[HN Gopher] Web Design Museum
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Web Design Museum
Author : helloplanets
Score : 149 points
Date : 2024-08-29 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.webdesignmuseum.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.webdesignmuseum.org)
| Aldipower wrote:
| Can't help, those old sites looking very colorful and
| characterful. Feels personal. Very nice memories.
| eterevsky wrote:
| I'm still missing the old Google logo with an elegant serif font.
| chris-vecchio wrote:
| I'm grateful to Web Design Museum for keeping the history of web
| design alive. I love waking up and seeing something new from days
| gone by that rekindles that spark.
| webdesignmuseum wrote:
| Thanks for the support. It helps us make the Museum better.
| lagniappe wrote:
| My favorite artist at the time was Mike Young
| https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/designgraphik-2001
|
| Serving 3 is in there, too bad serving phour doesnt seem to be.
| web64 wrote:
| It's cool to see the website[1] of the startup/dotCom I worked at
| in the early 2000s captured there! The website won the navigation
| award at Macromedia's fashforward event, and I still think holds
| up quite well even over 20 years later. The zoom navigation was
| quite interesting and worked well on mobile devices like the HP
| iPAQ PDAs we tested it on.
|
| [1] https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/relevare-2002
| romanhn wrote:
| The evolution of the McDonalds website is a great example of
| playful and whimsical 90s design aesthetic gradually replaced to
| become the blandness that it is today.
| neya wrote:
| I still to date prefer the older, full-of-character designs than
| the modern soulless minimalist designs. We also didn't have to
| worry about annoying cookie consent popups, "subscribe now!"
| splash screen popups and the general fear of clicking any link
| that opens a new window randomly to some walled garden.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| 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.
| Aldipower wrote:
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| nativeit wrote:
| 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.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I never developed with Flash, but I grew up on Flash media,
| in particular old Newgrounds Flash games / movies. I remember
| some of the pains of the day. The fact that Flash media
| usually came with a loading bar is seems quaint compared to
| now when websites are expected to load in mere seconds.
|
| To some extent I'm glad we live in a time where websites are
| lean and efficient for the reasons you mentioned, but man, I
| miss the days when the internet was actually worth exploring.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| As a developer I really miss the Flash books; they were a
| beautiful, glossy, coffee-table quality. I think it was the
| designer-bent audience. There were some good programming books
| but nothing like the Flash ones!
| raytopia wrote:
| 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?
| johnisgood wrote:
| Funny how some websites used to have their neat logo on the
| website, and now it is the name only.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| cyph3rpvnk wrote:
| That's atrocious. I think a big part of it is the merging of
| websites (purely informational) and web applications
| (programs with IO). The lines have blurred over the years.
| perardi wrote:
| Wow, I've never had someone ask me to purposefully build in
| latency. That's nuts.
|
| Maybe she was responding to how jarring page transitions can
| be. I've gotten some good use out of the View Transitions API
| in a product I'm building.
| (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/view-
| transiti...) It's a server-side rendered multi-page app, and
| throwing in just a bit of view transition CSS to get a nice
| fade effect when you go to a different page does feel nice.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think a lot of it comes down to the much larger variation in
| screen sizes... back then, you pretty much had to work in
| 640x480 or 800x600 and were usually good... 1024 got a little
| harder, then it was all over when 1440p and larger became very
| normal.
|
| A lot of the designs were also somewhat flexible via Flash/Flex
| and not HTML alone.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Oh my, this is amazing. Nostalgia lane!
| chasing wrote:
| https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/y2k-aesthetic-in...
|
| Remember when tech was optimistic?
| eamonobr wrote:
| 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.
| degenerate wrote:
| YouTube design changed almost every year until 2020! Wild.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Memberberries.... I member...
| bbor wrote:
| Amazing site, thanks so much for sharing! If you know enough to
| account for the inevitable technical improvements and changes to
| "popular" styles, this seems invaluable as a general writers-
| block-breaker for web designers.
|
| I will say, after browsing 2008 for a minute: Steam is just far
| and away the most modern. Fascinating to see what ended up
| influencing the industry (or predicting it?).
|
| https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/all-websites/steam-2008
| shombaboor wrote:
| Apart from some ridiculous backgrounds featured here, the web
| used to be very readable.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Web Design Museum_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40579730 - June 2024 (3
| comments)
|
| _Web Design Museum 1991-2006_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34675360 - Feb 2023 (31
| comments)
|
| _Web Design Museum 1991 - 2006_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723141 - July 2020 (14
| comments)
|
| _Web Design Museum_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891826 - Sept 2018 (90
| comments)
| jl6 wrote:
| https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history?timeline=...
|
| Web Design History seems to have trickled to an end in the 2010s.
| Checks out, IMHO.
| lbotos wrote:
| So wild! I was just thinking about 2Advanced today, Was anyone
| mesmerized by their site in 2006ish:
| https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v5...
| prmoustache wrote:
| we are missing anti0rp / Netochka Nezvanova's m9ndfukc.org
| website here. I believe there were others from the same "entity"
| but can't remember the url.
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(page generated 2024-08-29 23:01 UTC)