2024/04/04

A tall, glowing white figure stands astride the curved horizon of a dark planet, reaching over to touch hands with another glowing white figure, this one slightly smaller, on the other side of the planet. There is an eerie green auroral glow on the horizon. Above, many green-tailed meteors hurtle through a starry sky. Anyone who remembers browsing the web in the late 1990s might be reminded of something.

Founded today, 1994: Mosaic Communications Corporation. You’re probably more familiar with their second name, though: Netscape. My first glimpse of the web in 1995.

I was fascinated by that animated N icon. It got to me the way work by Dali and Magritte did: eerie, surreal, kind of haunting, with the glowing horizon and flying meteors during pageload. (90s internet meant seeing those meteors a lot).

Here’s to yesterday’s user interface design, and yesterday’s web.