
The Evolution of Web Design (2016) - stelonix
http://fabianburghardt.de/webolution/
======
burlesona
Hilarious that it doesn’t work on phones. I guess this is only the evolution
of web through 2009?

~~~
mattlondon
Yep. Mobile is the primary and indeed _only_ way a lot of people access the
internet now. Ludicrous that they just flat out reject those users!

Web design/development from the past 5+ years absolutely _requires_ specific,
deliberate, and thoughtful support for mobile users.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
On a serious note: “Mobile-first” was a rallying cry a few years ago - but all
I remember are pages that didn’t work well on desktop, especially pages with
above-the-fold (`height: 100vh;`) full-screen graphics or worse: videos. It’s
cute on a handheld 480x640 display you can scroll-flick, but terrible at
2560x1440 with a mouse-wheel.

------
oftenwrong
1991: simple and readable, minimizes scrolling, no menu to click through,
lightweight

2015: complicated with low-contrast text set against an animated background
image, maximises scrolling, requires clicking through a hamburger menu with
gratuitous animations, heavyweight

Or, put more simply...

1991: content

2015: content + cruft

~~~
aitchnyu
1995 has black text on black pen illustration.

2014 has thin gray text on brightened starry sky, which is too faint for my
FHD Dell. Indians still buy 800p laptop and desktop screens which are too
faint for rooms without curtains.

1997 and 2015 are also painful to read.

Early 2000s with "IE at 1024X768" haven't aged well for high resolution
screens.

I will fight to not diverge from stock Bootstrap and landing pages to be upto
3 screens and definitely no scroll hijacking.

------
nfoz
Now if I could just get this slider onto every website, and keep it locked at
1993. :)

~~~
enriquto
it's pretty much how I see the web thanks to umatrix

------
plg
You know what? I prefer the very first one. But then I am strange I admit.

------
agumonkey
1995 was the first time I used EDIT.EXE to write down a high level graphical
thing (HTML) to be interpreted by a program (IE). I felt like god. Prior to
that I only made pascal/asm shitty demos..

------
downtide
Prefer the text only version, at least it reflows.

------
izolate
Great job! You nailed the Sci-Fi aesthetic from 2005.

------
cgoecknerwald
Very cool! For some reason, 2003 is loading blank for me.

~~~
revvx
Probably because 2003 requires Flash!

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
With the death of Flash comes the loss of a huge part of internet cultural
history, mostly interactive parts - as at least flash cartoons can be rendered
to video and put up on YouTube. There were a lot of innovative games and
concepts on sites like MiniClip and Newgrounds.

I remember seeing a very early demo of a <canvas>-based SWF player shortly
after the iPhone came out - I wonder what would have happened to Flash if
Adobe, Apple, or Google put effort into making it work the same way they did
with the JavaScript-based PDF renderer.

~~~
tzs
Same with the death of Java applets. There were a lot of neat educational Java
applets, especially in STEM subjects. Some have been recreated in JavaScript,
but a lot are gone.

~~~
aitchnyu
I remember downloading a VR web pages of a cell and atom in 2000s and hoping
to get a magazine CD with a VRML player plugin. It may have been 25MB to
download, but it took hours of billable phone time. Seems that dream is lost
forever.

------
hliyan
We could do a lot with 1993 and a modern stylesheet. I hope that's where we'll
be in 2023...

------
LoSboccacc
ahah loved it, the frontpage two column and background theme really connected
with me, having wrote my first website for grandpa in the 97

this made me wonder tho, 2015+ design are all specialized for sparse
information and selling something. what would a modern content heavy site
focused not on monetizing would look like today (say, a modern wikipedia of
sort for timeless pieces)

said site was brought to 2010 levels of design but got stuck there due how the
modern template are not suited for such things

------
boot13
I couldn't get past the first heading: "NASA and the Space".

~~~
klingonopera
It's a direct translation from the author's (presumably) German native
language, where space is indeed referred to as a distincted "das Weltall/der
Weltraum" or literally in English, "the space".

It was weird for me, too - NASA, _the_ American space agency, with blatant
grammar errors on their front page? Ehhhh...

------
dcalixto
So the evolution is more about aesthetics than format or anything else!

------
Moxdi
that was cool

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
1999’s the best !

------
Yuval_Halevi
I thought you wrote 'The Eurovision of Web Design'

I guess I saw too much TV lately.

It might be cool due

------
jancsika
1\. See that background rocket video in the 2015? Now "imagine" the video is
instead pron1.

2\. Don't act like you don't know that scrolling down from pron1 will autoplay
pron2 when it enters the viewport.

3\. Don't act like you don't know about infinite scroll.

4\. Don't act like you don't _instinctively_ know that every single web design
in the years before that has fewer prons per minute.

If you fess up to those four truisms and _still_ pine for 90s web, at least
have the courage of your convictions to quit computers and become a street
preacher already.

~~~
arrow7000
... what?

