Joy Of Code - Web Design Training and Consulting
Joy Gems Newsletter

It's Getting Better All The Time

Share

By Bud Kraus
bud@joyofcode.com
Joy Of Code
Creator And Instructor

v5 11i
Originally Published: July 9, 2009

For the longest time I've been noticing that web page design has been getting better. Perfect? Hardly. Issues of bad navigation, poor on-site search tools, barriers to content, and broken functionality abound. Still, the web is getting better. The use of best practices in web page design has gone to the head of the class.

It's all part of a maturing medium and how people work with it.

Think back to the way web sites were designed and produced and how they looked 10 years ago. Did you forget the way things were?

Forget no more. Let me take you on a time machine tour of web sites to prove to you that things really have gotten better.

Our journey begins courtesy of The Way Back Machine. These folks have been archiving web sites for years. We can tap into their files to see just how any site looked years ago.

This is too cool!!

Let's look at a few sites - then and now - so you can see for yourself.

Joy Of Code

Ok. I'll be brave and go first. Hopefully this will prove my notion that if you work at web design long enough, you will get better at it - even if you aren't a designer.

Here's how Joy Of Code look on January 24, 2005 and here she is today.

The New York Times

I just had to do this site because I remember the earliest versions of the Old Gray Lady. They had no idea how to use the medium. Some say that's still the case.

Here's what the NYT published on November 12, 1996 and my, how things have changed!

Look through the archives for old NY Times sites.

The White House

President Clinton had the first WH web site. Table based layout, of course. How about those animated gif flags for the December 12, 1998 site? See that "Text version" link at the top of the page for the disabled? How quaint. Certainly not how it's done today.

Here's today's online WH .

Look through the archives for old White House sites.

ESPN

The sports broadcasting behemoth showed up on December 12, 1998 with this beaut. They got their logo up which was an accomplishment when compared to the competition. They also used a layout whose width was 610 pixels wide, figuring they'd be safe for screens with resolutions of 800 pixels. Proof that they were asking all the wrong design questions back then.

The better version - here's ESPN today.

Look through the archives for old ESPN sites.

Amazon

How did that user-centric service look on December 12, 1998? They sure looked more like a web site than other sites of that era.

Here's the big bookseller today.

Look through the archives for old Amazon sites.