Historic Crawlers & Critters
Though they aimed for "LOGIN", the first message ever sent on ARPANET in 1969 was just these two letters due to a system crash.
What is "LO"?
This dark pattern makes signing up for a service a breeze, but cancelling your subscription feels like trying to check out of a very sticky, bug-infested establishment.
What is a Roach Motel?
It's the fundamental markup language Tim Berners-Lee cooked up at CERN, originally with just 18 tags, to structure the first web pages.
What is HTML (HyperText Markup Language)?
This buzzword means "working together," but in corporate speak, it often just means "let's have more meetings until someone figures it out."
What is synergy? (will also accept "alignment")
It's not a tasty lunch item, but this three-lined icon, originally designed for the Xerox Star in 1981, is commonly used to bundle or hide navigation menus on websites and apps.
What is a Hamburger Menu/Button?
This British scientist, while at CERN, invented the World Wide Web, creating HTML, HTTP, the first browser, and the first web server. He chose not to patent his creation, ensuring it remained an open platform.
Who is Tim Berners-Lee?
When an opt-out button says something like, "No thanks, I enjoy overpaying!", you're experiencing this shaming tactic.
What is Confirmshaming?
Known for its motto "Write less, do more," this JavaScript library greatly simplified HTML DOM manipulation, event handling, and Ajax interactions for many years.
What is jQuery?
In design and development, if your brilliant design for rating pigeons isn't flying, you don't fail, you just do this quick change in business strategy.
What is a "pivot"?
This once popular approach dictates that you should start by designing for the smallest screen first, because most people are probably on their phones anyway.
What is Mobile-First Design?
This term for a software flaw was literally inspired by an insect found stuck in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer by Grace Hopper's team.
What is a bug?
Appropriately named after curious proteins served up in school cafeterias, the design's purpose or destination of a link is not clear until the user hovers over it.
What is mystery meat?
This once-ubiquitous multimedia platform, originally FutureSplash, powered countless animations and browser games like "Alien Hominid" before security woes and HTML5 led to its 2020 demise.
What is Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash)?
This two-word phrase describes the easiest tasks to accomplish, like finally unsubscribing from that one newsletter you never read.
What is "low-hanging fruit"?
This infamous paperclip assistant in Microsoft Office was designed to be helpful but often ended up just being hilariously annoying.
Who is Clippy?
This early internet "critter," created by Robert Tappan Morris in 1988, was meant to gauge the internet's size but accidentally caused widespread slowdowns due to a replication flaw.
What is the Morris Worm?
Named after the CEO of Facebook, this dark pattern subtly tricks you into sharing much more personal data than you ever planned.
What is Privacy Zuckering?
This Microsoft browser, bundled with Windows, famously crushed Netscape Navigator in the "Browser Wars" of the late 90s, leading to antitrust lawsuits.
What is Internet Explorer (IE)?
Not a mythical creature, but a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion, supposedly as rare as finding one in your backyard.
What is a "unicorn"?
These tiny, contained interactive moments, like a button changing color on click or a satisfying swipe animation, enhance engagement and provide feedback.
What are Microinteractions?
The global panic over this "bug," abbreviated with a 'Y' and a 'K,' stemmed from early programmers saving memory by using only two digits for the year.
What is the Y2K bug (Year 2000 bug)?
This dark pattern involves automatically adding extra items, like "charity donations" or insurance, to your online shopping cart without clear consent.
What is Sneak into Basket?
This visual browser from NCSA, released in 1993, was a game-changer for making the web accessible and popular by displaying images inline with text.
What is Mosaic?
This term describes tech that's so new and untested, it might just make you "bleed" money or patience – think beta software for your pacemaker.
What is "bleeding edge" technology?
This set of four core principles – Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR) – guides developers in making web content usable by people of all abilities.
What are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?