Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
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Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
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Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#2haha I still have "creating killer websites" in my bookshelf. It was a quick buy, never thought of it to become a classic. Nevertheless - it was such an experience to see websites designed the way the book shows. But, not practical INHO. In my eyes, it was just a replication of print media. If one remembers how coldfusion worked at that time, or, dreamweaver -> some things are clearly borrowed from quark express (DTP software). Like to remember the times, though. And never went the road of designing sites.
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#3I began my career learning from these folks. I loved sites like A List Apart.
I got star struck one day when Zeldman emailed me asking for an enhancement to a WordPress plugin I had created. Felt like I’d come full circle.
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#4haha I still have "creating killer websites" in my bookshelf. It was a quick buy, never thought of it to become a classic. Nevertheless - it was such an experience to see websites designed the way the book shows. But, not practical INHO. In my eyes, it was just a replication of print media. If one remembers how coldfusion worked at that time, or, dreamweaver -> some things are clearly borrowed from quark express (DTP…
Indeed, your statement may be unpopular, but I would laugh this off in a similar manner. After spending reasonable amount of time in my life creating websites, designs (for print and web) with every technology you can imagine - from REX BBS scripts to ES6, SVG and WebGL these days, I can boldly state that these people had absolutely no clue what they been doing on the WEB. Perhaps they were the top designers for print, which was commendable, but web is not print.
They did not understand this new medium, the screen, and the fact you don't have to put all the information on the same page. It was not until 2010 perhaps, when things started to flatten and simplify again, that people actually started doing reasonable web design. Usability was a new thing even in 2005, and Apple with their K-12 interfaces did not help this much, even though certain design decisions on System OSs make a lot of sense. But this was not the web.
Most of what these books teach is how to get the illustrator/coreldaw/quarkr approach and slap it on top of a webpage. How very little people experimented with the widgets already available to them such as pages, buttons, etc, the fact that it can show little, but be navigated. This is the same for cartography, btw, where things move even slower, and we still getting maps overloaded with information like its 1834.
IMHO, and this may be super unpopular, but game designers and game UI designers served as much more substantial inspiration for the web, rather than these early over-hyped designers, which otherwise did great job for posters and print. Some games are so forward-thinking, and so beautiful in the simplicity of their interfaces, that we can really argue most of the world got where gamers (and demosceners!) already have been for years.
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#5> Jeffrey Zeldman — who turned 42 in early 1997
I’m today years old, realizing that Jeffrey Zeldman was 40+ in 1997. I always thought he was kinda just a few years older than us in the early 2000s.
“View Source” of their websites was an educational time well spent. Warning: In some regions, “View Source” may be illegal. Please use it at your own discretion.
Starting my career in the early 2000s, and my design and other Flash Works were on the Internet - Zeldman, Siegel, and a lot of others were the heroes. Nielsen was the villain. By the mid-2000s, I had done extensive work for clinics and physicians, delving into accessibility, HIPAA compliance, and other related areas. By then, Nielsen and the likes became the heroes. :-)
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#6> Jeffrey Zeldman — who turned 42 in early 1997 I’m today years old, realizing that Jeffrey Zeldman was 40+ in 1997. I always thought he was kinda just a few years older than us in the early 2000s. “View Source” of their websites was an educational time well spent. Warning: In some regions, “View Source” may be illegal. Please use it at your own discretion. Starting my career in the early 2000s, and my design and oth…
> Warning: In some regions, “View Source” may be illegal. Please use it at your own discretion.
Where is "View Souce" illegal?
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#7Another seminal book for me, was Web Pages That Suck. They actually used to throw shade on Creating Killer Web Sites. Lots of big egos, back then.
I learned quite a bit from that book. I think Flanders may still have a site. I was on his mailing list, but I haven’t heard anything for the last decade or so.
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#8> Jeffrey Zeldman — who turned 42 in early 1997 I’m today years old, realizing that Jeffrey Zeldman was 40+ in 1997. I always thought he was kinda just a few years older than us in the early 2000s. “View Source” of their websites was an educational time well spent. Warning: In some regions, “View Source” may be illegal. Please use it at your own discretion. Starting my career in the early 2000s, and my design and oth…
> Warning: In some regions, “View Source” may be illegal. Please use it at your own discretion. Where is "View Souce" illegal?
He’s probably saying it with a bit of a wink and referring to this
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2022/02/journalist-wo...
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#9don't forget the greatest webdevs of the late 90s...Larry and Sergey
people now don't seem to appreciate how much Google's radically simple homepage changed the web
look at web design right before Google took off - it was always about adding more to the page, and most sites were a mess
Larry and Sergey showed that radical simplicity was literally worth a trillion dollars
Re: Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
#10This article put Nielsen in the corner of "technically correct", but the influence he had on me at least was a strong focus on "empirically correct". i.e. doing actual tests (with humans) on what kind of things work to convey information. He did this to the detriment of "looking good", which is why his stuff ended up looking "hopelessly outdated", but I think he was on the right side of the fight.