[Tech] Dopo otto anni chiude Webmonkey

Negli anni era diventato, per parafrasare un fortunato slogan della Apple, il sito del web design "for the rest of us", una fonte inesauribile di articoli, recensioni, suggerimenti, mini-corsi utili sia per i semplici appassionati che per gli aspiranti professionisti dell'HTML - e non solo.

Launched in August 1996 as part of a fast-growing collection of websites funded by the original owners of Wired magazine, Webmonkey instantly became the surprise hit. Most of Wired's sites offered the breathless cyber optimism and punditry the magazine was known for. As it turned out, online readers didn't care for it. What they really wanted was: How do you build that Java-powered interface to your site?



Enter Webmonkey: A series of how-to articles and techie opinion columns written not by professional writers, but by the lowly geeks building Wired's websites. Most important, the site's editors ditched the dry, lecturelike tone of other tech publications in favor of a flip, funny approach -- the language Web workers use to talk to one another. Editorial founder June Cohen described Webmonkey's voice as "the smart, sassy friend you wish you had."



Instead of documenting software protocols for trained engineers, Webmonkey offered informal advice for self-taught webmasters. One programmer took up stunt journalism, offering to write anything -- a chat server, a search engine -- in four lines of code. Another posted an audio file containing an ear-shredding howl, to convey the pain he suffered at the hands of misbehaving Table tags.

Fuor di retorica, una iniziativa che ha fatto scuola, e un altro pezzo del Web dei "tempi eroici" dei pionieri che se ne va. Va be', forse sto invecchiando.



Fonte: Wired News.