July 18, 2017

Retro website design.

Like this.

It's the thing now. (Please click that link, which is for a new, hip restaurant.)

I learned about that trend in the NYT, and I know you won't necessarily click that link, but you will not regret clicking of the top link.

From the NYT article, on the subject of the website you'll see at that top link:
[The] restaurateur... tapped his buddy... to slap together something quick... The result recalls a personal website built by a bored teenager in the days before Facebook and Myspace, with flashing Comic Sans text, dancing MC Hammer GIFs and cheesy keyboard music. A banner declaring “now with working email” scrolls across the top.

Mr. Silverman said he regularly gets emails from customers who are confused. A common note: “‘I love your restaurant but saw your website and think I can help you out.’”
Hey, email is cool. The Internet. Hey, I'm on a site. Hey, download tonight.... The Internet....

50 comments:

Robert Cook said...

It's a "thing" that won't last: the retro web page at the link is hideous!

Danno said...

I ran into a website that spewed music at me the other day. Now this one. Oh I hate that!

Birches said...

Warning: seizures may happen if you click over.

I was trying to figure out what retro website design would look like before I went over. I didn't go that far, but it was perfect. I didn't get any sound though. A midi file would have been a nice touch.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

If I had more free time, I'd code up a website time-translator. Come to my site, enter a URL, and it would reformat the page, changing colors, fonts, background, etc., to look like a page from another era.

tim in vermont said...

Reminds me of the time David Broder demanded of Matt Drudge who was "funding" his website. Thanks for the blast from the past.

tim in vermont said...

It's a "thing" that won't last: the retro web page at the link is hideous!

And people say lefties don't have a sense of humor.

rehajm said...

I'll take retro over something like this for Netgear. At least you can navigate without having to scroll or waiting for the background to load.

bleh said...

Ludicrous. Not a legit fad. The whole Internet was a fucking eyesore back then. That's how we kept the oldsters out of it.

Sprezzatura said...

"I learned about that trend in the NYT, and I know you won't necessarily click that link, but you will not regret clicking of the top link."

It's cool how Althouse smacks y'all upside the head. At the same time, you perceive that she's doin' ya a solid.


Carry on.

Ralph L said...

The Argyle Sweater cartoon used to alternate CaPs like that. Truly annoying.
Do love the tiny Hammer time, though.

J. Farmer said...

No phone yet?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Time is passing. I often forget that the '90's are as distant now as the '40's were in my childhood. If you can recognize the retro-osity it's because you lived it.

rhhardin said...

Email Rush at 70277.2502@compuserve.com

He gets up to 250 letters a day.

Stephen said...

Took too long to load on my 28K modem.

Fernandinande said...

BDNYC said...
Not a legit fad.


I figger that if the fNYT says that something is a fad, er, a thing, then I can trust that it may, or may not, be a fad or thing.

Because memes!

MountainMan said...

Hate it.

Steve said...

The giant PNG files of their menus make me question their commitment to the retro vibe. A Bitmap menu would be a thing of beauty.

Henry said...

Retro web site design is a trend every half decade. When it comes back, it only last a few weeks before its annoying again. It's like a cicada.

Nothing, ever, will beat Lings Cars, which never changes.

David Smith said...

28K? You should try it on Mosaic with a 300 baud no-name!

And then the music starts ;-( Back to defaulting to muted sound, I guess.

But seriously, there's 247K (19 files) of JavaScript and 135K (4 files) of css - total throw weight 492K and 32 files not counting the sound file. This is how today's kids write old-style HTML?

This is how you get megabyte executables to print "Hello, World!" to the console!

Bah, humbug!

BarrySanders20 said...

I want those dancing MC Hammers on my site

Lyle Smith said...

I like the restaurant's website. It's lit!

tcrosse said...

There's a lot you can do with your Apple ][.

clint said...

Did I just get Rickrolled?

Fernandinande said...

7.2-million-year-old pre-human website found in the Balkans

New hypothesis about the origin of the Internet suggests oldest website was hosted in Europe.

The researchers conclude that the first pre-human protocol followed the split from the last ftp-http common ancestor.

n.n said...

A website fit for my Atari 800 XL.

Bill Peschel said...

At least when "GalaxyQuest" put up a fan site in this exact same style, it worked because of the shock of recognition. You knew that this is what a GQ fanboy would work up back in the day.

"[The] restaurateur... tapped his buddy... to slap together something quick."

