
Web Design 3.0: When Your Web Design Matters - nicepage
https://nicepage.com/doc/article/20348/web-design-3-0-when-your-web-design-really-matters
======
fbelzile
> The use of Bootstrap and the spread of templates made Web Design boring.

Boring maybe, but Bootstrap is extremely practical for non-designers like me.

I feel like Bootstrap captured more than 80% of the features I want for less
than 20% of the time (or cost) it would take to make something from scratch.

Second, navigation on websites became much more predictable. The examples they
show of Web Design 3.0 look difficult to navigate. Aside from increasing dwell
time from confused users, there probably isn't a big benefit.

In the future, I see custom website design being accessible for large
companies that need their site to evoke a certain brand image. For the rest of
us, Bootstrap will continue to evolve (Web Design 2.5) to provide +80% of what
we want.

~~~
mattferderer
Bootstrap & templates didn't make web design boring. People using them without
much modifications did.

I think Bootstrap is trying to offer both an out of the box template like
framework & utility framework in their latest & upcoming releases. Foundation
also does this. Whereas something like Tailwind does a nice job of being just
a utility framework.

I think there is a lot of value in using any of the above depending on your
skill level. They all solve common problems so you don't have to.

A good HTML/CSS designer/developer should have no problem extending &
customizing them either so that they don't look like every other site using
them. No reason to rebuild everything from scratch.

On an additional note, it depends what the website is trying to mirror as to
how you want to layout the content. A news site is often best done similar to
a newspaper with nice table like structure.

~~~
extra88
And those who don't modify Bootstrap also probably load the whole damn thing
instead of just the parts they're actually using. They use a CDN-hosted copy
and say "eh, performance isn't an issue because the files are probably in the
user's cache anyway." Except the files aren't in the cache more often than
not.

Bootstrap has flaws but they keep improving it. A non-professional designer
using Bootstrap is a better outcome most of the time compared to no CSS
framework or using many of the others.

------
jeroenhd
I've never heard about "Web Design 3.0" before, but now I know a term to
describe websites that care more about artistic expression than bringing
across information.

Seriously, most of the examples of "Web Design 3.0" look like a piece of
modern art. That's great for showcasing your portfolio as a web designer, but
if you try to be artsy with the menu of your restaurant I'm going to the
competitor.

Compare the "Web 2.0 vs Web 3.0 in MS Word" comparison. On the left: "Web 2.0"
(looks like "Web 1.0" to me) with quickly skimmable paragraphs, concise
information and a clear overview of where to look for what information. On the
right, a flat-out clusterfuck of random boxes and pictures that doesn't tell
you anything at all.

By the way, we already had free positioning in the "old" web; stacked floats
and absolute positioning are nothing new. It became easier with flexbox and
css grids, but only for people writing actual HTML/CSS.

Whenever I see a website made by a tool like this, I generally don't even
bother reading what it has to say. The themes are always form-over-function
with huge swathes of whitespace and PNGs that suck up my mobile data. If
you're a designer and looking to make a website, please get someone competent
to write proper code for you instead of wasting your design on an awful tool
like this.

~~~
pixelrevision
Web Design 3.0 = Print designer who just won't give up the good fight

~~~
reaperducer
Web Design 3.0 = Screw accessibility

------
josefresco
Web designer here: 19 years exp.

All of the "web 3.0" examples feature maybe 3-4 of the same design tricks or
techniques. Which makes this not web 3.0 but more like Web 2018/19.

Examples: Offset elements like drop shadows, angled/shaped section dividers,
uneven "artistic" layout models (aka free positioning), art deco - it's
basically one design concept, executed many different ways. I wouldn't go so
far as to call it a new generation of web design, just updated
styles/preferences.

A lot of this is driven by new layout models for CSS, which makes these
approaches feasible/much easier for your average designer.

------
vanadium
I guess I'm confused by Nicepage being "Web Design 3.0", being told Bootstrap
is yesteryear, then using Bootstrap 3.x.x (and a boatload of jQueryUI
dependencies) with !important directives sprinkled all over the place. Don't
get me wrong, it's pretty on the front-end, but the technical choices are
still rather confusing after reading the article.

