+2And how far would the punch cards and paper tape of all those web pages reach? How about the hard drive platters? Who cares, it's all electrons and photons anyway...
    • Abennobashi, on 01/26/2008, -12/+5That's alright, the guy writes like a stupid ***** anyway.
    • Cofaloaf, on 01/26/2008, -1/+6That's efficient space travel.
    • darlingt, on 01/26/2008, -3/+131 web page != 1 piece of paper.
      • MadOtaku, on 01/26/2008, -0/+14Correct. According to him, 1 webpage = 1000 trips to the moon.
      • steveboutin, on 01/26/2008, -0/+14i usually only get about 800 moontrips per page (MTPP). i should probably get a hybrid.
    • bioskope, on 01/26/2008, -5/+4to be fair back then the webpages used to be bigger, so its not all that unbelievable.
      • Lennalf, on 01/26/2008, -2/+11Yes. Yes, it is entirely unbelievable.
      • timro, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2The websites used to be bigger?
        Even when you had to adjust the window size down on a 800x600 resolution "to view this page properly"?
    • BitterPeace, on 01/26/2008, -1/+8You could then fax them to those Scientology nuts.
      • chingy1788, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1no just fax goatse, they'll star worshiping that as the portal to where xenu or what ever his name is lives
        • Shananra, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Xenu's their devil, they'll worship it as the place where LRH lives.
    • aerovolce, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Or... 683 229.814 trees (according to howstuffworks (http://science.howstuffworks.com/question16.htm))
      Thanks guys.
    • SolidSteve, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1nerds
    • loggedout, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4Only if each webpage is just one paper page long.
    • gnoshme, on 01/26/2008, -1/+1Reminds me of that thing about if you took out all your intestines and stretched them out, you'd be dead.
    • Dan11023, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1THATS A LOT OF PORNO!
  • icemounts, on 01/26/2008, -25/+2This is great! I'm really glad the internet doesn't look like that anymore....well, for the most part anyway. Between Pepsi and Lego....I don't know what makes me gag more. Poor web designers of the past...If they could have only known what the future held....php, js, dhtml, css..etc etc.
    • Matt2k, on 01/26/2008, -0/+24> php, js, dhtml, css..etc etc.
      Oh yes. Now, we privileged modern men have to deal with:
      SQL injection, XSS, browser incompatibilities, CSS hacks. In that order.
      PS. The web was just as fun back then.
      • vornan19, on 01/26/2008, -0/+9Hells yeah man.
        Back then the web was full of crazy stuff and finding actual information was a little hard now it seems reversed.
    • fafaforza, on 01/26/2008, -0/+24I don't know why the Pepsi site is getting so much criticism. Compared to the other pages, they were experimenting with layouts and graphics that are commonly used today. Fine, the background was bad, but the 3d styling is not that different than what sites are doing today with Flash.

      They did that instead of the basic html stuff that other companies did, and I think that's worth something.
      • MrScience, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5In fact, they were one of the first to use Flash well. In a year or so, I still remember being amazed at what they had pulled off on their website. It was the place to go if you wanted to show something what the Internet could do.
        • TheNuminous, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Something? What advances in AI have you been hiding from us, Mr. Science?!
    • Audacitor, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3I think that of all of them, Lego was the least sucky. The colors didn't make me throw up (that much), and it had funnier ***** on it. For example, the button marked "this is home".
    • hello2usir, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4Knock it all you want but back then the internet wasn't yet as thoroughly polluted by ads, scams, spyware, spam, and everything else we've come to know and hate. It was actually nice to have access to information without wading through all the crap. I'll take ***** web design over any of that.
  • anderzole, on 01/26/2008, -2/+127the most shocking part of this article is that alta vista is still around.. what a fall from grace
    anyone remember webcrawler? That was the search engine of choice back in 1995
    • SickMonkey, on 01/26/2008, -0/+89Alta Vista was my favorite search engine. I remember someone telling me about Google and I was like yeah, yeah, it will never be nearly as good. Back then everyone was using Netscape Navigator as a browser until Microsoft came in with IE and drove them out of business. And I remember getting the first flash plug-in from Macro Media and seeing animated icons in my browser for the first time. I thought it was amazing.
      • offspring06, on 01/26/2008, -16/+1I think I was the only person who used Google where I live when it first came out. I liked it a lot better than Yahoo or Alta Vista.
        • Fraff5, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Webcrawler. I used to think that website was a game, but could never play it :(
    • TheMarvel, on 01/26/2008, -0/+39Ah yes, good ol' Netscape with their funky animated logo in the corner. I remember staring at it for like 30 seconds each time (due to dial-up). Plus, Altavista was the bomb... I remember first learning to use the operator commands with them, I thought that was genius.
    • mancat, on 01/26/2008, -1/+39Hotbot...
      • ta10n, on 01/26/2008, -3/+1Hotbot wasn't good until later... in 1995 Hotbot wasn't around yet (launched 1996 sometime I think). So there!
      • EgaoNoGenki, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7I remember Hotbot was my search engine of choice before switching to Google for the last time.
    • Loki00000, on 01/26/2008, -2/+21Man, i was all about the Hotbot, i miss that *****.
    • NeonGod, on 01/26/2008, -0/+10Anybody remember Archie?
    • schrankage, on 01/26/2008, -0/+10all those websites look like crap now, but back then they were still interesting, and actually exciting
    • DeadFox1, on 01/26/2008, -0/+6my fav back then was infoseek. now owned by abc/disney/espn/ etc.. etc.. etc..
      • DarkSamus, on 01/26/2008, -3/+2where did you find this information?

