In the 90’s, every website seems to be much simpler. They are often hosted in Tripod and Geocities; and no one knew about Google. It was all about text-based information and no more. Unfortunately, even if we are already in the 2nd decade of 21st century; they still use designs that are the hallmark of 90’s web design. They could actually create webpages that look like something that came from 1995. This is obviously no compliment. They could add intrusive background patterns and glowing “email me” icon. They want to be creative, but eventually create unprofessional, silly and amateurish designs.
The big question is why websites looked like that back then. People didn’t know how websites were supposed to be constructed with a lot of creativity. There are plenty of difficulties in expressing creativity at the moment. In those days, people only used limited numbers of templates and software. So, even the most visually pleasing design was mostly based on the quality of the images, used as background. Microsoft Frontpage still had plenty of limitations and many people still coded their HTML scripts with Notepad. Eventually, new methods started to appear, such as frames, JavaScript, animated GIFs and Adobe Flash.
After reading this, many people would feel the twinge of nostalgia, since it was a simpler time and everybody were still beginners. However, it is still important for us to re-learn about 90’s designs and this should allow us to avoid repeating those design mistakes. Flash appeared at the end of 1990’s and it seemed to open new possibilities for web designers. Not only people are able to create animation easily, but the technology became a way to create navigation. Adobe Flash is no longer used by many people, but we could still make the same mistake by creating objects that bounce, slide and revolve across the display.
Virtually any website in the mid 90’s has the word “Welcome” placed somewhere. At the time, websites were like houses and good hosts supposed to make sure that everyone feels welcomed. It is also important for them add some background images. It isn’t too uncommon for people to picture of their children tiles on all pages. It was also considered as fund to match color of the images and texts. In this case, it was all about adding light text and dark background. Some people loved to use orange background and purple text; while others used black background and light yellow text.
At the time, it was though as a cute way to implement a website. Others also want to create all-image and no-text websites. There was no Flickr and Facebook at the time; so creating online albums were considered as a cutting-edge way of using the Internet. With all the excitement about the new online technologies, it isn’t hard to find hyperactive webpages. Although it is unlikely that today’s web designers will create 90’s pages; it is still possible for them to repeat mistakes in terms of old concepts.
