Blinking marquees of the early Web
November 11, 2020 10:23 AM Subscribe
Blinking marquees of the early Web
In the mid-to-late 1990s, two browser giants - Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer - began the First Browser Wars, each introducing their own proprietary features to the nascent web. The former gave us <blink>, the latter <marquee>, and many personal websites used both (one wrapped inside the other) in order to provide animation to virtually all of their users. Don't bother dusting off your old computer: I've recorded what it looked like!
I'm increasingly interested in preserving the living history of the World Wide Web. Others are doing so too, but I'm certain there are personal, lived experiences that aren't widely recorded. I remember the moment when 2002's Netscape 7 became the first - and possibly only - browser to support both the <blink> and <marquee> tags... because it immediately rendered about one in every ten GeoCities pages even-more-unreadable by applying both effects to the same block of text. (My eyes!)
Younger web developers are sometimes unaware of these quirky and fascinating bits of history. I'd like to try to work to better surface these kinds of stories and share them with the world. One more fun fact: <blink> may be dead, but <marquee> (surprisingly) lives on in virtually every modern browser.
(I don't know whether <marquee> works on MetaFilter, but if it does... sorry.)
In the mid-to-late 1990s, two browser giants - Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer - began the First Browser Wars, each introducing their own proprietary features to the nascent web. The former gave us <blink>, the latter <marquee>, and many personal websites used both (one wrapped inside the other) in order to provide animation to virtually all of their users. Don't bother dusting off your old computer: I've recorded what it looked like!
I'm increasingly interested in preserving the living history of the World Wide Web. Others are doing so too, but I'm certain there are personal, lived experiences that aren't widely recorded. I remember the moment when 2002's Netscape 7 became the first - and possibly only - browser to support both the <blink> and <marquee> tags... because it immediately rendered about one in every ten GeoCities pages even-more-unreadable by applying both effects to the same block of text. (My eyes!)
Younger web developers are sometimes unaware of these quirky and fascinating bits of history. I'd like to try to work to better surface these kinds of stories and share them with the world. One more fun fact: <blink> may be dead, but <marquee> (surprisingly) lives on in virtually every modern browser.
(I don't know whether <marquee> works on MetaFilter, but if it does... sorry.)
Role: author
Yeah, afraid not. I tried to put "(I don't know whether works on MetaFilter, but if it does... sorry.)" into a marquee tag and it worked in preview which made me think it might on save... but it didn't.
Probably for the best!
posted by avapoet at 6:51 AM on November 13, 2020
Probably for the best!
posted by avapoet at 6:51 AM on November 13, 2020
I enjoyed this. Thank you :)
posted by one4themoment at 3:03 PM on November 13, 2020
posted by one4themoment at 3:03 PM on November 13, 2020
If you like this project, you might also like https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash
posted by aniola at 7:30 PM on November 24, 2020
posted by aniola at 7:30 PM on November 24, 2020
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(maybe MetaFilter does not support marquees)
posted by Going To Maine at 2:15 PM on November 12, 2020