        mmmmmfffffffffffinfoseeeeeek
    • chugger1992, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3http://www.altavista.com/
    • ninja0, on 01/26/2008, -1/+1bahaha, that definitely brings back the memories...
    • jiveturkeyblues, on 01/26/2008, -0/+10i was a fan of dogpile
      • grawity, on 01/26/2008, -6/+1a pile of dogs?
      • EgaoNoGenki, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3I still am when it comes to audio searches. Why doesn't Google have an audio search yet???
    • rhyss, on 01/26/2008, -0/+19Is there no love for Lycos.com?
      • WallnutBoy, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Was there anything that dog COULDN'T do?!
      • joshuaer, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1my god i had forgotten all about Lycos - Lycos chat ruled the day!
      • badjoke, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2Thinking about those Lycos commercials reminded me of HomeGrocer.com.
    • citizen782, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5Webcrawler was it for me. I actually argued with colleagues for Webcrawler against Yahoo in 96. Then I found Google.
    • theblt, on 01/26/2008, -0/+17Excite -> Lycos -> Alta Vista -> Yahoo -> Google

      13 years of searching strong.
    • ussoldier, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7dogpile.com... searched them all.. but yeah, mostly all you needed was altavista
    • calon9, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2I miss the days of Alta Vista. You could have a simple web site selling any product online and at the top of search results in 3 days. You didn't have to have a ton of links to your site to affect results. I scraped by a living that way in those wild-west days of the early internet.
    • CedEx, on 01/26/2008, -1/+0What about those internet directories you could buy which are just like phone directories? I *almost* got one...
    • elmafudd, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2I used to use mamma meta search. mamma.com
  • wildfire, on 01/26/2008, -11/+612It has just been replaced with MySpace.
    • Phocion55, on 01/26/2008, -9/+55Call me crazy, but web pages with fusica text and a tiled 200x100 picture of Justin Timberlake is a pretty sweet web design.
      • Dylson, on 01/26/2008, -2/+12You aren't crazy, you're ***** PSYCHOTIC!!!!!
        • VelvetoneFusion, on 01/26/2008, -1/+6or 14. and a girl.
          • Speed, on 01/26/2008, -0/+6You realize this is digg, right? The 14 year old part is a possibility, however.
          • OrangeSoda31, on 01/27/2008, -0/+0Rule number 1 of the internet: There are no girls on the internet.
          • Speed, on 01/28/2008, -0/+1Every guy is a guy, every girl is a guy and every kid is a cop.
    • neio, on 01/26/2008, -17/+2Oh dear g0d, Pepsi, WTF were you thinking?
      I just threw up in my mouth a little.:(
    • tas08, on 01/26/2008, -3/+1This seems an appropriate time to mention...
      http://hs.facebook.com/event.php?eid=12889350750
    • chedabob, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5Maybe in 12 years time, all the Myspace pages will have AJAX and stuff...
    • hackiavelli, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2At least you can argue back in '96 we didn't know any better.
  • falco216, on 01/26/2008, -16/+114"From Left to Right: Wizard on Bicycle, Wizard on Bicycle,
    Wizard on Bicycle, Wizard on Bicycle, Wizard on Bicycle"
    • cyx7, on 01/26/2008, -3/+25WIZZARD NEEDS FOOD, BADLY
    • shoutsmurmurs, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Wand glows in the dark!
    • Nekiruhs, on 01/26/2008, -2/+42"I take off my robe and wizard hat..."
      • Llanowar, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4I told you never to message me again!
    • lime148, on 01/26/2008, -1/+24Holy *****, thanks for reminding me. I forgot about that as soon as I closed the tab.
      • sonicjosh, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4Tab? Internet `96 does not recognize that term.
    • h4mx0r, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3... I... I still remember the lego site... Ah the memories... :..)
      • thebriz, on 01/26/2008, -0/+0The lego site was one of my first experiences with the internet...I had forgotten how much it sucked then
    • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1I always found that annoying about web sites back then. Many pages just had a glut of images strewn all over them, many which were repeated over and over again. I just didn't get it. It's one thing to put a bunch of pictures on the page, but something else entirely to put multiple copies of the same picture on the same page. Especially when they're in a line, as they often were. It always made me image the website designer being some spastic retard who couldn't resist creating visual abortions, or someone so enamored with the ability to put a picture on a web page that they had to repeat the action dozens of times.
  • lickmyback, on 01/26/2008, -9/+565I dunno, I can't see a single annoying ad in any of those screenshots. Bring back the good old days.
    • WolverineBlue, on 01/26/2008, -3/+82Those are corporate sites: the site IS the ad.
      • adrianmonk, on 01/26/2008, -1/+16These days, the corporate web sites have ads on them... ...for the same company whose site you're already visiting. For example, when I go to my credit card company's site to check my balance, there is a giant ad for a home equity loan. This has nothing to do with my credit card at all, except that it's a product offered by the same parent company.
    • jgreene777, on 01/26/2008, -2/+12http://adblockplus.org/en/ welcome to 1996... sort of.
    • dstz, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4Beside adblock there is "Noscript". After a few days, most authorized or forbidden ("untrusted") scripts will be set and it's very efficient.
      • Mizzike, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2also a great way to stay virus-free and avoid lots of tracking cookies.
    • avatarpalin, on 01/27/2008, -0/+6Back when Java was a coffee and AJAX was a cleaning powder your grandparents used..


