How web design has evolved over the years

[RidinHighSpeeds]

This research paper I did is 15% of my grade for my web design class. I was wondering if you all can give your opinions on how well I wrote this paper. Below is the link to the technical research paper:

http://www.jonswebdesign.com/homewor...b%20Design.htm

Guidelines:
A/A-
-Intro smoothly leads reader to a focused, clearly stated thesis statement.
-Body paragraphs relate back to thesis.
-Complete,well developed paragraphs using descriptive details and examples.
-Conclusion effectively summarizes position.

What do you all think? Its due on Tuesday... :)

[matauri]

I have moved this topic to Site Design, because I think it would be a good idea to get some injection from designers to help you.

For the moment, I have just picked up the following spelling mistakes & a differing of opinion.

During the late 90’s, the Internet was growing very strong as more people around the world were able to connect to the internet using there dialup modem or high speed broadband connection.

A small percentage of those people go on to designing there own personal web sites, or even taking classes for web design.

However many people still use flash in there web pages today which is most likely going to be commonly used in web pages in the near future.

I wouldnt say the below is necessarily true. I think it was a combination of internet access increasing, ISP rates going down making it more affordable, and more education in schools that inevitably made it way back into homes.

As web pages were looking much better with all kinds of features, more people were getting connected to the Internet.

Also, IMO regarding below, I think that in the future the requirement will be for more interactive & real time informative sites. I think animated sites will still be more of a showcase item. Functionality will play a major role.

In the future, instead of seeing a web page with just content, frames, and images…you could expect to see web pages in full animation and sound.

HTH

[vwebworld]

Here's a link for some comprehensive statistics
about the internet:
http://www.clickz.com/stats/

You might also check out:
http://www.waybackmachine.org/
to see how your favorite site(s) have changed from
the mid 90' through today.

From my own experience, I think things started a
little before the mid-90's. The origins of the
internet are way before then too. One of the first
purposes was to communicate between academic locations.

I tend to think that "Flash" will not become
the standard web media... unless the whole search
engine issue is "solved". But sites will become more
interactive as Matauri says.

However, this interactivity and even the growth
of web sites is driven by the "business" or
"commercial" side... that is, to make a sale, a web
site will need to interact more with the customer...
to "predict" his/her need and solve it.

~roland

[Dragonsi]

Hi,

A good article but like above, I have a few differance in opinion:

In the 80's & 90's - it wasn't so much the speed of the PC's but more to do with connection speed. Back then you were privilaged to get a connection speed above 28Kbps, the average home user connected at about 9Kbps - thus text only bulliten boards were the norm.

It is a common myth that a faster PC will give you a faster internet - completely and utterly incorrect. Yes a powerful PC will help with decoding Flash and Java et al - but if you are connected at 52Kbps > then you're only going to recieve data at no faster than approx 46 thousand bytes per second - period...

I agree with mantauri - Flash will not become the norm with regards to future standards. Unless the entire world gets ADSL or better, there is fat chance of Flash becoming the norm. I can safely say that when I come across sites made entirly from Flash, there is about a 5% chance I will wait for the blasted thing to download... After about 20 secs, if nothing is happening > I click off the site and go somewhere else.

Also agree that animated sites full of fancy stuff will be for marketing commercial products and for personal pages - at the end of the day - content is still king > that's the entire reason for searching something out - to learn more information and not to be impressed with fancy graphic work.

Still, well done on what you have produced and all the best with your course...

[Stibbs]

Hello all,

Lets get the obvious out of the way, the Flash stuff is out as no SE can see the stuff inside.

That said, it seems designers are interested in beauty and not taking into account the beast that must be tamed. (Thank G-d we don’t have to contend with the battle of the browsers anymore.) Designers need to have PhotoShop or Corel Draw to make web sites and they do it in a box (frames or tables). They must begin to understand that CSS is a designer’s dream of done properly.

Web programming has been the misunderstood lemming for sometime and I for one am glad to see that is coming out of the closet and with PHP and ASP are now ready for prime time. No more “that can’t be done” and a lot more “There you go”

Good Luck
David

[synergytheory]

I believe flash is here to stay.

- No browser or font compatability issues
- A whole flash file cached, will load quicker on dial up than many files within an html file. Of course you must use separate .swf files for each page of your site rather than one HUGE file. And know how to optimize images/flash files.
- There is technology smart enough to crawl flash files which google now owns I believe [but obviously doesnt use, YET!]
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchd...le.php/2200921
- 98% of all internet users can view flash

Flash has it's place, not for every site out there, but it has many many good points in my book.

Yes that's right! I am a flash lover and work for an SEO company :) I like a bit of eye candy, and without flash I wouldn't be able to drool over sites like www.webagent007.com or www.estudio.com or www.24-7media.de or www.2advanced.com

[netman4ttm]

Sorry you are way off target.