[https://nicepage.com/Content/BundledScripts/main-
libs.js](https://nicepage.com/Content/BundledScripts/main-libs.js)
[https://nicepage.com/Content/BundledScripts/main-
libs.css](https://nicepage.com/Content/BundledScripts/main-libs.css)

Additionally, I have yet to find a page builder that's in any way 1)
performant and 2) not compromising fundamental best practices (because WYSIWYG
site builders require exorbitant amounts of flexibility).

[https://www.webpagetest.org/result/190305_4Y_ff1823195f2bedd...](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/190305_4Y_ff1823195f2beddbf357583bcfe13ceb/)

I liked the article and agree with the central thesis of CSS Grid enabling
some wild UI designs, but the whole thing came off in a completely different
light after looking under the hood.

~~~
H1Supreme
> I guess I'm confused by Nicepage being "Web Design 3.0"

Yeah, it's kind of ironic that my first thought was "this looks a canned
Bootstrap site". And, not a very good one at that.

------
adjkant
I'm not a designer but it made me sad when I got to the end to realize this
was the opinion of a web design company trying to justify itself and not a
true/honest look into the future of web design. From the comments here from
actual designers it seems like "3.0" is not a real thing, just a term they
created to try and position themselves ahead of website design companies that
doing well today when in reality they are simply one option among many that
optimizes for different things. The 2 axis graph at the end felt particularly
disingenuous, as did things like a screenshot for the search "design is dead",
which isn't really a good formal argument for something existing. It felt far
too much like creating an answer and then making up a justification to get
there.

~~~
reaperducer
"Web Design 3.0" is pretty much AT&T's "5GE"

[https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/att-5ge-is-
not-5g-and-t...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/att-5ge-is-not-5g-and-
they-know-it/)

------
mattferderer
> Web design 3.0 is the new dimension. It has the free positioning of
> elements, overlapping, and layers like in Graphic Design tools. It opens the
> new prospects for Web Design. And it is the beginning of the new Web Design
> era.

No offense to the author but this is not new. Of course neither is Web XXX 3.0
which has been used for over a decade.

I'm somewhat sad to see the Flash era wasn't mentioned. A lot of this non
positioning was done back then in the late 90's & early 00's. And one can not
forget the days of giant images in Photoshop spliced apart to make a web page.

Content should determine design strategy 99.9% of the time.

~~~
mgkimsal
> And one can not forget the days of giant images in Photoshop spliced apart
> to make a web page.

"Forget"? Are they gone?

------
dccoolgai
How serious is this vs. tongue-in-cheek? The tone of this article (dripping
with sarcasm, I think? E.g. over-repetition of "Web Design".. Web Design 3.0)
seems weirdly out-of-sync with the content. If it's a Kaufman-esque joke it's
done really well... if it's an actual advertisement for nicepage, it's
weird... _BUT_ if it's a stealth thinkpiece about how _no_ design really
matters if your content is off, it's absolutely brilliant...

~~~
snegu
> For the first time, this article shares the secret about how to create the
> trendiest web designs in the world.

When I read this, I was sure I was in for a fun takedown of web design
gimmicks. Sorely disappointed.

~~~
dccoolgai
> I was sure I was in for a fun takedown of web design gimmicks.

I'm still not certain that it _wasn't_ that...

------
def_true_false
The article keeps going on about creativity without giving a single reason why
anyone would want that. Not everything needs to be original, not everything
needs creativity. Some (most?) websites just need to work -- i.e. present the
content in a readable manner. I'm not sure if relative offsets on colored
rectangular backgrounds help much. Seriously, most of the examples look worse
than the supposedly obsolete bootstrap templates.

~~~
asark
A key miss with the print vs. digital design is that digital's interactive,
and you don't usually see the whole thing at once. Plus, you know, screen
sizes. "Unique" may be attention-grabbing, it may look nice, and it may help
you peacock "we are with-it and well-funded enough to spend money keeping up
with design trends" but it's gonna harm UX more often than not.

