xkcd

by **phlip** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:25 am UTC

Very much awesome. Brings back so many horrible memories of web-sites past (including, sadly, some of my own...).

Lemme see how many awesome things I can find...

<MARQUEE>, <BLINK>, and animated backgrounds... three things that just scream professionalism.
<HTML WEB="2.0">
There's some C++ code, except in capitals, some QBASIC code, except with Perl-like $var syntax, and some allegedly-Scheme code, that mentions Common Lisp in an error message.
<FONT STYLE="FORTHRIGHT">
<FONT FACE="COMIC SANS MS">
<TABLE CONS=()>
HTML errors and broken tags everywhere.
Under construction banners!
Calling the forum a "Guestbook", the store "E-Commerce", himself a "Webmaster".
Email link goes to Lycos.
Web rings!
Lots of Netscape-style broken images.
Lots of Win95-era mangled long filenames (XKCDLO~1.JPG, BROKEN~1.png)
<LANG="AMERICAN/ESPA☃ISH">
Mismatched back/forwards buttons (the "First" button and "Next" button are the same style, as are the "Prev" and "Last" buttons).
"Subscribe" links.
Random awards (I always wondered, who ever gave out these things anyway?)
Hit counters with optimistically-many digits and very small numers
X10KCD SPY CAMERA!!!! TESTED ON KITES!
Best viewed in a 10-year-old version of Netscape that for some reason has an Internet Explorer logo (but is still called netscape.gif).

Did I miss anything?

by **Steax** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:30 am UTC

I think the term "webmaster" itself now has some crude connotations. Perhaps "web designer" will also be superseeded by other stuff like UX designers and such over time.

The background is still tame by geocities' standards though!

by **PhoenixEnigma** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:34 am UTC

No midi loops, thank god! Otherwise, it brings back some long buried memories. I'm still deciding if that's a good thing.

Also, no Fora link? Or is it there, and I can't see it because my retinas are bleeding?

by **phlip** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:36 am UTC

PhoenixEnigma wrote:Also, no Fora link? Or is it there, and I can't see it because my retinas are bleeding?

No, it's there, it's just renamed to "Guestbook".

