Almost every business, company and individual has a website these days. From social networks like Facebook and Twitter to ecommerce stores, forums and general pages representing products and services, everything and everyone from major corporations to your friends, has some kind of online presence. As the online environment becomes ever more crowded, you don?t just need to have a basic website for your business ? you need to have an outstanding website that implements advancements in web design to introduce trailblazing features and cutting edge applications that enhance appearance, functionality and customer satisfaction.
Web design is, of course, one of the most essential aspects of running a successful website. As any website owner knows, when trying to make your business standout from online competitors, you can?t get by without unique design features. It?s also likely that you know how quickly and regularly web design techniques are advancing?but just how did it all begin?
Since the Internet was only invented in the 1960s, and did not become available as a widespread method of communication until the late 80s, the history of web design is quite a short one.
The first early trying in web design didn?t commence until the Internet began to transform from a tool used solely for communication to one used for browsing and viewing information. This change eventuated around 1993 when the first web browser was developed. Prior to this, the Internet had only been used to transfer basic information between computers using telephone lines. The first browser allowed Internet users to view documents using HTML, however modem transfer rates were slow so the quality of graphics and amount of text was limited in order to maintain accessibility.
Nevertheless, people were amazed by the possibilities of the Internet and the first browser quickly attracted millions of users worldwide, prompting the 1994 establishment of the?World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which outlined goals, and standards of web design. These rules outlined HTML as the primary coding language of websites and also prevented the ownership of web design codes by particular companies. Standards set out by the W3C are still active today, providing standard web design guidelines that enable search engines and browsers to effectively display and index web pages.
Since the mid-late 1990s, developments in web design have enjoyed a meteoric rise. While early websites were primarily text documents with very few graphics, the increasing speed of modern modems has meant that web design has developed to include a greater range of colored layouts, animated text and high quality graphics.
Today?s high-speed broadband and wireless Internet connections mean that the possibilities for advancements in web design are limitless. Increased speed of Internet connections has allowed creative web design techniques to developed, giving us the kinds of website we are seeing to today that tend to be unique and vibrant in appearance and functionality.
Full color text, video, animations, flashing banners, polls, quizzes, games, interactive images, forms and search tools are just some of the web design elements we take for granted, without realizing what recent innovations they actually are. Can you even begin to imagine what kinds of web design will be possible in another fifteen to twenty years?
Graphics and animations that hover in mid-air without need for a monitor or screen? Websites that employ the principles of Artificial Intelligence to provide a truly personalized service? Who knows what?s in store in the world of web design, but one thing?s for certain, it?s one of the most actively progressive and exciting elements of the contemporary computer industry and one that can work magic on the web presence of your company.
The first main coding language that I will talk about is HTML, HTML is an evolving language, one that has been complicated at times by some browsers developing their own tags, and has slowly been developing into a single standard. HTML 1.0 was the first public release, and as website creation wasn?t widespread, the language was quite limiting. The first official standard was HTML 2.0, released in November 1995. This included everything from HTML 1.0 but added some new features. It defined many core features for the first time and remained the standard until January 1997. HTML 3.0 was proposed in April 1995, introducing new and improved abilities, but as browsers were slow in implementing these. HTML 3.2 became the standard in January 1997 and was W3C?s first work, removing the nuisance browser-specific tags and leaving advances made there for later releases. In April 1998 HTML 4.0 became the standard. The last iteration of classic HTML, it represented a great evolution in standards with the focus being on internationalization and support for a new presentational language, namely cascading stylesheets (CSS). HTML 4.0 offered three kinds: Strict (in which deprecated elements were forbidden), Transitional (in which deprecated elements were allowed) and Frameset (in which mostly only frame related elements were allowed). It soon underwent a few minor revisions and HTML 4.01, the final version of the specification, became the standard in December 1999.
In January 2000, XHTML 1.0 became the recommended joint-standard with HTML 4.01. XHTML marked something of a departure and was an XML formulation of an HTML specification. There weren?t many new or deprecated tags and attributes, but accessibility and functionality were increased.
In May 2001 XHTML 1.1 was released, based on XHTML 1.0 strict but including minor changes. In August 2002 XHTML 2.0 became a working draft but will never become a standard and support will end for this in December 2009. This was inevitable because XHTML 2.0 was not backward compatible and failed to offer any compelling new features, relying on semantic precision rather than the realities of web design. Rather than an update on 1.1, it was really a new XHTML-inspired language, one that browsers did not feel the need to implement. XHTML 5, which is an update to XHTML 1.1, is being defined alongside HTML 5 in the HTML 5 draft and will no doubt be the future of html (although won?t be fully supported for years).