I call bullshit. Slapping something together today, you'd use Wordpress with the basic theme. This was premeditated.

Salazarla's food must be really shite if they had to use this to get attention.

///"I learned about that trend in the NYT, and I know you won't necessarily click that link, but you will not regret clicking of the top link."

///It's cool how Althouse smacks y'all upside the head. At the same time, you perceive that she's doin' ya a solid.

She is "doing us a solid." We've told her enough that some of us don't subscribe to the NYT. Some of us like to retain the 10 links for news stories.

Soon as they publish any, I'll be sure to click over!

Shawn Levasseur said...

Comic Sans? Blink tags? That's not retro, that's terrible in ANY era.

Now for a good example of a retro design...

This site!

(But can it be called "retro" if it never changed to begin with?)

Wince said...

What is Love?

LordSomber said...

Bad retro design (or is it retro bad design?) is still bad design.
And bad design doesn't work.
How do we know?
No one is talking about your food or drinks.

Bill Peschel said...

Crap. I had inserted emotion tags so that the last line should have looked like this:

Soon as they publish any, I'll be sure to click over! *Rimshot*

Fernandinande said...

Bill Peschel said...
the last line should have looked like this:


‮Crap. I had inserted emotion tags so that the last line should have looked like this:

David said...

Hey, I like it. And when I clicked through to one of the articles, which had great photos, I liked it even more.

Simple, cheap, bright, low prices.

Probably a great view of the gang activity down the street, if you come at just the right time.

(Just kidding about the gang activity. How the hell would I know?)

Etienne said...

When I started seeing web sites designed like that in the 90's, I only felt pity for the owners.

tim in vermont said...

"Ling love idiots with iPhones."

That Ling's Cars website wins the genre.

Art in LA said...

Nice ... and it uses responsive web design so it looks good on a phone. Miss those prehistoric web days. Simpler times, right?

Ron Winkleheimer said...

The reason websites used to look so crappy is because they were designed by people with mad programming skillz, and absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of graphic design. It was a good thing when people with graphic design expertise took over designing websites from people who thought putting little torches in the corners of a webpage was a brilliant idea.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Friends used to ask me to build websites for them, usually compensation was not mentioned. They just kind of thought, hey he knows computers, and he is a friend. I would always defer, telling them that they wanted someone with actual graphic design expertise. Of course, someone with actual expertise in graphic design who had mastered html in that early period of the interwebs would have been working for major corporations and commanding premium fees.

ALP said...

Ugh, no. The assault on my eyes....that garish color. NO. Just no.

Scott M said...

It's a trend that will last about a week. There's a reason people don't design websites like that anymore.

Snark said...

I'd go. And then I'd conspicuously pull out a Radio Shack calculator and pay for my meal in 1996 dollars, daring them to complain about it with my agressively raised eyebrow as I maintain eye contact and back out of the restaurant.

mikeski said...

The whole Internet was a fucking eyesore back then. That's how we kept the oldsters out of it.

Bah. If it's using that newfangled html crap, it's not retro. Real retro is text-only Usenet, at the newest.

If you're lucky, Kibo will reply!

MadisonMan said...

Wow. Complete with a dancing MC Hammer.

Blink</blink? on there as well!

Infinite Monkeys said...

Not retro enough because they have a domain-based email. A true retro one would have an AOL email address.

The '90s era style websites, as hideous as they were, are still better than the early 2000s ones with the splash page (loading page) that took too long and you couldn't skip. The '90s websites were about people discovering what they could do with simple html. It was ugly, but it was fun.

Infinite Monkeys said...

clint said...
Did I just get Rickrolled?


7/18/17, 9:16 AM


Haddawayed.

Real American said...

"Oh. They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

Paco Wové said...

One of my favorite sites for old-school hardcore retro Internet:

http://www.coboloncogs.org

Paco Wové said...

Though for my tastes, craigslist was the pinnacle of web design, and it's been all downhill ever since.

Zach said...

They need one of those black and yellow "Under Construction" signs to complete the theme.

Wandering Badger said...

Thanks for the notice - I'm planning on going next time I'm in LA, I recognized the street name and my daughter lives a mile from it. It's on the Working Persons edge of the "hippest" neighborhood in the US per Forbes, Silver Lake - so the Retro look is perfect.

Craig Howard said...

I found it hilarious.

I sat looking at it for a few minutes just because I like that song -- the dancers at the bottom were great.