xkcd Geocities Site Redesign

[gamers2000]

This is by far the best strip (redesign?) ever. It took me a full 5 seconds to realize that, I did not, in fact, misspell XKCD. After that it was a good 2 minutes of grinning silly as I strolled down nostalgia lane.

Although I must say that I'm disappointed by the lack of "Right-Click is disabled, go jump off a cliff" or little faeries chasing after your cursor like the Pied Piper.

[patrickbeebe]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http: ... omatically)&doctype=Inline&ss=1&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator/1.654

94 Errors, 22 Warnings.

Thanks for a wonderful throwback!

[Ekeda]

This is the best xkcd has been in a long time.

[flguy1980]

From 2004 to 2007, I was the sysadmin for a high school. The school's website was in the not-very-capable hands of our web design teacher, who was a complete moron and pretty much taught her class out of "Web Design for Dummies"--the students knew more than she did.

One day, while solving some sort of computer problem in her lab, I heard her discussing the blink tag to her students. I could feel my blood pressure climbing...

To her credit, the school's website actually looks a bit more 1998 than 1995. Every event photo gallery, instead of a thumbnail page, is a Java photo montage. Most of the links spawn new windows, and URLs like "http://www.school.district.k12.state.us/DailyUpdates/calendar/calendar/calendar.htm" abound.

Oh--and the principal thought the school's website was the best thing since sliced bread and loved to brag about it, despite it being the laughingstock of the school district's IT office.

Care to guess why I don't work there anymore?

[bumpgrrl]

dear god, randall, you are evil. evil, evil, evil.

ugh.

oh ugh, my eyes, my stomach, my html and aesthetic sensibilities.

Rest in Peace Geoshitties? More like rot in hell.

good bye and good riddance.

also, y'all are way too young. thank god for the sysadmins on here making me feel like I'm not the only person who was an adult in the 90s. (young adult, but adult nonetheless).

[batterj2]

[neoliminal]

Just figured I'd throw in my linx screen shot^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h copy/paste.

Code: Select all

#                                                                                                 xkcd - A Webcomic - Nachos - HOSTED BY GEOCITIES (p1 of 2)

   #Atom 1.0 RSS 2.0

   INT MAIN(VOID) { COUT << "\

                                                                     [geocities.jpg]
                                                    [CONST1.GIF]   [CONST2.GIF]   [CONST1.GIF] &NBSP;

   Archive Guestbook
   [EMAIL1.GIF] News/Blag
   [A HREF] E-Commerce
   About the Webmaster
   [ANTISP~1.GIF]
   THE INTERNET COMIC WEBRING&NBSP;&NBSP; &QUOT; &GT;
   <A HREF="A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

   GeoCities is shutting down today. To commemorate this, xkcd.com has been redesigned."> [BROKEN~1.png]
     ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                   COMIC TITLE: Nachos

                              [left5.gif] [left4.gif] <BLINK>rAnDoM</BLINK> [right5.gif] > [right4.gif] /A> [BROKEN~1.png]

                                                                         Nachos

   |<                    < Prev
   <BLINK>rAnDoM</BLINK> Random Next > >| [BROKEN~1.png]

   Grownups Centrifugal Force Angular Momentum [USELES~1.PNG] Bored with the Internet

   SUBSCRIBE                                        SUBSCR~1
   Livejournal Comic Feed SUBSCRIBE: [info] xkcd_rss
   LiveJournal Website Feed SUBSCRIBE               [info] xkcd_blag

   [counter.gif]
   Pageview hit counter
   [webaward2.gif] [coolsite16.gif] [coolsite11.gif] [webtrips.gif]
     ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

   The internet comic webring!

   [back.png] Dinosaur Comics A Softer World Perry Bible Fellowship Copper Questionable Content Achewood Wondermark Indexed Buttercup Festival
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   TESTED ON KITES
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   Creative Commons License
   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
   This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). More details.
   [netscape.gif] Best viewed in Netscape Navigator 4.7 or better at 800x480
   GOTO 10


[Jamaican Castle]

<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>

Tell me this isn't what Lisp is supposed to look like.
I'd die twitching if someone made an actual language like this.

Also, I vaguely remember learning all those stupid HTML designs that looked dumb. Fortunately I never got to show off my "prowess" to the world at large.

[tentacleTherapist]

AHHHHH MY EYES

[harveytwoface999]

I dunno, needs more 404.

[rescbr]

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.

Ahem. http://webneko.net/

On another note, could any of you people who are mirroring sites, pretty please mirror this site?

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... /neko.html

To me, Neko is a big part of the 90's, and while I'm going to try and save the website myself, it would be nice to have a working copy out there for all eternity. This is after all the best of the few Neko websites, I've been able to find.

I got it mirrored at http://tequila.amendoim.org/neko/ . I wonder if it still works on Windows 7. Going to try to compile it later.

UPDATE: yeah, it still works.
UPDATE (almost) AN YEAR LATER (!!!): new url: http://in.sert.co.in/neko/neko.html

[Raptortech97]

No midi loops, thank god!

...text...

