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
  The Truth And Myth About Internet Marketing: The Lie By Implication
  The Top Ten Things You Must Put Into Your Internet Marketing Business If You Want To Make A Living At It.Just read the ads from the Internet Marketing gurus and you’ll be led to believe they will make you rich if you’ll just buy this course or that software. After all, the ad will tell you, “this is the exact same system I used to rake in over 2 million dollars last year.”Are they lying to you? Probably not. They probably did rake in 2 million dollars last year using this or that method. But the implication is that they only did this one thing and money, traffic, or fame just poured in. They probably aren’t lying about the facts, but there is a lie built into the implication.Here’s the truth. Nearly every one of these Internet Marketing gurus runs a large company. He (or she) has a forma
  ed, 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 i
    Is Your Networking Working?
    Small business owners attend networking events to get clients. Much of the time, it doesn't work the way they anticipated, and they often give up before really determining why it didn't work. They move to a different group and are destined to repeat the same mistakes.First of all, let's talk about networking basics. In order to get the maximum bang for your networking buck, join a group where your target market gathers and keep showing up. That means to go to every event you can possibly attend over and over so you can build relationships with the other members and they grow to trust you. You are not just looking to get clients directly from the group though; you want them to refer others to you, so that relationship is very important. Also, you need to stick with it for at least several months
    wsing 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 i
      6 Common Teacher Interview Questions and How to Answer Them
      When you get a call from a school administrator inviting you to interview for a teaching job, how do you feel? Happy? Elated? Excited? Nervous? Scared stiff?You don't need to worry about the interview if you're a well-prepared, qualified candidate. Preparing for a teaching interview is a lot like studying for a test. You can review commonly asked questions, think about what you'll say beforehand, and go in to do your best. If you prepare beforehand, the interview questions will seem routine and familiar. You'll have answers on the tip of your tongue, ready-to-go.Below is a list of six commonly asked teacher interview questions from my eBook, Guide to Getting the Teaching Job of Your Dreams. How would you answer each question?1. Tell us about yourself. This will be
      o 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 i
        How to Make Money from Free Products
        Is it even possible to legally make money from free products, you might ask? If it weren't possible I would not be wasting your time and my time with this article. So, read on...To make money from free products there are three extremely important principles that you must adhere to.These principles are:1. Find high quality products.When you promote and recommend any product, you are attaching your name and your reputation to that particular product. If you promote products of inferior quality your reputation and your integrity will suffer, and any success that you might have will be very short-lived.Building a sustainable long-term business based on product promotion, including promoting free products, requires you to be very selective in terms of the quality of products
        n 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 4.666, 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.