"Most Geocities users didn't seem to know the chat was there."

I had a few sites there in the 1900s, and used them sporadically after that. Today I learned about GeoCities HTML Chat.

wow, absolutely incredible.

Thank you for resharing this post, even tho I followed you on cohost I never saw it because I wasn’t as active as the regulars. I really enjoy reading articles like this, this is preservation of culture. I hope you rehost this post somewhere else too after cohost goes down

I still run such an HTML chat whose first version I built in 2001 or so to learn programming. In its current iteration it does some JS trickery, but under the hood it's still an infinitely loading document in an iframe, sent by a custom HTTP 1.0 server. Since it's still used by a couple of people (who mostly joined 20 years ago), I keep maintaining it and just recently ported it from PHP 5.6 to 8.4 (which went surprisingly smoothly).
And yes, of course it supports HTML nicks. 😁

I remember poking around on geocities (I had a page with drop shadow buttons with reversed text that flipped when clicked which I was inexplicably proud of) but not the chat, though I was embedded in the old volanochat rooms and the old palladium books chat rooms back then, but yeah I've definitely retained a deep sense of disgust for any website trying to tell me how it should be displayed, or interacted with.

'oh how cute, you think you can disable my right click huh, up yours!'

That post was one of the first things I read on Cohost, and it lives rent free in my head. I must think of it every few weeks at least. Thank you again for sharing it!

I had completely forgotten about that. I remember that and hanging out in the yahoo games rooms as well. Thanks for dusting off a memory I had long forgotten about!

tolles Video. Dankeschön!

Danke Dir! Es hat mich zum lächeln gebracht!

Gute Nacht Elsa 🌹♥️

Wünsche dir auch einen schönen Abend, Elsa und später eine gute Nacht! 🥱 🤗 🌃

Und obendrauf die Spieluhr mit den Engeln. Hab heute noch mit ner Freundin darüber gesprochen. Sieht sehr schön alles zusammen aus.

Ich wünsche dir auch einen schönen Abend 😘

Einen schönen Abend und eine erholsame Nacht.
Toller Baum 👍

@KK Dankeschön, liebe Karolina, das wünsche ich auch dir! 🧡 💫 ✨

@hanspetermeyer Vielen lieben Dank! 💫 ✨

@Hope Vielen Dank, liebe Hope, auch für dich meine allerbesten Wünsche! 🧡 💫 ✨

@Elsa & Balou
Danke liebe Elsa ❤️🖤, du sprichst mir aus dem Herzen. Wünsche dir auch ein friedvollen Abend 🫂😘❤️🌹🐻

Wie aus dem Bilderbuch

was für ein schöner Baum 🌲 ich wünsche dir ein friedliches Fest 🍀

@Aileen22 Dankeschön, liebe Aileen! Ich wollte damit nicht angeben, liebe es einfach... 😘 🎄
Wie geht es dir und deinen Lieben?

@Aileen22 Ach, soweit ganz gut. Die Aufregungen der letzten Wochen liegen Gott sei Dank hinter uns. ☺️

Das sieht sehr schön aus, Elsa!🤩
Dann genieße dein Werk und hab einen schönen Abend! Später eine gute Nacht!🥰🙋🏼‍♀️🌟🌙😴

Danke, Elsa, ja, meine Gedanken sind auch oft bei den Betroffenen in Magdeburg… Ich wünsche dir auch einen ruhigen Abend und hoffe, dass du irgendwie doch Schlaf finden wirst! Gute Nacht! ✨🌖🥱😴

@davecb Correct.

Used them in a text (non english) once and the reviewer (if that is a word) almost came in their pants exclaiming "fuck me... you /can actually/ write! AND you understand ;'s!!!". These days I avoid artistic writing.

Have you been misunderstood because of a semicolon?

@windy How would I know how of my readers misunderstood something unless one happened to say something that indicated they misunderstood something.

I was just wondering how you know "so many people now just don't understand" semicolons. But forget it, not important.