The evolution of web-design – 1990 – 2020

Web-design – web creation today has nothing to do with what it was in its beginnings, at the end of the 1990s. A paradigm shift took place at the turn of the century, and if certain people saw this as a positive development in web design, others lamented the demise of classic forms like long-form content and the establishment of “handmade” websites.

A notable transition

Perhaps the biggest change has been the emergence of JavaScript. Since HTML and CSS were originally written in the early 1990s, experience of using and accessing the tools available at the time meant that these were largely adapted to the system. Windows operating system from Microsoft. In the 2000s, as the emergence of the web gave developers access to rich technologies to produce more fluid and intuitive websites, designers increasingly turned their attention to user experience: UX/ UI design. In order to achieve a design usable on multiple devices, with small screen sizes and slow internet speeds, developers have increasingly adopted functional web design practices that rely on JavaScript and AJAX technologies to extract data. relevant and display them in a user-friendly way.

Javascript and Ajax

JavaScript, AJAX and their associated technologies were adopted and integrated into the design process, and the experience of web browsing changed dramatically: pages could now react “intelligently” to user action. user when clicking, hovering or even bringing the mouse closer to an element!

Originally relatively static in design, web designers have been encouraged with the advent of JavaScript to incorporate interactive elements such as sliding navigation bars and/or pop-up menus to give users access quickly to the desired information.

The turn of the 20th century

A new concept began to take hold at the start of the 21st century: producing pages could require not only technological skills, but also graphic design experience. Since the late 1990s, CSS2 has become widespread, enabling the essential principle of separation between “appearance” and “matter”. This gave page designers much greater control over the placement and appearance of any element.

Web designers have come to realize that too much content on a page or too much text in an unbroken block is a burden on the reader. They started dividing the content into multiple pages, with navigation menus and tables. The landing page has become more and more important, often to the detriment of the content which has been diminished, but to the advantage of a more fluid user experience.

The greater availability of fast connections, higher resolution monitors and faster computers has created (and still creates!) new opportunities for web designers. The craze for animations and adaptive graphics has become an example of this.