It was _nice_ when every site settled on the header-sidebar-footer two- to
three-column layout. You knew where stuff would be. "Bootstrap" design is
_nice_ (though often less-nice than old-school column layouts, at least on
desktop, because more spread out and less predictable) for similar reasons.

This stuff for "experience" sites is one thing. For anything else it's, as
mentioned above, peacock-signaling over usability. Often the flourish-filled
stuff is outright broken on some not-uncommon browser and platform combos—I
saw a Tesla marketing site the other day that's broken on Safari on
MacOS—though that's more common when they screw with interactions than
layouts, but often the two go hand-in-hand.

I have no doubt this will be A Thing. In the overwhelming majority of cases
it's used, it will harm UX. It looks expensive to do right across platforms
and screen sizes, and will probably be done wrong (i.e. be broken) more often
than not. So the cycle continues.

------
franga2000
1\. The article's conclusion is straight up an ad for whatever service it is
that this company provides. It's so shameless, I'm almost impressed.

2\. While I do like many of the "new" graphic design trends they mention, good
graphic design is not always (and in fact not usually) good web design. Paper
is usually a reasonable size and shape and, most importantly, is not able to
suddenly change in either of those parameters at any moment. Almost every
attempt at this that I've seen has been either broken, stupid or different
when using viewed on smartphones and the like. If you just show me the desktop
version, I will get annoyed from scrolling and zooming. If you try to slightly
adjust it, you will probably end up wasting an absurd amount of screen real-
estate. If you adjust it to the point where the experience is good, I'll be
frustrated when I try to find the same thing on my desktop an hour later and
get a completely different layout for the same URL.

The fact is that you need many different designs for different mediums and
while a "poster" style website could do that, anything you expect people to
"browse" needs to be mostly standard and have to adapt as little as possible.

------
typeformer
As a web designer, I can tell you this whole post is the worst kind of garbage
content marketing. They call their product web design 3.0, and yet they say
Webflow, a product superior in almost every way, doesn't qualify for that
designation, please!. In addition, their homepage for their own product is
pretty terrible design wise and I have a strong feeling this must have been
upvoted with bots.

