The 'Captain Marvel' site revisits classic 90s web design

Ah, the bad ol' days. (Actually, there were a lot of good days, too)

[weeks]

Marvel software engineer Lori Lombert said, "We built this in FrontPage and host it Angelfire." We can only say, complimentarily, that it looks like that's what they used.

- [engadget.com...]


Angelfire?!? It's still around?
[marvel.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 5:42 pm (utc) on Feb 9, 2019]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]

[graeme_p]

Angelfire is still around [angelfire.lycos.com...]

I think they are joking about hosting there though. Completely different IPs, different name servers...

I love it though.

[lucy24]

Hee. But seriously ... sure, you can intentionally make a site look retro, as if it hasn't changed since 1995. But for hevvins sakes, that doesn't mean you literally have to build it using tools from the 90s! (Looking at the source, I don't believe they did--unless they mean that they first designed it in FrontPage and then translated the output into current HTML 5. Or rather, into current javascript, since there is essentially no HTML as such.)

Direct link to the site under discussion:
[marvel.com...]
People with photoreactive epilepsy may want to have someone else vet the site first; it's got a lot of flashing and blinking elements.

Oh. Right. I knew there was a reason we no longer design things that way. The color scheme reminds me of my test site, which is intentionally made to look horrid in order to deter humans.

[tangor]

Must have a lot of scripts! FF with NoScript won't even display it. Temp allow the site itself and it STILL won't display. I'm outta there. :)

Obviously might look like 1990 to some, but acts alike an over done 2018-19 ...

[Marshall]

I just marvel at it, hehehe

[lucy24]

Har har, yuk yuk :)

[thecoalman]

Fail!. There is no use of <marquee>. :P

[lucy24]

There is no use of <marquee>.

Maybe it's lurking on one of the subsidiary pages that nobody has yet had the nerve to study? It would be trivial to replicate any kind of crawling effect using a canvas.

Poring over the main script (direct link is probably a violation of our rules, but it's the one ending in “settings.js”) reveals that it’s really all just HTML tucked away behind a series of scripts. (Whyyyy?) I found one

<blink> Captain Marvel</blink>

but mostly it’s animated gifs.

[engine]

There's a guestbook, and people have "got it" the Y2K is great.

[LifeinAsia]

Fail!. There is no use of <marquee>. :P

Double fail- no "This site is best viewed in Netscape" message.

[lucy24]

Over at cracked dot com, they point out the real failure in verisimilitude: the Multimedia stuff works, and does not take three days to load up. (Would have included a link, but they still haven't figured out that a CMS which yields “The page isn’t redirecting properly” errors every few days is perhaps not the way to go.)

[Marketing Guy]

Did anyone else Ctrl + A at the bottom to check for hidden text?

[Swanny007]

That's hilarious, so close to legit 90's. I'm feeling inspired to redesign my responsive sites now. Hmm how can I make my existing site responsive and 90's vintage? LOL

[lucy24]

Hmm how can I make my existing site responsive and 90's vintage?

Seriously, it's easier that doing responsive + 2000s vintage, because hard-coded page widths were not yet a thing. You'd be lucky if there was even any side padding instead of letting text run right up to the edge of the browser window--whatever width it might happen to be.