by **sje46** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:38 am UTC

I'm on Ubuntu, and I haven't learned how to work GIMP yet, so it would be cool if someone could take some screen shots. Here is the HTML code though:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all: <HTML WEB="2.0"> <HEAD> <TITLE> xkcd - A Webcomic - Nachos - HOSTED BY GEOCITIES </TITLE> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 1.0" href="/atom.xml" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="/rss.xml" /> <link rel="icon" href="/static/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/static/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> </HEAD> INT MAIN(VOID) { COUT << "\ <BODY BACKGROUND="http://imgs.xkcd.com/STARS.GIF"> <FONT COLOR="#88FF88" STYLE="FORTHRIGHT"> <CENTER> <IMG WIDTH="280px" SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/geocities.jpg"><BR> <IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/CONST1.GIF">  <IMG WIDTH="400px" SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/CONST2.GIF">  <IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/CONST1.GIF">&NBSP; <TABLE BORDER="5" CONS=() WIDTH="800px"> <TR> <TD width="170px"> <FONT COLOR="#88FF88" FACE="COMIC SANS MS"> <A HREF="/archive/">Archive</A> <A HREF="http://echochamber.me">Guestbook</A><BR> <A HREF="http://mail.lycos.com/"><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/EMAIL1.GIF"></a><A HREF="http://blag.xkcd.com/">News/Blag</A><BR> <IMG SRC="A HREF"><A HREF="http://store.xkcd.com/">E-Commerce</A><BR> <A HREF="/about/">About the Webmaster</A><BR> <IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/ANTISP~1.GIF"> </TD> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="QBASIC">IF $BROWSER = "IE" THEN GOTO 50</SCRIPT> <TD> <A HREF="/"><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/XKCDLO~1.JPG" alt="THE INTERNET COMIC WEBRING&NBSP;&NBSP;" />&QUOT; &GT;</A>  <BR> <FONT COLOR="#2468AC" FACE="COMIC SANS MS"><A HREF="A <FONT COLOR="#FF4466">web</FONT>comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. <BR> <MARQUEE><FONT COLOR="FF0000" FACE="COMIC SANS MS" SIZE="+2">GeoCities is shutting down today. To commemorate this, xkcd.com has been redesigned."><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/BROKEN~1.png"></MARQUEE> </TD> </TR> </TABLE FONT="800px"> <HR><JAVA> <FONT SIZE="+3" FACE="COMIC SANS MS"> COMIC TITLE: Nachos </FONT> <TABLE BORDER="5" CELLPADDING="5" SHELL="REGEDIT.EXE"> <FONT COLOR="#88FF88" FACE="COMIC SANS MS"> <TR> <TD> <TD><A HREF="/1/"><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/left5.gif"></A> </TD> <TD> <A HREF="/653/" accesskey="p"><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/left4.gif"></A> </TD> <TD><FONT COLOR="#bababa" FACE="COMIC SANS MS"><span style="text-decoration:blink;"><BLINK><A HREF="http://dynamic.xkcd.com/random/comic/" id="rnd_btn_t">rAnDoM</A></span></BLINK> </FONT></TD> <TD> <A HREF="#" accesskey="n"><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/right5.gif"></A> </TD> <TD><A HREF="/">><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/right4.gif">/A> </TD> <TD></TD><TD><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/BROKEN~1.png"></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <BR> <LANG="AMERICAN/ESPAâ˜ƒISH"> <IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nachos.png" title="'Cheater!' 'Hey, gaming on wifi? You have only yourself to blame.'" alt="Nachos" /><BR> <BR> </TD></TR></TABLE> <TABLE BORDER="5" CELLPADDING="20"> <TR> <TD> <A HREF="/1/">|<</A> </TD> <TD> <A HREF="/653/" accesskey="p">< Prev</a></A> </TD> <TD><FONT COLOR="#bababa"><span style="text-decoration:blink;"><BLINK><A HREF="http://dynamic.xkcd.com/random/comic/" id="rnd_btn_t">rAnDoM</A></span></BLINK> <TD><A HREF="http://dynamic.xkcd.com/random/comic/" id="rnd_btn_t">Random</A> </TD> <TD> <A HREF="#" accesskey="n">Next ></A> </TD> <TD><A HREF="/">>|</A> </TD> <TD></TD><TD><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/BROKEN~1.png"></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <BR> <TABLE BORDER="8" CELLPADDING="5"> <TR> <TD> <A HREF="/150/"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/grownups_icon.png" alt="Grownups" /> </TD> <TD> <A HREF="/123/"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/centrifugal_force_icon.png" alt="Centrifugal Force" /> </TD> <TD> <A HREF="/162/"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/angular_momentum_icon.jpg" alt="Angular Momentum" /> </TD> <TD> <A HREF="/55/"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/USELES~1.PNG"> </TD> <TD> <A HREF="/77/"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/bored_with_the_internet_icon.jpg" alt="Bored with the Internet" /></A> </TD> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE='SCHEME'>(define (eval exp env) (cond ((self-evaluating? exp) exp) ((variable? exp) (lookup-variable-value exp env)) ((quoted? exp) (text-of-quotation exp)) ((assignment? exp) (eval-assignment exp env)) ((definition? exp) (eval-definition exp env)) ((if? exp) (eval-if exp env)) ((lambda? exp) (make-procedure (lambda-parameters exp) (lambda-body exp) env)) ((begin? exp) (eval-sequence (begin-actions exp) env)) ((cond? exp) (eval (cond->if exp) env)) ((application? exp) (apply (eval (operator exp) env) (list-of-values (operands exp) env))) (else (error "Common Lisp or Netscape Navigator 4.0+ Required" exp))))</SCRIPT> <TABLE BORDER="4" CELLPADDING="20""> <TR> <TD> <A HREF="/rss.xml">SUBSCRIBE</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="/atom.xml">SUBSCR~1</A></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD> Livejournal Comic Feed SUBSCRIBE: <A HREF='http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xkcd_rss/profile'><img src='http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/syndicated.gif' alt='[info]' width='16' height='16' class='lj' /></A><A HREF='http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xkcd_rss/profile'>xkcd_rss</A><BR><BR><BR> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD>LiveJournal Website Feed SUBSCRIBE </TD> <TD><A HREF='http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xkcd_blag/profile'><img src='http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/syndicated.gif' alt='[info]' width='16' height='16' class='lj' /></A><A HREF='http://syndicated.livejournal.com/xkcd_blag/profile'>xkcd_blag</A><BR> </TD></TR> </TABLE> <BR> <IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/counter.gif"><BR> Pageview hit counter<BR><BR><BRB> <img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/webaward2.gif"> <img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/coolsite16.gif"> <img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/coolsite11.gif"> <img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/webtrips.gif"> <HR> The internet comic webring! <TABLE BORDER="3"> <TR> <TD><A HREF="#"><IMG SRC="back.png"></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.qwantz.com">Dinosaur Comics</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.asofterworld.com">A Softer World</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://pbfcomics.com/">Perry Bible Fellowship</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.boltcity.com/copper/">Copper</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://questionablecontent.net/">Questionable Content</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://achewood.com/">Achewood</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://wondermark.com/">Wondermark</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://thisisindexed.com/">Indexed</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.buttercupfestival.com/buttercupfestival.htm">Buttercup Festival</A></TD> <TD><A HREF="#"><IMG SRC="NEXT.png"></A></TD> </TR> </TABLE COLOR="8"> <BR> <A HREF="http://xkcd.com/store/"><IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/ad.jpg" TITLE="TESTED ON KITES"></A> <BR><BR>&LT;BR <TABLE BORDER="5"> <TR> <TD> <A REL="license" HREF="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border:none" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/static/somerights20.png" /></A><br/></TD> <TD>This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License</A>. </TD> </TR></TABLE> This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). <A HREF="/license.html">More details.<BR><BR><BR><BR> <IMG SRC="http://imgs.xkcd.com/netscape.gif">Best viewed in Netscape Navigator 4.7 or better at 800x480<BR><BR></FONT> </BODY> </HTML> GOTO 10

