What should I add to my '90s website?
So I’m currently toying around with NeoCities, and decided to trial it by building your classic mid '90s Geocities/Tripod/Angelfire pastiche website.
Some of the most important elements are already in place.
Tile background? Large font? Heading in bright pink with a shadow? Unusual colour choices? Random cat gifs? Under construction gif? Check! Check! Check!
In the true spirit of the '90s DIY web, some more pages (including the links page) are coming soon.
(I’m thinking of adding a page dedicated to either Britney or a nu-metal band.)
You can see the page so far here: https://that90ssite.neocities.org/
There are a few things that I want to add to make it complete, and I’m looking for suggestions.
The first, is to embed a midi file that plays automatically. Any suggestions on the best way of doing this?
Second, it’s just not going to be complete without a guestbook.
Third, any webring suggestions?
Fourth, what’s the best way of adding a java chat room in 2024?
Finally, anything else that really needs to be a part of a great '90s website?
UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback! I’ve added more annoying GIFs, a guestbook, a links page, and a cyber cat hangout.
UPDATE 2: And added even more gifs, an amazing Amiga demo, and a ton of links.
Adobe flash.
Nah that was a 2000s thing. It existed, under different names and owned by different companies in the 90s up until 2005 when it was bought by Adobe but you wouldn’t likely have seen flash elements on webpages. I think it was more of a vector drawing tool around that time.
Internet Explorer had an API called ActiveX, which let you run native code in the browser. Flash was an ActiveX object, but there were others available too. Adobe Shockwave was already available for Internet Explorer 3 in 1996 (https://news.microsoft.com/1996/06/03/microsoft-and-macromedia-deliver-shockwave-and-activex-to-millions-of-web-customers-and-developers/), and in the 90s you’d usually see either Shockwave or Java.
A precursor to Flash (FutureSplash) was already available in the 90s too, but it wasn’t quite as popular yet.
ah nuts. I could only remember seeing it post 2000s and then I thought, before saying it wasn’t really a thing in the 90s I should double check that that’s actually true so I did a very quick bit of research which seemed to indicate it wasn’t really around or used in the manner it’s most well known for on websites and assumed that cursory research would be enough. Goes to show you need more than lip service to fact checking.
Macromedia player. Used to play a lot of cartoon network games online back in the day with net zero and win 98 back in 1999