The History of Web Page Design
The history of web page design began with the concept of documents, information, and knowledge interlinked in a way that was, at the time, a new and radical method: hypertext. Initially, web pages were a radical, and useful, text page with key words linked to related documents. As the web developed, linked images, movies and animations were added resulting in the current state of web design and development.
Other People Are Reading
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The Concept of Hypertext
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Ted Nelson, a graduate of Swarthmore College, the University of Chicago and Harvard, developed the concept of hypertext when writing a program in the 1960s to organize his notes. He realized that there were key words in his notes that related to other notes. He first coined the term "hypertext" in 1965, and it was published in an article in the Harvard newspaper entitled "Computers, Creativity, and the Nature of the Written Word."
The Graphical User Interface
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The first experimental implementation of the graphical user interface and a mouse was done by Douglas Englebart at Stanford University in 1968. His award-winning interface also was the first experimental implementation of a hypertext system. The first commercially successful implementation was with the Apple Macintosh in 1983. An early consumer hypertext system was the implementation of Hypercard on the Macintosh.
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The World Wide Web
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Tim Berners-Lee is credited with the development of the World Wide Web while working for CERN in Switzerland. His early experimentation with hypertext systems began in 1980 when he was a consultant to CERN. In 1989, he wrote a proposal entitled "HyperText at CERN," which wasn't well received. By 1990, he had solved the problems with the proposal and was working on writing the initial World Wide Web software on a NeXT computer. The next year, the technology began to spread through CERN. By 1993, the World Wide Web began to come into more common use as a text based hyper link system.
The First Web Browser
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The first web browser developed globally was Mosaic. Mosaic was entirely text based and didn't support any graphics or images. It was written by Joseph Hardin and Dave Thompson and the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) and was released free of charge. The first graphical version was written for X-Windows on Unix in 1993. Despite running in a graphical environment, web design at the time was limited to text and hyper links.
The First Graphical Web Browser
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In addition to being the first web browser to support graphics, Netscape was the first commercial web browser. Released in late 1994, its use spread quickly because of its support for graphics and rudimentary page design elements. Netscape, and its support for rich media, allowed web designers to create pages that were visually interesting and compelling.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
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About the time that Netscape came into common use, developers realized that a standards organization would help maintain interoperability among applications on the World Wide Web. The W3C was formed to ensure consistency in implementation of web standards, including HyperText Markup Langage (HTML). Early generations of HTML supported basic hypertext, graphics and graphical links, and rudimentary ability to choose type sizes, colors, and effects. As HTML has developed, standards were implemented to make visual typography and precise control over the look of a web page possible.
Proprietary Interfaces
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Limitations on the precision of web page design element placement and some limitations on its ability to create interactive graphics resulted in the development of Flash technology. Flash web pages load in a web browser and run on a user's computer. Flash supports a wide range of design elements, including hyperlinks, animations, graphics, sound, and video.
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- Photo Credit Illustration: Claudio Sepulveda Geoffroy, stock.xchng
