> DHTML, which stands for “distributed HTML”, was the final feather in our cap of web development tools.
Dynamic*
Anyway, there's also tables for layout, including Photoshop and Dreamweaver having a slice tool to generate those tables.
Also most of the coolest early adopter sites using CSS were anime artist portfolios, because it allowed them to do much cooler stuff.
Webpage view counters.
Midi files playing when you came to the site.
The <font> tag. Oh and <strong> was spelled <b> and <em> was spelled <i>. We also had <u>.
XHTML, with very long doctype tags I used to know by heart.
Diagonal stripped images that tiled for backgrounds were all the rage.
> Pixel fonts
Ohh yes. "Visitor" was the most popular one and was everywhere.
Not really dev-related but Windows used to make a noise when you would click links. For some reason, when you'd trigger a pop-up or an activeX control the multiple redirects or whatever would cause the click sound to happen over and over again. You knew a site was really turning its gears when there were three or more clicks.
Every site wanted you to install a toolbar. I collected them like pokemon, to obvious detriment (spyware galore). You bet I also had Bonzai Buddy or whatever his name was installed. Being 12 was fun.
DHTML was wild, alert was like magic. prompt() was also a favorite, haven't seen that one used in ages and it's likely now removed.
Downloads had a popup every single time you clicked on it - no download menus.
Flash. Shockwave. The other one from Microsoft that was cool for a bit but super convoluted and buggy... oh right, Silverlight I think.
PhpBB and vBulletin and Conforums. You were cool if you had a forum signature that was large and commissioned by an artist that likely used PlanetRenders. Bonus points if it was coordinated with your profile picture.
X.com still said "coming soon" or something, for decades I swear (everyone wanted x.com and I was always jealous of someone having a domain name with less than three letters).
Java applets (RuneScape was a good one).
"Sign the guestbook".
Overline styles were great fun.
Once flash hit, entire sites were made in it. No, text couldn't be selected for the longest time (ever?). Accessibility ("a11y") was but a hilarious concept. Text flying everywhere, blinking, even on fire in some cases.
Gifs with their boolean alpha channel making everything so delightfully crispy.
Bitmaps were used often since they were the defacto format for MS Paint. Most 1x1's I made were in paint. They had to match the background color you were using since MS Paint didn't support transparency (does it even do that today?)
Rounded corners were done using a 3x3 table and images for the corners. No, border radius was not yet conjured up. No, you couldn't rotate the images, you needed 4 different ones.
Emojis were not emojis but emoticons and were images, or we had a long dictionary of cool text ones people had dreamed up. Here's chef boyardee, one of my favorites: @=:{D
Clipart was exported from Microsoft Word 2003 and used everywhere. Curvey rainbow text images were rampant.
Speaking of, text as images when operating systems didn't have the latest cool font or you needed some gradient or something.
Oh yeah, gradients in general. Images!
bgcolor on the <body> tag.
Yahoo's genuinely great articles on website optimization.
#anchors in the URL didn't work with the id attribute, you needed an actual <a name="..."> tag. Bonus points for putting content in it and it linking you to your browser's homepage.
Ask Jeeves (which then turned into Ask.com). Babelfish translator. The speech to text software that was either parrot or turtle branded.
TortoiseSVN to download the sources for your favorite private server source code.
Filezilla deploy your site over FTP. It was the web developer's version of the "compiling!" meme, thing took forever.
Web rings, where people would link to the next site in the ring.
Lists of IP addresses you supposedly weren't supposed to ping. Got those from HellboundHackers and hackthissite forums.
BBCode. You were really cool if you implemented that.
Comet frames to implement live chat (before XMLHttpRequest or "AJAX", now simply fetch(), was a thing). Iframes before any of that.
PHP errors being dumped to the webpage, inline. You always knew someone's mysql server was down.
HTML comments that were actually if statements to switch out tags for IE.
<noscript>
"Created by Microsoft FrontPage"
Macromedia Coldfusion
Waiting 8 hours to download a 200MiB game client.
for (var k in obj) if (obj.hasOwnProperty(k)) ... being burned into memory.
On that note, actually using .prototype or I think .__proto__
Custom HTML headers had to be prefixed with X-
Java Server Pages (JSP) and ASP being the tabs vs spaces of backend development.
That may be an intentional "mistake" given the article's ironic style. Though "dynamic" does sound much cooler and groundbreaking than "distributed". Like in "dynamic programming"!