Ahem. http://webneko.net/

On another note, could any of you people who are mirroring sites, pretty please mirror this site?

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... /neko.html

To me, Neko is a big part of the 90's, and while I'm going to try and save the website myself, it would be nice to have a working copy out there for all eternity. This is after all the best of the few Neko websites, I've been able to find.

I got it mirrored at http://tequila.amendoim.org/neko/ . I wonder if it still works on Windows 7. Going to try to compile it later.

It works in Vista (no laughing), but the image library doesn't seem to work for me.

[TheChewanater]

This looks like someone in my Web Design class (besides me, of course) made it. Nah, they don't have this skillage.

[MotorToad]

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

If getting rickrolled felt like I felt when I opened xkcd, then it'd mean something. I mean, damn.

[fishfish]

I actually registered just so I could come say it - thank you!

Beautiful, and brilliant.

I used to write the html for my "pages" hosted on geocites by hand. On a notepad. Yeah.
And of course, shame has made me erase every one of those when 2000 came. Oh, the regret!

[thinboy00]

My first post although I've been lurking for some time...

http://tinyurl.com/yfy8wkn goes to the validator link (someone else posted it above, but the link broke)

I particularly liked this:

Line 127, Column 33: element "BRB" undefined. Did you mean "br" or "abbr"?

Code: Select all

Pageview hit counter<BR><BR><BRB>
                                ^

Obviously I liked a bunch of other stuff, but other people already mentioned everything else.

Finally, for your continued amusement,

• http://www.webcitation.org/5kowqF4NC -- archive of the site.
• http://www.webcitation.org/5koyxSERv -- archive of the complete validator output, in verbose mode, with original source.

Did/will someone submit this to the daily WTF?

[antinea]

hehehhe this is fun.

i learnt all my html from looking at other people's code.
my approach to designing was to get the best result from the least amount of code.
yeah i'm guilty too of stealing backgrounds and animated gifs, using a counter and br -br- br- ing, nbsp;-ing my way through a page. i'm sure it looked a bit better though and i never put awards or webring nonsense on there.

remember how we all put our email addresses on our websites - in the hopes of receiving email that never came? before the spam started?

does Frontpage still exist? what a uber-lame app that was! i had a friend who used frontpage to create geocities pages just like that, with emo poetry and embedded midi and lensflare and backgrounds brighter than the text. i couldn't really criticise her, she was my friend but oh did it hurt my eyes.

[PhantomPhanatic]

There's always Angelfire if you still want some nostalgia. I still have one.....and I don't have the excuse of making it in 1998....it was last updated only 4 years ago......

Also, the webring links did it for me. I finally fully cracked up when I saw the last few bits.

[Majuba]

Totally awesome, thank you Randall - I've been dreading the loss of Geocities for months now, for nostalgia mostly. It's nice to know it won't go out with a bang

[cream wobbly]

What's next? With any luck it'll be pixel text; and automated "webmaster" tools like it.

(And having found that generator, I can't help wondering how you'd actually go about using it in any meaningful way. I didn't wonder for long, and I don't intend to, so flame on!)

[DHeadshot]

No midi loops, thank god!

...text...

Ahem. http://webneko.net/

On another note, could any of you people who are mirroring sites, pretty please mirror this site?

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... /neko.html

To me, Neko is a big part of the 90's, and while I'm going to try and save the website myself, it would be nice to have a working copy out there for all eternity. This is after all the best of the few Neko websites, I've been able to find.

I got it mirrored at http://tequila.amendoim.org/neko/ . I wonder if it still works on Windows 7. Going to try to compile it later.

It works in Vista (no laughing), but the image library doesn't seem to work for me.

I'd already started on a mirror when this one was posted. Oh well, here's the zip file containing everything for it...

[dean.menezes]

<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>

Tell me this isn't what Lisp is supposed to look like.
I'd die twitching if someone made an actual language like this.

It's part of the source code for a Lisp (Scheme) interpreter, taken from Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. If you read this chapter, you can see that the syntax is an advantage because you can implement derived expressions (e.g. LET can be rewritten in terms of anonymous functions [lambdas]) in the interpreter by manipulating the cons cells that make up the program.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/ ... H-26.html#%_sec_4.1

Also, he took out all the indentation:

Code: Select all

(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))))


[Acheon]

I definitely shit myself this morning when I saw this. I was actually distracted enough to forget to read the comic!

One of my all time favorite crappy looking websites:
http://dustindiamond.com

[cream wobbly]

Did/will someone submit this to the daily WTF?

WTF? Why would you? If everyone went all-out creating intentionally bad code just to get their name or the name of their favourite thing up there, where would it end?

[docchaos]

Wow,
that brings back a lot of lovely memories.

Although, if I think about it, the fact that 10 years ago I thought something not too different from that design to be actually beautiful just creeps me out.

Anyway, I think this redesign to be better than most strips (and they're already pretty great). I didn't know geocities was closing and now I feel quite nostalgic (if only I could remember my old geocities adress, I might find the ruins of my first homepage ever).

PS: After being a fan of xkcd for quite some time, I registered to coment on the redesign.

