Web Design Evolution in Last 20 Years

Web design has become the part of our life at every aspect whether it is business, food, cloths, blogs, recipes, books, schools, magazines, fashion, medical help, study etc.  You can get information of these things through just searching and one click on website. It is completely clear that the web design evolution which has taken place in last 20 years has reached at an amazing height.

World without websites

Nowadays, websites have become a very normal thing of our high tech world but have we ever wondered how hard that time when there was no website and internet.

Whenever I think about this question; I felt that generation of internet and invention of websites has brought a tremendous revolution to us. It has completely changed our human life with the very high web chain all over the entire world.

However, how these websites had created and also how these websites occupied our whole world.

Let’s jump into the history of web design.

Initial history of web design

Let’s first go through the timeline to understand the whole web design evolution in last 20 years.

The physical name websites or web page comes into existent after the production of www. That means World Wide Web and internet.

So before moving to website let us talk about internet first.

Origin of internet

In the old time of nineties’ for gaining information that was stored in the computer, people had to two ways to reach.

• First was to go to place where computer exist.
• Second way was to use magnetic tapes.

Person who thought about worldwide web

APRANET

In 1960, the first prototype of internet came with the name APRANET.

You may be wondering about this acronym. Well yes, APRANET is in its full form known as Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. It is actually founded by the defense department of US.

At that time, APRANET allowed multiple computers to share data and communicate through single network. However, the disadvantage of APRANET was that it only worked on single network.

TCP/IP

In the year 1970, we saw another great development of TCP/IP from the famous scientist Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn.

Where the full form of TCP is Transmission Control Protocol and the full form of IP is Internet Protocol.
TCP and IP were the communication models that allowed transmission of data through multiple networks.

At 1^st January 1983 APRANET has adopted TCP/IP after that, researchers had begun to connect networks that resulted in the birth of MODERN INTERNET.

Birth of Websites

Now the internet had come into existent than let’s jump on real topic that is websites.

At CERN (Swiss research center) Tim Berners on World Wide Web created the first website. He has also created HTML.

Here the timeline of websites begin.

HTML which is a Hypertext Markup Language was the fundamental builder of website created by Tim Berners. He used HTML for coding the CERN site.

However, by using HTML, we can only write data into rows and column only with text. At that time the old websites lacked color blocks, images and graphics. In other words, they were not eye catching and beautiful as like they look in present time.

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A quick look on some essential things to know about the process of web design

GOPHER SYSTEM

At university of Minnesota a text-based system gopher was created by using hierarchical menu structure for navigation, it had worked on client-based services like it integrated the services of Usenet, FTP, Archie, WAIS and veronica.

However, after 1996, it has completely declined and if we talk about present time, it is rarely used.

Line Mode Browser- known as Second browser that was made in World Wide Web.

A team of three people created line Mode Browser that was considered as simple browser and the name of peoples are Frystyk Nielsen, Nicolla Pellow and the great Tim Berners lee

18tags by Tim Berners –Lee

In initial days web designing internet pioneer Tim-Berners- Lee has launched a document containing 18HTMLTags. These tags are

• <title>
• <nextid>
• <a>
• <isindex>
• <plainintext>
• <listing>
• <p>
• <h1>
• <h6>
• <address>
• <hp1>
• <hp2>
• <d1>
• <dt>
• <dd>
• <ul>
• <li>
• <menu>

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Les Horribles Cernettes-

Les Horribles Cernettes was the first ever photo uploaded on website by silvano de gennaro (Italian computer scientist) at CERN. He has asked to upload this photo parody pop group from Tim Berners lee by scanning.

He uploaded this photo on to the info.cern.ch website.

VERONICA

It was a search engine and was developed at the university of Nevada by two developers who were Steven Foster and Fred Barrie.

The name of this search engine is indeed a complex one. Its full form starts with “very easy rodent-oriented net wide index to computer archives”.

It was used for gopher menu items to brows and index information into it.

Process of websites

After production of first websites, two years later world’s first search engine was also coming into existent-that’s called ALIWEB.

ALIWEB- Archie like Indexing for Web.

ALIWEB was the web page that is used to organize links in categories of the following points.

• Entertainment
• Living
• Money
• Recreation
• Research
• Shopping
• Computing

Many websites grew in short time, which had given idea to businesspersons to promote their business through websites. In 1994 only one website was formed that increased in amount to 2738 by the year 1994.

And a historical website was also launched in year that is Amazon.com by Jeff Bezos. I will not considered as wrong if I say almost every person in the world is familiar with amazon. What do you think?

While talking about website it is must to know how they are being created. So, let’s dive into the world of creation the world of web design and development.

Web design and development

During the initial phase of websites they do had become popular but it was also true that they look lifeless and boring with text only at that time. Then between the years 1995 to 1998; the birth of web development occurred to make website interactive and more live.

Responsiveness of website comes into existent when JavaScript enter the world of websites. JavaScript was the first programming language that has the ability to add dynamics or response to a motionless or steady website with interactive effects. JavaScript was risen that gave birth to “pop up” window.  But the problem with JavaScript was that it makes website to load slower.

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The developer got liberties that are more creative in page organization when HTML 2.0 was launched in 1995. HTML 2.0 is powerful enough to support graphics, tables, forms and more.

Year 1996 is known for arrival of Flash. Flash is an innovative technology that allows web designer to design highly dynamic website by linking or interacting audio, video and animation. At that time audio, video and animation were packed in a file after that it was sent to the browser for display.

This kind of website with multimedia elements was very exciting for people.