------
werds
While I realise this is essentially marketing for Nicepage, the article is
very good. The templates here
[https://nicepage.com/templates](https://nicepage.com/templates) are mainly
informative sites like portfolios, restaurants, dental practises etc.. It is
going to be a while before the typical functional ecommerce sites we use use
everyday adopt a more creative approach. It is just too much of a risk to
present a user with an unusual design and a learning curve. When you just want
users to part with their cash, the site needs to be as predictable as
possible.

~~~
onli
Is it? I think it shows some chutzpah to write such a long article defending
such a thesis, but it's also completely wrong and thus not very good. We
already had this: It was called Killer Websites or later Flash pages. We
killed it with fire when the web professionalized.

There are two forces at play here: On the one hand you have those print
inspired designer types, boosted by the possibilities of modern browsers. On
the other hand you have the usability requirements and the dictate of the form
factor: If you do a mobile website you need a very simple grid, responsive for
bigger screens yes, but the focus is on structure and content. Free placement
of stuff according to print design ideals of magazine cover pages is
completely useless there, the phone screen is too small for that anyway.

What we end up with is the current design: Very formalized pages for the most
part, with lots of possibilities to experiment thanks to evolving browser
capabilities _while keeping the standardized structure_. This will lead to
further evolution of what is a modern design, but I doubt we will see a
complete new paradigm anytime soon - as long as technology remains as constant
as it was the last 10 to 20 years. Foldable phone screens might move the
needle a little, if they ever come down from the uber-premium price segment
vendors target right now and don't turn out to be a useless gimmick

One thing to keep in mind: Yes, web design is new, but because we already had
print design before it adopted very much very fast. This is not a completely
new field that still has to match what humans actually need, it already took
that from existing research and practices. That's why it could evolve and
settle down that fast, and that's why the article is wrong in predicting the
next grand revolution, that happens to need their website builder.

------
martin_drapeau
Bootstrap solved a big problem: have a developer create a modern looking
website without needing a designer.

Looking at the mentioned "Web 3.0", I see patterns that Bootstrap can pickup
and evolve into having over time. For example overlay elements and grid cells.

Designers will continue evolving the look of the Web. Bootstrap (and others)
will continue picking up patterns and incorporating them for developers to
implement without a designer. And that's a good thing.

------
tempguy9999
My requirements for a website are: I get the information I need then I leave
ASAP.

This is held up if the site requires cookies, or blocked outright if it
requires scripts eg. to present text (q.v. the washington post). That is about
all.

This sums it up:

> We are strongly against the fact that designers are limited in the freedom
> of creativity

I'm all for limiting their creativity in areas outside the purely artistic. I
want usable websites (= useful info concisely and safely presented, with
respect for others' disabilities), but creative types often don't seem to care
(edit: or know; they're often clueless about usability).

(to be fair, this website is certainly not bad)

------
pixelrevision
I don't get what they are trying to say here. They talk about positioning and
overlapping as if they are new features. All this stuff has been baked in for
a long time the hard part is making the layout adjust to multiple form
factors.

They show some pictures of intricately laid out shelves and all I can think
about is how they are going to look when you squish them. The "free
positioning" in their 3.0 illustration reminds me of using tables to lay
things out precisely and having everything break when you need to change the
text. Forget about providing content with a CMS.

At the end of the day it's not about "better tools" it's making tradeoffs
between a tight elegant design and a need to show dynamic content on a wide
variety of devices.

------
redleggedfrog
Awesome, that's what I wanted - for websites to look like the overproduced
glossy ad inserts in magazines that I tear out and throw away.

Be warned, I could be tearing out and throwing away your website too.

------
potta_coffee
Boring web design is not bad. I prefer boring stuff that loads quickly and
lets my find information quickly. Even on a website dedicated to art, I care
about the ART, not the layout.

------
zackkatz
This article appears to be written in order to rank in search engines for the
phrase "Web Design 3.0" and to have people use a phrase they already rank well
for.

------
jressey
I remember awful avant garde websites being in style in the mid 2000s too but
they were unusable and confusing. That's all that 'Web 3.0' is in this
article. Ordered grids will rule forever.

------
rchaud
Thanks for putting this together. I don't know if "Web Design 3.0" is a term
people recognize, but I do agree that this particular style is based around
bringing in more elements from print design to digital. CSS3, Flexbox and now
CSS Grid has made a lot of that possible.

The bigger challenge now is that "web design" isn't really respected as a
discipline, since half of the customers associate it with cheap templated
Wordpress/Drupal sites, and the other half care only about utility (if it's a
web app), and little to nothing about how the design speaks to its brand. It's
their call of course, and if they want a barebones site, it's on the designer
to show them that a custom design can bring in more business.

PS - the Pinterest-sourced design examples are nice. I wouldn't have
discovered them myself since Pinterest's UX and takeover of Google Image
search results has soured me on them.

------
conradfr
This being an ad aside, I'd like to see the conversion rate and other
meaningful metrics of those "web design 3.0" websites, especially for the
examples at the beginning.

------
exodust
This is nothing but a "marketing 3.0" advertisement for a product called "nice
page".

Someone likely advised them to write a blog article all about how everyone
needs "web design 3.0", and position the product as the solution to everyone's
problem.

The thing is, they forgot about responsive design. If everything is
overlapping everything else, you will end up with a very nasty problem of what
to do on different size screens, and scrolling, and font size, and zoom levels
etc.

You can safely skip the article, as it's nothing but a messy concept around
"web design 3.0" (which isn't a thing) and a lead into the inevitable pricing
page...

[https://nicepage.com/premium](https://nicepage.com/premium)

"no coding needed". (for your messy looking web design 3.0 page)

------
adamsea
We love Web Design. Web Design is our life. Web Design is vital. We must
capitolize Web Design every time we say Web Design. Capitalize on Web Design
today!

------
whytaka
As a millennial and a designer for 18 years, I absolutely despise this free-
positioning overlap stuff.

Let's learn all about accessibility and then spit in its face.

------
devmunchies
This company doesn't have an "about us" page or a profile on Crunchbase, and
LinkedIn only shows a single developer working at this company, yet it shows
Amazon, Getty Images, Microsoft, etc as customers on the homepage.

I don't have a problem with small companies (Indie Hacker myself), I just
wanted to learn more about the founding team to see if this is some fly by
night company or if they have some solid experience in this space or some
investors.

