What is Digg?161 Comments
- Sparklehorse, on 10/12/2007, -12/+61Old News:
Last Updated: December 24, 1999 - capellathestar, on 10/12/2007, -7/+44"If your browser does not support images.."
ROFL! - Quarks, on 10/12/2007, -4/+40This is from 1994, the good old days.
Amazing that they only had 3 servers running microsoft.com
The bloopers are nice :-D
"Mark Ingalls recalls how he mistakenly deleted the live default.htm file that served as the microsoft.com home page, in the days before staging servers. While home page visitors were receiving File Not Found errors, Ingalls rooted around in his browser cache - where the cache filenames did NOT map to their real names - to find and restore the page to active duty.
The predecessor to MSNBC, known then as MSN News, was first published prematurely when a member of the production team, sitting up on a desk to study a schematic, clicked a mouse button with his derriere. The team watched in horror as the content went live to a public server before it was ready.
For the Internet Explorer 3.0 launch, the product support team released a fully overhauled knowledge base. However, their production environment didn't mirror the Web server, and the site was published without running a vital script that adjusted the drive letter used for the access point on the live Web machines. When customers tried to search the knowledge base, they'd get errors instead of results.
A vendor who had only a passing knowledge of microsoft.com coding policies delivered the first Windows CE site. The first test on the site with Weblint, a tool used to check validity of HTML, returned 100 pages of errors. There was a harried pre-Comdex weekend in November 1996 where every link and quite a bit of other code on the several hundred page site was manually recoded by a handful of people so it could be published in time for Bill Gates' Sunday night keynote.
The first try at personalization on microsoft.com, with a home page that marked headlines as read once a user had clicked them, wasn't tested for scalability to a large Internet audience. The technology worked fine on an internal Microsoft intranet site, so it was simply ported to the live site. It wasn't long before the feature was removed due to its decimating impact on live Web servers." - tuxidomasx, on 10/12/2007, -6/+37...omg
looks like someone's grandma made it. haha. its amazing to see how far the web has come (in terms of both browsers and design). - mglmouser, on 10/12/2007, -5/+34Ah! Took me a while to find it back but…
On a related topic, this site has a collection of Apple front pages since early on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernelpanic/sets/283374/ - kevinrose, on 10/12/2007, -35/+61Is it just me or is this design somehow better than the existing microsoft.com site?
- davidv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24If your browser doesn't support images, we have a *text* menu as well.
Ahhh the good ol days! - joel2600, on 10/12/2007, -18/+37now it's a decade later and craigslist still can't design a site to look any better than this
- rabiddogma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15I like it, it's very Web .2
- Schrade, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22ROFL look at the hacked Apple website picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernelpanic/14909783/in/set-283374/
- capellathestar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15the animated gifs...the horrid MIDI...*sighs* Ahh, the good old days...
- cheese06, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22to joel2600. you'd rather have craigslist be full of flash animations and cool ajax? did you totally forget about usability and ease of use? its about quality, not who has the most up to date html/flash techniques.
- dendrimer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13were they building the freakin death star??
- diecastbeatdown, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16you whipper snappers have it easy, what with your WEB2 and AJAX-a-ma-jiggies. back in the good 'ole days we had BBSes, and their good friends archie and gopher, yee-haw!
- robinyang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Good design can exist without fancy HTML/flash elements (in fact, some sites using flash are among some of the worst I've seen). I think he's referring to the relatively generic look that craigslist currents sports.
- energyblue, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13I can't see the picture, can someone link me to the text verson?
lol, kidding.
+digg. - Goatman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Considering it's linked off of Micrsoft's site, I doubt it's a fake.
- StealthTomato, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Meh, as funny as it is to say that, I'd have to disagree, Kevin. That looks like some 8-year-old's homepage ~7 years ago. The current design, while slow, at least doesn't try to be _too_ flashy. Granted, there's still a bit of excess bells and whistles, but that's not terrible.
- EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I remember that site from when I first got an Internet account. Even for the time it was horrendously ugly and slow as hell to load. I designed my first page back then too--my big concern was whether browsers would support the center tag. Ah, the memories.
I've tried to find an archive of that page before so I'll digg it. Archive.org only goes back to 1996. - imtigger2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11I know you guys aren't going to like this comment.... but I think Digg is heading in the same wrong direction. It used to be a clean, easy, simple interface that keeps adding on more and more. If they keep going this way, it's going to be a mess eventually. I'm hoping for the best.
