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The Animatrix

43 points| MichaelTieso | 10 years ago |intothematrix.com

40 comments

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billyhoffman|10 years ago

"View Source" on this home page is a fun/terrible time capsule into web development in 2001.

1- FRAMES!

2- Table based layout

3- Preloading image via JavaScript! In the <HEAD> no less! Screw start render time, we are doing this!

4- Opening links in new pop-up windows. Ahh the days before tabs....

5- Swapping images with onmouseover, like some kind of an animal

6- Burning text into images to use a specific font

7- Browser sniffing the navigator.appName object

david_p|10 years ago

On the other hand, the sites still renders perfectly 14 years later.

It would be interesting to see how today's super-fancy-html5 javascript-everywhere no-tables Websites look in 14 years with a modern browser.

All the "terrible" techniques you mention actually do the job in a surprisingly time-robust way.

Engineering versus hype.

vectorjohn|10 years ago

It's funny because it isn't just that HTML(5) and better CSS support exist, it's just sloppy in general. Either it wasn't taken seriously at the time, or I don't know what.

On the other hand, it's a working site that gets the job done, no matter how embarrassing behind the scenes.

huxley|10 years ago

For anyone who liked the "Kid's Story" and "A Detective's Story" segments, those were done by Watanabe Shinichirō who directed Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, two amazing anime series.

iMark|10 years ago

Digital archeology is going to be an interesting field sooner or later, sooner from the looks of this.

It's amusing to see the video sizes - "Large bandwidth 640x272"

My, how times have changed...

sp332|10 years ago

Oh it already is, check out this blog about Geocities http://contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/

And you can emulate so much software in your browser now, including rare stuff. In your browser - just click a link and play history. https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

If you want to help, first donate to the Internet Archive http://archive.org/donate/ then send your floppies and old CD-ROMS to Jason Scott http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4624 and then help us back up the archive http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK/g...

frikk|10 years ago

Plus, the non-native plugin support (is it shockwave?)

Scuds|10 years ago

What's the codec? mpeg-1, sorenson?

robogimp|10 years ago

Internet old timer here, I watched these videos through this site on their release dates, AMA...

drzaiusapelord|10 years ago

Me too, now it all seems so horribly pretentious and the entire series just some sexy veneer over a lot of milquetoast AI and information theory concepts.

The first movie still holds fairly well as a stand-alone. I feel there's a reason sci-fi creatives get reigned in by management often. Its to avoid sequalitis where movies become info dumping grounds for whatever books the director read recently. Frankly, I feel the series would have been better as a bunch of books instead of movies with a lot of 25 cent words tossed it. I feel embarrassed for the Watchowski's anytime "The Architect" is on-screen.

norea-armozel|10 years ago

Yeah, I remember reading the website after the first film came out. It was weird reading excerpts of Simulation and Simulacra at 18. Now it just seems old hat to me.

hartator|10 years ago

Am I the only one who think that this page loads surprisingly good?

I don't think a modern website with CSS3/HTML5 favored will load that perfect in 10 years.

strathmeyer|10 years ago

It's because there are no advertisement/cross site cookies that you need to wait to load. I've been working directly with the web since 2000, pages loaded faster back then over 56K modems.

nextw33k|10 years ago

> I don't think a modern website with CSS3/HTML5 favored will load that perfect in 10 years.

I'd be willing to bet it will, modern design principles are about separating the content from the style. Many of the techniques used were just workarounds because we didn't have the standards we have now.

In fact I'd say that this sites days (probably years) are numbered. It uses frameset for example. I would imagine that browser developers are going to start pushing for a cleaner underlying HTML/CSS/JS.

Having to support valign attributes in the HTML tags is not something you want to support forever.

NelsonMinar|10 years ago

May there be mercy on man and machine for their sins.

ramgorur|10 years ago

the japnese katakana titles are fun to read

the second rennaissance part 1: za sekando rune-sansu pāto 1

program: puroguramu

detective story: detekutebu sutōrī

the second rennaissance part 2: za sekando rune-sansu pāto 2

franze|10 years ago

sadly to videos don't work anymore (to download)

jakebasile|10 years ago

They don't, but if you have Netflix you can watch it there. It was recently added.

I'm not an anime fan, but The Second Renaissance 1 & 2 are excellent.

aw3c2|10 years ago

Hey DarkStarX1, you are shadowbanned and I don't see any reason in your post history so I post this in the hopes you see it.