How Web Design has Changed over the Years

A few of my first business websites courtesy of the way way back machine.

I first started designing websites in 1994 by building a personal website in my college dorm room using a text editor, Photoshop, and uploading it to our local ISP using a dial-up modem. Now, this once novelty hobby grown has into a vital marketing and sales tool for businesses and organizations large and small. Here is how sites have changed most since those early days.

Content Management Systems

With the advent of content management systems (CMS) like MODX and WordPress in the early 2000s, website creation became automated. Early on, we started using a home-brew CMS using PHP and a MySQL database until it became impossible to keep up with the pace of technology. It went from creating sites one page at a time to creating templates and themes for clients to manage their content and speeding up content creation.

jQuery Library

jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library. Before jQuery, javascript was much more rudimentary. The jQuery library played a large part in browser interaction with the web server beyond loading static pages. It largely made it possible for Websites to behave more like applications on your computer and blurred the lines between your desktop and the World Wide Web.

Exponentially Expanding Bandwidth

Websites back in the 1990s were heavy on text and light on images because large images and videos would take too long to load. Our first websites were built on 56Kbps modems but, with a fiber-optic line directly into our building, we were among the first to have nearly unthrottled speeds. This allowed us to build more websites faster than ever before. It wasn’t until home Digital Subscriber Lines and Cable Modems became prevalent that we started using large amounts of video and photography on websites. Today’s sites often use dynamic video as a central element to their users’ first experience.

Smartphone Technology

Perhaps the biggest game-changer in Web technology has been the advent of mobile web browsers. Where websites were once static with a known aspect ratio, today’s sites can vary from 300 pixels wide to 2000 pixels or more. This need for responsive design requires the use of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) media queries to add breakpoints where your design changes from one layout to another. Most modern websites use a framework layer that combines CSS and jQuery to add these responsive design features.

Artificial Intelligence and the Not-so-distant Future

Artificial Intelligence is the next game-changer for web design. We are already seeing AI-generated content flooding the internet, from writing copy to creating near photo-realistic images out of thin air, it won’t be long until AI is creating entire websites for your needs. We are already seeing Web building tools from DIY hosting-model pay-per-feature tools to more robust content management systems like WordPress integrating AI into our workflows. Adobe Systems is integrating AI generation into its design programs. I am hopeful that Artificial Intelligence, rather than replacing human ingenuity, will enhance our ability to make our visions become reality.