Eras of Website Design
assignment for wri 121 class
Eras of Website Design
The World Wide Web (WWW) is playing an important role in the development of society in the 21st century. The mass proliferation of internet usage by both consumers and businesses alike has led to an increased importance in having a presence online, and with the wide variety of tools and professional services available at this point in time, it’s arguably not hard to build one. The WWW wasn’t always this accessible, and like many other technologies seen throughout human history, has gone through various iterations and accepted standards. The protocol itself started out as an experiment in CERN by Tim Berners-Lee as a method of cross-referencing the text of research papers from across the world (Longman). However, interest from corporations and governments quickly led to widespread implementation and usage worldwide. As the WWW went through its own phases of iteration to reach the standard we know today, so did web design in its own way adapt with each of these iterations to match with the tools and knowledge available. These adaptations can be classified and viewed as their own eras of design: the early web, the user web, the standardized web, and the modern web.
The early web era encompasses web designs from the WWW’s inception at CERN to the early 2000’s, specifically from around 1993-2002. During this time websites were largely owned by technology and media companies, with many technology companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo competing heavily against each other to see who could establish early web standards (Francis and Mills). This led to the principle of websites being designed with the owner’s best interests in mind over the consumer, with most sites being designed on the principle of advertising content to the viewer. Additionally, with only around 20-40 html tags available and the limited abilities of css, the html “tables” tag was creatively used to create clean and orderly block layouts which were present on almost every major site. Furthermore, the image capabilities of browsers was also incredibly limited, and with the corporate domination of the web at this point images were mainly used to showcase advertisement banners. These design principles can be seen in examples such as Microsoft’s website designs from 1994-1999, which focused on promoting Microsoft’s web technologies above all else and later as a method of garnering support against its DOJ case in 1998 (Version Museum).
The user web era follows the crash of the dot-com bubble and the rise of the internet’s first social networks such as Myspace, Facebook, and Reddit (Emery). This era mainly spans from 2003-2012, where following the dot-com crash governments started to pay more attention to the WWW, leading to increased accessibility and digital safety regulations. This was seen through the introduction of tools such as Wordpress, along with the rise in social networks such as Myspace and Facebook, all of which made it increasingly accessible for the average consumer to have a presence on the internet (Web Design Museum). Additionally, with the advancements made in consumer web browsers websites had a lot more freedom to make use of some of the more experimental technologies that were introduced in the 1990s. This was mainly noticeable through the increased usage in css features such as the box model (which removed the need for using “table” html tags for design purposes), larger images, and a higher variety of colors and fonts. With the increased web traffic the design methodology for web pages had shifted from corporation-centered to user-centered design. Websites were designed similarly to physical control panels, with higher contrast placed on elements such as buttons and textboxes that the user was supposed to interact with. This was especially noticeable on Microsoft’s website designs from 2005-2011, which shifted from promoting Microsoft’s web technologies to instead focusing on showcasing the newest release of microsoft products, both digital and physical, with large image banners (Version Museum). The traditional “forum” design started to become normalized as a method of user-focused design as well, being implemented in most social networking sites at the time.
The standardized web era can be viewed as the “industrial revolution” of both web development and design, spanning from 2012-2017 and bringing web design to follow most of the same standards and practices we see today. With the popularity of Apple’s smartphones on the market and their ability to browse the web using safari, mobile-centered responsive design started to become incredibly prominent (Shelley). Additionally, it was now incredibly simple for any business or person to set up their own website, and for experienced developers to make more complicated websites using javascript frameworks. CSS features such as flexbox and the popularity of svg images created a growing trend of sites ditching the table-like structure that was common in the late 90’s and early 2000’s in favor of designs that scaled with screen resolution in order to work on any new device that was released (such as smartphones and tablets) (Shelley). This can be seen on Microsoft’s homepage designs from 2012-2014, which begin to forgo the table like structure seen in previous years (Version Museum). The release of the Bootstrap CSS framework by the team at twitter made it incredibly easy for sites to implement this responsive design, and improvements in the features of javascript and libraries such as Jquery allowed for websites to be much more interactive on the frontend and less reliant on a backend, saving computation costs of servers.
The modern web era classifies everything from 2018 to present day. Most web design protocols and standards have been solidified at this point, and while there are of course more and more advancements in web-based technologies, no new heavily altering features have been introduced in web browsers. Due to the over-saturation of web developers in the market and overall accessibility of web development as a craft, CSS frameworks have begun to fall out of favor as more and more sites have frontend developers create specialized designs. This can be seen in the designs of websites such as Microsoft’s and Github’s, both of which completely forgo using a box-like structure and instead make use of completely dynamic layouts with animated UI buttons and figures (Version Museum). Each era of web design showcases a different approach to design philosophy, evolving from the limited corporate designs in the 1990’s to the more user-centered dynamic designs of modern day. The modern web is considered to currently be at a tipping point, with the increased capabilities of artificial intelligence and cryptography being two of the main drivers toward a new era of the web. By looking back on design history, we can see the differences between each era and how the design philosophy of the next era of the web might be formed.
Works Cited
- Emery, Colyn. “A Brief History of Web Development.” Techopedia, 5 May 2022, https://www.techopedia.com/2/31579/networks/a-brief-history-of-web-development. Accessed 9 November 2023. Francis, Mark, and Chris Mills. “The history of the Web.” W3C, June 2011, https://www.w3.org/wiki/The_history_of_the_Web. Accessed 9 November 2023.
- Longman, Addison. “Chapter 2.” W3C, 1988, https://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html. Accessed 9 November 2023.
- Shelley, Ryan. “The History of Website Design: 30 Years of Building the Web [2022 Update].” SMA Marketing, 22 May 2022, https://www.smamarketing.net/blog/the-history-of-website-design. Accessed 9 November 2023.
- Version Museum. “29 Years of Microsoft.com Website Design History - 29 Images.” Version Museum, https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/microsoft-website. Accessed 9 November 2023.
- Web Design Museum. “Web Design History.” Web Design Museum, https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history. Accessed 9 November 2023.