> Some bigger websites at the time were like mazes with some of the words on each page hyperlinked to other pages on the site that were about each of those separate topics, and you had to open up multiple links from each page otherwise you'd lose them, and you wanted to read every word.

This was a nightmare before tabs were a thing.

why?

The combination of the instability of Windows 3.1/95, terrible window management, 14"/15" monitors and uncontrolled pop-up windows was dreadful.

Windows NT made the browser crashing your computer a little less common.

Linux wasn't any better - the only graphical browser then for Linux was Netscape, and and that was even less stable on Linux than on Windows.

Follow a link, lose your place and have to start over.

I don't get this. What's wrong with the back button plus visited link colors?

I feel like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and the number of open tabs makes things more confusing.

Usually, the next page also has interesting links, and the tree quickly becomes painful to traverse.

You click an interesting link, read it, click the back button, then click the next unvisited link. Where's the pain and how would tabs make it less?

Because what actually happens is I click an interesting link, read it, find a couple interesting-looking links, click them, read the first, see another 3 interesting links (on the now 2 levels-deep nested page), click them, notice that one of them links to a category or tag that's relevant to what I'm looking at (which has, on most wikis, dozens of pages)...

In short, sufficiently high branching factor means that neither depth first nor breadth first search can keep up without a lot of memory.

EDIT: Note that, at over 100 tabs per browser session, I am probably an extreme edge case. :)

One notable example from the 90s that I was referring to with this statement was a site that had many, many pages about unusual science/mystery/gnosis/anarchism. I haven't been able to locate it.

(- the author)

I know the one you mean. It disappeared a while back, but maybe some of these will help: http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/realitycarnival.h... https://josephmatheny.com/ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index https://www.livereal.com/spiritual_arena/practical_experimen...

There is this one that sort of fits the bill: http://www.sacred-texts.com/

But that might not be the one you mean... I recall one with a black background... hmm.

/edit/ I also found this one: http://www.crystalinks.com/ ...I (probably badly) archived a copy of it around 2000/2001, back then many pages had dark graphical backgrounds. It seems that has changed.

There was also the Temple of the Screaming Electron, which has since disappeared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOTSE

Was it ZetaTalk? Ah, the 90s internet, where kookery and legitimacy stood side by side.

you're right - the kookery and legitimacy is no longer side by side, it's now stacked and you scroll through it on social media ;)