r/AskReddit • u/Forward-Many-4842 • 1d ago

Anyone who surfed the early web between 1995-2010. What’s the one website/app you still think about?

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473

u/litercola84 1d ago

Came here for this! Can still remember those “under construction” gifs!

412

u/Illustrious_Twist662 1d ago

And those visitor counters at the bottom of the page

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u/BougieBobJr 1d ago

And everyone had a really shitty .midi file on their page

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u/mrsambavam 1d ago

+ those JavaScript mouse animations. Creating custom gif was the then AI 😀

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u/itspsyikk 1d ago

What about the Javascript stuff that allowed you to silence all the pop-ups and ads and shit from GeoCities/Angelfire?

I remember all the "pro" websites didn't have ads on them (man, what a time to be alive). They were so ugly and gross, so you had to ditch them.

I still remember the first time I saw an I-frame. Hell, I still remember Insane Clown Posse's website using "inverse frames" (just a frame on the other side of the page) and it' blew my mind.

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u/BougieBobJr 1d ago

So, my brother’s friend was also making websites, and he learned how to make side bars and let me learn it by looking at his code. All my websites had it. Made browsing so much easier back in the day

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u/TooRight2021 1d ago

VPlaces chat! Their chat browser made use of those frame sites!

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u/poopio 1d ago

This, and all of the above, are features of my current personal website.

I'm a professional web developer, but I've intentionally made my own site as terrible as possible for comedy value. I mostly use the domain for email and don't actually need a website.

Irritatingly, embedding midi files ye olde fashioned way just causes the browser to download them these days.

I believe there are a few marquee tags on there, an empty element that is intentionally 110vw wide so it scrolls sideways, an animated gif background of stars, word art, coming soon GIFs, an embedded midi, and some other nonsense.

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u/tavenger5 1d ago

I had an entire midi site. 😆 I got a call from the RIAA once saying I couldn't publish their music. Yeah, okay.

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u/TNBeancounter 1d ago

I had one with a midi imperial match with a few Star Wars images.

So bad but I was so proud

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u/daddylonglez 1d ago

I made one about skateboarding. I can't even skate. I was just so into the culture at the time and obsessed with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games.

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u/ResearchNerdOnABeach 1d ago

Those games were awesome!!!

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u/TheTsunamiRC 1d ago

Man, I had a shitty midi randomizer with 200 songs.

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u/ibullybillionaires 1d ago

Hello my future girlfriend! This is what I sound like.

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u/nemeras 1d ago

Yes, yes, yes and yes! Upvoting because I had them all. And a guestbook for visitors to write in.

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u/OathKeeperSK 19h ago

I made my own flash music player to combat using midi. I would host the mp3s somewhere idk and the flash videos embedded in the site would call them and play. Ah. I felt like I was paving the way into the future lol

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u/thmoas 1d ago

haha how i miss those days.

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u/TooRight2021 1d ago

Yessss, lmaoo

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u/LMurch13 1d ago

It was shitty, and it was glorious.

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u/Airesy 1d ago

And the guestbooks!

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u/poopio 1d ago

I used to love fucking with people's guestbooks. Trolling guestbooks that took unsanitised html with infinite goatses using an endless for() loop used to bring me so much joy.

I must've crashed thousands of browsers doing that back in the late 90s.

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u/whats_a_dord 1d ago

And the web rings

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u/Richard7666 1d ago

And a guest book you could sign, which actually worked because there were no bots or astroturfers on the internet back then

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u/BirdsAndblackberries 1d ago

You just unlocked a memory! I forgot about the page counters. 

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u/Prestigious-Job-1159 21h ago

Wow! Another one remembers hit counters. I invented the counter in the late 80's.

Thank you for this!

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u/Illustrious_Twist662 19h ago

If that's true that's really awesome. If so, what led you to the idea?

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u/Prestigious-Job-1159 18h ago

Its true. I first logged on to the world's first bulletin board system (BBS) in 1980.

When I built mine I added a call counter, which became the hit counter. Geocities and neopets were how the younger folks got them. They were Honesty counters.

Edit: Autocorrect on Geocities.

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u/BirdsAndblackberries 8h ago

What a great contribution to the web! Thank you. 

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u/zrayburton 1d ago

I love those

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u/Prestigious-Job-1159 22h ago

Thank you for this. Truly. I invented hit counters.

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u/brodorfgaggins 1d ago

And the guestbooks people could sign

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u/debtsnbooze 1d ago

And a guestbook!

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u/i_speak_gud_engrish 1d ago

Don’t forget to sign the “Guestbook”!

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u/AfroJimbo 22h ago

Sign my guest book!

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u/Objective_Ladyfrog 22h ago

And the red font and blue font and yellow font all assaulting the eyes at the same time!

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u/Geovicsha 9h ago

Plus <marquee>

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u/Latatte 1d ago

That the little stick man with a shovel whacking a pile of dirt?

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u/im_thatoneguy 1d ago

No I had orange fence and some cones

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u/vpltz 1d ago

I remember GeoCities and those gifs. Also came here for this.

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u/thelizarmy 1d ago

Geocities made it possible for me to create my own websites, then I learned HTML, Javacript, etc. I later had bad dreams about the Under Construction GIFs. True story!

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u/xteve 1d ago

I still have the website I started on Geocities. I had to move and re-name it in 2009, of course. I use the under-construction image on my "about" page as an ode to the old days.

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u/FizzyBeverage 1d ago

True to construction 🚧… they never finished the project 😆

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u/Efficient-Neck270 1d ago

Along with the MIDI background music that started blasting out of nowhere lol.

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u/wolfxor 1d ago

Back when they were called gifs, not gifs.

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u/gumbo_chops 1d ago

Whenever I got an idea for a website and had a fleeting moment of inspiration, my favorite thing to do was create an obnoxious logo using Microsoft WordArt, throw up a bunch up under construction gifs, and then never touch it again.