The reason the web looks like it does is someone at the Univ. of Indiana had a better idea, than Lynx.

The next reason was that someone in Congress (not Al Gore) said you could open the internet to commerce.

Then someone in Redmond Washington saw the Internet and took it over.

Short - over simplified - accurate

[alienzhavelanded]

I dont think Flash will become the norm. It's nice to use to enhance a site or for sites that would benefit from it's full blown use, such as a band's website for example, although there is still the issue of SE indexing. Flash has its place, as synergy said..but I doubt it will become any kind of a standard. The real power in web site interactivity is not the pretty fluff, but the code behind it.

As for what the Internet progressed into, it started back in the 60s actually, and you can check out the history here (shameless plug) http://www.marznetproductions.com/computing
hehe

Happy coding,
The Martians

[netman4ttm]

The internet was designed by DARPA and a limited number of Universities to allow communication in the event the USSR decided to nuke the US.

HTML was designed to make electronic research possible.

The original web browsers were text only. And if you were doing internet research your best friends were Archie and Veronica.

The confluence of Windows 3.11, Netscape and commerce being authorized on the internet are the factors that gave us the web we see now.

The power of the home computer is not relevant, the power of the server isn't that important either. A graphical interface to the OS and the web and dirty pictures to look at is what drove the web to where it is now.

[xmx]

I hope my thoughts can help.

I know web design is maybe not real web developping but I think you could also spend some words on the languages that brought the interactivity on the net, which is probably the key to success of websites.

I refer to perl and cgi in the past, and in the recent years to php that allows to build fantastic sites.

[netman4ttm]

Your writing style!

The 1st paragraph; The original web sites were entirely textual. (content IS text, pictures links etc)

The 2nd paragraph! The first sentence is the same sentence you used in your first paragraph.

1st sentence 1st paragraph The first web page were academic. They consisted entirely of formatted text and a few links. This would change dramatically, as Netscape became the browser of choice. Netscape introduced web masters to a method of formatting their pages to include pictures and text.

1st sentence 2nd paragraph! Web pages were beginning to include pictures and text. As Netscape and Internet Explorer began to mature the programmers were able to take advantage of the power offered by these competing web browsers.

Stop using the word content, when you mean text. (see above)

2nd sentence 2nd paragraph There was a small number of people. 3rd sentence Web designers designed-- just text and a small number of pictures.

1st sentence 3rd paragraph the internet was growing strongly

Did you run this through a spell check?

[davebarnes]

I can't stand it anymore.

This "paper" is pathetic. Spelling errors galore. Grammatical errors. One and 3/4 pages are worth 15% of a trimester/semester grade?

If this is an example of a typical college-level paper than I understand why all the IT jobs are migrating to India.

If I were the professor, this paper would get a D+.

,dave

[flashfast]

Firstly I agree - the many mistakes are indicative of the poor level of education achieved in schools in the US. e.g. I am an Australian living in LA and was concerned at the level of grammar my 15 yr old nephew had not achived. A teacher told me that he was fine - grammar was not needed - all that was inportant was that he got his idea across. As shock overwhelmed me, she added that spelling was not necessary either - now that the kids had spell check. I couldn't respond for the shock I was in. This is most obvious, in the text, where 'their' cannot replace 'there' in the spell check.

My point is that a web site is meant to be read as well as seen, and a poor dsiplay of grammar on a site reeks of unprofessionalism. This is okay for personal sites, but a noose for any business.

Totally disagree with the myth SE can't fetch flash text. As long as Google is doing it then it's showing the lead (again). A designer can even insert text that can't be seen, such as displays that have mostly graphic content, in much the same way alt tags arre added on a web page.

Lastly, the rather uninformed views of flash. The Flash player relies solely on processor speeds, unlike bitmaps who rely on graphic cards. As processors become faster and faster, the limits on Flash decrease. Already Flash is a wonder as it can publish at revolutionary small file sizes. This was the reason for it's success in the first place. The fact that a flash website loads slowly on a 56k modem is more indicative of the lack of scritping adeptness in flash by the designer ( a well tuned flash site will load pieces of the pie, rather than the whole lot at once). It's equivalent to the days when no-one had an idea of web graphics and their proper resolution - pages would load images that were far too bulky and slow. Now, it is rare to find a site with overloaded graphic sizes. The same is happening in Flash.

And then there is the next great revolution facing us - the advancement of electronic displays into fabric and paper - or anything that can be weaved. Imagine building columns that can be covered in woven material that plays different marble textures, or even aquariums. Walls that can display web pages? Newspapers that display electronic text and images through a single sheet of paper (the trees cry out in joy!)? Clothes, or ties that change colour or pattern or run stock quotes?

