Using a Modern Web to Recreate 1980s Horribly Slow and Loud Loading Screens
Remy Sharp at Everyman Cinema on 3rd May, 2019
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Sponsored by
CSS Wizardry, Leeds International Festival, and Stac
These days people chase the dream of high performance, fast loading slick web sites. But in the 1980s computers were ugly, slow and loud: let’s make that instead!
The first generation of home computers launched a movement of developers and hackers across the world. But to start your app, you had to load a tape (a really old usb-type-thing), press play, and patiently wait for the screech of the program to load (akin to listening to a fax machine).
Why invest time in building a fast website, when we can have fun building slow old retro machines using JavaScript? The end result is a mix of Web Audio, canvas API, cameras, audio jacks, binary, typed arrays, blobs, history of computing and a lot of questionable JavaScript.