    • bubba9999, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1The 1996 internet was infinitely superior to today's internet because there was no ***** Flash being used.
  • 10goto10, on 01/26/2008, -5/+341< blink > Awesome! < /blink >
    • chingy1788, on 01/26/2008, -0/+18marquee?
    • highPhone, on 01/26/2008, -0/+71< marquee > KIll me now! < /marquee >
      • Macskeeball, on 01/26/2008, -0/+6Silly highPhone, marquees are for links.
    • Culero, on 01/26/2008, -2/+47< marquee >< blink > poop !< /blink >< /marquee >
    • plachenko, on 01/26/2008, -0/+31Silly deprecated tags... Time for the new-age to arrive with "text-decoration:blink; font: ***** HUGE and red;"
    • PhantomBantam, on 01/26/2008, -0/+16You can't have a marquee without a gif of a dog running from side to side along the top!
    • ryan83189, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5blinking words attract attention.
    • gavintlgold, on 01/26/2008, -1/+16http://frnz.de
      • xxNIRVANAxx, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5My retinas!
      • hyperfocal, on 01/26/2008, -0/+12I'll see your frnz.de and raise you a http://www.horserentals.com/louisiana.html
        • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2Two things catch my eye on that page:

          "Double Click on ALL Underlined Blue Links." That's just about everything.
          "Bookmark us for Riding FUN" More like "Boomark us for Internet HELL!"

          Although they lose points for not inducing a migraine. Clearly they need more variation in their font sizes and colors and much more blinking/scrolling text and pictures. frnz.de is much more of a visual assault than this one.
      • xerigen, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3I'm not a big fan of music automatically loading but a FF7 midi is acceptable in most cases. Good on you, frnz.de.
      • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2I think I just had a seizure.
    • SystemError51, on 01/26/2008, -0/+17Schroedinger's cat is < blink > not < /blink > dead.
    • grawity, on 01/26/2008, -1/+2I have a userstyle.css that neutralizes all occurences of < blink > and < marquee >.
    • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+3Thank god for glitter text, now we don't need use blinking marquees.
  • sexualaj, on 01/26/2008, -14/+282You mean an Internet without;
    LOLCats, 2girls1cup, Goatse, Numa Numa, Myspace, Ron Paul, Ask a Ninja, N64 kid, Wikipedia, Dancing baby, Facebook, TubGirl, Chuck Norris Facts,

    Say It ain't so!
    • doctorfungi, on 01/26/2008, -39/+83An internet without Ron Paul... seems awesome.
    • holygram, on 01/26/2008, -2/+25I could do without the first three of those...no, four.

      Wait....five. Or six. And tubgirl.
    • Awspire, on 01/26/2008, -2/+31You missed the hamster dance http://www.webhamster.com/
    • LittleDas, on 01/26/2008, -0/+11Several of those are awful, awful things that I wish I could scrub from the folds of my brain
    • perogi21, on 01/26/2008, -12/+1What's 2girls1cup?
      • xxNIRVANAxx, on 01/26/2008, -2/+7http://2girls1cup.com/ : You tell me
      • xkingADROCKx, on 01/26/2008, -0/+14It's just 2 girls drinking from a cup of tea wtf??
      • EXreaction, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3I think it is one of those things you just don't need to know.

        I am glad as hell I read a comment on the first time it was dugg before watching the movie, just reading what they did was too much.
    • monospaced, on 01/26/2008, -0/+10That was all beta stuff. We're well into version 2.0 now.
    • Jones82, on 01/26/2008, -0/+48Wikipedia alone is more useful than then entire Internet was in the late 90's
      • celkin, on 01/26/2008, -8/+2LOLcats > Wikipedia
      • Speed, on 01/26/2008, -1/+9Wikipedia alone is more useful than the rest of the internet in 2008 is.
    • fakeplasticsnow, on 01/26/2008, -3/+6You left out Zero Punctuation. It's my reason for getting up on Wednesdays.
    • rawheadrex, on 01/26/2008, -0/+9Except, Dancing Baby was circa 1996.
    • Krystof82, on 01/26/2008, -3/+2Goatse has been around as long as the internet, and will live on long after it dies.
    • banter, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1We did too have Dancing Baby. You take that back!
    • Mirag3, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2I would welcome an Internet without all of those except Wikipedia.
    • Antixian, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1also you must add StarWars Kid
    • jimmiss, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Goatse and Tubgirl were around back then.
    • blitzkriegpunk, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1You forget meatspin and lemon party.
      • Scaryclouds, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1You haven't lived until you have been meatspinned.. After which you kill yourself.
    • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1I love it when people complain about content on the internet. Did it ever occur to you to simply NOT visit those web sites?
    • zeigual, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1all your base?
  • badwithcomputer, on 01/26/2008, -4/+73so...anyone else used to go into aol chatrooms MP3 1, MP3 2...or server 1, server 2....? people would have bots that sent you menus of their entire inbox, indexed to include albums track by track as email attachments. early p2p. good times. good times.
    • Joomal, on 01/26/2008, -0/+42AOL chatrooms? No, but IRC chatrooms worked well. Plus, BBSes still ruled the roost.
      • Matt2k, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7In 96? At least not around these parts. They were in a steady decline in my area from at least 93-94 onwards, when our town got its first ISP. They dried up very quickly. A few stragglers hung on.
        • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1I had a friend that ran a BBS around that time. It was a lot more fun than the internet back then.
      • Mirag3, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7Hey, IRC's still around and going strong - well maybe not strong...
        • SpoBo, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4usenet is getting a whole lot stronger and that was probably there back in 1996 :)
          • voyvf, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Oh wow this is making me feel old. Yes, yes usenet was around back then (and far earlier; check wikipedia). So was fidonet. (http://www.fidonet.org/)