EDIT:
Here's a mirror: http://sean.raptorswithhats.com/geoxkcd.html

by **Pez Dispens3r** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:38 am UTC

Man, now I'm nostalgic for the era.

But I seem to remember most geocities pages being about vampires, goths, wicca, or some combination thereof.

by **psychosomaticism** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:42 am UTC

PhoenixEnigma wrote:No midi loops, thank god! Otherwise, it brings back some long buried memories. I'm still deciding if that's a good thing.

Yeah, and especially bad quality midi (is there any other?). Because for some reason visitors will love to hear the same song every time they visit.

and what about auto-pop-ups that inform of something new, or just random welcomes? Also, call me ignorant, but were   that big of an issue back in bad-html/geocities webpage maker times?

...I do remember seeing some geocities sites that actually had simple but viewable pages, but maybe because I caught the last few years of it in the mid-2000's.

by **pyroman** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:43 am UTC

No midi loops, thank god!

I was quite surprised about this one. He missed a chance to rick roll everyone 90s style.

But yea looking at this site most definitely brings back memories. While I can say that my site that I had made back in the day was better than this I can't really say it was all that much better. Yea we on the internets had some interesting "tastes" back then.

by **Asleep or Wrong** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:44 am UTC

I'm really grateful for the heads up--it reminded me to mirror some useful geocities sites (yes, there are useful geocities sites).

by **phillipsjk** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:48 am UTC

My first though: EWWW!!! Gross!

My second thought: I should look into using that Gopher mirror from now on.

The link the OP provided in the Comic discussion didn't work well for me. It pointed to forums.xkcd.com instead of forums.xkcd.com. Thus, my login cookie stopped working.

by **Steax** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:53 am UTC

But it needs more marquees!

