[xenocyon]

I rather miss those early days. Web 1.0 is looked down on for its visual clutter (and definitely the hatred of image backgrounds and animated text was well-deserved), but Web 2.0 has just as much if not more clutter, and of a darker nature.

[l0b0]

The current web isn't anything like Web 2.0. Web 2.0 never happened, except in tiny isolated pockets. It's a terrible name anyway - it indicates a natural progression (which never happened), a clear improvement (which didn't materialize quickly enough for anyone important to care) and incompatibility with the past (which was never necessary since semantic components can be embedded in a normal web site). We're currently at Web √(-2) alpha-Google-2-Facebook-4-patched-0af33cd.

[efitz]

It boggles the mind to think of how much resources (time and money) have been spent so that control freak corporations can control my user experience from the server when I have a rich client under my control.

The whole web is backwards these days; users should’ve able to download themes for different kinds of content and the content itself should be barely human readable self-describing text with no layout instructions, only hints (like title and h1 and p)- leave it to the client to choose how to display.

[jrumbut]

I think it's extremely important that the text going around on the web be human readable and notepad editable. It really lowers the bar to start creating content rather than just consuming it.

Obviously it's a minority that do, but the potential itself has value I think.

[lbotos]

So, I'm younger, but there was absolutely a shift in thinking from web 1.0 to 2.0 in that 2006-2008 era. You could even call it the Ajaxian era. http://ajaxian.com/

I read that blog every day and the techniques and tooling (jquery/mootools/etc) absolutely shifted the thinking that birthed our "modern" react/vue style single page app.

This is like saying that Classical -> Baroque never happened because people still paint in a Classical style.

[l0b0]

No, what happened was that a lot of people said "web 2.0!", a bunch of other people said "AJAX!", and only the AJAX thing actually happened. Web 2.0 meant the semantic web, not the asynchronously loaded web.

[Crinus]

For as far as i remember 'web 2.0' meant replicating Mac OS X's Aqua on the web (very poorly, of course) with gradients and shadows (not necessarily through CSS, thanks to IE6, but it helped) and unnecessary javascript everywhere.

[TheRealSteel]

My favourite sites are Hacker News, and similarly reddit with the old design and custom themes turned off. Functional, clean, content focused, and high - but not too high - information density. There are changes I would make to both, but there are reasons I got addicted to them.

[smoyer]

My kids always insisted on using the blink and marquee tags together :O

[pbhjpbhj]

But how else could you make sure people knew your content was coming soon!?!

[retzkek]

"Under construction" gifs of course!

[thedaemon]

Relevant website with most of the under constructions GIFs. http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/

[dwild]

I'm way too much nostalgic right now.

[Breza]

I'm feeling the same way

[pubkraal]

I’m not sure why the overlords of HTML had to remove blink in the first place.

I have a daily need for both tags.