Do you folks know about the internet way-back machine? You can take a look at what today’s websites looked at in years past. Here’s an early Car Talk web page, 26 years ago, April, 1997. That was during the internet’s infamous web-browser war, AOL vs Netscape vs Internet Explorer. I’m using the Chrome browser today, and most of the links seem to at least sort-of work.
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Interesting. We complained a lot when formats changed but looks like we got used to it. Would have been fun to see some of the comments on rant and rave. I think some hard heart failure they got so angry. Just like now, people were not much open to hearing things they didn’t agree with.
Back about the same time with the same format was a great woodworking site called the oak. Founder died and his relatives took over and down the tube it went. Everyone moved over to a new one that was also great until the server blew. One day up, next day dead without a chance to say good bye.
Today, that site would be equally functional and desktop and mobile! You could actually navigate those sites and find what you wanted. The clickable areas were well defined.
Thanks, was nice to see the old site including Cafe Dartre. Back then, the site let you assign your screen name for each post. Guys like bb(insert humorous quip here) would change the text in the parenthesis for every thread. Rant and Rave had some real characters and as bing said, were quite passionate about certain topics. Good thing they didn’t have to exercise much forum moderation in those days. Was one of the more entertaining web sites of the day…
Hard to believe folks would get angry when discussing such a simple thing as cars, eh? … lol … reminds me of my dad & brother in law. They would get so mad at each other during car discussions you wouldn’t believe it if you heard it. And it was about topics that wouldn’t seem like they generate a lot of passionate debate, like does motor oil degrade with use or not? Or whether it is better to use engine compression to slow you down or use the brakes only. My brother in law would say using engine compression would create so much suction, who knows what’s going to get sucked into the engine … then he’d make a loud gasping sound … lol …
No it wasn’t cars. It was politics, welfare, civil service, etc. just like now. I don’t remember his name but one poor guy was a rural mail carrier that just could not accept reality.