Update 2/11/09: I redesigned the site, leaving the old 1999 April Fools theme behind. You can still view this post as it was intended though by going to http://www.jasongraphix.com/ugly. Clicking this link will redirect you to the archived version of my website and set the theme to 1999. Enjoy!
Update 4/5/08: Apparently while I was cheering on my wife, sister-in-law and friends at the BridgeRun, my site went naked a bit early. Thanks to the person who let me know about my preemptive nudity.
Update 4/2/08: Ok folks, show’s over, move along. WHAT? You really want the 90s April Fools version back? Just go back to the homepage and select “1998” from the dropdown on your right.
I couldn’t exactly encourage you all to get experimental last week without doing something a little off the wall myself. If you saw me speak at SXSW or at the Webmaster Jam Session, you’ve probably seen this version of my personal site straight from Geocities in 1998:
Inspired by Cameron Moll’s classic suggestion to steal from my own work, I’ve extracted the late nineties flare from the above design and injected it into my current site. Rather than starting with a clean slate on this site, I thought I’d update (or revert in this case) the CSS alone. Yes that’s right folks, the glorious design you see before you was possible simply by swapping the stylesheet. I was tempted to bring in the good ole’ blink
and marquee
tags, but that would have violated my self-imposed rule of not touching the existing HTML. I hope you’ll find that the site is still quite functional. You can even swap the stylesheet back to the original default by returning to the homepage and selecting “Contemporary Home” from the dropdown in the sidebar.
For those of you who are suddenly inspired to redesign your own sites – Really now, who isn’t? – I’d like to encourage you to check out my book: “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design”. I’m sure my tips about layout, color, texture, type and imagery will be just the help you need to tweak your own website design into something of this level.
I believe my work here is done. I’m gonna go rummage through the attic now to see if I can find my Garbage Pail Kids stickers, Soap shoes, Hypercolor shirt, pogs, and slap-bracelets. Peace!
Hahaha… ahem. I keep looking for a floating ad to follow me around as I scroll through the site. Truly awesome.
Adorable! It looks a lot like the one I had in high school. I think it’s gone now, but I was doing some cutting-edge things with image maps, let me tell you. I had the animated lava lamps too – I sort of miss them…
This is amazing! Guarantee you it’ll win you award after award, and more importantly I think you’ve set a trend here.
How do you make the stars sparkle and that peace sign that bounces? Breathtakingly effective.
This is great. I feel like I just learned HTML 3.2 all over again.
@Jason You can always use text-decoration: blink, one of the few CSS elements the browser makers have the option to support. FF supports it, IE not 😉
@Chris This is actually a fully web standard XHTML page 😉
Incredible! Brings back memories of my geocities page back in high school. My background had a purplish nebula type of thing going on.
@All – Thanks for the kind words. I’m counting on this look to catch on again – kinda like Madonna.
@Ove – Thanks. I thought about using blink in the CSS and a couple people have suggested it via IM and Twitter so far. But what should i blink? Links? Images?
How about my own comments?
Gotta call them out somehow!
Am I in a time warp? Because I have no idea where I am right now.
Great work Jason! It’s… uh, really groovy.
Oh, and Bryan is probably just jealous of your web skillz. Haha.
Amazing. Your site makes me feel 10 years younger! Not at all what I was expecting when I got here, but I felt so nostalgic I couldn’t leave.
I love it!
Jason, this is the most awesome redesign ever. Though for some reason, I am expecting a MIDI song to start playing automatically and really loudly…
@Rob � I AM jealous. I mean. This is beyond anything my feeble mind can even attempt. I’d try this style for a*26, but then I’d be ripping. :X
Oh, and that little arrow next to the date; Uniracers FTW.
Oh wait that last comment was towards Hamish. 😛
Like it Jason. Reminds me of one of my web sites 10 years ago.. and its still up!
http://members.aol.com/arks00/si2.htm
wow have things changed. LOL
Dude, this is awesome. Well done. This should be an example in The Principles of Beautiful Web Design Vol. II 😛
And, this is embarassing but I feel obligated to share my old site now.. it’s still up: http://www.geocities.com/kennyskills
haha Jason.. geocities was awesome. I love the comments about blink tags and floating ads. I’ve used my share of midi songs too. 🙂
Most awesome thing ever.
Haha! This cracks me up! Quite a few folks were surprised from Naked Day and their automated plugins 🙂