- StealthTomato, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8You mean Web .02? :)
- MikeEFresh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It looks like the Wu-Tang Clan logo, without the cuts at the top and bottom.
- plamoni, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7No, seriously, I use lynx! -- http://lynx.isc.org/lynx2.8.5/index.html
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10HA! That's not the funny part though... the funny part is the picture of Mark Ingalls next to their first rack of Internet Servers... http://www.microsoft.com/library/images/gifs/stories/flshbk_mark.gif
LOL! What a tool! - JayRod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Most if not all the websites were like that back in the day, like 10 or 12 years ago. A title, a picture or two some links and links at the bottom of the page to take you back to home page or other shortcuts. The pictures couldn't be too big (file size) as dial-up roamed the land of the internet. 33k was in and 56K was around the corner. And that was it. No ads, no spyware, no cookies. Maybe it should've stayed that way. All using plain html. I remember doing a webpage on geocities like that. I also remember going for the top of the line U.S. Robotics 56k modem and it was expensive. I paid extra for the name. And then 3D graphics came along. One video card for 2D and one for 3D (SLI connected a la crossfire) and the rest is history.
- chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Less annoying for sure. =P
- digitalsin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I love the GOPHER link =)
- lalindsey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5why would microsoft archive a "fake" old version of their own website??
- toekneebullard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8agreed. I love how they introduce you to their "world wide web server."
- mwebb1984, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It would be usefull if several sites still had an html menu instead of only flash today. Try browsing on a cellphone on regular web pages... or if you're on a very low bandwidth connection. (I've actually turned off loading of images a few times in the past 6 months when I was on low bw connection.)
- andoru, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I like how the name of the browser on the window's title bar has magically vanished.
- TexMachina, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4EMWACS, I remember this site!
A Pre-IIS WWW, when Netscape Web Servers roamed free, SSL was new and BBS's were starting to feel the pinch. - chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yeah, my browser doesn't support images. =P
Oh, the good old days, sad and glad they've past. - withinavoid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ROFL the old death star page. I remember that.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Probably the first, last and only time anything microsoft did kept with any actual standards. :)
- kjd88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5ie has barely changed. muahahahah.
- arizonagroove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Apple.com through the years - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernelpanic/sets/283374/
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I think that their desire to destroy small innocent planets and rule the empire with a iron fist using an army of faceless atomatons has been pretty much realized at this point...dont you?
- oboreruhito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Mark Ingalls recalls that when he first typed www.microsoft.com into a Web browser to ensure it hadn't already been claimed, he was surprised to find a site already there. He traced the site to pioneering Microsoft developer J Allard, who had claimed the server name to test out his new TCP/IP networking stack."
J Allard, as in super meg0rz XTREEEME Xbox 360 J Allard? Oh that crazy rebel! - tra242, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Are you kidding? With all these bitchin rounded corners, standard pastel colors, and the ubiquitous text-heavy styling? It's still gonna be cutting edge 20 years from now. Kind of like the 80s.
- ,,|,_, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This is pre-deathstar Microsoft.
- Berkana, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Microsoft's look has always been cluttered with too much text. I'm not that surprised that even the first web site looks that way.
Behold the Microsoft style:
http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/03/visceral_design.html
Microsoft has added gloss, but it's still text poisoned. - EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Basically the entire page was one huge image map. And 14.4kbs was considered fast. *shudder*
- maverick3x6, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3hahah... you mean skynet from The Terminator?
- darthmdh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Was it just me, or did anyone else notice that the background image was of a planet with a nuclear-decimated city (think - skynet) and everything Microsoft are offering is linked from the traditional artistic location of hell?
- TheAttacks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4if you click the photo, it'll go back to the "history" as of 1999, which I was reading. There are several more versions I'm sure the developers would love to forget.
- evilneuro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I still remember gopher ... ah, halcyon days.
- oliyoung, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3it's deliberate, both craigslist and eBay are deliberatly shoddy design, it's the "flea market" approach, if your interface looks too over design you tend to alienate the kind of people who eventually become your customers .. eBay and Craiglist both have the money to redesign, they just chose not to ..
- dlaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3lynx
- GrahamStw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Lynx (the text only browser) is still available if you fancy trying it.
Gotta laugh at all you kiddies who are surprised that some browsers didn't support graphics.
News flash: All television used to be in black and white. Music used to come on huge vinyl discs called records. No one had mobile phones. People were nicer. You could leave your door unlocked. The air was cleaner. You got proper snow in the winter.... *mumble grumble* -
Show 51 - 100 of 158 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 