Media Websites

ITV - old website URLs

Split from UTV sell TV business to ITV (June 2016)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
JA
JAS84
Going way off topic, but to complete the conversation, here's the homepage for BBCNC:

and here's "ITV Online", the first ITV website.

https://up.metropol247.co.uk/Whataday/itvonline.png
Those gifs are awful - why weren't they using jpgs?
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
There was a time when one could get GIF files to be smaller than JPEG files (typically by compressing the hell out of it and reducing the colour palette, plus they could be made transparent, which you can't do with JPEG, the transparency would hide the border on a black site) , and in 1998 when we all went on the internet over the phone line at a breakneck 56k speeds, the loading time of the site often took priority, even over prettiness.

I mean you can tell it's Darren Day and you can just tell its Murray Walker. Okay its blocky but that was how a lot of sites looked back in the day before broadband became available.
JA
james-2001
Ahh, the days when it took 2 minutes just to load a webpage...
Hatton Cross and dbl gave kudos
JA
JAS84
There was a time when one could get GIF files to be smaller than JPEG files (typically by compressing the hell out of it and reducing the colour palette, plus they could be made transparent, which you can't do with JPEG, the transparency would hide the border on a black site) , and in 1998 when we all went on the internet over the phone line at a breakneck 56k speeds, the loading time of the site often took priority, even over prettiness.

I mean you can tell it's Darren Day and you can just tell its Murray Walker. Okay its blocky but that was how a lot of sites looked back in the day before broadband became available.
Lack of transparency wouldn't be an issue, it's on a solid black background. I did think that file sizes for GIF and JPG files would be roughly the same. Good point about the extra compression though, which wouldn't be bothered with nowadays.
WH
Whataday Founding member
gifs were definitely the standard in those days due to their small file size.
IN
Interceptor
Veering off topic slightly - the TCC website lived on for years and years after Flextech closed it - presumably because they left it up for the benefit of Cable & Wireless (who carried on showing a looped tape version for a while after the main service closed) and then forgotten about.
JA
james-2001
Well, it wasn't just Cable & Wireless, that version was shown to the nordic countries for a while too, up until 2000. Though as you said, the website was still up for years after that.
IN
Interceptor
Well, it wasn't just Cable & Wireless, that version was shown to the nordic countries for a while too, up until 2000. Though as you said, the website was still up for years after that.

It wasn't the same. TCC Nordic had localised presentation in Norwegian, and some differences in programming - although I believe the programmes themselves were in English.


The tapes C&W played out appear to be a rush job - but you're right in that it seemed to use presentation elements from the Nordic service.
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
The Big Breakfast website was floating around on channel4.com for many years after the show ended. Think it only finally disappeared when the site was reorganised.
VM
VMPhil
The Big Breakfast website was floating around on channel4.com for many years after the show ended. Think it only finally disappeared when the site was reorganised.

There were quite a few old sites left up on the old /microsites domain. The header CSS was broken though I seem to recall.
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
The Big Breakfast website was floating around on channel4.com for many years after the show ended. Think it only finally disappeared when the site was reorganised.

There were quite a few old sites left up on the old /microsites domain. The header CSS was broken though I seem to recall.


Mind you the same thing has happened to a lot of the old BBC sites as well, but they at least admit on the sites in question they're not maintaining them (via the big mothballing banner).
SP
Steve in Pudsey
I remember one of the ITV Saturday morning shows, probably What's Up Doc, using one of those awful Compuserve email addresses

(bunch of numbers).(bunch of numbers)@compuserve.com

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