For any organization or business, having a website is extremely important. The concept of the website was introduced with the inception of the internet, which revolutionized the existing industries and created new ones. One new job sector that was created was web design. Let’s take a look at how this creative job sector was created in the first place and how it evolved with time.
Web design: a brief history and its journey
The first web browser was developed by Tim Berners-Lee and it was known as the World Wide Web. Later it was styled as Nexus. The first web pages weren’t designed the way it is today. Only plain texts were displayed on the webpage and there wasn’t any concept of using pictures, videos, or fancy fonts etc. Links were underlined with blue colour, to emphasize them.
With the release of mosaic in 1993, web developers could add pictures, including gifs in web pages. The capacity of web design was severely constrained due to the browser restrictions and connection with slow speed. The websites which contained a lot of graphics took a lot of time to load.
Netscape went on to become the leading browser, but it was quickly replaced by Internet Explorer and soon enough competition between the browsers began. At the same time, web design slowly started to become complex in nature. A few websites also started to use JavaScript.
Toolkit for web development was introduced in 1998. Web design programs such as Dreamweaver started to become popular because of evolving web design. An increasing number of designers were required to create websites.
Although web design hit a slow pace during the 2000s when a lot of web business crashed. The standards again found back its pace. Designs evolved from the basic ones that we saw at the beginning, with CMS becoming popular. This program helped the designers to publish and edit their contents on the web without any hassle.
2004 saw a huge change for web and web design. New elements of web designs were introduced and it became the period of the boldly designed website. With increasing functionality of websites, widgets became common as they helped with the integration of one website to another. An increasing number of people started to access the internet and websites and this created a demand for interactive websites. Platforms such as WordPress were introduced, along with user interactive guides on how to create websites, which didn’t require one to learn CSS or HTML to create websites but to use the platforms and the guides.
In recent times, increasing numbers of users started to access websites through smartphones and tablets. A website that appears on the desktop/laptop will be difficult to navigate through devices such as smartphones and tablets due to the difference in the screen sizes. This introduced mobile web design, which allowed the users to view and navigate the website without any hassle. Grid designs are becoming a trend in web design as well in recent time. It is not uncommon to find complex yet minimalist design websites, which is different from the websites that were first introduced. It is just a matter of time to see how web design will evolve in the future!