pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it

was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color

and the color of the image were the same?

background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was

nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read

with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they

couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.

flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?

The mid-late 1990s were the playful childhood of the worldwide web, a time of great expectations for the future and pretty low standards for the present. Those were the days when doing a web search meant poring through several pages of listings rather than glancing at the first three results--but at least relatively few of those websites were unabashedly profit-driven.

Hallmarks of 1990s Web Design

Of course, when someone says that a website looks like it came from 1996, it's no compliment. You start to imagine loud background images, and little "email me" mailboxes with letters going in and out in an endless loop. Amateurish, silly, unprofessional, conceited, and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago.

Why were websites so bad back then?

• Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good

  website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing

  their studies of web user behavior.

• Difficulty. In those days, there weren't

  abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing,

  easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your

  site in Notepad or used FrontPage.

• Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether

  it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply

  crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of

  whether it served any purpose.

Browsing through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro.

Splash Pages

Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen.

Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.

Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.

Text Troubles

• "Welcome

  to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word

  "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't

  saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the

  first place?

• Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids'

  pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it

  was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color

  and the color of the image were the same?

• Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple

  background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was

  nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read

  with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they

  couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.

• Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of

  flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?

• "This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.6
  How to Set Up Your Own Free Ad-Tracking Links and 7 Reasons Why You Want To!
  Any time you use a URL in an Article, Web Page, Classified Ad, Pay Per Click ad or anyplace else you should always use Ad = Tracking Links. Not only will this Article show you how to build your own Ad-Tracker in 2 simple steps it will also tells you 7 reasons why you should always use Ad-TrackersBuilding a Tracking Link is as Simple as using a Free Web Site Counter with a Meta Tag Refresh Link.For a Sample how to do this Visit http://www.ewguru.com/hbiz/sample-Ad-Tracker.htmlThe Redirect part of the Code takes place in the lines Between the Head and /head statements. This Page is redirected to Google. Just change http://www.google.com to point to any URL you want re-direct too.The Tracking Code Appears between the Body and /body tags. You would put in the Java Script code for y
  , and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago.

  Why were websites so bad back then?

  • Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good

    website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing

    their studies of web user behavior.

  • Difficulty. In those days, there weren't

    abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing,

    easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your

    site in Notepad or used FrontPage.

  • Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether

    it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply

    crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of

    whether it served any purpose.

  Browsing through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro.

  Splash Pages

  Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen.

  Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.

  Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.

  Text Troubles

  • "Welcome

    to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word

    "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't

    saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the

    first place?

  • Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids'

    pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it

    was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color

    and the color of the image were the same?

  • Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple

    background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was

    nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read

    with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they

    couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.

  • Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of

    flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?

  • "This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.
    A Review of Deposit Slips
    Everyone who has a bank account cannot do without making deposits. Deposit slips are an itemized slip which shows all money, notes, coins and checks that are deposited into an account in particular. Deposit slips can be two kinds - personalized or standard. Generic deposit slips could be obtained from the bank and they do not include any personal information printed on them. Any client of the bank can use them if they provide information such as name, address and account number. You can find personalized deposit slips in the back of a book of checks and they have the account holders personal information and the bank account information reprinted.Personalized slips can be ordered in case we need to make a bank deposit. These slips are easily purchased from online retailers offering banking products an
    through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro.

    Splash Pages

    Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen.

    Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.

    Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.

    Text Troubles

    • "Welcome

      to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word

      "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't

      saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the

      first place?

    • Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids'

      pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it

      was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color

      and the color of the image were the same?

    • Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple

      background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was

      nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read

      with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they

      couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.

    • Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of

      flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?

    • "This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.
      Warren Buffet Essays are a Classic for Corporate Governance
      The Warren Buffet essays are as good for Corporate America as Milton Friedman’s papers were for Free Markets or Henry Kissinger's essays for Foreign Affairs. The stuff Warren Buffet wrote about is timeless. They are old now, but could have been written yesterday. Remember he is old school not a stock flipper, although today you could say he is a market maker, as his investments move stocks and industries. Well, I guess Kramer on TV is too these days.The Warren Buffet essays on Corporate Governance should be considered classics. My copy is a hard copy, so I do not even know if they are digitally available on the Internet, I bet they are somewhere;http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Warren-Buffett-Lesso
      y Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.

      Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.

      Text Troubles

      • "Welcome

        to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word

        "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't

        saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the

        first place?

      • Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids'

        pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it

        was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color

        and the color of the image were the same?

      • Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple

        background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was

        nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read

        with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they

        couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.

      • Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of

        flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?

      • "This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.
        Are You PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Prejudiced?
        I was reading an article one day, that ironically I found while searching through Google for subject matter to write about. I wish I had bookmarked the page, but I didn’t. I do remember the content of the article:Pay-Per-Click Fraud.Now, being in and out of PPC advertising off and on as the mood strikes me, the title of the article hit me in the forehead like the snap of a strategically aimed wet towel. I believe I still sport the welt.The article led you to believe that PPC was not only fraught with fraud, but the fraud was growing at an alarming rate with no controls to keep it in check! I read about instances of Competitors for keywords setting up “farms” of clickers to run out the PPC budgets of smaller businesses, ad copying, hackers using “click bots”, and link spamming. The tw
        at the web page is all about in the

        first place?

      • Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids'

        pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it

        was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color

        and the color of the image were the same?

      • Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple

        background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was

        nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read

        with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they

        couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.

      • Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of

        flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?

      • "This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.666, 1,000x3300 resolution."

        It was always so cute when site owners actually imagined anyone but their

        mothers would care enough to change their browser set up to look at some

        random person's website.

      • All-image no-text publishing. Some of the worst websites would

        actually do the world the service of putting all their text in image format so

        that no search engine would ever find them. What sacrifice!

      Hyperactive Pages TV-envy was a common psychological malady in 1990s web design. Since streaming video and even Flash were still in their infancy, web designers settled for simply making the elements on their pages move like Mexican jumping beans.

      Animated Gifs In 1996, just before the dawn of Flash, animated gifs were in full swing, dancing, sliding, and scrolling their way across the retinas of web surfers trying to read the text on the page.

      Scrolling Text Just in case you were having a too easy time tuning out all the dancing graphics on the page, an ambitious mid-1990s web designer had a simple but powerful trick for giving you a headache: scrolling text. Through the magic of JavaScript, website owners could achieve the perfect combination of too fast to read comfortably and too slow to read quickly.

      For a while, a business owner could even separate the serious from the wannabe prospects based just on how (un)professional their business websites looked. Sadly, the development of template-based website authoring software means that even someone with no taste or sense whatsoever can make websites that look as good as the most biggest-budget design of five years ago.

      Of course, there are still some websites whose owners seem to be trying to spark a resurgence in animated gifs, background images, and ugly text. 'll just have to trust that everyone is laughing with them, not at them.