Daily Reports from 1997 on
Our “Twelve Years of Web 1.0 Goodness” theme continues with a mini-retrospective of Daily Reports from 1997 on. (Earlier Reports are lost due to over-writing.) You don’t need the WayBack machine to go way back in zeldman.com history. Enjoy these representative Daily Report pages from …
- July–August 1997
- October 1998
- January 2000
- August 2002 (featuring the HTML Fist)
- October 2002 (a)
- October 2002 (b)
- October 2002 (c)
- November 2002 (a)
- November 2002 (b)
- December 2002
- January 2003 (a)
- January 2003 (b)
- mid-April 2003 (I’m still fond of this period)
- April 2003
- May 2003
Damn, that’s good eatin’. There are thousands of entries; these are just some I found while clicking idly along. As I look at them, I mostly focus on column width, font, text size, and color. I can’t bring myself to read them (although I’m sure some are okay). What is the value, anyway, of an old blog entry? Compared to an old song, an old valentine, not much. What an odd activity for so much human energy to have been channeled into.
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- Since 1995
- Twelve years of juicy Web 1.0 Goodness.™
Tags: blogs, blogging, daily report, blog history, zeldman, zeldman.com
Filed under: 12 years, Blogs and Blogging, Publishing, industry
My god you’ve written a lot. Do you regret anything you have written in the past?
What an awesome trip down memory lane. I actually remember reading some of those in 2000. I can’t remember my cell phone number, but I remember your writing (and that damn Wendy Pepper).
Anyway, I’ve said it before, thanks for everything. You’ve shaped mine and countless other minds on the web and the surrounding design space. My hat tips to you brother.
Man, you’re like the Franz Haydn of web writing.
It’s hard for me to believe that the old teal design was only on the site for the last couple of months of 2002. I liked it a lot, remember it very clearly, and it feels like it was around much longer.
Looking at the designs makes me pretty sure that I’ve been a regular reader of yours since early 2002. Wow. Time flies.
D’oh. Clearly I need more sleep. That teal design I liked so much was obviously around roughly twice as long as I originally thought (or typed). Makes sense. I seem to recall you doing a weird take on the Happycog logo, followed by an entertaining commentary on Bush’s run-up to the Best War Ever.
Something that has always irritated/annoyed/saddened me about bloggers/magazines/websites and their resurrected archives is the loss of original visual context. Cramming old “content” into a new design means mentions of a new sidebar that’s long gone, or apologizing for the teal that’s morphed into a blazing deep green.
I get why A List Apart did this for their archives, but loosing the visual history and evolution of that site through the years is, while not quite up there with the sack of Alexandria, an incredible loss for web designers and developers interested in where the medium came from and how it got here.
All of which is a bloated prelude to this. Thanks for presenting your past self as it was; Warts, beauty marks, chickens and all.
…I think Anne Frank would disagree. A journal is never a waste of energy, regardless of the form it takes, unless it is done for insincere reasons. I’ve never had that impression about your blog, Jeffrey.
Um, excuse me? Where is the astronaut?
Aaagh Dude, I hate to break this to you but we’ve been going through the archives and old posts for like…. e-ver.
“(featuring the HTML Fist)” I got a t-shirt of that only mines better. Mine has an X.
Unlike most 12 year-oldsZeldman.comreally does know everything about everything.
Daily Reports from 1997 on1 hour ago Cameron Moll : Daily Reports from 1997 on - Zeldman: Daily Reports from 1997 on. “You don’t need the WayBack machine to go way back in zeldman.com history.” I revel in, and envy, Jeffrey’s collection of archived writings. In their
12 years… Who would think…
One of my favorites from your old archives is this one (later I discovered also this one)… I am impressed:)
(And the first article I mentioned, I discovered it while reading your book - there was a screenshot, and I started reading, and then got interested so much that I stood up, went to the computer, and searched he article at zeldman.com - luckily you didn’t change any URLs since;-)
– — –
@Alan:
I agree with you! What impressed me a lot was when I discovered some time ago that Doug Bowman over at StopDesign does *keep* his old versions online!
Check it out - instead of http://www.stopdesign.com try http://v1.stopdesign.com/ or http://v2.stopdesign.com/ etc.! Amazing! :-)
Doug even wrote an article on that, I just don’t remember the URL but you can easily find it:)
Cheers!
