#vintageinternet — Public Fediverse posts

Found in my Calishat Snaps: Buddy Icon Archive. From the site’s short history of AIM buddy icons: “The canvas was so small that every decision became emphatic. Surviving client documentation describes images between 48×48 and 50×50 pixels. A face needed a close crop; text needed blunt contrast; an idea often had to survive in a single glance. Animated GIFs turned that square into a tiny […]

Ars Technica: Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment. “In the mid-’90s, the web was exploding, but finding anything of actual value on it felt like an elaborate negotiation with whatever proto-search engine happened to be standing closest to the door. Unlike now, when Google is widely seen as both portal and gatekeeper, sites like AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, HotBot, and […]

Spotted in my RSS feeds: GE-97 Terminal. “A browser-based Windows 98 that boots, dials up, and browses what remains of the 1990s web with everything switched back on — built so a modern audience can feel what that screen felt like, not just look at a screenshot of it.” If you spent any time on GeoCities this web design will evoke nostalgia.

Spotted on LinkedIn: public.monster. It’s a 1990s-style Web host. From the About page: “Back in the 90s, you could just drop some HTML files in your ~/public_html folder and BAM — your site was live for the whole world to see. No build steps. No frameworks. No deployment pipelines. Just pure, unfiltered creativity. We want that feeling back.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/20/public-monster/

Alex Plescan: Just for fun: animating a mosaic of 90s GIFs. “…let’s go behind the scenes of how the GIF mosaic came together. We’ll look at sourcing the GIFs, cleaning them up so they’re safe for public display, and animating them.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/09/17/just-for-fun-animating-a-mosaic-of-90s-gifs-alex-plescan/