A Web Page From 1992 Still Loads

Thirty Bricks is $7 on how a catalog gets built from nothing and what changes once the shelf actually fills up.

Cyber-Tek is a cyberpunk tech zine that started in 1990, before most of us had a web page to break, and Issue #31 is two bucks of video vortex.

THE TIP. Open info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html in whatever browser you’ve got. It’s a web page from around 1992, one of the earliest anybody put up, and it still loads. Plain tags and links, and not one line of CSS anywhere on it.

Think about that, fam, the next time you’re rebuilding your site for the fourth time this year. (I see you. I AM you.)

None of it is clever. Not one bit. It tells you what the project is and where to go next and then it shuts the hell up, and thirty-odd years of browsers have rolled right over it without breaking a thing.

Meanwhile the portfolio you built on last spring’s framework wants an update before it’ll let you log in.

Every layer you add is a layer somebody has to keep alive. That somebody is you at eleven at night, and you’re cussing out a dependency you never asked for.

Somewhere under your site there’s a package you’ve never heard of holding the whole shitshow up, and the one guy who maintains it quit answering his email a while back.

What’s the oldest thing you ever made that still works? Hit reply. I actually want to know. ~ J.D.