The Animatrix
intothematrix.com"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
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.
THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. A MILLION TIMES THIS.
The source code is awful and crappy, but 14 years later it still renders.
Also if you save the page and load in the browser it will still load correctly.
this might also be an artifact of the development of browsers -- IE was a dominant force until relatively recent times, and browsers had to standardize what existed, then build carefully on top.
It may be the case that the techniques used were particularly robust, but it may also be the case that we've striven to keep them unbroken.
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.
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.
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...
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...
I tried this and was hilariously stopped by 1980's DRM:
http://i.imgur.com/Z1HxVhU.png
Sure, I can find the manual somewhere, but its a PITA. Today's DRM in the future will not be this easy to overcome.
Oh there are a lot of those, there's a whole tumblr http://pleaseregisterthisshareware.tumblr.com/ You could probably brute-force that one, just click refresh to reboot until you get it :)
Plus, the non-native plugin support (is it shockwave?)
What's the codec? mpeg-1, sorenson?
Internet old timer here, I watched these videos through this site on their release dates, AMA...
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.
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.
Don't miss Neil Gaiman's contribution to the Matrix's folklore: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/cyberpunk/goliath.shtml
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.
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.
Yup. I build HTML 5 sites that don't have those (often for intranets), and clients always mention how fast they come up.
> 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.
I've got these on DVD, they came in a box set [1] I got a long time ago. The Neo bust is on top of my work computer right now :)
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Collection-Collectors-Revolutions-Revi...
"We got both kinds of video: QuickTime AND Flash!"
(For those who don't get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSZfUnCK5qk)
...I'd love to see someone try to get "Final Flight of Osiris" to render in real time on UE4.
May there be mercy on man and machine for their sins.
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
sadly to videos don't work anymore (to download)
Happily Youtube (aka Napster 2015) has a full copy of indeterminate licensing. Easy to download with youtube-dl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq9vyRFPTjg
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.
To my mind, the animatrix was a better successor to the matrix than the sequels ever were. (Then again, just about anything would be.) It showcases the history of the matrix, pleads a case for the machine, and shows life in the matrix. It's an underwatched not-quite-masterpiece that is still excellent.
I recently re-watched the sequels and came to find myself puzzled by the amount of vitriol they receive. Can you explain what your objection to them were? I found them at least entertaining, and consistent with the original. They were by no means above criticism, but I certainly don't think they deserve the level of scorn you typically see.
Matrix: What if we are all living in a simulation and don't know it? What does this mean for the human existence and how we perceive it?
Animatrix: What if we get so smart we build machines that are so advanced that we can discriminate against them? What happens when humans create life and expect that life to remain servile?
The Matrix Reloaded: What if we fleshed out this world to show multiple societies co-existing, although not entirely peacefully? What if we throw a bunch of rehashed dialog from other science fiction films? What if we change the style to be slicker? Can we pull it off if we inject just enough substance to make people want to watch a third movie?
The Matrix Revolutions: Take the wheel, I have no idea how to end things but there should be some massive fight scenes. Ka-CHING, baby.
Was it me or in one of the sequels was there some monologue about simulations that seemed to be a philosophical take on garbage collection in a VM?
Yes, I'm pretty sure that was in the second one. Half of that movie was brilliant and cerebral. Half of it was, well...not.
Do you remember which scene it was shown in?
Going entirely off of memory I would guess it was the discussion between Neo and the Architect, where the Architect describes Neo as an 'anomaly' that is expected.
They are probably not bad movies, and the high-way action scene is amazing, but I'm not really sure there was anything to those movies other than that.
When the first movie was so mind blowing (which it probably isn't today) then some good special effects a great action scene or two and mediocre story is not going to look like decent action movie, but more like an atrocity.
For me it was the cliff hanger between 2 and 3 and the anticipation for several months followed by a huge letdown.
I recently (in the past year so) rewatched all of the matrix movies and I found the sequels boring.
Agreed. This was one of my first exposures to anime, when I got this on DVD. It was pretty engrossing.
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.