The Evolution of Web Design (2016)

http://fabianburghardt.de/webolution/

by stelonix • 7 years ago

107 27 7 years ago

fabianburghardt.de

Moxdi• 7 years ago

that was cool

nfoz• 7 years ago

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

enriquto• 7 years ago

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

cgoecknerwald• 7 years ago

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

revvx• 7 years ago

Probably because 2003 requires Flash!

DaiPlusPlus2• 7 years ago

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.

burlesona• 7 years ago

Hilarious that it doesn’t work on phones. I guess this is only the evolution of web through 2009?

mattlondon• 7 years ago

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.

DaiPlusPlus2• 7 years ago

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.

syphilis2• 7 years ago

Want another laugh? Turn your phone 90 degrees.

agumonkey• 7 years ago

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..

hliyan• 7 years ago

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

Yuval_Halevi• 7 years ago

I thought you wrote 'The Eurovision of Web Design'

I guess I saw too much TV lately.

It might be cool due

downtide• 7 years ago

Prefer the text only version, at least it reflows.

LoSboccacc• 7 years ago

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

plg• 7 years ago

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

dcalixto• 7 years ago

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

oftenwrong• 7 years ago

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

aitchnyu2• 7 years ago

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.

boot13• 7 years ago

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

klingonopera• 7 years ago

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...

jancsika• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

... what?

izolate• 7 years ago

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

qrbLPHiKpiux• 7 years ago

1999’s the best !

The Evolution of Web Design (2016)

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