Man, I’m really jealous of this—although Snub Communications as an entity isn’t as old as your site, I’ve had a site online since about the same time you started yours, but I didn’t think to back the things up at the time. Instead, each site was torn down and replaced by the next one. *sob*
Still, congrats on your 12 years, and thanks for the memories—for some reason, the August ‘02 and April ‘03 designs are the ones that still make my mind go ‘Ah—Zeldman!’. Must be all that orangey goodness.
intermingled with the windows of your Mac apps. (Just like, you know, Classic.) Making Wii-Friendly Web Pages ★ Opera developer resource with information on the limitations and capabilities of the Nintendo Wii browser. (Via Shaun Inman.)Twelve Years of Zeldman.com★ Jeffrey Zeldman marks the 12 year anniversary of Zeldman.com and his Daily Report with a retrospective of entries, presented as they originally appeared. I’ve been reading Zeldman as long as I remember the web; these old layouts bring back
012. Why Mafia hitmen drop their guns after a kill. 013. Book By It’s Cover is an excellent blog that looks at book design from the inside out. 014. Zeldman.com is 12. To celebrate here isevery Daily Report on Zeldman.com from 1997 to today.015. Well designed book covers make me happy. 016. This logo design guide is pretty handy. 017. Oooooo. I just love this blog full of passive aggressive notes left by everyday people. It’s fun.
is your leather anniversary, so we’ll be watching a bunch of guys flash some leather. That reminds me, I need to order her a Chris Berman t-shirt for the occasion. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. The former Dr. Web also provides a handyarchaeologist’s guideto his own body of work and highlights one of his favorite strata, mid-April 2003. I loaded that one up and was pleased to see that his archive contained a bunch of references to one of my favorite old (now totally offline) projects, Meet The Makers.
celebrating the fact he has been writing on and working with the internet for over 12 years. It is amazing when you look back at what has been achieved by a large group of passionate, knowledgeable and ground-breaking individuals. His posting, whichlooks back at the Daily Reports since 1997(the ones previous seem to have been over-written, hey no cheap blog tools then) are a great read. I started out working on 3.5″ floppy disk based electronic projects, and then moved onto the internet at about the same time as Jeffery, and remember
av zoom og “fotosyntese” Antropolgisk vri på telekommunikasjon Framtidsscenarier for brukarskapt innhald Analyseverktøy for kortsortering Smidig brukarsentrert prosess Ukas klassikar: Zeldman fyller12Ukas web2.0: Ryktespredning2.0 kosta $12.107
12 years of zeldman.comZeldman.com turned 12 last month (holy cow, congrats!) and Jeffrey posting retrospective “best of”s featuring past Daily Report gems — still in their original clothes. #→06.06.07
pose with some serious rocker hair, comes this full-on retrospective of the web, Zeldman-style. On the 12th anniversary of firing up Zeldman.com, the man has posted a bunch of oldies but goodies: ·Daily Reports since 1997, packaged into nice digestible chunks ·Check out that yellow, yee-hah! ·”Experiments” in 1995 ·15 Minutes, famous interviews with famous people ·Icons you would have killed for in the ’90s.
12 years of zeldman.comSimpleBits6/7/07, 1:41 am
Man, twelve years old. Your web site’s gonna be staying out late with friends, terrorizing the neighborhood. Damn kids.
Congrats Jeffrey… and to think eight years ago I visited your site every day, wanting badly to do “design stuff” the way you did. Here’s to that, and here’s to you.
ps - love that icon. always thought that kid was pinching a loaf, but maybe it’s just me.
The title: Meatless Little Lies.The topic: Am I just a vegetarian in vegan’s clothing?You decide….12 years of zeldman.com…SimpleBits | 7 Jun 2007 | 1:41am GMT
“Still, congrats on your 12 years, and thanks for the memories—for some reason, the August ‘02 and April ‘03 designs are the ones that still make my mind go ‘Ah—Zeldman!’. Must be all that orangey goodness.”
Well, you’ve came quite a ways! I mean, just look at those table layouts with the markup in all caps! Ahhh, ’twas the nineties.
celebrating the fact he has been writing on and working with the internet for over 12 years. It is amazing when you look back at what has been achieved by a large group of passionate, knowledgeable and ground-breaking individuals. His posting, whichlooks back at the Daily Reports since 1997(the ones previous seem to have been over-written, hey no cheap blog tools then) are a great read. I started out working on 3.5″ floppy disk based electronic projects, and then moved onto the internet at about the same time as Jeffery, and remember
Looking at the designs makes me pretty sure that I’ve been a regular reader of yours since early 2002. Wow. Time flies.