            And there are still a few BBS's running to this day, a few of which have both dial in lines and ssh/telnet access. A couple of them are still superior to a lot of the phpBB boards out there.
    • fafaforza, on 01/26/2008, -1/+14Yup, copying 100MB of warez to another AOL users' email inbox in a few seconds FTW. Good times.
    • mancat, on 01/26/2008, -0/+21Totally forgot about the AOL warez bots, though I don't recall even being aware of MP3s until Napster showed up.
    • kbeeveer46, on 01/26/2008, -0/+15You were not the only one. I loved those chat rooms. Back then a CD took almost all night to download. My parents were never happy that the phone line would be tied up when I was online.
    • kayfouroh, on 01/26/2008, -2/+0I used to upload for those bots.. PS1 games, not MP3s.
    • Jones82, on 01/26/2008, -0/+22Remember waiting 2 hours to d/l a horribly compressed .rm porn clip
      • jus1haz2, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1haha ya good times. You couldn't even really tell what was going on.. you just hope it was 2 girls going at it, like the title said.
      • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Sigh... I'm on dial-up right now, and youtube videos take forever to download...
    • elshizzo, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2oh yehhhh....forgot about those. Good Timez
    • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1No, I don't remember that because AOL sucked too much to pay for. I used Prodigy, IRC, and a BBS that my friend ran.
      • SpoonerMcgavin, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1what? ... no aohell program that would use fake cc info to get you online for 3 days until they checked the number? ... aol had me online for 6 months for free ... makes up for all the cd's I got in the mail
    • niteskunk, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Any old-schoolers from PRs "phishy"? "vb"? "progz"? Man, those were the days...
  • chingy1788, on 01/26/2008, -30/+2looks like my friend's webpage
    www.bubboo.com
    or mine which i shall not post a link to since the server is an old P3 800MHz running XP and apache and my internet is capped, and I'm afraid of the digg effect
    • NotOptium, on 01/26/2008, -0/+30It's alright, I'm sure no one would visit it anyway.
    • lcarsdeveloper, on 01/26/2008, -1/+3"Welcome to Australia's best homepage website"
    • fileptr, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Hey chingy1788, please give your site's link..we want to "digg effect" it...please...
      • chingy1788, on 01/26/2008, -1/+1no its too good to be posted on digg
  • socalrob, on 01/26/2008, -4/+286" The internet in 1996 looks like it had been created in its entirety by a panel of 13-year-olds with Geocities accounts who had about half an hour to spare each night before bedtime. "
    Actually I was 13 in 1996 and had a geocities account. My website looked nothing like these craps. I had teh kool animated gif's and lots of scrolls and blinks!
    • Llanowar, on 01/26/2008, -0/+37I remember having a few geocities accounts too. And scrolls, blinks and animated gifs was the best possible way to create a site.

      We've all been MySpace design people :(
      • ta10n, on 01/26/2008, -11/+3Speak for yourself. Some of us have never been myspace design people. Blink tags and annoying animated crap was crap then and it's crap now. Although to be fair, my websites weren't exactly great either (mostly boring and bland).
      • AmazingAndrex, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2Everyone has to start somewhere.
    • arjung, on 01/26/2008, -3/+5the best part was putting the same GIFs over and over on the same page and seeing how they all moved together. and remember frames on everything? my pages were made so that links in the "navigation frame" opened in the "content frame".

      and then i heard about this thing called css.
    • reva, on 01/26/2008, -0/+19and then those 13-year-olds became 25 year olds who still use the same " tricks" in their MySpace accounts.

      But hey, at least there's no embedded emo songs!
      • keviniskool, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7Nope, but there are embedded emo MIDIs.
    • ZoomBoy, on 01/26/2008, -0/+76I hope you had the mandatory "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" sign and a counter as well!
      • Braxo, on 01/26/2008, -0/+37sign my guestbook if you like my site!
        • ChaosProfessor, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1i had chat on my angelfire page and a counter but just the one that spun around
          • natedouglas, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2I hacked my counter to multiply the number of visitors I "got."
          • spader725, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1in angelfire, you just got to refresh to page to get the counter to go up
      • bxblox, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1ya damn right
    • ChaosProfessor, on 01/26/2008, -2/+3I had an angelfire account Taught my self HTML in 5th grade
    • darlingt, on 01/26/2008, -2/+5So now you're 25, and yet you still say "teh kool". What has this world come to?
    • Dantetheinferno, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1I know these seem bad, but really, to the standards of 10 years ago without the coding technology we have now, were they THAT bad?
  • Frostman3D, on 01/26/2008, -4/+58It's not like it's that much better now.
    • badwithcomputer, on 01/26/2008, -2/+14i mean i can comment on your post and it doesn't freeze. and i'm using safari. plus i can see how many diggs this comment got just by browsing my comment history- it shows up in parenthesis. i've got to admit it's getting better. it's getting better all the time.
      • thailand1972, on 01/26/2008, -2/+8man I was mean, but I'm changing my scene and I'm digging the best that I can...
    • joshuagor44, on 01/26/2008, -4/+1Of course it is.
    • Jones82, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4"It's not like it's that much better now."
      Yeah, stuff like Google Calendar, Wikipedia, Amazon.com, online banking, Last.fm, Netflix, eBay, Google Maps, YouTube and Digg have barely changed at all since 1996
    • uziko, on 01/26/2008, -3/+6Another ridiculously stupid comment that people digg because it's cool to badmouth stuff.
      • Frostman3D, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1No, the fact is there hasn't been that much improvement on the net. I mean, we're still just sitting at our computers checking out webpages for the most part. We could be doing much more.
        • voyvf, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Like pulling down RSS feeds, watching movies, or even using our computers as telephones? Holy crap, you're right!

