Net-Cards, do you send webpage cards?

[Melooon]

Net-Cards

Recently I received a wonderful birthday net-card from a group of people I was at a workshop with! It was really nice to receive and it made me realise that net-cards are not as commonplace a thing in the web revival space as a person might expect them to be.

A net-card is basically a postcard on the net, made using HTML and CSS and scripts 

I made one for my aunt's birthday a few years ago (she really loved it even though shes not a big web enjoyer) and I really should make more! (Fun fact about this card, due to a bug it will keep posting pictures of her face until your browser crashes  )

Do you make net-cards? And if so do you share them widely, or only with the person they are made for? Do you reuse net card code or do you make a new one each time?

[bees]

I don't think I was aware of this concept before, I honestly thought this was going to be about e-cards! Now I want to make some for my friends next time there's a special occasion.

[dbnet18]

Woah! This is actually an awesome idea!

[Winternet]

Interesting concept! Funny enough, I never heard about this before, but had this exact idea in high school. I wanted to make a little webpage for my English teacher. It was the best way I knew to be creative and make a card, since my drawing skills were (and are) really lacking. I never did make that card though!

[Cobra!]

I remember we used to send similar things to one another for our birthdays or other events. Usually it was in the form of a small flash video or game, and usually sent through email. Those were fun times!

I’d love to bring that back. Make a website duplicating that exact kind of thing except using Ruffle, obviously.

[wygolvillage]

I remember we used to send similar things to one another for our birthdays or other events. Usually it was in the form of a small flash video or game, and usually sent through email. Those were fun times!

I’d love to bring that back. Make a website duplicating that exact kind of thing except using Ruffle, obviously.

Yes! I remember those! I remember doing a Christmas one where you got to make a snowman, and I sent it to my grandparents :)

I love the concept of digital greeting cards a lot, maybe it's due for a revival 

[tertiaryapocalypse]

yeah! way back in 2022 i made my then-partners a valentines card with carrd (since i didn't know any HTML at that point.) i've also made my friend an HTML game for christmas :-) net-cards are such a good concept and i feel like they have a lot more flexibility than just a paper card! + they're definitely more suitable for long distance relations 

i think the 2022 valentines card had, like, custom sprites and an embedded playlist? i only shared the link with the recipients but it would've been possible for anyone to find it. the game i made my friend was sent over on a zip file, though. i'm looking at maybe custom-making a pal of mine a digital pet for her birthday this year :-)

[di]

Yes, I love seeing shrines/e-cards on people's websites dedicated to their loved ones & pets. It's very cute seeing the love people put into them. I made one dedicated to a close friend for her birthday this past year. I like that it's like a hidden page on my site now.

[Memory]

I've actually never heard of them :o . They seem super cool , thanks for sharing!

[Salty]

My grandpa used to get these type of emails from his Army/VFW buddies back in the early 2000s. He thought they were hilarious! I remember they often had little Flash-based animations or games nested inside of them... not really appropriate ones, usually a fake "undress a naked lady" or post-9/11 "Punch Al Gore in the Face" mini-game type of stuff that was peak humor for jaded old Vietnam vets. Wild times, indeed.

[Dreamwings]

I wasn't around long enough for those but I guess what I had were e-cards??
It was the VERY tail-end of the ye oldie web-ness we talk about and try to recreate today. I remember that there was this little game of sorts on the very old Disney Playhouse website (the precursor to the current Disney Junior) with these two red and blue puppet monkeys called Ooh and Aah. They used to transition between shows and announce which one was coming up (I literally only remember them now because I saw a video that mentioned that 99% of those I saw back then were lost media. Definitely couldn't have preserved those as a litteral toddler but ok.). Loved those monkies as a kid (also remember their voices being very very soothing for some reason) so I hung around their section on the website a lot (because these were the days when the various kid websites would be split into sections for respective TV shows). And I am not sure if it was a flash game or a web game (I think it was a flash game because I remember there being a lot of fancy transitions), but there was a game where you could make a card themed after the monkeys with various stationary and tags and then write your own message on it or whatever, at the end you would put an email in and send it off to whoever had the misfortune of being the person in the recipiant box. My Nana was the victem but she enjoyed it a lot I remember, and I sent her A LOT. Too many probably. I think she sent me some back as well but for the life of me I can't remember what they actually looked like on the other end (I am assuming it was a flash animation of some sort).
After I finished writing this paragraph I decided to double check Flashpoint and yeah, it was a Flash game. It's "Ooh & Aah's Wish You Were Here" if yall are curious. Didn't play it because why would I play an ecard generator made for preschoolers in 2024 (would be hilarious if somehow it still worked though). Buuuut for curious people, know that it isn't one of the many lost Ooh and Aah related things.

Back to the actual topic of the thread though, as for if I would make real net-cards, unfortunantly I don't think so because all of the family in my life are very old and boomerish and too old to understand what I am doing. It also probably doesn't help if it looks like I am sending them a suspicious link of some sort. I've been trying to teach my immidiate family NOT to do that because theyve already gotten the public home computer infected with some sort of stealer or logger or something (I don't know what but I see it flash a little command prompt on screen every so often but for some reason will NOT let me do a full system wipe to get rid of it (It's deep in there I do not know where they went to get it or where it is because the computer is such a clunker of a machine it takes aeons to do anything if it doesn't just outright do nothing but that is a topic for another day). Kind of a "Don't teach kids to not take candy from a stranger by giving them candy as a stranger" situation. As for the friends though.... maybeeee. Maybe. They'll either think its cool or think I was hacked and turned into a discord scam bot (probably the latter).

[invader_gvim]

Woah! This is actually an awesome idea!

Yes. I have a new project idea thanks to this... HMM maybe I should use something like this to surprise someone. 

HTML. Its fun like computers! 

[TheFrugalGamer]

I remember these well! The one that stands out most in my mind was one my friends and I sent to each other often. It was "send your friends a kiss!" or something similar. It was a big, cartoon pair of juicy lips, and you'd pick out the color and pattern to go on them, then you'd add a message and I think maybe there were some sounds to go with it? It was very silly and I've missed it over the years.

I actually had planned to make my own set and put them up on my webpage, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. We could do way more with them these days!