~ * ~ welcome, traveler of the information superhighway ~ * ~
retrostrap
Build like it's 2026, look like it's 1999. NEW!
retrostrap is a CSS + JavaScript framework that lets anyone build websites that look like the web of 1996-2003, GeoCities homepages, phpBB forums, teal-desktop system UIs, green-phosphor terminals, while behaving like the best of the modern web: responsive on every screen, accessible, fast, and installable with two tags. The trick is constraint. Retro sites looked the way they did because of 256-color displays, a handful of preinstalled fonts, and 800×600 monitors; we reintroduce those limits as design law, so if you stay inside the vocabulary you cannot accidentally build something that looks modern. Underneath it is all 2026: real landmarks, native dialogs, CSS grid wearing 1998's clothes. This site is built with nothing but retrostrap itself, poke the theme buttons up top and watch it change outfits.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/retrostrap@0/dist/retrostrap.min.css"> <script defer src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/retrostrap@0/dist/retrostrap.min.js"></script>
That's the whole install. Two tags and you're a webmaster. The long version, with themes and a page skeleton, lives in Get started.
The five laws
- Palette: Only the 216 web-safe colors plus the 16 classic named colors. UI colors are opaque.
- Fonts: Nine sanctioned era font stacks; no @font-face in core.
- Shape: border-radius is 0 everywhere; shadows have 0 blur. Rounding only via border-image pixel assets.
- Motion: Only linear and steps() easing. Everything honors prefers-reduced-motion.
- Decency: No autoplaying audio, no tracking, no external network calls from shipped code, progressive enhancement.
The laws are what guarantee the look, and they're machine-checkable. Run
Retrostrap.audit() in your console and it will tell you, politely,
where you strayed.
Take the tour
Status report: the framework shipped whole: 63 components, 22 widgets, and 10 themes, with demos to prove it.