~~~
exodust
It's a sham.

Scroll down home page to their "testimonial" from web designer "Allan
Hollander". There's a picture of him. He's a good looking chap, and the photo
looks like stock art, because it is....

[https://www.stocklayouts.com/Solutions/Graphic-
Designs.aspx](https://www.stocklayouts.com/Solutions/Graphic-Designs.aspx)

------
arthev
I like web design 1.0.

Funny that all examples of web design 1.0 present ye olde web as "boring" pure
text websites rather than the rivetingly fun designs going around (see
[http://mentalfloss.com/article/53792/17-ancient-abandoned-
we...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/53792/17-ancient-abandoned-websites-
still-work) :) ).

Also, any mention of "design progress" sounds _odd_.

------
tomnipotent
> Web Design 3.0 is about the designer's freedom

Which is exactly why it'll never take off. Design is only one part of a larger
whole, and I can't think of a single business or website that shows the
"designer's freedom" and is still in business.

Websites with byzantine navigation or difficult-to-decipher layouts are
designer masturbation that create frustration rather than solve problems.

No thanks.

------
hjanssen
I read through the comments an often saw the same sentiment: "Modern Webdesign
is bad, artistic expression is bad". Which strikes me as odd. Sure, there is a
place for "boring" and information-dense webdesign. If I go through wikipedia
and search for something, I want information, and modern webdesign would be
bad in that regard. But there is also a place for modern design in websites.
Company websites for example. There, the overall design language is part of
the brand identity and defines how I see your company. I cant help but see
those "bootstrappy-boring" company websites as very unprofessional (although I
know I shouldnt make that connection), and I know at least from asking my
family members that this effect is only more pronounced in people that have no
direct connection to the tech or design industry. We have to recognize that we
are a very little minority - many people dont _think_ about websites - they
_feel_ them.

------
gotrythis
I saw this post this morning and actually spent the afternoon redoing my
personal website with nicepage.com's editor.

While there were a few annoyances, it is one of the best visual web editors
I've experienced, and it only took a few hours to redo my home page, without
watching any of their training. I am impressed.

The site I'm redoing was built on bootstrap. The results on nicepage looks
close to identical, but it was much easier to make versions for different
sizes, as I could rearrange elements however I wanted, allowing me to
customize my site more than I can with bootstrap for different devices.

The code even looks reasonably clean compared to what I've seen from other
visual editors.

