MOUSELING.net

Websites through an Apple iBook

Have you ever used an old Apple computer? I'm serious. Apple technology from before the iPhone destroyed the company all is kind of magical. I had only ever used modern Macs, and I had no idea why I hated everything Apple did so much, until I finally looked at their old stuff.

You see the old stuff and you realise why the company has such diehard fanboys. I was always fond of iPods, at least, and my handy little 30GB iPod from 2005 isn't going anywhere now that I have it. It just so happens to match my beautiful iBook G4, a boxy and huge masterpiece of technology, also from 2005.

If you want to do something on this thing, you probably can. Modern computers only exist for the sake of the Internet and video games. Even so, with the internet, if you're not a slave to social media... you might just be able to scrape by with TenFourFox on this thing... so here's my demonstration of some of my bookmarked websites on this thing, starting with my homepage.

MOUSELING.net

My homepage looks... fine. The only problem is that the beautiful translucent background colour with backdrop blur I have going on in CSS does not play nice with an older browser engine like TenFourFox, which is sorely missing that sort of thing.

You can still read articles just fine! And my photo log looks even better than on my beautiful 5:4 desktop screens, in my opinion:

It was directly based off of the layout for a super old service, so it makes sense. I still love it. Blue forest dark of memory lives to see another day. You know I've been using that title for various types of blogs since I was 15...

One-Room

One of the first websites I decided to test on this thing was my friend cco0orn's website One-Room. It's such a cute website and, as it turns out, it works perfectly after the initial grueling load time!

Poor Corn's face is being covered up by delicious melon soda, though...

Google Images

But how does Google Search fare? The answer is, pretty well. I didn't get a snap of the actual search page, but somehow on TenFourFox, Google looks exactly like the old days and is lightning-fast.

Google Images hit me with a ton of nostalgia... my only gripe is that, when you click on an image, it takes you to the website it's on. Bloated modern websites are not made to run on this thing, you see. Between you and me I think you can put the dots together.

Did you know that the giant panda was discovered after the red panda? They thought they were related and that's why they're called that, thanks to their bamboo eating habits...

Kimi wo Mukaetakute

I wondered if a more lightweight website might be a little faster loading, so I chose my mutual Ogaratsu's deliberately retro website, Kimi wo Mukaetakute. It didn't load the fastest in the world, but it loaded! I was happy.

It's easy to browse and it displays just fine thanks to the old practices used. This is why, in my opinion, simple HTML is great... it's naturally responsive, fast-loading, and gets the point across no matter how you're reading it.

zDiskuss

I am a proud early adopter of the art site zDiskuss, which has swelled to over 450 users already. I have the 12th account on the website. I consider myself a very lucky person, because the community there is wonderful and everybody loves everybody's art.

My one gripe: the art galleries on this site are all made of CSS grids and prayers, so on an older browser like this, artworks decide to present themselves in their own fat horizontal rows, taking up loads of space. It's not an important gripe—the website is still more than usable, but it is something to point out! This kills quite a few websites, but luckily on zD it's a minor setback.

Here's the J-Music group, which I happen to own, working just fine too. Again, you can see a small artwork taking up an entire row of space, but other than that it all functions fine.

seal pool

Elly's site, seal pool, is a wonderful website showcasing everything from lolita fashion to plastic models to stationery scans. As you can see, there's no problems rendering it on this iBook.

Image galleries load shockingly fast on this one, so I wonder why it varies so much from website to website, even within Neocities-hosted ones...?

poltern.net

A cute old website that inspires me very much is poltern.net. The drummer/mascot Sayu Candy has it up to promote a few things he does, including his art and design work, which is in full showcase here.

What delighted me was how, for the first time in my life, this website took up the entire space of my screen... and it just barely didn't overflow! Beautiful work!!

DDCPY.net

And if we're going through some older websites related to musicians, I had to check DDCPY.net, a website which absolutely does not live at that domain name. It's a bit of a zombie, the last update was in 2009... it even still has a Flash element on it.

TenFourFox does not like Flash. You can see it trying and failing, complaining about no compatible plugins. Not that that's a problem in the modern era.

suboptimalism

In an effort to truly torture this girl, I attempted to visit suboptimalism, my favourite Neocities website. Despite being made of text this thing used to, somehow, kill my lower-power machines, I assume thanks to whatever subtle animation was being computed in the background.

The problem: the new theme is great and loaded faster than you ever would have imagined. Damn you, suboptimalism, for being optimal just once in your life!

Myan Myan Factory

A really cute retro (genuine, not synthetic-GMO-et cetera) website I like to look at sometimes to remind myself of the beauty of pure HTML is Myan Myan Factory. Isn't its design so cute?!

Of course, it loaded practically instantly, and it works just as well on a smaller screen like this than it would on any other.