          Of course, if you mean more like VR, go play secondlife. (:
    • DocumentEd, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1I agree with you from a technical standpoint. Seems like lately I've been hearing more and more gripes about the framework of the current internet from people I know. It's just SLOW - and this leads to a lot of unused potential. And that hasn't changed a ton from 1996 to now. Sure, people are going to slam your comment b/c the ideas behind the sites on the 'net have gotten markably better. Well OF COURSE they have. And 12 years from now, they will be better still. But the framework of the internet has not changed enough for me to think of it as being that much better today, since the essential are the same - click, wait, browse, click wait some more, plod plod plod...
      • uziko, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1wtf are you talking about? if your internet is slow it's because you have a slow connection, any webpage i go to loads in under a second,
        Why do you say the speed of the internet hasn't changed a ton from 1996 to now? It's gotten thousands of times faster. I am completely puzzled as to wtf you are talking about.

        i sat here for about 5 minutes rereading your comment trying to make sense of it, but dude you make no ***** sense
      • uziko, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1i can't even say i don't agree with you because there is nothing to disagree about, you are speaking gibberish, you sound like you have mental retardation
  • joeglab, on 01/26/2008, -3/+44So what did your own website look like back in 1996?
    • Tazmaster, on 01/26/2008, -0/+84Geocities page with animated chasers following the mouse cursor. MIDI music that played automatically with no option to turn it off. Hypnotic pixel image tiled for the background. Web traffic counter at the bottom and absolutely no content whatsoever. Pretty much like most myspace pages.
    • Matt2k, on 01/26/2008, -17/+4http://www2.fwi.com/~safemale/
      • bakagaigin, on 01/26/2008, -0/+11Woah, I didn't know what I was getting into going to that page...
    • ranalicious, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3yep, good old geocities gif background with obligatory music and links galore
    • pirloui, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3never completed, but a start, 97:
      http://lavrans.net/old/
      Made on a 33Mhz /8MB ram Mac :)
    • barnsaton, on 01/26/2008, -1/+6A little bit like this: A little like this: http://welcometomyhomepage2.ytmnd.com/
    • Pillage, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4I disabled right click!
    • AmazingAndrex, on 01/27/2008, -0/+3I'm afraid to try and validate most of these.
    • jstem1994, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Geocities baby. Animated GIF's, trying to figure out how to center a table using AOLPress!
    • rufo, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1http://web.archive.org/web/19990203045939/http://w ...
      Site actually went up in '97. Read the comments for what I thought was awesome JavaScript/Java interaction at the time. Of course Java crashed Netscape half the time and if it didn't, it slowed down your computer.... but hey, if you sat on that page long enough you could read a special message!

      Images are broken unfortunately, I had a cool faux-3D brick background I stole from a FrontPage collection.
  • doctorfungi, on 01/26/2008, -0/+206I love it how the New York Times has a button for a "Low Graphics Version".
    • soulrock, on 01/26/2008, -1/+31Had to...dial up was a mother.
    • sluggoo, on 01/26/2008, -1/+5I remember reading the Times back when it looked like that. Not as much info, but it sure was easier to navigate. The crossword was free, too.
    • reva, on 01/26/2008, -0/+11they had to keep in mind that not everyone was rich enough to have 56k, naturally
    • Dylson, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2Lots of web pages had that back in the days of AOL.
    • thejadedmonkey, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4I actually think the NYT website is nicer in 96 then it is now!
      • cpanic, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Yeah, it had a nice clean modern look to it and it wasn't loaded with ads.
    • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1I'm on dial-up right now. I wish sites today had low graphics versions.

      Thank god for AdBlock Plus and NoScript.
  • Phocion55, on 01/26/2008, -2/+125Back in 1996 your interwebs street cred was determined by how many AOL punter appz you had.
    • badwithcomputer, on 01/26/2008, -0/+23anyone who knew their ***** can tell you- aohell and magenta were the killer apps of their day
      • Phocion55, on 01/26/2008, -0/+16Haha yea that's actually where I started getting into programming - Visual Basic 4 and AOL punterz. Specifically the one where all you had to do was send someone <font size="99999999999999999999999999999999">LOLZ</font> in IM and their AOL would crap out.

        Great fun!
      • Plutar, on 01/26/2008, -0/+8I remember using something called fate-x for stuff like that, good times, mail bombing people and such.
        • ajames01, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4I remember having my (horrible looking) forum being thread bombed and then editing the script to re-direct all the threads to his email so he ended up mailbombing himself everytime he tried to bomb my forum.... Good times!
      • niteskunk, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2Gothic Nightmares ftw!

        Dude... funny ***** was joining a public chat with your sounds disabled and typing {s c:concon
    • bitspace, on 01/26/2008, -6/+46Back in 1996, as with today, you were mocked for having any association with AOL.
      • DJNewStyle, on 01/26/2008, -1/+151996 = "gimme your warezlist"
      • dafragsta, on 01/26/2008, -0/+15The first thing anyone typed before spawning a new channel on EFNet

        /ban *!*@aol.com
    • darkism, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Or made. :D
      RaRe 9d7 and all that.
    • KayIslandDrunk, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4I can't tell you how many times I had to call up AOL customer service when I was a little kid and promise that I wouldn't use "the punters" anymore to get my family's account re-enabled.
    • UnderWaterman, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3i used prodigy!
  • garryconn, on 01/26/2008, -9/+3The terrible thing about this is the fact that many of the sites showcased here in this Digg haven't really changed much over the last 12 years! :)

