History/Trends of Web Design

            In 1969, Ted Nelson had kicked off the era of web design as he invented the language known as hypertext. Hypertext is a software system that links topics on the screen to related information which are accessed by the user. This was the way computers communicated and transferred information before the internet. It wasn’t until 1989, that hypertext was used by Tim Berners-Lee to create the World Wide Web.

 The web was finally up and running by 1991, which launched the internet craze, starting as a simple line-mode browser displaying text only pages.  The early to mid 90’s was the browser war starting with Mosaic thus creating W3C, and becoming the foundation of the internet we use today. By 1996, Microsoft and Netscape were going head to head for the dominant browser. Other advancements from shopping to research appeared like JavaScript, Flash, CSS, eBay, Amazon, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Blogger. By the end of the decade, Microsoft established causing Netscape to be sold to AOL and Internet Explorer becoming the number one browser while Google become the next best search engine. Web design at this point, was mainly text only pages with varied colors; pictures were able to be uploaded as well.  The features included clickable text boxes and shaped that transferred to other pages.

            With the beginning of the 21^st century, the internet was becoming integrated into peoples’ lives as the technology advanced. Web design also evolved as websites were the future, so the new cutting-edge style became a fad.  2003 was a turning point for the internet as Myspace became the first popular social network as it became the outline for other similar networks; Facebook. Myspace was basically a small website creator, each person had a profile that was uniquely designed to their preferences, and the better one’s page looked, the more views it had received and more friends they acquired. People were being exposed to website design and creating content. WordPress .7 soon became available and was an open source content management system that creators could publish anything to; blogging. People were starting to personalize the internet as documenting and connecting to others from all over. Between 2005 and 2007, YouTube sparked the era of vlogging, Steve Job releases the very first iPhone, everything that is now on the internet is being integrated to apps. After 2010, it has been the era of the apps and almost everything now they make an app for it.

Web design is now a personal yet professional style as everyone is using the web for a self-promotion tool. As a website is created, it can be seen on any device throughout multiple platforms so the content must be consistently flexible through those different parameters. Today there are numerous websites that provide user friendly tools to create a website without having any past coding experience. Everything is easily accessible and anyone can become a website creator/designer.