Asklemmy

IRC when it was truly big and building your own homepage at Geocities

I don't miss anything about it. And certainly not the modem dial sounds I knew from memory/intuitively.

Imagine having to dial into the internet and having to wait 30s with beeping and whooshing sounds.

/e: It seems OP question was stated more broadly than the linked article addresses and people seem to reply to.

It being much less busy with the general populace and corporation

I miss the days before it became all corporatized. The days of the early world wide web and gopher made the internet a whole lot of fun. I had a blast with usenet and internet relay chat as well. Even email was freaking awesome. I remember getting excited when I'd receive messages. Thankfully that excitement is getting rekindled due in a large part to corporate's own hubris. The growth of the fediverse is making the internet fun again.

Java chat applet embedded in niche websites

I remember the pre-facebook era, it was about the same as now just less visually appealing. Ads were worse; they were able to redirect people to pay per view (on your phone bill) sites without notice; if you had a windows pc viruses could literally be installed by visiting a website; installing crackz was a gamble of wether you were infecting your pc or actually getting o play a game; downloads took an entire night and a day for an album; albums actually were sold per song; songs cost money; YouTube didn’t exist so TV was god; we called Friends via landline and listend to them to walk down the stairs as their mother held the apparatus in their hand, waiting to be relieved from her duty. That and most of my now bosses made most of their money scamming people and their competitors. It’s much more civilized now - trust me

IRC and playing Warcraft “online” by dialing my friend’s house. One time we messed with a telnet client. That was neat.

You guys remember pMachine (evolved into ExpressionEngine)? That shit blew my mind when I got it installed. No more Adobe Pagemaker.