When the World Wide Web first appeared more than 30 years ago, it was apparent that its creator Tim Berners Lee could not have envisioned the interconnected world we live in today. At the time, the Web was fairly limited in terms of design and functionality and it is safe to say that it has achieved tremendous growth in what is realistically a very short period of time.

As is expected, the original concept of web design has undergone a lot of changes since inception and continues to evolve with the emergence of new technologies. The web design styles available at the dawn of the internet may look unflattering and even amateurish to us today, but they served their purpose in much the same way modern websites do.

The one thing that is true is the fact that web design styles, concepts and even content have grown with remarkable speed. The first website ever created would only have contained text and hyperlinks that would have explained what the website was about, a few basic instructions and how to use it. This seems far removed from the websites we are familiar with today.

But the purpose of setting up a website has hardly changed in that time. In fact, it can be safely argued that the need for every business to have an online presence has only increased over time. In the beginning, businesses would have been nonchalant or even suspicious of the Word Wide Web and as expected initial uptake was relatively low. Comparing that with today’s business environment and it becomes clear that no business can afford to operate without an online presence.

30 years ago, the web publishing language was primarily Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). But HTML is limited in that it can only be used to share text-only pages via a simple browser. This made many early website fairly basic with very few graphics.

By the mid-to late 90s, the language of the World Wide Web expanded to include Graphics User Interface (GUI). GUI allowed designers to add graphics and images into websites and the website we are familiar with today began to take shape. With GUI, it was also easier to use tables to arrange the text and graphics on the website. This brought order, but also made it easier for the web designer to emphasize certain content on the website. But as useful as these tables were, the web designer group needed to make them proved more complicated that later methods.

Towards the end of the decade, a new technology appeared on the web design space. Flash was a platform that made it possible for designers to add music, videos and animation into websites. This created the room for more content on the website and made the website more interactive. It was also the beginning of various creative additions to a website including menus, bubble buttons, highly decorative and interactive animations and splash pages.

At the time, websites were still unfamiliar to many and many businesses had yet to embrace the online space. Flash technology made it easier to people to interact with websites. The ability to have a big, shiny decorative button that website visitors could click on became a game changer. Suddenly, websites became one of the prime ways to share information and businesses took notice. But Flash technology required computer users to have a flash plugin installed on their computer. This would prove to be a limiting requirement and a new platform was required.

Even though Flash technology was not successful in the long run, it did open up web browsing to more people, creating the space needed for businesses to exploit this medium of communication. But as social media emerged, there was need for a more flexible platform which would ultimately be Cascading Style Sheet (CSS).

CSS allows the emergence of web design templates which made it possible for the average person to create and publish their own website. The main problem however was that, these websites often had poor design which made them less appealing and inaccessible.

It wasn’t until 2010 that Ethan Marcotte came up with a way to incorporate CSS with HTML to create what became known as the responsive web design.  The main idea of the responsive web design is to make it easier for people to have the same experience on a mobile device as they would on a desktop. This led to a web design that was known as the flat design. This design is a minimalistic two-dimensional design that is meant to be pleasing but also efficient, emphasizing functionality over other aspects. It is primarily the go-to design for most businesses.

It is clear that various technologies have facilitated the metamorphosis of web design in a relatively short period of time. But it is also clear that web design is quickly becoming about delivering an ideal user experience. This means that the future of web design is in end user experience and hence any technology that appears will be geared towards this goal.