Art books full of screen grabs from web1.0 sites

Wapoose

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Used book stores always have a sections full of outdated computer software manuals from decades ago, which are cool enough, but do you know what's cooler?
Books full of screenshots from the computer, on the paper.

This seemed to be a bit of a genre in the 90s(?) For example, this book, Cool Sites. Published 1998, it's a showcase of "cool" looking web design from the era.
Usually books like this will be full of stuff in the vein of Pepsi World.
They act like kind of an art gallery to websites that might not be alive anymore, might not be archived on the Wayback, etc..

It's nice to know some people thought of web design as design "art," even back then.

If you know titles of ANY similar books, even more recent ones, let me know!
Attached is the book cover, +some scans of pages from Twitter.
CoolSites.png
VoidXNet.jpg
BigTop.jpg
 
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Used book stores always have a sections full of outdated computer software manuals from decades ago, which are cool enough, but do you know what's cooler?
Books full of screenshots from the computer, on the paper.

This seemed to be a bit of a genre in the 90s(?) For example, this book, Cool Sites. Published 1998, it's a showcase of "cool" looking web design from the era.
Usually books like this will be full of stuff in the vein of Pepsi World.
They act like kind of an art gallery to websites that might not be alive anymore, might not be archived on the Wayback, etc..

It's nice to know some people thought of web design as design "art," even back then.

If you know titles of ANY similar books, even more recent ones, let me know!
Attached is the book cover, +some scans of pages from Twitter.
View attachment 129792
I have this book. It's pretty rad
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It's a shame that @Captain decided to quit the forums. He has a lot of interest in these types of books too
 
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Wapoose

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Here are a few more from my collection:

Talk To Me, edited by Paola Antonelli
This is a book based on the 2011 MoMA exhibit of the same name. The book and exhibit both explored concepts of communication between individuals since the advent of the personal computer in the early 1980s. So while the book isn't specifically focused on web pages, there are some examples within it. Though they're more Web 2.0, not really Web 1.0, but still interesting

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Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond by Jakob Nielsen
I didn't realize this until I started this post, but the author is one of the founders of the Nielsen Norman Group, also known as NN/g, a company that promotes insightful user experience practices. They have a YouTube channel that's loaded with byte-sized videos on UX tips (I've been subscribed to it for a couple of years). The book came out in 1995, three years before NN/g formed

Anyways, this book is interesting because it's focused on hypertext, but not necessarily on Web 1.0. In fact, most of the examples are for different applications that use concepts of hypertext
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Designing Interactive Digital Media by Nicholas V. Iuppa
This one's probably the most relevant one to the thread since there are some genuine Web 1.0 examples in it. It even includes a section called "What Does The Internet Look Like" (sans question mark). There are some insights into former trends, like sites that were styled as virtual "places", webcomic websites, or games

This came with a CD-ROM, but the contents were basically one executable and one applet, neither of which I could run on a modern computer. The total size was only a few megabytes, too, which was surprising to dedicate an entire CD to such little data. It didn't seem worth trying to spin up a virtual machine to see the contents

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Jodo_Fan

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Cool thread. I had a few such books and magazines. Unfortunately they're all scattered to the cosmos.

Anyway, interested Agorans can also head over and take a look at this thread.


Or check out the Web Design Museum.

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/
 
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Shit-Lord

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i remember seeing a book like this in my middle schools library, it was basically a guide on how to use windows xp (or 2000) and other stuff about pc's. it was a really interesting book, as it allowed me to peek into a time period where computers were just becoming more prevalent and more popular. i wish would have bought it but i don't if my parents, or school, would allow such a transaction to take place.
 
i remember seeing a book like this in my middle schools library, it was basically a guide on how to use windows xp (or 2000) and other stuff about pc's. it was a really interesting book, as it allowed me to peek into a time period where computers were just becoming more prevalent and more popular. i wish would have bought it but i don't if my parents, or school, would allow such a transaction to take place.
It's a touch earlier than that since the book came out in 95, so it actually has quite a number of examples of Windows 3.1 programs (which makes it extra nostalgic for me since that's the version of Windows that I grew up using)

It's not uncommon for libraries to sell off old books for cheap, including school libraries which might unload older books at the end of the year. So it might have been worth asking about it. Though these books are pretty cheap now anyways. It's common to find this particular one on ebay for $5, including shipping, such as this listing

Do you remember coming across any other similar books?
 
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Shit-Lord

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Do you remember coming across any other similar books?
sadly no, but i do remember seeing a book about newspaper caricatures and about various famous(?) caricaturist/cartoonist. a friend of mine stole said book in 8th grade, might buy it off him if he still has the book/if he can find it
 
not web 1.0, but (by now) retrofutristic visions of future
(forgot name)

have this
-maybe there is cool thing inside

- it was similar to this one. i in fact posted pcs from it on my Canceled futures /thread, i think (here)

it was THIS:

(btw https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/simon-stalenhag-darker-retro-futurist-art.4122/)
 
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h00

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I have this book. It's pretty rad
View attachment 129803
View attachment 129804View attachment 129805View attachment 129806

It's a shame that @Captain decided to quit the forums. He has a lot of interest in these types of books too
Found more screens here:
View: https://y2kaestheticinstitute.tumblr.com/post/189637326809/web-design-selections-scanned-from-cool-sites

Looks like an awesome book, would love a full pdf version, or at the least a picure of each page.
 
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