Browse previous versions of OpenBooks

Visit the OpenBooks Archive - and experience every version of OpenBooks since 2014.

Copying CSS and HTML is encouraged, however, please don't copy the contents of these pages. Due to their archival nature, information represented here may be wildly innacurate and out of date.

OpenBooks 11

OpenBooks 11 is the current release of OpenBooks, and is the first full rewrite of the site since 2019. It introduces an all new 2008-inspired visual style, full dark mode and mobile compatibility, and a focus on content first, design second.

OpenBooks Series 9 and 10

OpenBooks 9 was build on top of 8 Series, and futher refined the dark blue visual style, cleaned up the leftover code from 2019, and rebuilt several core functions of the site while still being visually similar to 8.7.

In 9.5, a new home page design was introduced, making the tiles from 9.0 more central to the design, while OpenBooks 9.6 introduced responsive page layouts, using an internal CSS framework,which also simplified future additions and modifications.

OpenBooks 9.8 switched to a new version numbering system, and dropped "Series" from the full release name.

9.15 was the last version to use a blue color scheme, and 9.16 and 10 used a new, brown, humanist color scheme. 10.0 also featured a new multi-layer navigation.

OpenBooks 8 Series

OpenBooks 8 Series was based on the OpenBooks 5 codebase, but was mostly rebuilt from the ground up. The original versions of 8 Series used a pale blue color scheme, but this was updated 8.7 in 2021.

OpenBooks 8 Series also marked a return to OpenBooks providing a web portal for Neocities users, rather than being a solely personal site. Development paused in 2019, but resumed in 2021.

OpenBooks 7

OpenBooks 7 was a short lived re-boot of OpenBooks 2.0. It was taken down and the site remained dormant until 2019.

OpenBooks Classic (6)

OpenBooks was rebuilt in late 2016 as a purely personal site after the poorly-received OpenBooks 5. It was, however, very short lived. Though it had its own numbering scheme, it can be counted as the 6th major version of OpenBooks.

OpenBooks 5

OpenBooks 5 was the second major re-write of OpenBooks, intended to be an attempt at a fully modern website - however it was met with harsh backlash from the Neocities community at the time.

5's stark white and teal minimalist visuals was taken as an affront to the Neocities aesthetics, which was mostly basedon 90s throwback websites at the time.

OpenBooks 5 eventually lived on, forming the codebase of 2019's OpenBooks 8 Series.

OpenBooks Release Series 4 (NX)

OpenBooks 4, originally codenamed "OpenBooks NX" was built on top of 3.X, but featured new components merged in from the cancelled OpenBooks TV project.

OpenBooks Release Series 4 builds have mostly been lost, however the pre-release internal build of 4.5 has been uploaded here.

OpenBooks 2, XP, and 3

ChromeBooks

ChromeBooks was launched on September 12th, 2014, and was started as Coyote Reyne's personal site. It features a heavily 90s-inspired design, which saw few changes.