It’s weird to think that the internet’s been around long enough now for things to look terribly dated. It might not seem like that long ago, but the 90s had a lot of typical traits for websites that now feel like a headache in a fever dream in a nightmare. If you’re thinking of making a website these days there are some things you should really avoid unless you’re going for irony. Here are some of the culprits.
Has anyone mentioned hit counters recently? These relics were the mainstay of websites throughout the 90s, worn as a badge of pride, or mark of shame, on many a personal site, or even some of the bigger ones too. For a website to have a hit counter today is a show of bad taste. Googlerank’s transparently shows the relevance of a site, and it’s true popularity beyond ‘hits,’ so you know what you’re getting as soon as something appears on the search engine page.
Overloading the user seemed to be something that was super-popular through that crazy decade too. It seemed the advent of a massive network of information wasn’t exciting enough for people without some form of strobe effect to indicate how the technology was advancing to dangerous levels. A pro tip would be: Anything that flashes is 90s. Probably best avoided as such.
Having blinking loading signs is something of a time warp these days too. There are a lot more exciting things you can do with flashplayer than that. Similarly, automatic background music, usually of the synth variety, is a nightmare that most people have probably forgotten now, but it was once the norm. Try not to think about it too much.
Some staples of the 90s still survive today, bizarrely. For example, have you ever considered why there are so many messages proclaiming ‘click here’ next to what are obviously links? It seems that not everything’s changed at least. Also, the drop-down menu hasn’t entirely died a death, but its definitely pays tribute to more innocent times. Of course in seriousness there’s plenty that’s survived, and no doubt a lot of what we use today will seem garish in a couple of decades.
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