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.