There are many things about internet usage today which people take for granted: fast browsers, widespread social media, sophisticated website designs, and much more. But it wasn’t always like that. Here is a look at five early internet features which young people of today would find it difficult to comprehend, especially when compared to what is available online in the contemporary world.

1. Using Ask Jeeves as a Search Engine
2. Listening to Dial-up Internet Sounds
3. Using Guest Books
4. Using MIDI Background Music
5. Navigating “Under Construction” GIFs on Websites

Using Ask Jeeves as a Search Engine

Last month saw the final closure of search engine Ask Jeeves. Unlikely as it might seem now, this was one of the main search engines before the rise of Google in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. It was named after the character of Reginald Jeeves created by the writer P.G. Wodehouse for a series of novels, which focus on a valet, Jeeves, and his comic adventures with his employer Wooster.

As a valet’s job is to help someone, the search engine functioned as though the user was asking someone like Jeeves for his knowledge and advice. The Web Design Museum showcases how this looked to internet users back in 1999.

Listening to Dial-up Internet Sounds

The audio experience of accessing the internet is usually a quiet one, even in situations where some broadband speeds can be slower than others. So younger internet users would be startled were they to go back in time to the early days of going online, where it was usually accompanied by sounds similar to telephone dialing.

This was during the days of what was known as dial-up internet: named as such because the computer literally had to dial up to access the internet via a telephone network. You can hear examples of these tones archived here.

Using Guest Books

A guest book has traditionally been used for a visitor to leave comments about their experience. Today we associate guest books more with visitors a place of business or wedding, and it is very unusual to see them online.

But during the earlier days of the internet, many websites had a guest book feature which operated in a similar way to the paper guest books, as a place for people to leave their details and their feedback on what their experience of the website had been like.

Using MIDI Background Music

Music is easier to access than ever on the internet today, both in audio and video forms. But it took a long time for this process to evolve. Earlier forms of music on the internet often used the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) format, which drew heavily on synthesizers.

However, one of the features which distinguishes it from other music formats—its small data size, especially compared to modes like mp3s—saw it become integrated with many websites during the 1990s. Microsoft and Netscape, who were the major figures in internet development in this period, began to utilize MIDI music on websites as it was a way to add another feature without it taking up much room on a site.

Many of the MIDI tracks which were used on GeoCities during this era can be found today on the Internet Archive, where they were saved before the closure of GeoCities in 2009.

Navigating “Under Construction” GIFs on Websites

Early internet graphics were nothing as sophisticated as they are today, to the extent that many websites had to use “Under construction” GIFs in the background as an apology for the lack of complete imagery.

These images often included representations of real-life construction objections. While it seems strange, there is nostalgia for this, and the Museum of the Moving Image even hosted an exhibition of archived images on this theme, a collection of which can be viewed online today.

More Nostalgia Reads: