Blog posts are no longer happening here. Visit blog.nervousmusic.net for the latest updates.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Welcome to the information superhighway

This site is under construction. Five little words that quickly proved to be a big no-no in the web development community. But back in the mid-90s, who knew? We all thought we were saving face with our cute "under construction" announcements:



It gave us the ability to tell our audience that although you may not be impressed with what you see, don't worry, it's under construction, you see, and things will be worked on posthaste.

Those were the days. Teaching ourselves HTML in college so we could produce fun webpages with lists of hobbies, or academic projects, or other bric-a-brac that allowed us to put our own personal stamp on the internet. Except back then it was called the Internet.

We were amazed by the concept of the hyperlink, and stunned that our creation could be published on the World Wide Web moments later. (In some ways, I'm still stunned.)

We wrestled with frames, moving backgrounds, auto-playing MIDI music, and the <blink> tag. We were on top of the world.

But somewhere along the line, our college accounts were erased. Even the wonders of the Wayback Machine couldn't find http://abacus.bates.edu/~smcgonag. So sad. The World Wide Web lost its free spirit to the growing pains of the late-90s dot-com boom and eventual burst. But we still have wonderful reminders of those adolescent days like Geocities 1996 (a tongue-in-cheek tribute executed with perfectly valid and semantic XHTML and CSS markup) and articles like A Vernacular Web.

I'll never forget those trailblazing early days, even if it was just a period of half-truths and animated gifs. It's great to think back on how much fun we had. If you'd ever like to reminisce with me, you can always: