What was your earliest experiences with the Internet like?

@solarvalleys Definitely AOL chat rooms. But also figuring out how to use Netscape Navigator and search for things using a seach engine called Hotbot. And teaching myself how to build entire websites on notepad.

It was neat to see things evolve fast. Examples: AOL sent these loss leader free offers to grow their network, it gave you free time to try the service and was an installer package that came in the physical mail as little cartidges. A short time later as CDs (the precursor to DVDs), with even more time. It rapidly went from “90 minutes free, wow!” to “600 hours free, wow!” and they went from people coveting them to just piling up everywhere and getting upcycled around the house. 🤣 “Honey hand me one of those 3000 hours coasters for my drink”.

Or how fast web development went. I remember how excited we were for hotdog pro, where the html tags had colors and you could push buttons to add tags! A short time later “Hey Netobjects Fusion just stick this graphic here somewhere, i dunno you figure it out, use a dozen nested tables with a single clear pixel in each cell, kthx”

Man now that I think about it, the frequency that businesses and organizations had the word “hot” in their brand name back then was another thing lmao. Hotdog, Hotmail, Hotbot, and I know I’m forgetting some other ones. Because the internet was HOT my friends! 🔥