Sony announced last year that in 2004 they would release the first sheet paper with dynamic display - still waiting -so that means maybe another few years away. There is no way possible that Flash is not going to be the standard delivery choice for most of these devices. And flash keeps advancing it's versatility for not only web pages, but cinematic animation and editing, software apps, video etc. Flash is already reaching farther than just web pages.

[Son of a script]

From my experience,
The emergence of the internet was an inevitable vehicle which sprang from the popularity of bulliten board services. Yes I hear people in the room secreaming DARPA, but that was slightly before my time.
I remember upgrading to an external 14.4 Hayes compatible modem on my IBM 8086 ...and thought "Yeahh! now I'm smokin!".
I paid $1600.00 for that setup
We didnt have flash back then, all graphics where rendered via ascii.
(Thats the way it was... and we liked it like that.)

Pretty much you had to network with other people to find local BBSes to log into, otherwise prepare for the two pound phone bill.
I used BBSes to exhange information, download and upload programs, mostly games, and on occassion to find a blind date. (Kids, please don't try the later without extreme parental supervision)

Not being satisfied with waiting a half hour to download games from a bbs, only to find out that they required a serial number to play, jumpstarted my experience in programming.
Anyone remember when you only needed to overwrite the boot sector to remove protection?
(Mental note: go to confession on Saturday)

With the advent of rgb monitors that could display more colors than the standard black and white. or green and amber. Graphic file formats like gif made the scene.
(I could never figure out why the gif was limited to 256 colors, heard a rumor about it getting tied up in court as to who owned the rights to it.)

Someone earlier made a refernce to http://www.waybackmachine.org/ I love going there and looking at Microsofts site site from Oct 96 and thinking, "Wow, what sloppy coding" and..."What? no style sheet?"
(Enforces my competence in design)

As for flash, I love it ...but dont think its quite yet practicle, (Barring using a script to redirect)
...but then again, what do I know, I still check my sites using netscapes 216 color pallate

As for my predictions of the future of the internet.
1) Bluetooth will revolutionize the industry, making both wired access and debates over weather or not to use large file formats, and heavy scripting a thing of the past.
2) Pricing for access will continue to decline.
3) George Orwell was right, Big Brother is watching.

[netman4ttm]

Thank you Dave

I was hoping someone would notice that there was a problem here.

No facts. No grammar. No clue.

[timmathews.com]

Wow. The guy asked for some help, not to get slaughtered by insults.
Give him the guidance he needs, not the sarcasm to push him away.

[netman4ttm]

Blanket,

I practically rewrote the paper in my 2nd comment.

[timmathews.com]

Wow. Pat yourself on the back. 3 cheers for you mate.

[paulhiles]

Okay guys, I would suggest that any further comment is moot at this point. It's Tuesday, RidinHighSpeeds aka Jonathan will now have handed in his assignment. Let's hope he's had the sense to amend his spelling and grammar, maybe take some of the points raised on board and hopefully he's ignored any negative remarks.

I hope Jonathan will post again to tell us how well he did. Thanks to all those who contributed their own perspective on the development of web design over the years.

[RidinHighSpeeds]

Wow. I went on Google and searched "ridinhighspeeds" just to see where my username appears. I noticed this thread that I never responded to.

I'm sorry I did not get back with what I received on my paper. I heavily modified the paper a couple of days before it was due and received a B+ which wasn't so bad. As for another year in school with more programming classes and web design experience, I sort of laughed at this paper that I wrote.

As for davebarnes...I am really hurt by your comments. I have had speech problems when I was young and it was very hard for me to get a hold of the English language. To this day I have improved just a little bit but I stumble here and there and have a tough time adapting to more advanced words. I'm sorry that is just the way I am.

In high school I did too much of working and less studying. I loved money and I got my first job at age 14 (McDonalds). I should have waited and just paid a closer attention in class. But I didn't which is the reason why I received C's in school.

I am in a good school in Boston and I've been on the Dean's list all 4 semesters. I have taken some time off of work and put more time into my studies (Computer Engineering), which involves circuits, programming, calculus, and many other advanced classes.

Once again I wish I could speak English more thoroughly but I just have too much trouble. My typing has improved and my papers are much longer since I am running Defendingthetruth.com (political web site). I am trying my hardest and one thing that really upsets me is to be corrected by someone else and called a fool. Dave I know you are being serious but don't make me look like a fool.

BTW Dave, the jobs are migrating to India because they will work for pocket change. You should know that.

[timmathews.com]

Hey man, congrats on your grade. I know through posting here and other places that people often type negativity then post it, before actually taking the time to fully understand you or what you are trying to say.
Keep up the good work and keep your chin up.
You will do wonders!
Talk to you later,
Tim Mathews