Itty Bitty Pixel Committee

February 16, 2011 4:20 PM

Pixelfari - 8-bit browsing for the aliased among us [via]

For advanced beginners: Browsing Metafilter is more bitty with the Plain theme.

posted by Blazecock Pileon (21 comments total)

That's more of a 16-bit look. (Unless 8-bit just means pixellated now)
</pedant>
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 4:25 PM on February 16, 2011 [7 favorites]

It would be really nice if, somewhere on that page, they indicated that it's an OSX app.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 4:27 PM on February 16, 2011 [4 favorites]

I hope it comes packaged with Strip Poker! Hubba hubba.
posted by not_on_display at 4:28 PM on February 16, 2011

of course, the first thing i did was this
posted by Mikey-San at 4:34 PM on February 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Mikey-San's twit, sans twitter:

yo dawg we put the pixelfari website in your pixelfari window so you could pixelate while you pixelate http://twitpic.com/40jxy9

In case you fear Twitter's new and improved "won't you stay with us a while longer" anti-reversing feature.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:42 PM on February 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

That's more of a 16-bit look. (Unless 8-bit just means pixellated now)

It's starting to.

Well, that and music composed with sine, square, saw, and triangle waves combined with a white noise generator, delay channel, and LFO.
posted by weston at 4:53 PM on February 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

I would say 8-bit would require all the characters to be the same size and grid aligned. Except for maybe the Atari 800 you really didn't get either the video or just plain application RAM to do multiple font sizes pixel-placed on a graphic display like that.
posted by localroger at 4:57 PM on February 16, 2011

In case you fear Twitter's new and improved "won't you stay with us a while longer" anti-reversing feature.

Yeah, I forgot about how newtwitter is Not Playing Nicely with back buttons. My bad.

This app's window needs a pixel-art drop shadow, fo reals. I almost want to make this my normal browser. Does that make me a broken person?
posted by Mikey-San at 5:10 PM on February 16, 2011

Mac? Mac? Mac mac mac?
posted by bicyclefish at 5:15 PM on February 16, 2011

I always wished somebody'd make a web browser for the Sega Genesis. Guess this is the next best thing.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 5:19 PM on February 16, 2011

Oh... just noticed the tabs aren't pixelated. Really kills the illusion.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 5:20 PM on February 16, 2011

Fun. Needs a browsers tag.
posted by christopherious at 5:28 PM on February 16, 2011

No, THIS is 8-bit browsing.

And it's wonderful.
posted by i_have_a_computer at 6:06 PM on February 16, 2011 [9 favorites]

What does NewTwitter do that messes with the back button? On Safari it works normally. :?
posted by 47triple2 at 6:17 PM on February 16, 2011

8-bit browsing
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 6:26 PM on February 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

47triple2: "What does NewTwitter do that messes with the back button? On Safari it works normally. :"

Same here with Chrome.
posted by dunkadunc at 6:34 PM on February 16, 2011

Here's a screenshot of MetaFilter in case anybody is interested and can't run this.
posted by floam at 6:56 PM on February 16, 2011

BOOO! PROFESSIONAL WHITE BACKGROUND

BOOOOOOOOOO!
posted by dunkadunc at 6:57 PM on February 16, 2011

I meant to make a Digital: A Love Story post before seeing somebody else made one a long time ago. And I was going to ask Matt to start a MetaFilter BBS. With VOIP, I don't need to worry about long distance, so he can run it in Portland!

And I've heard it works okay over VOIP at a low baud, which just makes it even better.
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:59 PM on February 16, 2011

dunkadunc: “Same here with Chrome.”

I've tried it with Chrome (well, Chromium) on Ubuntu and on Vista, and on both it does the no-you-can't-go-back-we-won't-let-you thing. Hrm.
posted by koeselitz at 7:05 PM on February 16, 2011

Tip: never click a link with the left mouse button. Always click with the scroll wheel (or ctrl + left click). That way you'll never run into problems like these. On top of that you won't get lost in your browser history as often as you do when your whole session is in one tab.

OK, "never" is perhaps a bit of an overstatement. But I rarely do it nowadays.
On topic: "everyone's favorite browser" - ha!
posted by mahershalal at 2:29 AM on February 17, 2011