So, while the article was all about these more artistic layouts, it's a pretty
good tool for putting together a "web 2.0" site if you don't feel like coding
it yourself. No way I could have done it that fast by hand, and the results
are good enough for me.

~~~
exodust
They need you as their testimonial instead of the fake one they have on their
page currently.

I would recommend scanning for malware if you installed anything from
nicepage.com

------
phaedryx
It reminds me of when Bill Watterson was allowed full control of the Sunday
strip layouts and he started to break free from the grid:
[https://imgur.com/a/wjcnuXh](https://imgur.com/a/wjcnuXh)

I would argue it isn't just "artistic", but it conveys they ideas better in
this case.

------
JimBrimble35
Taking into consideration the content of this post, as well as the company
posting it, this is essentially an invitation to participate in the newest
release of the homogenization of web design.

There are already skilled and talented designers/developers out there
producing "Web-Design 3.0" sites, but they are doing so at a much higher
budget than the average SMB is going to shell out. The tool being advertised
brings these layouts and design ideas to a broader range of designers, and
allows for projects with this look and feel to be completed at a lower cost.

I actually really like this as a business opportunity. Anyone with a
reasonable pipeline of clients could start using this to crank out sites for
SMBs and turn a decent profit.

------
coleifer
> how to ensure you can stay employed to shit out JavaScript and bloated
> styles.

------
piokoch
"The use of Bootstrap and the spread of templates made Web Design boring."

Frankly, as a user I don't complain. GUI consistency has a great value for me.
Crawling through the fancy artistic designs is fun until I just want to find
contact address of some company on their website.

The advantage that MS Windows has (or had, before they decide to go with the
"modern designs" here and there) is a GUI predictable across all applications.
File menu, Edit menu, Tools menu, Help menu, consistent shortcuts, toolbar,
everything always the same, boring - all of this makes users productive.

------
vlucas
Looking at most of these designs, it strikes me that most of them are
completely unusable for a simple blog. I just don't have that many photos for
my website. It's mostly text and information. I am not sure how many people
actually do, or actually want that many visuals on their site. Most of those
design just look cluttered to me. They fit the high-end physical product well
that requires a lot of visuals to sell, but I am not sure it really meets the
needs of the average website out there today.

------
oliwarner
It's this satire? It's _awful_.

"Free positioning" isn't new. I was dragging absolutely positioned divs and
image maps around in Dreamweaver 3, 20 years ago.

These chumps think they've reinvented design. Instead they've just unearthed
exactly the same problems that Bootstrap helped control.

Seriously. Some of us have _been through_ the hell of uninformed design
choices. Mystery meat navigation, never knowing what you can or should click,
criminally insane typography, and fixed resolution design. Leave in in the
90s.

------
two2two
I've not used Nicepage before, but I have used the majority of WYSIWYG editors
mentioned in this article. It's an exciting read for a designer like myself
because I've been thinking about this problem for a while.

The conclusion is fairly misleading because it's missing the glaringly obvious
answer: designers could learn HTML and CSS. I fought it forever thinking that
there will always be a WYSIWYG and they'll eventually get so good they'll spit
out the code for me.

The reality is much more frustrating. Adobe Muse was promising as it helped
with responsive design and the free form creativity this article talks about,
BUT it had a ton of issues. Relying on it for projects with clients was risky
as one update would kill your production, as it often did. Reverting back a
version was a solution so you could finish the project, but the features added
to the update were crucial, and as a designer I wanted those too.

Then it became a game of learn the software de jure, and hope it's A) good
enough B) will have support for a long time C) isn't cheap, and D) doesn't
take forever to learn.

Eventually, I discovered grid and flex box and have been teaching myself HTML,
CSS, and JS. Code isn't going away. Software does.

Also, I don't trust any WYSIWYG editor to produce clean and concise code. I'm
afraid it'll spit out a bunch of divs and be extremely inefficient. Not to
mention accessibility and semantics. Even if designing to a grid and carefully
watching my proportions and where items sit on or next to each other, I still
fear the program will spit out some ugly code.

Mainly, when using a WYSIWYG, it ends up taking just as long as it would to
code, especially if you want it to look really good.

So now, my goal is design like the Web 3.0 described in this article, but with
the good old tools with which I have full control. It's like a carpenter in
his wood shop, as opposed to using a combination of legos and Ikea. No matter
what, to have ultimate control is the best, and it remains to be seen if
Nicepage or any design tool will ever be as good as the most fundamental of
tools (code).

I suppose the reality is there's a huge spectrum of designers. There's the
developer oriented ones, which resources are aplenty. Then on the other end of
the spectrum are artists, who need a blank canvas to fill out their ideas. One
is quick and good enough, the other long and the end result likely janky
behind the curtain. Nicepage seems to want to appeal to the the artist.

With enough time, a true designer can understand the full spectrum and see
that fully custom coded websites, even if they take a long time, are still
likely to be the most unique and longest lasting.

~~~
pixelrevision
"Then on the other end of the spectrum are artists, who need a blank canvas to
fill out their ideas."

For the most part people who are like this should be doing a different
specialty related to design (graphic design, branding, tv, print...). Web
design for the most part is taking a lot of data and fitting it into a limited
space that changes based on the user's preferences and device.