[TheChewanater]

I don't anyone's pointed out that

Code: Select all

id="rnd_btn_t"

is not at all a round button.

[Monika]

Thanks for reminding me to back up my Geocities page.

<tear>

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.

Oh, I remember, the good HTML guides said not to use marquee because it only works in Internet Explorer .

Do you remember when Internet Explorer started having autocompletion? It changed everything.

<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>

Tell me this isn't what Lisp is supposed to look like.
I'd die twitching if someone made an actual language like this.

Die.

They made Scheme mandatory for first-years at my uni. Two years later they gave up and returned to Java. I hate Scheme.

[drekhan]

Complain all you want. It still beats CSS.

[tehol]

This is by far the best strip (redesign?) ever. It took me a full 5 seconds to realize that, I did not, in fact, misspell XKCD. After that it was a good 2 minutes of grinning silly as I strolled down nostalgia lane.

Although I must say that I'm disappointed by the lack of "Right-Click is disabled, go jump off a cliff" or little faeries chasing after your cursor like the Pied Piper.

Agreed. This is pure class I think.

Also... just because I really feel like scaring anyone who actual knows webcode with my truth.....

I....learned 'html' 3 years ago, with invisionfree....my friend made most of the code, I made the horror that is at the top (admittedly, it DID work... before I started to use it as a sandbox). I also used my 'knowledge' to write a website (last year) who's layout was... table-based.

Are you rocking in your chair, holding your knees and crying yet? no? you should be. It was gross, and I didn't know it until last...april/may. That's 2009. I had 'heard about' CSS. I tried to learn it once, but gave up after 15minutes, since it wouldn't do what I wanted. (oh, and I wrote it in notepad, but I still don't see that as a huge shame)

XD, who wants to see the code? It has... some CSS, but I can't claim having done anything but modifying the px variables and colours. (if it looks familiar, its probably because I tried to imitate a code my friend showed me years ago, since I wanted a border, and it may or may not have been his code that he showed me)

PS. the font wasn't my doing. I had a 'boss' that requested it.

[ManaUser]

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

Me too actually. (OK, not so much "mirror" as "archive") I just went through my bookmarks checking for geocites sites and found a few. Not all were on topics I care about anymore, but I'm glad I checked because couple had some content worth saving, and one had a notice that they've moved.

[ThemePark]

Thank you, DHeadshot and rescbr. You have saved the love of my life. <3

[Amarantha]

I'm... still traumatised.

*twitch*

[DHeadshot]

Good News!
There appears to be a bunch of people working on archiving the whole of Geocities. This Site is going to become a Geocities mirror, just as soon as they've finished...

[KestralTweet]

This whole thread makes me feel lucky enough to not have used the Internet in this time. For my eyes would have bled horribly... >.>

Did people honestly think this looked good?

[TranquilFury]

Reminds me of this bundle of nostalgia:

http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http:/ ... sample.css

[omgtbh]

Loving the redesign today - looking pretty sharp!

I'd like to make October 26th "Geocities Day" - hopefully it can become an annual event, with cake! (That's how you know it's a real annual event - cake)

Geocities really is an important part of Internet history - it shouldn't be forgotten. Sure, it's a great joke, but it's not all flaming animated gifs.

So with that in mind, I and a few friends have created http://geocitiesday.com to spread the word.

If you like the idea, please go to http://geocitiesday.com/#guestbook and leave a note about what your geocities site looked like - include the URL if you have it mirrored anywhere!

[MrMattHehman]

Randall, I don't know if you're going to read this. I too am a longtime fan who registered just to say thank you. I never did have a Geocities page. Actually thought I wasn't cool enough. Born just a hair's breadth too late or too soon, I guess. But the parallels between those endless piles of gaudy self-assertion, with what worked and what blew up, the tortured evolution of those bleeping beige boxes that lead up to it, the potential squandered, the promise it represented, and that point in my own life at the time are more than I can count. That's a part of me that they're pulling the plug on. And like Geocities, there's a lot to bury and move past. And a lot to love even more for all its warts. Thanks to my fellow fans for the mementos you dug up. But nothing could have made the intervening years fall away so precipitously like stumbling bleary-eyed into the den on Monday morning, firing up Firefox 3.5 with Privoxy and seeing unrendered HTML blink at me. Perfect. Frakkin' perfect. And I'll have it forever. Thank you, Randall. I owe you one.

[CmdrPage]

Brilliant. About the only thing that could make it more obnoxious would be fixing the background relative to the frame instead of the document so the text scrolls over it. Oh, and frames... anyone else remember those?

*cough* not that I may have perpetrated anything like that in my younger, more impressionable years

Also:

Code: Select all

GOTO 10

you fool! you may have just doomed us all!

[Color Printer]

Today triggered a nice remembrance of my past. And by "nice" I mean "painful" and by "remembrance" I mean "suffering that will still continue to traumatize me for life, thanks a lot for bringing that back up, xkcd".

[Kame]

What? I'm allowed to right click and there's no warning about how I'm not supposed to steal their site!? What is this!?