Astro Hacker News - Show HN: TitleArt – Make text like it's 1997

dstu |next [-]

Oh this takes me back, what a cool project. Can someone reinvent the internet from that era next please?

davidbarker |next |previous [-]

I wanted to make a faithful recreation of the original WordArt so I went through the various screenshots I could find and tweaked the built-in styles by eye. It's pretty fun to play with, and I didn't realise it would take me back to sitting in the ICT computer rooms at my school in the late '90s.

Enjoy!

And please feel free to share anything you make with me — I'd love to see. (Contact details in the help menu.)

pjmlp |root |parent |next [-]

Thanks, but if fails short without a dot matrix printer to go alongside it, to print out those hanging banners. :)

kleiba2 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Wow, that landing page was instant nostalgia for me. Well done!

poglet |root |parent |previous [-]

Brought back many memories. There were also some fonts that added 'shimmer' and 'sparkle' text. You didn't run up a Win98 VM and install the old Word? Great job at making it all by screenshots and eye.

davidbarker |root |parent [-]

Wonderful.

I never thought of that, actually. Perhaps I should as I don't remember shimmer or sparkle. I'll see if I can find some examples (if you happen to know of any I can reference please send them over).

akx |root |parent [-]

Here -- they were effects you could add on regular text:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RHbP2Q7A-Wg

(I still find it mind-boggling that Word 2000 runs mostly just fine on a MacBook with an entirely different OS and processor architecture via Whisky/Wine.)

meerita |next |previous [-]

Who else remembers using BannerMania and printing those endless banners on Epson dot-matrix printers with continuous paper? Man, those were the days! What a nostalgia trip!

mixdup |next |previous [-]

One of the weirdest bits of 90s tech trivia: Scott Forstall, who was in charge of software at Apple when the iPhone was initially developed, when working as an Intern at Microsoft contributed to the development of WordArt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Forstall#Present

|root |parent [-]

matsemann |next |previous [-]

At around 10 years old, I remember spending more time on the word art for my titles than the rest of the paper for school projects, heh.

Also remember that I set up some kind of templating, where I could print the same document multiple times, but it would go down a list of values. So I could print personalized birthday invitations, I felt so cool 8)

muglug |next |previous [-]

I had some fun adding WordArt support to Slack's Word document renderer.

Turns out that WordArt is still feasible in modern-day Word, but it's really fiddly.

davidbarker |root |parent [-]

Do you have any notes/write-up on that? I'd love to read.

tim-- |root |parent [-]

You need to open up a document in Compatibility Mode on a Windows machine. Basically, open an older .doc file (save a blank new document in Word, as a Word 2000 file). You will see it in the "Insert" tab on the ribbon (it's the "A" next to "text box").

morikyouko |next |previous [-]

Is there any plans to support CJK fonts or to release the source code so others can contribute? I'm so disappointed it doesn't support my language! https://www.makewordart.com/ supports a wider character set but is no where near as good otherwise.

davidbarker |root |parent [-]

I've just added support and it seems to work in the testing I've done. If you find anything that's off, feel free to let me know. Have fun!

swiftcoder |next |previous [-]

I do indeed feel the nostalgia

bozdemir |next |previous [-]

I miss 90s CorelDRAW, it reminds me of that. Thanks for the nostalgia fill.

halflife |next |previous [-]

I remember having Word 5 installed on my pc, while the other classmates had Word 97. I was so jealous for their wordart!

jeremycarter |next |previous [-]

I used to use Xara 3D

florianschauera |next |previous [-]

test

symbolhunter |next |previous [-]

Man, this takes me back! The internet felt like a different place back then.

eis3nheim |next |previous [-]

This just bought back memories, I used to play with it for hours when I was a kid.

windows2020 |next |previous [-]

I've always been fond of the red blue gradient one which I imagine to be an Arizona desert.

davidbarker |root |parent [-]

Username checks out.

MrFiskarBengt |next |previous [-]

Nobody asked for this!

ReplyIntelligen |next |previous [-]

haha thats a blast from the past !

sairajb2249 |next |previous [-]

Absolutely love this, like its smooth!

doublez85 |next |previous [-]

[flagged]

hexjy |next |previous [-]

[flagged]

naeemnur |previous [-]

[dead]