Netscape Composer in 2024

[Retrograde]

From the «fun for fun's sake» department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: I used Netscape Composer in 2024
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2024 20:26:46 -0500
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/138335/i-used-netscape-composer-in-2024/


Netscape Composer was my first introduction to web development. As a kid, I
created my first web pages using it. Those pages never made it online, but I
proudly carried them around on a floppy disk to show them off on family
members’ and friends’ computers. This is likely how I got the understanding
that websites are just made of files. Using Netscape Composer also taught me
basic web vocabulary, such as “page” and “hyperlink”.

Of course, the web landscape has evolved immensely since then. I was curious
to try out that dated software again and see what its limitations were, and
what the code it produces looks like from a 2024 perspective. The first thing
I needed was a goal. I decided to try and reproduce the home page of my
personal website as closely as the application allowed it. That seemed like a
sensible aim as my website has a rather minimalistic design, with very little
that should be completely out of reach for an antiquated tool.
↫ Pier-Luc Brault[1]

What a fun exercise.

Links:
[1]: https://plbrault.com/blog-posts/i-used-netscape-composer-in-2024-en/ (link)

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Retrograde <fun...@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
> Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/138335/i-used-netscape-composer-in-2024/

> I needed was a goal. I decided to try and reproduce the home page of my
> personal website as closely as the application allowed it. That seemed like a
> sensible aim as my website has a rather minimalistic design, with very little
> that should be completely out of reach for an antiquated tool.

> ? Pier-Luc Brault[1]
> [1]: https://plbrault.com/blog-posts/i-used-netscape-composer-in-2024-en/ (link)

Interestingly what he ends up with is a page that looks about the
same in all browsers as his real page looks to me in Dillo, except
the photo doesn't load there (probably due to that border, which
I think ought to be done in the image itself). With CSS enabled the
link unlining is removed, which he couldn't achieve in Netscape
Composer, but I don't like that anyway - some sites indicate links
with very minor colour shades so that without the underline you
don't notice them at all.

Whatever produces his real homepage makes a real mess in the HTML,
even putting in a few empty comments for some reason. That page's
HTML is also ten times the size of the page generated by Netscape
Composer. So in my opinion I think he's found a better tool for
the job, aside from the HTML errors perhaps (Dillo does actually
report "zero detected HTML errors" on his real homepage, which is
pretty rare, although not always accurate).

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