And you are right the simplest solution is to just learn to write code. Once
you get a good setup going it's less painful than using the pallets in
photoshop and you'll have a hell of a lot more control and flexibility. I
think people get intimidated because when they think of code they think you'll
need a lot of math and arcane knowledge. CSS is a much different thing that
often makes more sense to designers than it does to developers.

------
whalabi
An image of a bunch of photo frames displayed not in the shape of a rectangle
is shown, then the writer says: "You notice the dramatic changes in Design
(sic) in general nowadays. Design has seen rapid progress in all areas."

Seems pretty damn inane if you ask me.

> Agree that these examples look like modern Print Design and Web Design 3.0?
> Why is this happening? Nobody wants to see boring Grids from the past on
> their walls.

Pretty sure this is content farm swill.

------
droptablemain
While the article has some interesting points, it is quite poorly written.
Additionally, it creates a problem that does not exist for the purpose of
pushing its corporate propaganda. Web 3.0 -- the semantic web -- is a legit
thing. Web Design 3.0 then, by default, would almost certainly be mobile
first, and thus this manufactured "need" of free positioning becomes basically
irrelevant.

------
badgers
There's nothing wrong with Web Design 2.0, in fact I prefer it when I need to
interact with information on a website. When I use Netflix to browse for a
movie or TV show, linear is good. I don't need free positioning, overlapping
elements. If the goal of the site is to showcase creativity and art, Web
Design 3.0 is a possible tool in the toolkit.

------
panarky
How much does web design matter if the server can't deliver it?

Server Error

502 - Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or
proxy server

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antoineMoPa
Any other hackers and wannabe designers using Inkscape to prototype web app
layout? It is good solution for these kinds of layout with free positioning.

I suggest you learn it as it is free and useful in many others aspects of life
(Cropping pdfs for including in lab reports, making simple icons, making
vector figures, etc.).

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agumonkey
This is just about everything I abhor. I even miss dreamweaver table hell..

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bryanlarsen
Why is that an iOS app that looks and acts different is bad yet a web app that
looks and acts different is good?

I'm a fan of the bootstrap hegemony. Bootstrap apps are predictable and
usable.

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ricardobeat
Every year since ~2008 has been the year the Web 3.0 is born.

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lewisjoe
When it comes to creative freedom vs reusable blocks, the latter will always
win. Period.

Assembly language provided creative ways to solve a problem. C won because it
had patterns to solve them across projects.

Word processors provide creative ways to layout your document. Yet markdown is
winning because it solves the layout problem with reusable syntax.

