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TABLE BASED WEB DESIGN
I was surprised there were no rants about this topic before I realized it was more than a decade back 😳
We've never had it better! So to help add a little perspective for all those ranting about what is unarguably the golden age for web developers... let me fill you in on web dev in the late 90's;
JavaScript was a joke. No seriously! - I once got laughed out of the room for suggesting we try use it for more than disabling a button - (I wanted to check out the new XHR request thingy [read AJAX]).
HTML was simple and purely a markup language (with the exception of the marquee tag). The tags were basically just p,ul,ol,h*,form inputs,img and table and html took 10 minutes to learn. Any style was inline and equally crude - anything that wasn't crude could not be trusted and probably wouldn't render at all in most browsers (never mind render correctly).
There were rumors of a style TAG and something called a cascading style sheet which were received with much skepticism since it went against the old ways and any time saved would be lost writing multiple [IE version specific] style sheets for each browser just to get it to work - so we simply didn't.
No CSS meant the only tags you had to work with to create a structured layout were br, hr and table... so naturally EVERYTHING was in nested tables! JS callback hell can't touch this! - it was not uncommon to have 50+ nested tables all with inline style in a single page which would be edited without any dev tools or linting.
You would spend 30 minutes scanning td tags until your eyes bled to find something, make a change, ftp the file to the server, reload the web page and then spend 10 minutes staring at the devastation on your screen convinced you broke
the internet before spotting an un-closed td tag with your bloodshot eyes.
Tables were not just a silver bullet - they were the ONLY bullet and were in the wild west!
Q: Want an inline form or to align your inputs left?
A: Duh table!
Q: Want a border with round-corners, a shadow or blur?
A: That's easy! Your gonna want to put that table in the center cell of another table then crop a image of the border into 6 smaller images to put in the surrounding cells... oh and then spend 10 minutes fucking with mystical attributes like cell-padding and valign to get them flush.
...But hey at least on the bright-side vertically & horizontally centering stuff was a breeze!22 -
!rant
As seen on a marquee:
Tetris taught me that when you try to fit in, you will disappear.
#stayweird1 -
Has anybody noticed some people's undying obsession with making their 2018 websites look like they're from 2001? Some of our clients INSIST on using site entry pop-ups, scrolling marquee text, and as many flashing buttons as possible on their sites. These are the type of people who think: "The number of buttons on my website directly correlates to the amount of money my site makes me. I want 12 buttons, all worded slightly differently, that all link to the same exact page. This will sell more of my product. From all of my experience in UX, I am positive that users will respond to a flashing neon colored button labeled "SAVE NOW!!!!!" Nevermind that your company employs professional UX Engineers. I know more than them."7
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S = Some person I know
Me = Me
S: Hey, I heard you also do [software/web development].. I was hoping to get some advice from you about some advanced level HTML and CSS for my classes.
//or that if I could teach him something
Me: What do you study?
S: Oh, I teach.
Me: 😯 Really? What do you teach?
S: Oh, just some basic HTML and CSS with Notepad to about 50-60 students.
Me: (;﹏;) That's great.
/*this is a shortened version of a very long conversation*/
They teach some basic HTML and CSS like <table> and <marquee> and stuff. They also teach C++ and Tally ERP.
Also, he and some other person made their small intuitions' website but they don't know how to put it online. They made it in, as far as I understand, simple HTML and CSS USING NOTEPAD (Don't know if they used JS or something else). That's.. really courageous or something... ? I don't know, I couldn't have a look at it because they have it on their local computer and don't know what Git is.
I showed him some better alternatives and ways that they could use (editors, version control, db, etc.) to improve their curriculum and answered his questions, and I told him that I'll try to help in any way I can if they ever need me.
This also made me realize how much I've learned and grown since I first started learning C in school. Still, I've got so much more that I need and want to learn.
//Always keep learning
😊
PS. What would you've told him if you had been in my place?1 -
A teacher where I used to study, thinks that there's teo types of Java:
Java NetBeans, and Java Eclipse.
Sime othe people there think that Java works only on Eclipse.
Some graduate students still use the marquee HTML tag, and encourage each other to use it.3 -
Remember this: <marquee>This text will scroll from right to left</marquee> and does any still actually use it? 🤣6
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For when I need to make a website awesome:
javascript:var a='hotPink',b='pink',h=document,i=h.body,c=function(d,e){f=h.getElementsByTagName('*');for(g in f){f[g].style.background=d;f[g].style.color=e;}};i.innerHTML='<marquee behavior="scroll" direction="left" scrollamount="30">'+i.innerHTML+'</marquee>';(function(){function htmlreplace(a,b,element){if(!element)element=document.body;var nodes=element.childNodes;for(var n=0;n<nodes.length;n++){if(nodes[n].nodeType==Node.TEXT_NODE){var r=new RegExp(a,'g');nodes[n].textContent=nodes[n].textContent.replace(r,b);}else{htmlreplace(a,b,nodes[n]);}}}htmlreplace("a|e|i|o|u",'o');htmlreplace("A|E|I|O|U",'O');})();c(a,b);4 -
A few years ago my boss held a brainstorming meeting to go over features for an internal reporting app. I brought up we should have related business news stories scroll on the page header like Fox business or something. He laughed and said sure. Two things happened after that.
1. Found out the marquee tag still works in chrome.
2. Yeah you bet I put that shit in there.
Anyways a meeting was held a few days after where my boss chewed me out for actually doing it. He showed the app to his boss and got laughed at by his leadership team when they saw news headlines scroll over analytics graphs.
After writing this I realize this is more his embarrassment than mine. Have a great Tuesday fam.7 -
I started programming in the eighth grade, and the reason as to why I continued was my Computer teacher. She was a really strict person who was generally very irritated with our class, but one day I had decided to actually sit down and do the web page she had asked us to make in the lab.
The page was a very simple one, all you had to do was put a title and below it a paragraph and then a subheading as well that was moving around using the marquee tag.
Since no one generally bothered to do it because we were often left unsupervised in the lab, I was the only one who had finished it.
She came back and saw that I had completed it and no one else; in that moment, the teacher whom we had tagged 'Hitler' because of her rude and mean nature, told me that I had done a really good job and was happy with my effort.
That somehow that made me feel like making the best goddamn web page in every lab class thereafter.
Today I have mostly forgotten how to use HTML and CSS, but that whole idea of writing words and making your computer do shit was beautiful.
If I can say today that I know how to code, it is because of her.
One day I hope to tell her this in person and express my absolute gratitude.1 -
How to make any piece of text irritating then it actually is...
A: add <marquee> tags ...
Irritating by how much?
A: add loop to it2 -
I just came across a website where someone used a <marquee> *and* a <blink> tag. That was the most interesting thing that happened to me all week so far. Too bad (luckily) blink doesn't work anymore.7
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The moment I knew that I was meant to be a dev was when I was 14 years old and it was computer class during high school. Basic HTML was the lesson and I was hooked by it. My favorite tags were the blink and marquee tags. I was fascinated by it! But learn to love web development when I knew what backend developing was about ;)
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