Web design has a short but drastically changing history. The internet has been around since the 1960’s but was used for the government and later in educational institution. Email was first started in 1972 by Ray Tomlinson and the first website was published in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee. Mr. Berners-Lee was the first person to write the language used on every web page today, HTML. Without this language web design would not exist, sites just can’t be designed or programmed without it.
When the first website was developed there was only one server being used, CERNS, and by the end of 1992, the internet grew to have more than 50 servers. Today there are literally millions of servers. In beginning of web design history, it was used mainly at research institutions and universities. With the start of websites on the web, the content was arranged on the screen with the use of tables.Today’s standards do not support tables. Cascade Styling Sheets (CSS) is the standard in the placement of images and text today. Cascade Styling Sheets (CSS) allow websites to not only have text, but have graphics as well. This was a major step in the development of web design. Up to this point text was the only visual image on the computer screen and the look was very plain and boring. The development of CSS allowed designers to place the text and later images in different places around the screen. These developments allowed a more creative outlet for the designers, more appealing to the user as well. As CSS grew, designers were able to add borders to images, move images on top of one another, hide text, and much more.
Server-side scripting (ASP and PHP) was the next major development in web design. ASP and PHP use databases to pull information to the website, allowing less space to be used on the servers. These languages add a new dynamic to web design; more could be accomplished using these languages.
Soon after CSS and PHP, came Macromedia Flash. Today Flash is a large player in web designs, but the down sides to Flash are also apparent. In the beginning Flash web sites were everywhere; they allowed more flexibility and creativity in web design; however they were also found to be inefficient with search engines. Now Flash is used but with caution and in certain situation. Flash is more commonly used for small parts of a page versus the whole page in Flash.
The W3C Consortium was started to set these standards for all designers to follow. The W3C Consortium was started in 1994 and every good designer makes sure they adhere to these standards. Through the past 20 years that the public has been able to use the World Wide Web (WWW) web design has made drastic changes and this is only the beginning. Every day new developments are released that makes the internet a better, more creative world to surf around in.
Author Byline: Daniel Blinman is writing on behalf of Media Tube, who offer Bristol web design and are Bristol web developers
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