Nov 17 2008
Web design history, a look at the 90s
Today we’re going to take a stroll down memory lane. How many of you were actually designing/developing websites in the mid-90s? If you were, you’ll find this list amusing and you’ll chuckle at how many, if not all, of the items below you employed. For you youngsters out there, you’ll be wondering how we’ve come so far based on the crap we had to work with ‘back then’. Either way, the 10 items below are things you should never, ever do:
- Animated .GIF files.Yes, we really thought these made our sites look cool!
Combine this with Times New Roman font and it’s 1995, all over again! - Cheesy clipart icons. Graphics programs have come a long way (can you say CS4?). Free and almost-free stock image sites are abundant. There is NO excuse for using crap like this today:
- Layout tables with borders. We all know (or should know) that CSS is almighty and that you really shouldn’t be designing layouts using tables. There are always exceptions, but that’s for a different article. You want your readers to flash back quickly? Give your layout table a border. At least if you are using tables to create your site, the lack of a border doesn’t make it obvious.
- Overbearing, non-seamless, repeating background tiles. Okay, admittedly, web design in the early 90s had major limitations and you were considered a progressive designer if you had a repeating background. Photoshop was still in its infancy, so seamless tiles were hard to come by. These days, there is nothing wrong with a repeating pattern but the rules have changed. Make them fade into the background, not stand out. And make them seamless and appropriate to your content. When it doubt, leave it out!
- Blue and Purple links. If you can install a theme/template, use any HTML editor, or do a Google search for CSS, you can change the color of your hyperlinks.
- Times New Roman and Comic Sans. Using either of these fonts for you body content tells the world you’re watching reruns of Beverly Hills, 90210.
- Centered text. For everything.
There were so few tricks of the trade in the 90s,
web designers did anything they could
to make their stuff stand out.
Centering body text was one of those ‘tools’.
Back then, I guess a lot of designers didn’t care that there text was not very readable. - Blinking text. Fun, isn’t it? For those of you who started coding after 1998, you can acheive this by simply using the
blinktag. (update: for some reason theblinktag won’t work with this Today.com theme. Bummer. You don’t know what you’re missing.) - Psychedelic buttons. You know the ones. pretty, funky, rainbow gradients with beveled edges, that showed off your mad Photoshop skills. Buttons like this one:
- Flash splash pages. Back in the 90s, all the cool kids toyed with Flash. Anyone who could make a logo rotate in an non-animated-gif way, and included a moving link to enter the page, well they are now the ones making kick-ass GUI interfaces. But back then, they made really annoying, no-use-whatsover splash pages.
And there you have it. 10 ways to take your readers back to the 90s.
Hi Ben! I actually started this post as a “what not to do” post after coming across a site that was stuck in ‘98. I did realize that while 90s design is not prevalent any longer, it’s still always nice to take a look back. Boy did this post take me back!
I did create a blog in middle school in about 1995. I think I used all of those, repeatedly. I’m glad the page isn’t cached anywhere that I know of. I remember dialing up to my internet connection to transfer everything over FTP. How’d I have the patience?
Hi Kristine! I’m wondering how I missed mentioning the good ‘ol dial-up ding ding ding of the 90s. It’s a bad memory I try to forget.
I remember entering a URL, going to fold a load of laundry, then coming back and hoping the page had loaded. I got a lot more housework done back then.
Oh dear, it sounds like you have your work cut out for you, Sueblimely!