    All kidding aside, you can clearly see which sites were wayyyyy ahead of the times in 1996 and which were not. Very awesome page and put together.
    • m0zzie, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7sorry for writing this here, i guess i was just trying to get high up in the comments in the hope that someone would read this.. but were any of you around back in the day before AIM, MSN, etc.. when ICQ had juuust started up.. it was ICQ'97/98, and we were all still on IRC?

      forgive me if i'm sounding a little old here.. but the internet was sweet back then.
  • smacksaw, on 01/26/2008, -0/+81In McDonalds' defence, they didn't have much time to get their website up since they had to get it from a lucky cybersquatter who won it from Wired Magazine when McDonald's passed on buying their own domain name.
  • Error601, on 01/26/2008, -0/+71The browsers then didn't let you do a whole lot. A lot of people were still running 9600bps and less modems so you didn't want to throw a bunch of graphics at them.
    • bitspace, on 01/26/2008, -2/+20In 1996? 28.8k and 56k were quite common at that point. Heck, 14.4k and 28.8k were common in 1994 and 1995.
      • stateofmind, on 01/26/2008, -1/+9Exactly, 9600 was more like 90 to 92. By 1993, BBS's were gloating about having 14.4s
      • likwidfuzion, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5I wouldn't say 56K was common place for the typical consumer. Most folks back in the day didn't even know the Internet existed.
    • Error601, on 01/26/2008, -0/+11Yes. You had to design for the general public and not just the technies who spent a lot of money on their systems. I was running a dial-in pool for an ISP in the late 90s and we a lot of low speed connections.
    • stateofmind, on 01/26/2008, -0/+10Ah.. 1996 was just about the last hoorah for BBS's. I went from 40-50 calls a day, to 15-20 calls. And those were mostly my dedicated Trade Wars 2002 and Barren Realms Elite players. (the WoWs of the BBS world).
    • roebeet, on 01/26/2008, -0/+8In 1996, 14.4K was probably the average speed - I recall having a 28.8K or 34.4K modem back in 1996 (as a techie), and I had horrible issues with my phone lines when I moved, that year. 56K was still a battle between USR and Rockwell, I think (x2 vs K56Plus).
      • zeroepoch, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4Yep, I remember that battle and for me USR x2 was better because my ISP commonly supported it. They only had one line that supported K56Plus in my area.
      • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+4Yeah, I had a 28.8 modem, but Prodigy at the time could only connect at 14.4.
    • TrevorBradley, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Remember boys and girls that these are kilobits per second, not kilobytes. I got a blazing 1.8KB/s out of my 14.4kbps modem. 1994 also had the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact on Jupiter, and I was able to download those pics to my machine at home.

  • telefuturo, on 01/26/2008, -9/+0hahaha great article..
  • daxsymbiont, on 01/26/2008, -18/+201WOW BEFORE SOMETHING IMPROVES IT HAS TO BE WORSE.

    INCONCEIVABLE.
  • williebee, on 01/26/2008, -5/+36Windows 95 and the Internet was the greatest thing since sliced bread, in 1996.
    • robo65, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1funny you say that. my buddy has a top computer, 250g hard drive, 2 gig memory, 256 graphics, and running vista. He wanted me to partition is hard drive and put windows 98 on it!!. It works fine and one of the fastest machines i have seen with 98 on it!!
  • krnldmp, on 01/26/2008, -0/+194In ten years we'll be reading stories about how flash turned corproate sites into a giant dildos.
    • carpespasm, on 01/26/2008, -5/+4huh, here it thought it made corporate sites into giant dildos today. Must be ahead of the curve.
    • Jones82, on 01/26/2008, -1/+3"In ten years we'll be reading stories about how flash turned corproate sites into a giant dildos."
      That actually sounds interesting, you do have any links?
      • celkin, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4In ten years:

        -we'll be visiting "primitive" archived sites like Google, Digg, and Facebook and laugh at them
        -we'll be viewing them with our standard 5Gb/s connections.
        -Firefox will be dead, but its code will live on in an even more advanced browser
        -Our computers will come standard with eight-core processors, 8Gb of RAM, 6 TB of hard drive space, and 2560x1600 resolution--all on our paper-thin laptops
        -we'll still be waiting for Windows 7 to be released
        • AmazingAndrex, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Well the wayback machine doesn't archive CSS or AJAX, and you'd have to sign into Facebook which isn't allowed either...
          • celkin, on 02/01/2008, -0/+1Our current wayback machine doesn't, but what about in ten years?
  • unicronband, on 01/26/2008, -1/+44How do I download the shockwave plug-in? Man, the internet in 1996 is serious business.
  • Joomal, on 01/26/2008, -2/+781996 web design was incredibly tough! Most computer nerds if you were rich and lucky had a monitor that could display 1024x768 and around 19"-20" which was about $600+ at that time.

    You had to design for people with 386s with 2400 baud modems and 640x480 screens that never knew how to reset the default screen size Windows 95 installed with.

    On top of that, there was no such thing as css/xhtml. php was unheard of still and server space and bandwidth was very expensive!
    • thailand1972, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7Too right - I remember being charged $600 a year for webspace and one Access database (yes Access).
      • TheSabre, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5Were you like me and paid $70 for two years for domain registration through InterNIC?
    • Error601, on 01/26/2008, -0/+36Yea, remember the "web safe" 8-bit color palette?
      • thailand1972, on 01/26/2008, -0/+15Oh man - memory lane.....and all the snobbery involved with that....

