How to Serve Your Users Nostalgia Through Their Browser

How to Serve Your Users Nostalgia Through Their Browser

Inspirations can sometimes be hard to come by when it comes to creating an original and eye-catching website. One of today's style, visual and musical trends is a new sort of retro, sometimes called vaporwave. People are cashing in on this trend all over the globe, and web designers don't have to miss out. For example, why not consider creating a website with a computer terminal style?

Here is an example of a website created to mimic the style of the terminals in the blockbuster movie Tron: Legacy. The background is black and the dominant colors are cyan and white, which is also true of the general color scheme of all the Tron movies, including the original hit from the 1980s. The source files for the website are available on GitHub so anyone can easily learn how to mimic this nostalgic, dark layout.

Here's another site designed to mimic the operating systems of the 1980s and '90s. There's a minimal intro screen, and after the user clicks, a computer startup sequence is mimicked, complete with a slow, CRT-style screen light-up simulation and a nostalgic PC speaker beep. Everything from the fonts to the false 1984 copyright mark are designed to make the user feel like he or she is using an ancient DOS platform, original Apple system or Linux shell. The creator of this website has another style meant to mimic the green-on-black layout of old IBM computers, and it can be downloaded on his GitHub.

For designers who really want to take things a step further, here's a site that mimics a Linux terminal and even requires users to type commands to navigate the site. For example, getting to the site's cookie policy requires typing 'print cookiep' and then hitting enter (or "return," if you're feeling truly nostalgic).

Finally, this early '90s-themed piece of work, with its incredibly ugly but true to form death-screen blue DOS theme, is sure to find a place in the hearts of 30+ year-old computer enthusiasts everywhere. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/8em749/any_examples_of_websites_that_have_a_computer/.

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