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Webdesign then and now

As most of you interested in webdesign have no doubt noticed A List Apart 4.0 went live yesterday (on a new host as well). In the look back, Zeldman mentions how A List Apart got started as a mailing list, back in 1997. To really appreciate what a long way the web has come since then – and in some ways still wrestles with the same problems – you should take a look at the following article: The Web is Ruined and I Ruined it which was published in 1997 as well. If not for the historical value, the entertainment value alone is reason enough.

Browser wars (the brand new 4.0 versions ;)), blink-tags, promising brand new stuff like PNG, Flash and XML, from “HTML Terrorists” to “the light at the end of the tunnel” called stylesheets – there’s really too many things to find a single quote that stands out. You’ll have to read it all I’m afraid – and I doubt you’ll regret it.

» The Web is Ruined and I Ruined it.

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What's your favourite quote from the article?

  1. “The tag denotes a paragraph (originally, HTML required a closing p-tag, , but most browsers ignored it, so it fell out of use).”

    ...Oh my Lord…

    — Hans · Aug 24, 05:24 AM · #

  2. Hans, I don’t think it’s that backwards. I think browser creators were trying influence how useable the syntax could be by ignoring it. Look at textile. There are essentially no opening or closing tags

    or am I missing the point?

    — Brandon Erik Bertelsen · Aug 24, 08:12 PM · #

  3. > I don’t think it’s that backwards

    If we would act like XML and XHTML never happened, you might have a point. Also note that Textile is a lot more ambiguous, especially with regard to edge-cases, and more cpu-intensive. And in the end, even with textile you have opening and closing tags to generate a p (though they look very different, opening is “p dot

    — Sencer · Aug 25, 03:17 AM · #

  4. “In a perfectly tagged world…”, I can’t begin to describe the visual there!

    — Rick Silletti · Aug 27, 07:46 PM · #

  5. Nice time travel :)

    — Jérémie · Sep 8, 05:34 AM · #