Like many areas of tech, there is no doubt that web design has come a long way. For many of us, watching the advancements, or even taking the occasional trip back down memory lane, has been nothing less than staggering. In the early stages of web design, the idea that pictures could be plastered onto sites, was nothing short of revolutionary.
Early 90’s Websites
Since some of the earlier websites in 1991, sites have come a long way since their primitive text based days. Aside from websites themselves, during the larger part of the 90’s, dial up internet was the best you could ask for. A lot of the websites during this period, specifically catered as a result to slower internet connections. As mentioned, most of these web site designs consisted only of text. Layouts for the most part, did not extend much further than that. However, as HTML evolved, web page layouts also did so simultaneously. In the immediate sense, this for the most part, consisted of links and headers for paragraphs. It was not until later on, that images as well as advancements in early typography were attainable.
It is understood, that these sites for the most part existed for informational purposes exclusively. However, there are some aspects of their designs that we can see implemented within websites today. With more expedient internet connection speeds currently, sites today do not have to be optimized for slow internet users. However, this does not mean that light, concise, straight-to-the-point web pages free of clutter, are not as desired today as they were then. Certainly, the internet and web pages have limits today just as they did then.
Mid 90’s Advancements
As the mid-nineties arrived, web design began to experience some significant growth. This was the case not just in terms of appearance, but the general structure of web sites. Organizationally, tables could now be used to structure content. No doubt, this allowed for creativity to flourish. Even though, for the most part websites were still primarily text based, they now could be organized in a more pleasing manner. By designating certain text into rows and columns, websites were slowly becoming more aesthetically appealing to the eye.
Although table based web page designs, are not usually the go-to today, during the early stages of web design they represented a large step toward more structural pages. The mere idea that different aspects of your website, could be displayed in different sections or ways on the page itself, forced designers to come up with new ways to present information. Even now, structuring a website is just as important as the content that it contains.