Evolution Of Web Design
Tags: design, html, css, webdev
Published: 2022-08-15 10:54:08

Web design always transformed as we interact with it in every aspect of our live. Where web development came from, and how did we get to where we are today?

We are going to cover a [history of web design](https://blog.icons8.com/articles/what-was-the-internet-of-the-early-2000s/) and how it has changed over the past three decades.

## Early ages of web design

It all began with Tim Berners-Lee, who created the first website in the world, designed at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). You can find the full version of the [CERN website](https://home.cern/) that allows you to access information to share with other researchers.

Berners-Lee is also credited as the creator of HTML, an online coding protocol that web designers use even today. His contribution to the field of web design was the creation of the World Wide Web Consortium, and it's standards still used today.

For that moment The World Wide Web started to expand and two years later, was created [ALIWEB](http://www.aliweb.com/) (Archie Like Indexing For the Web) which was the first search engine in the world. It was a simple web page with organized links into categories, including computing, entertainment, housing, money, newsstand, recreation, research, and shopping. 

ALIWEB was the first website which used a color - it simply can be counted as first steps in web design. The yellow background helped to separate the categories on the menu to make it easier for users to find what they had been searching for. Like the website from before, ALIWEB is still alive today and continues to do its job. As an example, if you click on any web site you will be redirected to modern versions of this web sites.

## First Steps To Modern Era

After a while, web design was seen as so called "monotonous", so it was time to find new ways to create an effective design. The evolution of web design and development during 1995 to 1998 influenced the [future of web design](https://dev.to/narottam04/web-10-web-20-web-30-explained-591n) in a significant way.

Behold [JavaScript](https://www.javascript.com/)! This drastically changed the game and made web development distinct from web design, as is was the first programming language to allow websites to have interactive effects with motion.

In 1995 debuted [HTML 2.0](https://html.com/), providing developers with more power to configure page structures like forms, tables even adding support of graphics.

As new technologies and software tools for web development became increasingly sophisticated, users expected more from the Internet. Thus, Apple created a term "User Experience".

Later in 1996 became available another important instrument -Cascading Style Sheets, or [CSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS). It provided control of HTML's display and set font, layout, color, and other elements. HTML and CSS became a close companions since that time.

The next stage was discovery of web animation starting with Flash 1.0 that took the Internet community by storm. But it was as ideal as we used to see it. Online animations could only run if a site has [Flash plugin](https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/about), otherwise they'd appear static. This gave a headache to web developers who used Flash as main building solution. Additionally, to bring animation to life need a strong hardware to simply run these animations.

Another turning point was in 1998, when Sergey Brin and Larry Page created a collaborative software program known as Google Beta, which was part of a research project investigating web page indexing systems. Page and Brin could not have imagined the magnitude of what their search engine would offer to the Internet and web designing.

## Conquer The World!

In the first half of decade of 2000s websites always created only for desktop browsing. Web developers began producing multiple variants of websites for diverse internet browsers and devices to satisfy user's preferences. While this approach worked, it had a myriad of issues, particularly because of a necessity to create a multiple versions of one web sites for different versions of web browsers. New types of devices were continuously evolving and having multiple variations of websites meant frequent updates needing to be produced.

As time went on, more and more websites were developed for business, information distribution, and blogs which became a global growing trend. People needed content management systems (CMS) and it led to the dynamic emergence of web design and it's development. Various CMSs had been in use prior to 2003, but those heavy hitters launched later that year.

One of the most famous CMSs [WordPress](https://wordpress.com/) was launched in 2003 and became the most powerful platform for website creation since that time. It's worth mention that WordPress conquered about %35 percent of today's internet space.

This wouldn't be a complete history if it missed the creation of MySpace (2003) and Facebook (2004). Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe created MySpace in order to help people express themselves using profile pages allowing people interact on the internet. Facebook originally started by Mark Zuckerberg and his company at Cambridge. Later this phenomenon became a global social networking website.

Social media, self expression, and online connection emerged over the course of the 2000s. Myspace and Facebook introduced a different type of social interaction, thereby creating a new industry for web design.

## Making It Into Mobile Industry

In 2007 Apple was in the process of developing one of the very first smartphones called "iPhone". With powerful speech of Steve Jobs we got the power of desktop applications on a mobile device. The browser called Safari was one of the earliest fully functional HTML browsers on a mobile phone.

As the world began to move towards mobile devices, responsive and mobile-friendly design became a necessity for websites. In 2010, web designer Ethan Marcotte posted the article "Responsive Web Design" which described how to optimize content based on resolution or screen size. Later, Google made an update which affected ranking of your website depending on web design responsivity. Also, Google would penalize you for having a non-responsive web design.

## Present Days

Web design has gradually evolved to accommodate user preferences. The 2010s saw the shift from an accommodating style (which incorporated dark backgrounds, depth, color gradients, textures, flashy animations, etc.) into a simple graphic style (modish colors, simplistic 2D icons, sans-serif typography, etc.).

Web design has gradually adapted to user requirements. The success of the 2010s saw a shift from rich web design (shadows, depth, color gradients, textures, animated gifs, etc.) to flat web design (clean, minimalistic, san-serif fonts, bright colours, etc.).

Before flat design, richer design had provided a skeuomorphic sensation of life or 3D  effects on the web page, but excessive design complexity made the page load a lot slower and along the event added additional complication and noise. The switch to flat design provided a more streamlined, clear-cut feel and enhanced user experience.

Apple and Microsoft both made the transition from conventional design for windows to the flatter, universal shape. Microsoft pioneered the shift with Windows Media Center, and Apple made it with iOS 7. The effect is most clearly seen by comparing the app icon on the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 7.

## What Future Awaits Us?

Our capacity for state-of-the-art designing has been remarkable. However, website designs haven't continued to reach their full potential proven by UX standards. In the future, web design teams should continue their focus on user experience.

It is predicted that micro-personalization will likewise gain momentum as we continue to leverage artificial intelligence to provide personal experiences.

To protect personal information as technology advances and privacy wanes, strict regulations must be taken that consider all aspects of web design and development.

Because of growing concern about the ethics of bad web design, [Dark UX](https://www.thecreativemomentum.com/blog/what-is-the-dark-ux#:~:text=Dark%20UX%20Defined,wishes%20to%20benefit%20the%20business.) has become a topic of interest in the last few years. Dark UX refers to using web design to intentionally manipulate a user into doing what they want. Remember the spam pop-ups from the into the net telling you you had won a million dollars because you were the 1 millionth site visitor? Dark UX is much deeper than that. It includes spying, false advertisements, subscriptions that last forever, hidden fees, and more.

## Conclusion

When it comes to the history and development of web design, the three-decade history is compelling. Often, we receive breaking news by phone instead of paper. We shop online for every retailer and find an online subscription service to deliver us our favorite meal. We cancel our cable television and switch to Netflix instead. We work from home and collaborate with friends and colleagues around the world.

The history of website design has seen great changes that have improved the average life span of people and improved the connections between people by utilizing the Web. Just imagine what may be in the future!