{"id":5270,"date":"2013-05-13T05:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=5270"},"modified":"2024-03-22T02:05:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T09:05:02","slug":"evolution-of-web-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/evolution-of-web-design","title":{"rendered":"Evolution of Web Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you imagine a world without the internet? Today, I use my phone, tablet, and computer to access the web to search for useful information, complete intricate and simple tasks, find entertaining videos and movies, browse items for sale and purchase a variety of goods, pay bills and manage my finances, and engage in conversations with my friends and family. While I can remember a world before the internet took over my life, it’s hard for me to imagine a world without the internet. I rely on the internet for so many things, it’s completely foreign to me to even imagine a world where I don’t conduct research on the internet, find out what’s going on in the world, or stay in touch with my friends. It seems like the internet makes getting things done much easier, simpler, and faster. The internet looks completely different today than it did when the first websites went online, and it’s amazing how much the web has changed. Designers are constantly coming up with new and cool ways to change the way we interact with the internet. Before we check out the latest trends in web design, let’s take a look back at the evolution of web design starting with the birth of the internet.
\nBirth of the Internet<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>
\nThe development of the internet began in the 1950s, with basic discussions of social interactions connected through networks. In the early 1960s, collaborative work between the University of California in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, the Stanford Research Institute, and University of Utah fostered the creation of ARPANet<\/a>. ARPANet allowed researchers at UCLA to send a message over a series of interconnected networks to researchers at the Stanford Research Institute. It was simply amazing, and shortly after that the internet was born. In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite<\/a> (TCP\/IP) was created and standardized, which provided people general guidelines or how data should be transmitted, received, and packaged across the internet. TCP\/IP, is basically a manual for how to use the internet, and in the mid-1990s we were introduced to the first web browser (the WWW<\/a>) by Tim Berners-Lee. Since then, the internet has continued to change and evolve, and so has web design.
\nEarly 1990s
\n<\/strong>
\nThe internet was just born in the 1990s, and so, most sites were strictly text based<\/strong> with first generation HTML. On the WWW only simple text pages could be viewed, however, this quickly changed to incorporate simple images. The 1990s showed us a period of simple websites that featured basic text, it wasn’t anything fancy but it provided people with an ease they had never experienced before. Check out some popular websites and how they looked in the 1990s. You’ll see that even in a matter of a few years websites quickly have more advanced features and images.
\nThe First Web Page (WWW) in 1992<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"19-02_first_webpages\"<\/a>
\nThe White House in 1994<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"whitehouse_1473523a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yahoo! in 1996<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"25-17_yahoo_96\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Altavista in 1996<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"19-04_altavista1996\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mid to Late 90s<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nWhile text was still the dominating feature of websites in the mid to late 90s, we began to see designers add some text effects<\/strong>. Designers made text roll across your screen, move, and tried to make text stand out using elements like Flash<\/strong>. We started to see websites with colored text, and scroll bars. In addition, many websites started showing hit counters<\/strong> at the bottom of their screen.
\nBy the late 90s everyone wanted to be on the internet, and simply having a website was a major thing for a company. Being on the WWW made you really stand out and make a huge impact. While websites were still pretty basic, by the late 90s we started hearing music being played on sites, and text change color when clicked on.
\nCheck out some of these websites from the mid to late 90s featuring more color with text:
\nExcite in 1998<\/a>
\n<\/strong>
\n\"25-05_excite_98\"<\/a>
\nNew York Times in 1996<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"nytimes-1996\"<\/a>
\nIn addition, from the mid-to-late 90s we began to see table-based design<\/strong> featured on websites, and the first online page builders<\/strong>. Everyone wanted to be on the web, and started doing anything they could to stand out and make an impact. Tables made it possible to create websites with multiple columns and sections, allowing for more dynamic layouts that weren’t simply lines of text.
\nGoogle in 1998<\/a><\/strong>
\n\"Google-02-12-98\"<\/a>
\nWired in 1997<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"Wired-08-03-97\"<\/a>
\nCNET in 1996<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"CNET-21-12-96\"<\/a>
\nAs I mentioned above, page builders like Angelfire and Geocities gained prominence. These sites allowed people to interact more with the internet and to get involved in the WWW. Angelfire and Geocities made getting on the internet easier than ever.
\nEarly 2000s<\/strong>
\nAround the year 2000, CSS<\/strong> (Cascading Style Sheets) became more and more popular. They allowed people to change and alter a variety of features of websites like background color, text size and text style in code. Designers wouldn’t have to create every single page on it’s own anymore,  instead they could write code that would hold true for each page within their website.
\nMSN in 2000<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"10years_olddesign2\"<\/a>
\n 
\nAsk.com in 2000<\/strong><\/a>
\n 
\n\"10years_olddesign3\"<\/a>
\nBBC in 2000<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"10years_olddesign9\"<\/a>
\nMid to Late 2000s<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>The most prominent design elements at this point showcased Javascript<\/strong>. Although Javascript had been around since the mid-90s it did not gain prominence until the mid-2000s. Websites featured drop-down menus, advanced navigation pages, and web forms thanked to Javascript. In addition, we saw the advent of the semantic web movement<\/strong> and xml coding<\/strong>.
\nYahoo! in 2002<\/a><\/strong>
\n\"19-05_yahoo2002\"<\/a>
\nAltaVista in 2008<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"Screen<\/a>
\nMSN in 2008<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"Screen<\/a>
\nBBC in 2008<\/strong><\/a>
\n\"Screen<\/a>
\nThe Present<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>The internet has definitely changed a lot since the 1990s, and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next. Presently we are seeing trends like responsive web design, parallax, and flat design. <\/strong>If you want to learn more about the present trends check out the post 2013 Web Design Trends<\/a>:
\n\"3887.pic\"<\/a>
\n <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can you imagine a world without the internet? Today, I use my phone, tablet, and computer to access the web to search for useful information, complete intricate and simple tasks, find entertaining videos and movies, browse items for sale and purchase a variety of goods, pay bills and manage my finances, and engage in conversations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"topics":[],"class_list":["post-5270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shop-center"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEvolution of Web Design - Creative Market Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/evolution-of-web-design\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Evolution of Web Design\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Can you imagine a world without the internet? 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