In a middle school HTML class, I've been playing with hex colors while everyone else used the constants. I got a 95/100 on my (I do think) well arranged and non-blinding page. My friend got 100/100. Because he had green text on black, and the whole page marquee-d, left and right, bouncing, whatever. The teacher said 'it was good use of HTML tags'.

by i » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:00 am UTC

Super. When's Myspace shutting down?

Youtube userpages can go with it.

by **Mindor** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:02 am UTC

The whole thing was great but when I got to ...best viewed in...

I laughed so hard I cried.
Good job Randall, I really needed a good laugh tonight. Thanks!

by **Feenicks** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:07 am UTC

OMG - Old School.
xkcd has outdone itself.

Seriously awesomest thing ever.
Brings back the memories. Like wow.

and

i wrote:Super. When's Myspace shutting down?

Well said indeed!

:-)

You know, i think i used that little animated @ Email gif once back in the day...

by **TCW** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:10 am UTC

I particularly enjoyed the 'GOTO 10' at the very end.

But yeah, the whole thing makes me somewhat nostalgic.

by **broken_chaos** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:13 am UTC

My brain exploded about ten seconds after the page loaded. It took that long to realise, in bewilderment, what was going on.

Kudos.

by **Steax** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:14 am UTC

Feenicks wrote:You know, i think i used that little animated @ Email gif once back in the day...

There were entire CDs with just thousands of those little GIFs...

by **mishgo** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:18 am UTC

After lurking for years, and receiving my signed book last week (Australia... takes a while), I saw this and had to register specifically to say:
Awesome.

So perfectly and wonderfully done - artfully chosen images, overly bordered tables, exposed code... ahhhh memories.

by **Random832** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:20 am UTC

Since I recently installed netscape 4.7 as part of some nostalgia of my own, I decided to load it up just for fun - the page actually looks better* in it.

*For certain definitions** of better
**as in, the <FONT FACE="COMIC SANS MS"> tags actually work
***and the <MARQUEE> doesn't.

by **Amarsir** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:22 am UTC

This was superb. I actually didn't know Geocities was shutting down - I still use an @geocities.com email address, from back way before Yahoo bought them. Now I should be bothered to wonder if they'll be getting clumsy with the domain name and screw up my mail somehow, but instead all I can do is giggle at the thought of that awesome new site design!

by **phlip** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:26 am UTC

Steax wrote:There were entire CDs with just thousands of those little GIFs...

There was a program I saw once, about a decade ago, in the computer store thats whole purpose seemd to be to make thise little 3D spinning GIFs... it could take some text, or some arbitrary simple shape, extrude it, and render it from various angles or animate it spinning. From what I could see, that was about all it could do... it was basically the 3D part of WordArt but with one or two more options.

It cost several hundred dollars.

I didn't buy it.

by **SW15243** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:29 am UTC

For awhile I was wondering if I could explain why the first thing out of my mouth when I saw this was "Adorable!"
Then I realized this is just like looking at baby pictures of the internet.

by **Max2009** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:33 am UTC

This somehow brings me back to bygone simpler days...

by **Cheese** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:46 am UTC

Ahh, good old geocities.

...though I was rather surprised when I first turned up mostly because I'm part of a team that is creating a website that will be sticking to flashing things, embedded MIDI, animated backgrounds and other terrible things at the moment, and my first thought was "wait, xkcd is doing the same thing? No, can't be a tribute, not a chance, we're not even live yet, go look at things properly, Cheese".

Anyway, yeah, that's me away again! Byee, Individual Comics!

by **jendral_hxr** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:11 am UTC

I am still thinking about how RSS icon could be there. Do we have RSS at that **lovely** time? :roll:

by **Blokey** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:11 am UTC

SW15243 wrote:Then I realized this is just like looking at baby pictures of the internet.

HA! Brilliant!

by **KyrieEleison** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:56 am UTC

PhoenixEnigma wrote:No midi loops, thank god!

