
Web Design Museum - davesailer
https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/
======
sdrothrock
It's really a shame that so many of these exhibits are company homepages; it
really puts a strange spin on the internet and makes me wonder how weird our
look at history is compared to "what it was really like."

For example, I remember the split frame layout (nav on top or left, body in
remainder) dominating web layouts for a long, long time -- the CSS float to
keep navigation "on top" was really just mimicking that for a lot of people.

Similarly, pop-up windows were such a huge thing for a long time, whether it
was for a music player, or for site navigation, or just links opening in
little miniature windows meant to be hovered over the main page so that you
never "left."

The closest that any of those sites come to capturing the "feel" of the
internet in that time for me is probably the Microsoft Games site.

Incidentally, one of them looks really broken:
[https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/true-is-
true-2001](https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/true-is-true-2001)

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kartan
It is impressive how design has changed thru the years. Just compare the 1996
Space Jam web [https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/space-
jam-1996](https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/space-jam-1996) with its
current design
[https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm](https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm)

~~~
jcelerier
> The jamminest two minutes of trailer time that ever hit a theater. It's 7.5
> megs, it's Quicktime, and it's worth it. Click the graphic to download...

Oh god if only the modern web was 10% as light-hearted as this was

~~~
astura
It's a site for a kid's movie.

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dkyc
SpaceX
([https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/spacex-2002](https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/spacex-2002))
is the one that really struck a chord with me. Not because of the design
itself, but because it shows just _how old_ the company already is, while only
stepping into mainstream spotlight fairly recently.

~~~
colordrops
What's crazy is that blue origin is older.

~~~
iamgopal
So, it takes couple of decades for overnight success.

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madrox
It makes me sad that the web design museum is mostly made up of corporate
sites. Companies didn't take the web too seriously in the 90s and early
2000s...at least as it pertains to design.

If you wanted to look at good design back then, you went to fray.com,
glassdog.com, 0sil8.com, zeldman.com, and others I don't remember. Oh boy
those were the days...

~~~
brandonmenc
Fortunately Fray has all the old site up as an archive[0]. Also can't forget
k10k.com and everything they linked to.

[0] [http://fray.com/index-old.shtml](http://fray.com/index-old.shtml)

~~~
themodelplumber
Man, people still aren't as creative with their headings (see the simple icon
overlap in the iTunes heading) as they were in the days when when you had to
use images as headings to even use a unique font.

Even though such capability can be abused, it's kind of depressing to still
miss this option in most projects due to time, etc. from a graphic design
standpoint.

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danielovichdk
Looking at these older websites (for me thats 1996—2002) I remember spending a
lot of my time on figuring out how they really worked underneath it all.

It was truly an exciting time where the differences in design and style for
websites were big.

Today, you don't really see personal websites anymore, and things have somehow
become streamlined and pretty much just standard. There is hardly any wow
effect on the web anymore, and that's sad I think.

~~~
kickling
On the other hand, Web standards makes it easier to use the Web.

~~~
jdironman
That must be why I have 3 dofferent browsers installed in case a website
doesn't work on one of them.

~~~
acdha
When was the last time you really needed that? I haven’t had to in years, and
I work in .gov. The only thing I see is needing to enable Flash and that was
awhile ago.

~~~
reaperducer
I see it frequently in testing. But then, I'm on the web dev side.

Sometimes if I see a web site I think might be too ambitious, I'll open it on
each of my testing machines in different browsers, and about 70% of the time,
my hunch is right, and it either fails on one or more, or the output looks
significantly/unusably different.

~~~
acdha
It’s interesting because I also do a lot of web development and have really
been enjoying being able to develop in Firefox and not need to worry much
about things working in Chrome/Safari, with a little care checking caniuse.com
for the newest things.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Firefox-first definitely seems to be the way forward for web developers. We
fell into the trap of Chrome-first and ended up having to fix everything for
FF and IE, creating a lot of work. Soon discovered that if we just developed
for Firefox everything would generally "just work" in the other browsers.

~~~
acdha
I generally also find the devtools to be better but both Chrome and Firefox
have years-old bugs involving source maps, breakpoints, etc. so I end up
cycling between the two during any given day.

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ricardobeat
Note if any maintainers are here: some of the captures, like Habbo.com, are
done with ClearType enabled, when it was in fact only available from 2006 with
IE7.

The blocky text rendering was a significant part of the look and feel of those
websites.

~~~
janwillemb
Some sites, like Time.com, prerendered parts of their text antialiased to an
image.

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aasasd
You might want to also exhibit secondary pages. The front page is often not
representative of the overall experience with a site, since it has different
objectives and techniques (that was especially true back before the single-
page era).

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wolco
These sites are better lookin compared to their modern version.

The facebook pic in the top banner is cool how it fades.

Why is modern design better? It is just the mobile aspect?

~~~
hegz
Works better on more screen sizes. All standard web tech; no
flash/Java/browser specific things.

Less clutter and visual distractions once you block adverts. Also much much
easier to navigate with a consistent design guideline vs having every page
randomly assembled with no oversight. Standardised components and design also
makes larger websites possible without having to manage 1 billion pages and
elements.

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zwaps
Man, this was the time when me (and every computer literary teen) fancied
himself a dev and webdesigner. And we were like, considered geniuses too - for
being able to code some PHP and copy some cool designs :3

good times

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nisc
I remember how long it took me to accept that the web was transitioning from
1.0 to 2.0, with things like word processors, email, and "IRC" suddenly moving
into the browser. Fast forward, one or two decades later, the websites in this
museum indeed look truly ancient and boring. Time flies.

