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Web Design Museum

webdesignmuseum.org

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Re: Web Design Museum

#11

Post by Aldipower »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #10

Related https://thehistoryofweb.design/ The book is an interesting read. The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. Granted, this may be less due to the death of Flash and more due to marketers and UX professionals trying to simplify the journey from visit to purchase.

I was an "ActionScript 3" developer around 2010s targeting browser, but also offline "Rich Internet Applications". Together with our designers, whom worked in Adobe Flash, we had a tremendous throughput of production ready applications. Today I program React.js/TypeScript applications. What a slow turtled pace of getting things done. :( And of course very very expensive to develop. And a lot of things aren't even possible anymore. Of course, the Flash platform had it's downsides too, but in terms of throughput and productivity, this was very very great.

Re: Web Design Museum

#12

Post by raytopia »

Mid 90s sites have a nice look to them. Honestly in some ways they're easier to read then a lot of websites of today.

Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?

Re: Web Design Museum

#14

Post by johnisgood »

raytopia wrote: post #12

Mid 90s sites have a nice look to them. Honestly in some ways they're easier to read then a lot of websites of today. Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?

Funny how some websites used to have their neat logo on the website, and now it is the name only.

Re: Web Design Museum

#15

Post by reaperducer »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #10

Related https://thehistoryofweb.design/ The book is an interesting read. The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. Granted, this may be less due to the death of Flash and more due to marketers and UX professionals trying to simplify the journey from visit to purchase.

The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now.

People romanticize Flash these days. Especially people who weren't old enough to struggle with it.

Used improperly – as it very often was – Flash was a resource hog far beyond even the craziest of today's web sites. In many circumstances it could actually crash your computer. Not just the browser, but the entire machine. Sure, the operating system and the browser were complicit, but I'm not going to blame a broken window for not being bulletproof. Plus, it seemed like there was forever update after update after update every time you tried to view a fancy web site. Updating plugins isn't a big deal today. It was a big deal when it happened over a 56k dialup connection.

Can you imagine someone today thinking, "Oh, this looks like an interesting web site. I'd better close every other window and program on my computer, so it doesn't crash." It's unthinkable.

I hate that today's web sites are all boring and desaturated and flat. But I love that I can browse the web and keep a dozen other programs open and doing work at the same time.

Watching all of the new things people are doing with canvas and WebGPU and whatnot makes me think we're heading back to the bad old days of Flash. It seems like an arms race between people who want to turn a browser into an operating system, and browser makers trying to keep everything tidy.

Re: Web Design Museum

#17

Post by reaperducer »

raytopia wrote: post #12

Mid 90s sites have a nice look to them. Honestly in some ways they're easier to read then a lot of websites of today. Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?

Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?

A lot of it is monkey-see-monkey-do. And realted, the widespread use of common frameworks instead of people actually understanding how web sites work and doing their own programming.

I build a web site for a hospital that was fast and responsive and accessible. A manager complained that it didn't look like a "real" web site because the pages loaded instantly. She wanted me to put in a mechanism so that every time someone clicked on a link a loading spinner would appear for a few seconds before the next page loaded. Because that's what "real" web sites do.

Re: Web Design Museum

#18

Post by eamonobr »

I feel like one could turn this into a traveling, interactive, VR/AR type of experience. Enter a room with old sites projected onto the walls. Get hit over the head with fun 90s/00s nostalgia, showcase notable tech from the era, etc.

Re: Web Design Museum

#19

Post by nativeit »

reaperducer wrote: post #15
Bjorkbat wrote: post #10

Related https://thehistoryofweb.design/ The book is an interesting read. The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. Granted, this may be less due to the death of Flash and more due to marketers and UX professionals trying to simplify the journey from visit to purchase.

The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. People romanticize Flash these days. Especially people who weren't old enough to struggle with it. Used improperly – as it very often was – Flash was a resource hog far beyond even the craziest of today's web sites. In many circumstances it could actually crash your computer. Not just the browser…

Yes, I loved Flash and ActionScript as a designer, but later viewed it as indistinguishable from malware as an IT support tech. It was frankly the worst, in terms of security whack-a-mole, and because it required patching so frequently, opened up a ton of genuinely malicious actors who could trick even competent people into clicking and installing malware.
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