Invention of CSS

In 1996, Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos has developed CSS also

In 1996, CASCADIND STYLE SHEETS also called CSS created by Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos.  CASCADIND STYLE SHEET (CSS) was the first who allowed web designers to separate HTML from the visual elements such as the layout, fonts, color etc.

After the invention of CSS, Web designer got the flexibility to improve and style a web site in far more better way than before. CSS has completely changed the overall all appearance of website.

Now our web had created through HTML, styled by CSS and become responsive through JavaScript.

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Search King

• In 1998 on September 4, GOOGLE BETA came live.  It made searching easy because it didn’t required link- filled page as with the ALIWEB (early search engine).
• Yahoo: From university of Stanford two PhD. Students JERRY YANG and DAVID FILO has created a list of website.
• Both of them entitled this with the name David’s guide to the World Wide Web (www). Later the named of this portal changed into Yahoo in March 1994.
• At January 18, 1995, yahoo.com was registered. Full form of yahoo is YET ANOTHER HIERARCHICAL OFFICIOUS ORACLE.
• And in 1995 yahoo was launched as the part of portal.

Essential things to know about web design and development

HTML Validator

Dan Connolly and mark Gaither in 1994 has created the first version of HTML validator. It was tool that is used to check the validity of documents.

In other words, it is used to compare code of document with the valid standard codes and it is also checked error too.

LYCOS

In the year, 1995 from the Carnegie Mellon University Michael Loren Mauldin has developed one of oldest search engine named as LYCOS.  This name Lycos is derived from the family lycosidae, Lycosidae is the Latin biological name used by binomial nomenclature by scientist Linnaeus for denoting a family of wolf spider.

PHP

In the year 1995, Programmer Danish –Canadian designed the first version of PHP a scripting language. PHP stands for Personal Home Page.

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Birth to blog

WordPress

In year 2003 Mike little and Matte Mullenweg created WORDPRESS. Word Press is a blogging software that was an extension of earlier project called cafelog. 

In the beginning, users were limited to write or create motion less, simple blogs post. However, within two years of coming, WordPress had launched plug-ins for themes and customization.

Now the user has access to change the overall appearance of site without manipulating the content.

At current, if you talk about world’s best content management system it is not other than WordPress.

WordPress offers both platforms a free blogging platform WordPress.com as well as open source software for designers WordPress.org.

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Myspace

Myspace was launched in the year 2004 and it was the social media network.  Myspace allows users to express their selves through DIY.  It makes user able to use simple HTML programming for customization of layouts. By Myspace now user can fill their websites through glittery graphics, blocks of text and image heavy layouts. That has totally changed look of websites and made them more appealing.

Rise of mobile phone

After the release of first iPhone in 2007 in the month of June, the revolution came into the history of websites design.  Now the websites are no more limited to desktop.  The mobile interface totally requires a different layout and the functional touch screen was completely a new challenge for web designer.

A play with column and grid

The first that has come into mind of web designer at that time was to focus on column and grid. In addition, after iterations 12-column division and 960-grid system won.

Designers used this system every day.  These years were challenging for web designer because now they should have to create websites for tiny screen with same features as they have on desktop.  

Bootstrap came into existence

So the next step that they were took was standardizing the common elements such as packing forms, buttons and navigation in simple and easy way.

In addition, creating a library for visual elements that could contains all the codes into it. For this purpose, bootstrap comes into existent.

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Switching towards the “Flat design”.

2010 can be taken as the year of switching from rich designs like depth, shadows, color, texture, gradient etc. to flat designs containing clean, 2D icons, beautiful typography, minimalistic, bright color etc.

Before 2010, skeuomorphic designs were used but they took too much time in loading and add noise to web page. That’s why using flat design becomes more suitable to users.

These flat designs gave a digital feel with productive user experience and they still do.

Now the looks nearly similar as they look like in beginning.

You can clearly see this switching of design by comparing iPhone 5 with iphone7.                  

With the new era of smart phones, web designers realize the how important it is to have a design that looks good on all types of screens. And from this point, remand for responsive web design came into being.

For designing the perfect flat designs with the functionality of responsive web design you must pursue a diploma program that is UI development course.

Responsive- Web Design

Ethane Marcotte a brilliant web designer coined a term responsive web design (proposed to use same content of website with different layouts for designs.)

And there are different definitions given by the different perspectives, some of them are given below.

• Here the responsive web designs means by designer – Mocking up with multiple layouts.
• Responsive web designs means by User- works on the phone.
• Responsive web designs means by web developer
  • Download speed
  • Semantics
  • How images are served
  • Content parity

In easy language, we can put it in this way:

A responsive design website is an approach that mainly focuses on UX (User Experience). A website that can be self- adjustable to adapt varies screen sizes, creating an optimal UX for smartphone, tablets and desktop. 

A responsive web design is a new and unique approach to already existing technologies. And this kind of website can be built through framework Bootstrap and Foundation.

Web designing and development is not only creating a web page. But it is actually a perfect logical approach with design elements to show desired information to user. If you also want to learn it then join web development course in Delhi.

Modern-web

Now we are switching from old web design to new web design.  In past ten years from 2010, the web design changed very much. We have seen the web design evolution in the above given points too.

In the beginning designer, prefer heavy design with bright color, crowded layouts and heavy text. But our modern websites contain simple color palettes, typography, illustration instead of using heavy one that it was looked like in the very beginning.

Second change that modern website has it is minimalistic version of itself with offering same features and in different version.

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The future

We have seen the timeline of web design from simple HTML to modern web. Billions of peoples search websites for various purposes according to their use. That’s why many big and small companies use websites to expand their marketing by evolving their website design time to time and use it to attract their users.

The website design is evolving and it will evolve further.

Share your views on it in the comment section given below.