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mattkevan
k10k.com! Used to spend hours browsing that back in the day. Some seriously
good design despite how basic the tools were.

And pixel fonts for the win.

I’m glad I no longer have to wait for Flash to finish loading, or to figure
out the navigation of whatever site I’ve landed on, but things are less
interesting now.

~~~
fuball63
I was trying to read up on what this was, it said it was a site focused on
pixel perfect design? What does that mean exactly, lots of images, spacers,
and pixel fonts?

~~~
mattkevan
It was an early webzine and community that showcased cutting edge web &
digital design in the late 90s and early 2000s.

For me it fits into the same early 2000s movement pushing the boundaries of
digital expression as The Designers’ Republic did in graphic design and Warp
Records in Music.

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tremendo
Many of those sites were designed with such bandwidth, resolution and color
constraints. I wonder if they could add some sort of toggle to see display
those images in the original intended resolution, or what was common for its
day. The jump from 640 to 800 to 1024! The Web-safe 216 colors. Modems from
under 3+, to 14, 28, 33, 56 kbps, ISDN, T1 and broadband! you had to use
lowsrc attribute in <img> tags while the better image loaded, or pre-loading
images in javascript. Glad all of that is over, glad I lived through it.

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Waterluvian
Compared to others, the Apple site from 2001 holds up really well.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Funny to see them marketing their machine as a means to copyright
infringement.

~~~
dan-robertson
Buying music on iTunes or CDs and then burning it onto CDs to eg put into hifi
systems or car stereos is not copyright infringement. It was a way to play
music that was bought online and a way to make mixtapes of legitimately owned
music.

Saying that advertising a CD burner is inciting copyright infringement is like
saying that advertising a knife’s sharpness is inciting stabbings

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Ah, ripping (eg CDs to iTunes) & mixing was and again is unlawful in UK.

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xtiansimon
An obvious criticism about the implementation of this museum deserves to be
mentioned--the postcard size of these screen shots misrepresents the websites
visual impact. Page load time was a limitation, and a significant tradeoff in
any design. Shrinking the page doesn't communicate the impact of sites like
K10K to the visual landscape of website design.

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Eridrus
This is pretty cool! Where are you getting these images from?

I would love to see this expanded to different genres of sites too. I've
noticed that (niche) fashion websites have their own aesthetic that is a bit
divorced from the mainstream. I'm sure we're all aware that Asian design
trends are also very different.

~~~
xtiansimon
In the day I collected screen shots of K10K promoted websites in FileMaker
Pro. I suppose these images are screenshots sitting in someone's CDROM
collection. :)

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booleandilemma
Why aren’t they in order by year?

Also, the page buttons at the bottom aren’t working for me (I’m using safari
on iphone x).

Nice site altogether :)

~~~
webdesignmuseum
Thank you for bug notification. On the desktop you can use filters by years.
We are now working on the new version of Web Design Museum where it will be
possible to filter sites by years also on mobile phones.

~~~
wrycoder
Except on Firefox/MacOS, once you select a year, you can't deselect it.

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DarkContinent
Would it be possible to incorporate some more recent websites as a point of
comparison? To my mind web design has changed pretty significantly in the last
ten years and it would be nice to see the progression.

~~~
webdesignmuseum
Look at timelines outlining the development of the most important world
websites over the past 20+ years.
[https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline](https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline)

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magerleagues
CDnow 1998 is the best one
[https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/cdnow-1998](https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/cdnow-1998)

~~~
Izkata
Y'know, seeing that tall/thin site with a side menu just reminded me:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html)

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golfer
Similar to another site,
[http://www.versionmuseum.com](http://www.versionmuseum.com)

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nayuki
The page screenshots look nice, but does the site let us look at the original
HTML code and media resources that made up those pages?

~~~
webdesignmuseum
Thank you for your comment, but it is very difficult to reconstruct the HTML
code or media resources of these old websites. For example flash technology is
now completely dead.

~~~
johnchristopher
which is really unfortunate, there were some killer flash website with really
subtle layout, animation and aesthetics that I haven't seen yet in any HTML5
websites.

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cryptozeus
Great idea but your website seems to be using very old style. Its not working
properly on mobile.

~~~
webdesignmuseum
We are now working on the new version of Web Design Museum, which will be
better optimized for mobile phones.

~~~
czardoz
I hope the Web Design Museum will have it's own screenshot too.

~~~
webdesignmuseum
Yes, but until 2027 :-)

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k__
Some really aged well, especially those with more extravagant designs.

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pcurve
looks like the site is crashing...

Adobe's old web sites still look quite good.

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reaperducer
To me, what this illustrates is that too many companies today don't understand
there is a big difference between a web developer and a web designer.

Companies that have both are the ones with the sites that stand the test of
time.

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johnchristopher
And boom, you are old.

~~~
52-6F-62
Shhh. The nostalgia already did that. You didn't need to say it, too!

I still really like some of the design trends back then. I think a lot of it
was because they _only_ had to work on desktop.

I also like those old isometric pixel drawings that were so popular. It was
fun to play with as a kid because you could pretty easily follow along with
paint, albeit with a lot lower quality.

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rokhayakebe
Gap looks about the same so many years later.

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keyle
Well now I just feel old. Thank you.

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halayli
tabs where made of 3 images. left/right radius corner, and stretch background
in between.

