Monday, October 26, 2009

But where shall we go for bad web design?

Geocities, we hardly knew ye. Yahoo! (the current "owner") has shut the place down:
Geocities is closing today. Its advent in 1995 was a sign of the rising 'Internet for everyone' era, when connection speeds were 1,000x or 2,000x slower than is common today. You may love it or hate it, but millions of people had their first contact with a Web presence right here. I know that Geocities is something that most Slashdotters will see as a n00b thing — the Internet was fine before Geocities — but nevertheless I think that some credit is due. Heck, there's even a modified xkcd homepage to mark the occasion.
The XKCD simply is outstanding, constructed from 100% Made Of Win and topped with Awesomesauce. Here's a taste:

Click through for the real thing: blinking stars on the background, "under construction" GIF pictures, datk text on dark background, and (my very favorite) a hit counter that reads "0000000036".

OK, Geocities, I guess we did know ye.

And if I recall correctly, my own hit counter here (scroll way, way down all the way to the bottom) may have come from somewhere on Geocities.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The source for the page is apparently a pretty good read, too.

Jim

Paladin said...

I was on Geocities pretty much from the get go, way back when. I think back on Geocities like I do the muttonchop sideburns and mullet I had as a younger man.

Not a particularly proud moment of my life, but a period I now look back on as "interesting" :)

Tam said...

It was a big day for me when I crashed my first Geocities page with a link from VFTP.