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Some observations on this: - There were JS rich and data driven web applications in the 1990s. E.g., there were all those text feeds for news etc, formatted for use with terminals. Client side reader applications for these were essential, since servers were not that powerful yet and suffered easily from load. And it could be done using the tech of the day, using hidden frames for loading what we now call padded JSON. (You had to be more on the defensive side regarding latency and loading order, since the app was dispersed over a couple of frames, but it could be done.) The main difference here was that these were dedicated applications for reading or browsing information. There was a rather strong dedication to the specific task and its mood, instead of an all over marketing approach. - There were strong influences that are now pretty much forgotten. Especially CD-ROMs and Adobe Director. While this was on its own rather experimental and hadn't found a common form, the influence was strong. We would have loved to go full screen and immersive, like CD-ROMs, but couldn't. (Here, JS had still lacking.) I, think, if it hadn't been for JS, wide portions of the web would have been taken over by Shockvave Director plugins and Lingo. (Compare what happened later with Flash, as it became more mature.) - There hadn't been a well established way of doing things yet. As a developer, as a designer, you pretty much wanted to contribute something new, something never seen before to the web. It was a race for the best, the coolest site, for best organization of content, etc. In light of this, the entire idea of having standard tools and templates, to be served to every customer, was just ridiculous. How could you innovate, or convey individually, or express the uniqueness of the customer to audiences by such a Stalinist approach to the web? (Compare this to nowadays, where, with a bit of bad luck, surfing – is this still a word? – is much an affair of changing color pallets.) |