Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web published a website in August 1991, making him the first ever web designer.
HTML
Early on, websites were written in basic HTML, a markup language giving websites basic structure (headings and paragraphs), and the ability to link using hypertext. This was new and ...
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web published a website in August 1991, making him the first ever web designer.
HTML
Early on, websites were written in basic HTML, a markup language giving websites basic structure (headings and paragraphs), and the ability to link using hypertext. This was new and different to existing forms of communication - users could easily open other pages. As webpages became more complex, so did the HTML, introducing new tags to control the way a webpage looked, for fonts, styles, size, colours and so on.
W3C
New features such as tables were also invented to allow data to be displayed in a tabular form, table also became an invisible way to structure a web page. This allowed users to position text and pictures and distances between them. As HTML grow and changed the standards became blurred especially with different browsers supporting different HTML tags, hence the formation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C have introduced a standard to which webpages can conform to, for web pages using HTML 2.0 (current most popular version is XHTML 1.1).
CSS
Another momentous event for web design was the invention of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), these style sheet literally kept all the styles for the website in one place. This not only tidied up the HTML code but also meant that changing the colours and to a certain extent the style of a website was relatively easy. This was because it only required the CSS to be modified, instead of every single HTML page. CSS can also control the layout of a webpage and can replace tables ( which are increasingly seen as outdates), however it is still far for perfect with different browsers interpretation of “commands” varying widely (which is why it is so important to test website over a number of browsers). CSS is rapidly becoming the standard way to control the layout of webpages, however in many cases it is still much more practical to use tables, especially when producing dynamic database driven websites.
DYNAMIC WEBPAGES
Dynamic webpages generally use a database to extract the webpage content from. Dynamic webpages are normally programmed using CGI, PHP, ASP.NET, ASP.NET 2.0, ASP, JSP, and ColdFusion, however the style and layout of the webpage is still in HTML. Almost all large website will be database driven, this allows the person controlling the website to managed it much more easily.
MACROMEDIA FLASH
Macromedia Flash allows much more interactively and animation than standard HTML, this allows designers to offer and produce new interactivity features to users. Flash, however, has many problems; requiring a proprietary plugin to be seen, accessibility issues and it does not integrate with most web browser UI features like the "Back" and “Forward” buttons.
THE FUTURE
The web is constantly evolving at an ever increasing rate, with buzz words like Web 2.0, AJAX, .NET 2.0 and DHTML it can seem like a confusing place. With technologies all progressing in many direction it is becoming harder to standardise and predict the future however there is no doubt that the next generation of website will be focused on the user experience and interactively. Its the most exciting time for the internet since it’s birth 15 years ago and in 15 years time I believe that the majority of website will look nothing like they do today.
Welford Media have recently completed a new website for Ustigate Waterplay, Water Play Specialist with over 15 years experience in the industry, working with both Public and Private sector organizations.
