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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 awa

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 2y ago
Funny how some websites used to have their neat logo on the website, and now it is the name only.
reaperducer 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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-transitions 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.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  > 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. Oh my god, that is awful and ridiculous.
tracker1 2y ago
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.
- grishka 2y ago
  Do people maximize the browser window on a 1440p monitor? I don't. Mine is usually around half the width of the screen because most sites don't stretch beyond that in a sensible way.
giantrobot 2y ago
Three of the main reasons were wide screens, mobile devices, and HiDPI. When a layout only needs to work at 640x480 on a 96dpi monitor where you're guaranteed to have a cursor and keyboard a "magazine" layout can work fine. When a non-trivial number of users have widescreen displays a layout designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio ends up either crowded on one side of the screen or floating in the center with large margins on either side. A layout filling a 16:9 aspect screen will end up being different than the 4:3 layout. This feeds into mobile as well, your 4:3 or 16:9 landscape layout for desktops either looks terrible or is broken on a mobile device in a portrait layout. The graphics that look good at 96dpi start to look shitty on HiDPI screens. It's entirely possible to make responsive layouts that handle all those cases. CSS and HTML have lots of options for responsive layouts. The main limitation is time/money. It's a lot of work to build a "magazine" layout that is responsive and displays properly on all devices. It's possible just difficult. It's much easier to make a layout that looks equally bland and lifeless across all devices.

johnisgood 2y ago

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

reaperducer 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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-transitions 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.
johnisgood 2y ago
> 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. Oh my god, that is awful and ridiculous.

tracker1 2y ago

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.

grishka 2y ago
Do people maximize the browser window on a 1440p monitor? I don't. Mine is usually around half the width of the screen because most sites don't stretch beyond that in a sensible way.

giantrobot 2y ago

Three of the main reasons were wide screens, mobile devices, and HiDPI. When a layout only needs to work at 640x480 on a 96dpi monitor where you're guaranteed to have a cursor and keyboard a "magazine" layout can work fine. When a non-trivial number of users have widescreen displays a layout designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio ends up either crowded on one side of the screen or floating in the center with large margins on either side. A layout filling a 16:9 aspect screen will end up being different than the 4:3 layout. This feeds into mobile as well, your 4:3 or 16:9 landscape layout for desktops either looks terrible or is broken on a mobile device in a portrait layout. The graphics that look good at 96dpi start to look shitty on HiDPI screens. It's entirely possible to make responsive layouts that handle all those cases. CSS and HTML have lots of options for responsive layouts. The main limitation is time/money. It's a lot of work to build a "magazine" layout that is responsive and displays properly on all devices. It's possible just difficult. It's much easier to make a layout that looks equally bland and lifeless across all devices.