Web design is the child of the Internet. The world's first web page was born on August 6, 1991 by the efforts of British scientist Tim Berrens-Lee. To see the first WEB-document it is possible and now on a site w3. The page was just a text with links, it was not about the design at that time. The opportunity to improve the appearance appeared in 1993 with the appearance of the first Mosaic browser.
Then there was a process of rapid development. The opening opportunity for improvement has caused a rapid growth of interest in this area. If at the end of 1993 there were only a few hundred sites, and their design was meager - text, links and several drawings, then in 1996 the number of sites was thousands, and in the design there were bright colored backgrounds and animated GIF images. The backgrounds and headlines of those years were unnecessarily variegated.
About shadows and transparency, special effects and font diversity could only dream of. The text was black, the headlines red or purple, the links are blue. But already in 1997-1998 the sites began to acquire features that are partially preserved even now. Table layouts, effects and drop-down menus when hovering over, experimenting with the size and color of windows, navigation using icons. There was a flash technology, blinking headers in the web design began to feel obvious bust. The possibility of using full-fledged graphics was constrained by the low data transfer rates and resolution of monitors.
A qualitative breakthrough in web design occurred in the 2000s with the advent of CSS technology, which allowed to separate the design of web documents from their content. Designers massively use rounded corners, shiny buttons and gradients, backgrounds go into the background and take their true place. Static sites, the change of information in which was quite a labor-consuming task, began to disappear in the past thanks to the appearance of a content management system CMS. Websites have become much more functional and have received a user-friendly interface.
2004-2006 is considered the beginning of the WEB-2.0 era. In web design, this is reflected in the desire to create comfort and convenience for the user. For this, shadows, specularity and rounded shapes of objects, soft colors and smooth gradients were used. 2007-2008 marked the beginning of the development of mobile web applications, the impetus for the emergence of the iPhone. Mobile web sites have appeared. In the same period, mass distribution was received by social networks, which necessitated the placement of widgets and social network buttons on websites.
With all its achievements in the first twenty years, web design continues to evolve today. The rapid development of the mobile device market posed a new challenge: sites should be equally convenient for perception on all systems, from the desktop PC and laptop to tablet and smartphone. To do this, adaptive templates are developed. Web designers have new tools for creating graphic delights.