        "Your website ISN'T using the web-safe pallette? Oh lordy! FAIL!!!!"

        ***** you web-safe pallette.
        • Joomal, on 01/26/2008, -1/+15The snobbery is still around.

          OMGz you use tables? fail!
      • teradome, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Hell yeah, we ride with the TWO ONE SIX
    • TheSabre, on 01/26/2008, -0/+7Actually, PHP was developed in 1994 as a bundle of CGI packages. "Personal Home Page Tools" released in 1995. But again, it was written in C at the time and didn't have its own parser yet.
      • illegalcortex, on 01/26/2008, -3/+1Few people realize that C has been around even longer. Of course, at the time it was just a letter of the alphabet and didn't have its own parser yet.
        ;)
        • AmazingAndrex, on 01/27/2008, -1/+4C is compiled, not parsed.
          • illegalcortex, on 01/28/2008, -0/+3I weep that you got this many diggs (3 at the moment). Parsing is PART of compiling. What you're trying to say is that C is compiled, not INTERPRETED.
    • drizzlelicious, on 01/26/2008, -2/+3Excuse me while I go buy a 32" hdtv for $600
      • HardSide, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2Ah remember the java applets? Everybody had that watermark applet on their sites.
    • thailand1972, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2I remember getting turned down for a loan to buy a 486 DX66 PC (66 refers to 66Mhz) - it was for $1200. The year was 1995.
      • MixMastaKooz, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Are you sure that was in 95? I bought a Pentium 90mhz during Christmas of 94 and it was less than 1200...(Heck, the monitor from that machine still works! A Hitachi that's on my 6 year old nephew's computer.)
      • adrianmonk, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2i486DX2-66.
      • natedouglas, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3I bought a 486 DX-33MHz for about $1200. Packard ***** Bell, man. 4MB of RAM. Had to be booted with the "shift" key depressed to avoid loading all the TSRs so I could play Doom.

        I can't remember precisely when it was. I remember that I bought Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge for $15 at Radio Shack to play on it, and that was my birthday in 8th grade... So I was 14... so it was at the latest mid-1994 that I got the 486. Possibly second half of 1993, which would put me in the seventh grade. With Brandi Padilla. God, what an ass that girl had. OMFG. And that slutty "choke me with your 13-year-old gland" look.

        *grabs the Kleenex*
        *not really*
      • rarson, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2My parents spent about $2800 on an Acer Aspire, with a Pentium-100, 8MB of RAM, and a 1GB hard drive. That was some slick stuff back then. I ended up overclocking it to 133, bumping the RAM up to 24MB, and overclocking the built-in Cirrus Logic video chip (I believe that it had 1MB of video RAM and a clock speed of 50 mHz or so).

        That was the first new computer the cheapskates ever bought, after making us do with a crappy Brother word processor and then a second-hand Commodore-64 which they overpaid for.
    • mitrovarr, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1None of those things made you lose all sense of taste or design, though. You can do good things with those limited tools - very few sites back then actually did. Everyone had to have their dayglow background, text color approximately one shade off the background, and a billion animated gifs.
    • xerigen, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5Yeah, and not to mention that all my web space (5 mb) was taken up by my favorite dragonballz images.
    • TrevorBradley, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5I remember the switch when we were allowed to develop websites for 800x600 screens. And clients at a techshop I worked at who were upset that their newer 800x600 monitors had smaller icons and text, and were therefore "not as good". Good times.
  • Autofac, on 01/26/2008, -2/+36I remember the LEGO site.

    It was a different time back then, the internet was so much easier when I was young.
    • theprokaryote, on 01/26/2008, -0/+10I'm glad I'm not the only one... I felt like such a dork when I saw the page and exclaimed "HOLY CRAP I REMEMBER THAT."
    • kahrytan, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2You're not alone. I joined the internet in Dec '96. And some of those websites were nice in their own time.
  • zaldoe, on 01/26/2008, -11/+8wow pepsi had a website ? whoever visits it ?
    • blackjack75, on 01/26/2008, -1/+16People who drink Coke I guess.
    • Lobstertacular, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5I remember when I was a kid pretty much the only sites I visited were commercial sites for products In enjoyed: Pepsi, Legos, Lunchables....
      • ChoiceMad, on 01/29/2008, -0/+1When I was a kid (well, mid-teens) I searched for different search engines, browsers, and philosophical debate threads because I thought 'Surely, with all this information coming together SOMEBODY else has been able to understand what causes Existence'.
    • timro, on 01/26/2008, -1/+2Pepsi HAS a website?
  • Aquabat, on 01/26/2008, -5/+90Hey, you gotta start somewhere.. Notepad HTML editing FTW. =P
    • Skod, on 01/26/2008, -0/+41I still do that, constantly. Even for PHP, CSS and the like. Makes my life a hell of a lot easier.
      • hexydes, on 01/26/2008, -1/+16I do my design in Photoshop, and my development in Notepad. I've actually found that as I learn more and more about web technologies, I use graphical webpage editors less and less. Not even because I know the underlying technology more, but simply because the graphical editor just gets in the way.
        • Tanouki, on 01/26/2008, -1/+14I do my design in MS Paint, my development in Notepad and I'm using a Papyrus-based interface to write this comment.
        • yohnstoppable, on 01/26/2008, -0/+8I chisel everything in stone. Makes it a bitch to update
        • OrangeSoda31, on 01/27/2008, -0/+0Tanouki and yohnstoppable, you are my heros.
    • adrianmonk, on 01/26/2008, -4/+3There was never any good reason to use Notepad to edit more than 5 lines of text. Better text editors existed (and were available for free) before Notepad was ever created.
    • EXreaction, on 01/26/2008, -1/+4Eww, notepad...doesn't even render UNIX endlines. Just try editing a page when all of the lines become one!
    • thebellmaster1x, on 01/26/2008, -1/+3Hey, I always use Notepad if I can. HTML and programming. It's quick to load, and it's easy to use. Nothing more efficient, as far as I'm concerned.
    • ellisgl, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2I actually used DOS's EDIT before getting my hands on Netscape Gold 3.0
  • tekiek, on 01/26/2008, -5/+15As a coder, I say hats off to designers for stepping it up in the past 10 years
    • KSUdesigner, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2There are still just as many, if not more, bad web designers now as there were then. Hats off to the developers who gave the good designers the capability to display their work properly in a web browser.
      • spudnic, on 01/26/2008, -0/+19Why don't we just agree everyone should take their ***** hats off.
        • OrangeSoda31, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1It is rude to wear your hat indoors anyway.
  • wukillabee, on 01/26/2008, -3/+118in 12 years people are gonna say our current sites look like ***** lol..
  • ImASpartan, on 01/26/2008, -11/+6Well Done Spartan.
  • EvilMoose, on 01/26/2008, -2/+28I was using lynx back then so I never got to see the graphics.
    • jus1haz2, on 01/27/2008, -0/+1Ya lynx is still pretty fun to use.
  • Chairboy, on 01/26/2008, -1/+24"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Everything needs to start somewhere.
  • jnosanov, on 01/26/2008, -0/+91-modem squeal- ... finding local access numbers ... "You've got mail!"
    Ah, history...

