That’s an archived/print-formatted design. It isn’t how the actual website looked in 1999 (CSS and the DOM weren’t advanced enough for those kinds of layouts then), unfortunately.
Regardless, I wish I could get this version of the website for current articles.
It's an archive page, but that's pretty much what the website looked like in 1999:
That's definitely 1999-era HTML and layout, except for the "This is an archived page" header, which is the only CSS on the page. The rest is all well-known tricks from the time: tables, image maps, a few embedded images. Heh, it even has the blockquote trick to pad the margins. Brings back some pretty horrid memories.
That seems to be a common theme with websites. Not to mention how quickly it loads...
back then I was probably still on my brand spanking new awesome US Robotics 56k modem!
Does it? Each line of text spans my whole monitor, which doesn't make for a very comfortable reading experience.
Back then it would have been fine since the monitors were small and square.
You don't have to have your browser spanning the entire monitor.