You forgot about the random scripts that you could use to have useless things follow your mouse around the page, like butterflies or bubbles, or a spinning clock with the date. Thank goodness that died out after about three years, although depending on what you're looking up, you can still run into them every once in a while. Like when I was starting to get into Tudor history and ran into the website of every 15-year-old emo-wannabe girl who "identified" with the tragic story of Anne Boleyn and yet managed to get all the historical facts wrong. One page had ghosts floating all over the page, making it hard to read anything, and also stretching out the page at odd intervals. I later tore her page apart for a class assignment in good vs. bad web design.

All that to say thank you Randall for managing to bring back the good things about cheesy web pages while making sure the evil things didn't tag along for the ride. It was a nice throwback and quite awesome.

by **lxs** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:16 am UTC

Code: Select all: "<TABLE BORDER="5" CELLPADDING="5" SHELL="REGEDIT.EXE">"

And the TABLE-based design in general

*g*

by **WhiteAvenger** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:38 am UTC

The first thing I thought when I saw the page was: "OMG! Has xkcd been hacked? That must be the reason for all these ad-like flashing banners!" It took me a while to find the real reason. (That might be caused by the page layout...)

by **Phoenix112358** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:40 am UTC

At first glance I thought the website got hacked or something! Then I took a closer look

Man, all those moving objects are really distracting... yet they were EVERYWHERE in the '90s D:

by **cyssero** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:45 am UTC

This is the best XKCD ever!

by **Steax** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:48 am UTC

lxs wrote:
Code: Select all
"<TABLE BORDER="5" CELLPADDING="5" SHELL="REGEDIT.EXE">"

And the TABLE-based design in general *g*

What exactly does that SHELL attribute do? I'm an idiot in web design, apparently. Don't know the CONS one either.

I find it amusing that things like accesskeys are still taken delicate care of. :p

by **phlip** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:54 am UTC

It doesn't do anything, it's not a real attribute.

The "CONS" thing is a LISP reference.

by **sje46** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:57 am UTC

phlip wrote:It doesn't do anything, it's not a real attribute.

Well, then, what's the joke then? If it doesn't work for HTML, what does it do in the language or whatever it does work for? Certainly it can't be there just randomly.

by **thumperward** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:57 am UTC

This is beyond win. The layout itself would be enough, but the source is hilarious.

jendral_hxr wrote:I am still thinking about how RSS icon could be there. Do we have RSS at that **lovely** time?

RSS dates from 1999. Back in the day, when you clicked an orange "RSS" button you got a page full of XML if you were lucky.

I had my first real "oh my God the WWW is wonderful" experience in 1999: a site full of Transformers biographies. And yes, it was a Geocities site which looked practically identical to this. (I can't believe that was ten years ago. Almost to the day, in fact, as I was in my first month of uni.)

As for what it's missing? The ripply-water Java applet. And a Comet Cursor obviously. The irony is that Firefox now actually supports the CSS3 cursor format, so you can have those in a standards-compliant format these days.

- Chris

by **wlao** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:06 am UTC

I LOL'd. I WTF'd.
Randall, this was brillant!

by **Kartoffelkopf** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:07 am UTC

When I was a young girl

Spoiler:

my first foray into my own webpage was not on geocities but on Freewebs, which worked much the same. I still ran into tonnes of horrible geocities sites. I still do on occasion, though they are actually good now. There are a couple of great Japanese RMXP sites on there which I need to quickly remember the URL for so I can save them...

RIP Geocities
(ps. why is Yahoo shutting it down? No profits?)

by **funda** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:34 am UTC

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zf-sOHNe3eY/SuVuDU6VSCI/AAAAAAAAAHI/LCsGXrjae94/s1600-h/xkcd-geocities-1.JPG

Here's the screenshot. For all eternity. :lol:

by **Quicksilver** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:39 am UTC

encapsulation of the entire page.

by **adamadam** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:46 am UTC

I like it, shouldn't the source code have less line-breaks (not <br>). I remember often looking at them and it would all show on one row. Which made it practicly impossible to find that one piece of source code that produced an awesome pop-up asking for your name, and then the page would say "Hello NAME, welcome to Adams awesome webpage".

Btw, it's not really optimized for 800x600

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