[ethbr1]

~1999, you would have had Pentium III @ ~500 MHz max in a laptop, likely less. Pentium M wouldn't release for several more years.

So transparency was arguably still something a true hacker wouldn't waste cycles on.

To your general point, it felt like there was a shift around 2000, when computers needed to be "serious business" and the whimsy of the 80s and 90s was scrubbed out of software.

Honestly, I think we all would have been better off if we'd turned the web to something more approachable for common people (especially if it inspired them to be creators).

Instead, we built a brutalist efficient system where most expression is limited to setting your background.

[anthk]

In the 90's even hackers loved some bling-bling. Maybe not with E16, but some WMaker with a nice backdrop and a transparent UXTerm was really nice and much faster than the emerging KDE in late 90's.

Also, heck, it was cool and pretty having some city at night while you were day and night with URxvt with links or lynx on it reading media and posting to fora.

[jasomill]

Yup. Circa 1997, I switched from AfterStep to (then-new) Enlightenment briefly before settling on WindowMaker as a good balance between bling and performance.

My PC at the time was a hand-me-down white box AMD 386 (40 MHz) running FreeBSD 2.x.

[sonicanatidae]

I think the change you mentioned (2000) has to do with maturity of the tech, as well as, maturity of the acceptance of this tech, as part of everyday life.

As far as the state of the web today, you can thank commercial entities. Yes, they did/do contribute to the web's existance, but at the same time, they make it much worse.

[Mainan_Tagonist]

"~1999, you would have had Pentium III @ ~500 MHz max in a laptop, likely less. Pentium M wouldn't release for several more years."

and, Boy, did i waste cycles on enabling every eye candy possible on Linux/BSD on the only 150 Mhz Pentium pro with 32Mb of ram i could afford in 2001-2002...

"Instead, we built a brutalist efficient system where most expression is limited to setting your background."

Common people being creative was MySpace, remember the eyesore?

Just being sarcastic, i think the "Ugly" web of early HTML was actually wonderful, and we should encourage people to go back to it, but let's not delude ourselves too much, FaceStagram will always win the appeal of the masses.