The floppy disk
1971 — still hereA physical object most people have never held, still meaning “preserve this.” The only dead convention that refused to die.
Discontinued
A corridor hung with interface conventions that died. Every one of them was obvious at the time. This is the plain list — the corridor is the point, but you should never have to walk somewhere to read something.
The hourglass
1985 — 2009Waiting, drawn as sand. Replaced by the spinner, which tells you nothing at all about how long.
Under construction
1994 — 2001A man with a shovel, animated, apologising for a page that was never going to be finished.
The hit counter
1995 — 2003Public analytics, before anyone thought to hide them. Usually started at 10,000.
The guestbook
1996 — 2004A comments section for the whole site, with no post to attach it to. Social networking, arrived at sideways.
Best viewed in
1996 — 2002A badge asking you to change browsers rather than the site change its markup.
The splash page
1997 — 2006An entire screen whose only content was the word ENTER. A door in front of a door.
Stitched leather
2007 — 2013Software pretending to be furniture, so that people who had never used software would recognise it. It worked, then it stopped being needed.
The 300ms delay
2007 — 2015Every tap on a phone waited a third of a second, in case you were about to tap again. Nobody was told.
The hamburger
1981 — presentThree lines that meant “a list is stored here” at Xerox, were forgotten for thirty years, and came back meaning everything.