    Oh wait some people still use AOL. Whoops.
    • Sharky35, on 01/26/2008, -10/+1Mostly diggers and scientologists... with the AOL to their trailers.
    • Jones82, on 01/26/2008, -0/+11Anyone who still has dialup AOL service will not be reading Digg comment threads
    • ElbowGeek, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4Interestingly, many internet old-timers, all two that are left out there now, blame AOhelL for what they saw as the internet neighbourhood's rapid decline, kinda like suburban flight in the mid-20th century. When AOL suddenly opened the floodgates for its members to fully access the whole of the internet, there was a tsunami of the net's version of trailer trash invading the otherwise very clubby, cliquey circle of geeks who then populated the various services therein. Actually, it was when the AOLlians found places to create their own pages such as Geocities (prehistoric version of MySpace) and loaded them with blinking text, MIDI music and scrolling text that things really went down the toilet.

    • ranalicious, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1I am ashamed to admit my parents still use AOL, although with cable internet. I just can't get them to detox on over to yahoo or gmail.
  • linksus, on 01/26/2008, -1/+21Whats worrying is people still buy that kind of crap off 13yr old school kids for thier own companys!!

    The amount of local companys ive seen with site like this is terrible!
    • Flummoxer, on 01/26/2008, -5/+3What's worrying is that you actually worry about someone having a ***** site.
    • clackerd, on 01/26/2008, -0/+5what's more worrying is that i had a major zero-wing flashback reading your post. thanks drug use!
    • timro, on 01/26/2008, -1/+4What's worrying is that you are worried over "companys" buying websites from 13-year-olds that can spell better than you. They would at least make "site" with better grammar.
  • MrHooper, on 01/26/2008, -5/+93Well... back in MY day, we didn't have any fancy dreamweaver, we used to code by hand. And Photoshop? Ha, it didn't have layers, and it certainly didn't support gif properly, so we had to use strange 3rd party apps just to make a gif or a jpg. CSS? what the hell is that? Tables didn't even work right in many cases. Since Netscape and Microsoft were trying to outdo each other on a daily basis, the rules changed all the time. What was orderly one week would break the next. You young whippersnappy turds think it was soooo easy to make a website in 96. Everything is easy when all you have to do is cry to get your diaper changed;)
    • Joomal, on 01/26/2008, -2/+17I still code by hand... the only way to really make sure your website markup is quality is to code by hand using css/xhtml. All the WYSIWYG designers such as dreamweaver are only good if you want just to get something up quick without worrying about compatibility and w3 verification.
    • AmnioticEntity, on 01/26/2008, -3/+0i designed my first page with photoshop 3.0 on mac os 6.1 on my mac II ci. i'm pretty sure ps3 featured layers. anyone remember learning to make fire from an inverted greyscale (256)color pallette w/ ps?
    • AmnioticEntity, on 02/01/2008, -0/+1"Well... back in MY day, we didn't have any fancy dreamweaver, we used to code by hand. And Photoshop? Ha, it didn't have layers, and it certainly didn't support gif properly, so we had to use strange 3rd party apps just to make a gif or a jpg."
      Photoshop 3 was released in '94 and it featured layers. it also ran beautifully on a quad950 if you patched to 3.05 using disks shipped directly from adobe. phone support wasn't half bad. then again, nothing beats an oldschool darkroom/press.
      "CSS? what the hell is that? Tables didn't even work right in many cases."
      Tables and Frames worked fine.
      "Since Netscape and Microsoft were trying to outdo each other on a daily basis, the rules changed all the time. What was orderly one week would break the next. "
      Books are cool. HTML For Dummies could have helped you in the past. btw, netscape on mac was pretty classy, especially when there was no ie for mac til what, version 4 or 5?
      "You young whippersnappy turds think it was soooo easy to make a website in 96. Everything is easy when all you have to do is cry to get your diaper changed;)"
      the hardest part about making a website in '96 was acquiring a computer and internet connection.

      sorry but your just plain wrong and you shouldnt have 88 diggs for such an asinine comment.