Show HN: TitleArt – Make text like it's 1997
200 points by davidbarker 6 hours ago | 28 comments
dstu 31 minutes ago
Oh this takes me back, what a cool project. Can someone reinvent the internet from that era next please?
replymixdup 5 hours ago
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
replymeerita 46 minutes ago
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!
replymuglug 5 hours ago
I had some fun adding WordArt support to Slack's Word document renderer.
replyTurns out that WordArt is still feasible in modern-day Word, but it's really fiddly.
matsemann 3 hours ago
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.
replyAlso 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)
morikyouko 3 hours ago
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.
replydavidbarker 41 minutes ago
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!
replybozdemir 3 hours ago
I miss 90s CorelDRAW, it reminds me of that. Thanks for the nostalgia fill.
replyhalflife 4 hours ago
I remember having Word 5 installed on my pc, while the other classmates had Word 97. I was so jealous for their wordart!
replysymbolhunter 4 hours ago
Man, this takes me back! The internet felt like a different place back then.
replyeis3nheim 4 hours ago
This just bought back memories, I used to play with it for hours when I was a kid.
replywindows2020 5 hours ago
I've always been fond of the red blue gradient one which I imagine to be an Arizona desert.
reply
Enjoy!
And please feel free to share anything you make with me — I'd love to see. (Contact details in the help menu.)
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).
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.)