People like patterns and reusability. Be it developers who want to reuse code
or the users who want to reuse their previous knowledge. Practicality will
eventually win. The arguments for Web 3.0 goes against this very funda. I
doubt it will ever catch up.

~~~
okaleniuk
C won because UNIX was free, and C was UNIX. What you're thinking is COBOL. It
was designed with portability in mind. Write once, run everywhere before it
was cool. By the way, assembly is still one of the most popular languages (or
language families).

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betternutter
Comic. Web 3 looks exac tly like flash. Same useless BS designers have pushed
from the dawn of web. Skumorphism anyone?

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typeformer
If you really want to see the future of web design, learn about Webflow, don't
buy into content marketing hype.

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mgkimsal
re: the examples under "Web Design 3.0 is about the designer's freedom"...

In 1997, I was tasked with making 'layout designs' like these in to
'webpages'. "Designers" have always had freedom of position/layout, even
(especially?) when it was a PITA to achieve.

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jacob_rezi
I love building really, really nice websites. Bootstrap is hands down the most
valuable tool I depend on.

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freeopinion
Desktop apps for Windows and Mac. No Linux. Browser app doesn't support
Firefox.

Hmm... pass

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pcurve
These 3.0 designs are something we saw pre mobile-first / responsive era.

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tsukurimashou
I wish we could go back to textmode, but that will probably never happen

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Theodores
I think that there is much to learn from 'electronic music'. This differed
from what came before in the way that the web differed from print. With early
techno music you could press a few buttons on a gadget box and it would play
the beat for you, on top of this you could sample things and mix them in.
Before that drummers had to actually keep time and singers had to hit their
notes.

Then computers came along. Some of the early techno pioneers didn't have a
clue how to use a computer. They were stuck using the early electronic gadgets
and the workflow that went with it.

Then a new generation came along that could use the computers and could do
everything on an Apple laptop without having to have a bedroom full of
turntables, forests of wires, keyboards, samplers and drum machines.

The older guys stuck with the original tools for 'electronic music' still
linger around but the tools for the job have changed. Had they been born a
generation later with the same passion for music they would have gone straight
to the computer stage.

Getting back to web development, I think we have something similar going on. A
generation of web designers got used to developing with the desktop publishing
tools and static mockups in PDF form. Responsive design for mobile for them
was just a doubling of their workload using these same methods. They are very
much stuck on things like 'pixel sizes' and much else that doesn't really
relate to how it is done.

I think that future designers will work very differently, essentially thinking
in terms of what can be done to content instead of placeholder copy with CSS,
SVG and javascript animation.

The reason we are not there yet is pretty much the same as it was with music,
you need a new generation to come along to think in terms of the new ways of
working.

Right now it seems that the website builder services such as Squarespace are
of great appeal to people. A few years ago a freelance designer could build a
website for a local business with Wordpress but now they use Squarespace. The
bloat does not matter to them. It looks good and who cares if it is not using
CSS grid?

At the other end of the spectrum, sizeable businesses with web development
teams are stuck like the early electronic music artists are. They have a
visual design process, the 'agile' religion and plenty of excuses for not
using CSS grid or even the full vocabulary of HTML5 elements one would use if
taking a content driven design path.

I am looking forward to the changes that are likely to happen as the new
generation gain more confidence and demonstrate better, quicker results by
using better HTML5 and the full range of CSS grid. I can't see website builder
services such as Squarespace being able to keep people happy with bloated web
pages forever and, when it becomes possible to get results with native
HTML5/CSS without having a behemoth of a dev team, there should be design
progress.

~~~
greensoup
Interesting, I`m thinkning in another direction.

With every step into makeing things easier, you lose something. With neural
networks, we cant see how or why. With electronic music. the button that lets
an orchestra play with one push, makes it more difficult to change one
instrument. For webdesign / development: with tools that help you, it is
harder to get things really how you want.

I notice this personally as well as coding as with music and find myself, not
going back to the basics, but wanting to know more about it so it gives speed
with using tools, while still being able to adjust the details.

I believe that there is value in mastering your skills and tools, and that
that will you make you a better ... I dont think it has anything to do with a
new generation or condifence?

~~~
Theodores
There was a lot wrong with HTML and it only got a layout engine two years ago.
People learned all the hacks, starting with table layouts, the the responsive
div soup and then the frameworks to make it easier to make more div soup, not
forgetting the build tools. There is sunk cost in this learning and a visual
design process that goes with it. Anyone can make something complex.

To give that up and to take a content first approach with no visual mockups
and semantic HTML is a bit too much to give up when you have teams built
around the process. A younger generation starting from scratch can avoid all
of this. Or they can just use Squarespace with the status quo continuing a lot
longer.

The thing is that there are universities and colleges that do teach basic
HTML. This will be taught with the modern HTML5 elements not too soon. When
people who learn this stuff then get to do real projects they might baulk at
using frameworks and libraries that are another thing to learn that is a bit
unnecessary as they can achieve their design goals with what they already
know.

This is 'intrinsic web design', using the inherent built in properties of the
browser, keeping it simple and binning the frameworks, polyfills, libraries
and visual mockup tools.

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okaleniuk
wordsandbuttons.online looks exactly like Text Design example from 1992. Got
half of million hits last year. Apparently, when you have things to tell,
being trendy is irrelevant.

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bigbadgoose
Gah, their YouTube channel pops up an auto-subscribe box

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crash0verride
> For the first time, this article shares the secret about how to create the
> trendiest web designs in the world

I don't like how clickbait-y the article started

