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Fugly Friday: Old school website atrocities from Microsoft
Back when I graduated high school, most websites hadn't begun thinking about design terms like glossy, grungy, or even "not a complete trainwreck." Heck, plenty of them didn't give aesthetics a second thought. Or a first one, for that matter.
It's no secret that Microsoft has some skeletons in their design closet. Hot Dog Stand will haunt them until the end of time. Less talked about are the early designs of the Microsoft web site, which reside at the corner of Retro Street and Fugly Avenue.
Recently the cool cats at Royal Pingdom dug up some real beauties. The screenshots go back as far as April 1994 and they remind me why I didn't care about using a browser that supported images back then. I love the first example - to me the shape resembles a cheap CD after you break it in half. The halftone sunburst and field of stars? Pure win.
It's no secret that Microsoft has some skeletons in their design closet. Hot Dog Stand will haunt them until the end of time. Less talked about are the early designs of the Microsoft web site, which reside at the corner of Retro Street and Fugly Avenue.
Recently the cool cats at Royal Pingdom dug up some real beauties. The screenshots go back as far as April 1994 and they remind me why I didn't care about using a browser that supported images back then. I love the first example - to me the shape resembles a cheap CD after you break it in half. The halftone sunburst and field of stars? Pure win.
Comments
11
Subscribe to commentsrokubungiAug 14th 2009 3:36PM
ouch! hotdog stand theme made my monitor display the white as a weird pink... or so I thought,I covered it up and amazingly the white was still white it just made my eyes see the pukey pink
DavidAug 14th 2009 9:21PM
If you're returning to 1994, Microsoft would not have been the only company that would have a fugly website by today's standards. To put things into perspective, how about commenting on the general quality of websites in 1994. As commented in links in the article, items such as the Microsoft's website and the Hotdog Windows 3 color scheme have since been modified. However, there are still bits of old Windows 3 UI in Windows Vista (eg. Add New Font dialog), just like Apple's system sounds in Mac OS X and ringtones on the iPhone could get a bit of a makeover (they're very unprofessional and quite childish).
Paul-PAAug 15th 2009 7:46AM
"..how about commenting on the general quality of websites in 1994."
Do you mean, like the way the whole first paragraph of the post does that?
Jeff hates socialismSep 11th 2009 5:04AM
Don't forget about the truckloads of money being made designing sites for technophobes..
FredAug 15th 2009 9:13AM
I submit for your consideration:
http://home.nwoca.org/
This is a website currently in use by the North West Ohio Computer Association, and is a portal for accessing information by teachers who live in that area.
The kicker... it was recently updated TO this layout. 0.o
FredAug 15th 2009 9:17AM
By the way, click some of the links... it gets worse...
EricAug 15th 2009 1:05PM
What's sad is I was actually working on the Microsoft web site in this time frame. The Visual C++ section, to be precise.
It was pretty fugly by today's standards. Every group had their own idea of what they wanted to do, and there wasn't any overarching design. That came pretty quickly, though.
feraligatr8Aug 16th 2009 1:33AM
hahaha back when everything looked like very bad quality GIF's
asldfnoasdfAug 18th 2009 7:46AM
I dont give a shit about this poorly written garbage why did i just waste a minute to read it, excellent, excellent story Lee Matthews. Keep up the fantastic, well written, very important work.
Lee MathewsAug 18th 2009 7:48AM
Oh, the irony! You don't care, but you just HAD to take the time to comment.
Thanks for the input. My next post will be the penultimate blog article, and you'll literally poo yourself a little. I promise.
Jeff hates socialismSep 11th 2009 5:01AM
Microsoft's design closet is built with the skeletons of massacred standards