If the world of technology has a central irony it’s how something that represents infinite opportunity can in retrospect seem limiting and miniscule. You would spend hours looking for a balance between links (followed and unfollowed), text, headlines, and background. Choosing the right amount of dithering on your GIFs. People would send emails complimenting you on your choice of colors. Other people felt proprietary about their palette and angry when it was copied (they might say “stolen”). Drama ensued in the community.

The point of those 216 was that they worked everywhere, Mac or PC or whathaveyou. What looks dithered and retro now (“retina” will, in time, be hilarious too) represented a best effort to make something all could see, at a moment when your operating system limited your view of the world. The idea was: It could work for everyone. Still a good idea.

Paul Ford is a writer and the co-founder of Postlight, a company that builds for the web.