Dynamic*
Anyway, there's also tables for layout, including Photoshop and Dreamweaver having a slice tool to generate those tables.
Also most of the coolest early adopter sites using CSS were anime artist portfolios, because it allowed them to do much cooler stuff.
Webpage view counters.
Midi files playing when you came to the site.
The <font> tag. Oh and <strong> was spelled <b> and <em> was spelled <i>. We also had <u>.
XHTML, with very long doctype tags I used to know by heart.
Diagonal stripped images that tiled for backgrounds were all the rage.
> Pixel fonts
Ohh yes. "Visitor" was the most popular one and was everywhere.
Not really dev-related but Windows used to make a noise when you would click links. For some reason, when you'd trigger a pop-up or an activeX control the multiple redirects or whatever would cause the click sound to happen over and over again. You knew a site was really turning its gears when there were three or more clicks.
Every site wanted you to install a toolbar. I collected them like pokemon, to obvious detriment (spyware galore). You bet I also had Bonzai Buddy or whatever his name was installed. Being 12 was fun.
DHTML was wild, alert was like magic. prompt() was also a favorite, haven't seen that one used in ages and it's likely now removed.
Downloads had a popup every single time you clicked on it - no download menus.
Flash. Shockwave. The other one from Microsoft that was cool for a bit but super convoluted and buggy... oh right, Silverlight I think.
PhpBB and vBulletin and Conforums. You were cool if you had a forum signature that was large and commissioned by an artist that likely used PlanetRenders. Bonus points if it was coordinated with your profile picture.
X.com still said "coming soon" or something, for decades I swear (everyone wanted x.com and I was always jealous of someone having a domain name with less than three letters).
Java applets (RuneScape was a good one).
"Sign the guestbook".
Overline styles were great fun.
Once flash hit, entire sites were made in it. No, text couldn't be selected for the longest time (ever?). Accessibility ("a11y") was but a hilarious concept. Text flying everywhere, blinking, even on fire in some cases.
Gifs with their boolean alpha channel making everything so delightfully crispy.
Bitmaps were used often since they were the defacto format for MS Paint. Most 1x1's I made were in paint. They had to match the background color you were using since MS Paint didn't support transparency (does it even do that today?)
Rounded corners were done using a 3x3 table and images for the corners. No, border radius was not yet conjured up. No, you couldn't rotate the images, you needed 4 different ones.
Emojis were not emojis but emoticons and were images, or we had a long dictionary of cool text ones people had dreamed up. Here's chef boyardee, one of my favorites: @=:{D
Clipart was exported from Microsoft Word 2003 and used everywhere. Curvey rainbow text images were rampant.
Speaking of, text as images when operating systems didn't have the latest cool font or you needed some gradient or something.
Oh yeah, gradients in general. Images!
bgcolor on the <body> tag.
Yahoo's genuinely great articles on website optimization.
#anchors in the URL didn't work with the id attribute, you needed an actual <a name="..."> tag. Bonus points for putting content in it and it linking you to your browser's homepage.
Ask Jeeves (which then turned into Ask.com). Babelfish translator. The speech to text software that was either parrot or turtle branded.
TortoiseSVN to download the sources for your favorite private server source code.
Filezilla deploy your site over FTP. It was the web developer's version of the "compiling!" meme, thing took forever.
Web rings, where people would link to the next site in the ring.
Lists of IP addresses you supposedly weren't supposed to ping. Got those from HellboundHackers and hackthissite forums.
BBCode. You were really cool if you implemented that.
Comet frames to implement live chat (before XMLHttpRequest or "AJAX", now simply fetch(), was a thing). Iframes before any of that.
PHP errors being dumped to the webpage, inline. You always knew someone's mysql server was down.
HTML comments that were actually if statements to switch out tags for IE.
<noscript>
"Created by Microsoft FrontPage"
Macromedia Coldfusion
Waiting 8 hours to download a 200MiB game client.
for (var k in obj) if (obj.hasOwnProperty(k)) ... being burned into memory.
On that note, actually using .prototype or I think .__proto__
Custom HTML headers had to be prefixed with X-
Java Server Pages (JSP) and ASP being the tabs vs spaces of backend development.
Low Orbit Ion Cannon
... alright I'm done :D I miss the old web.
EDIT: okay okay I'm really done now.