HTML 5 will be the obvious choice of the future, but until it is distributed amongst all browsers, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1 are both fine. XHTML is not that different from HTML 4.01 but is stricter, meaning that validation is easier. The most important differences are that elements must be properly nested, they must always be closed and in lowercase, and XHTML documents must have one root element. HTML 5 allows you to use either the stricter syntax of XHTML 1.1 or the open syntax of HTML 4.01, meaning that your written XHTML 1.1 can be converted to HTML 5 by simply changing the doctype. And unlike XHTML 2.0, HTML 5 has many new features, such as audio and video embeds, multi-column layout tools, offline data storage, and native vector graphics.
?
DHTML (Dynamic HTML) isn?t actually a language (or a web standard) but rather a marketing term originally coined by Microsoft to describe IE4?s implementation of the combination of HTML, JavaScript, DOM and CSS. DHTML allows documents to be animated (react to user events). The DOM (Document Object Model) is a W3C standard for the specification of how objects in Web pages are represented, such as text, images, links, etc. It defines what attributes are associated with each object and how the objects and attributes can be manipulated. DHTML relies on the DOM to dynamically change the appearance of Web pages after they have been downloaded to a browser. The term DHTML will no doubt be replaced with newer buzzwords, such as DOM Scripting or AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).
?
The second language I will talk about in web design in CSS,?Cascading Style Sheets, CSS has reinvented the way website designers not only create the look and feel of a website, but also how they keep that look consistent throughout the entire website.
Whether it?s a one page or 100 page website, CSS makes updating each page much simpler. With Cascading Style Sheets, a designer has one area or file uses to add pictures, change the font or color of the text, change the background color or image and update the entire look of a website.
?
CSS is a?syntax?used in the markup languages HTML and XHTML and has limited use in XML documents. CSS is used in almost every aspect of today?s website designs.
CSS hasn?t always been the web designer?s outlet for a ?simple fix? method to revamp or give a website a ?face lift?. After years of trial and error testing,
CSS is still a work on progress. With ever changing browser support and new browsers being continually created, finding the correct syntax for CSS is a constant and everlasting project.
Since the beginning of style sheet usage in the 1970?s, it has evolved through widespread study and testing. It wasn?t until the mid 1990?s that CSS was introduced to the?World Wide Web Consortium?(W3C). At that time, W3C members became involved in its development, as well. In the late 1990?s, CSS was ready to be used and in December 1996, the syntax became official.
Even with the support from the W3C, Internet Explorer 3 was released in 1996 with very little support for the highly useful style sheet syntax.
Three years later, Internet Explorer 5 was released and had a nearly 100% compatibility and support for CSS. As with any new Internet language, however, bugs and inconsistencies were major obstacles.
Introducing different variations of CSS, such as CSS1, CSS2 and CSS3, aided in weeding out the properties that browsers simply wouldn?t support. Creating a standard for CSS and browser compatibility was mandatory for a successful syntax and style tool. By using variations from all forms of CSS, CSS2.1 was created in late July 2007. By 2008, the latest and greatest version of Internet Explorer, IE8, allowed for full support of the CSS2.1 syntax in its highest quality ?web standards? mode.
Today there are still several quirks and tweaks in CSS and some website designers use?CSS filters?and hacks to workaround inconsistencies. Keeping a consistent appearance in ALL Internet browsers is the main goal and reason for constant research and testing as newer versions of CSS are established.
CSS3 is currently in the works. This newest version of the elder syntax will involve several of the same elements included in prior versions. W3C keeps an ongoing record of its work and studies on CSS3.
?
As specified by most CSS syntaxes, the width and height of block-level elements should be included for all information and content within the box, not including the surrounding padding, margins, borders, etc?this is to be added afterwards. However, some web browsers, IE5 and earlier, were programmed to include the padding and margins within the block elements, therefore expanding the size of the block seen by the browsers and misconstruing the layout of web pages using the CSS syntax.
?
Several workarounds have been invented to force IE5 and earlier versions to display the layout of web pages as the CSS programmer intended. Along with the famous box model bug, arose a workaround called the ?box model hack?.
Though the ?box model hack? was developed to improve compatibility of CSS in web browsers, most designers currently find the ?hacks? to be unreliable and have opted to use CSS filters to insure proper viewing of web pages in earlier versions of IE.
With a history of limitations and disadvantages in using standard CSS to style websites, the current and future advantages of style sheets to create a consistent and flowing feel to one?s website are well worth the minor hindrances of certain elements contained in CSS attributes.
?
HTML5?and?CSS3?are the future of web design, but you don?t have to wait to start using them. Even though the specification is still in development, many modern browsers and mobile devices already support?HTML5?and?CSS3.
What makes HTML5 and CSS3 so exciting is that they allow developers to create functionality and effects with text and multimedia that were previously left to
third-party programs like Flash, or were included on web pages as images. For example, with HTML5 and CSS3, rounded corners and drop shadow text can now be directly by the browser, rather than through the use of images.
?
It?s also going to make viewing video on your phone or mobile device much easier because instead of having to load a plug-in to play the video, it will be playing off a standard multimedia framework.
Even if you don?t watch a lot of online video and don?t have a mobile phone that supports multimedia, you?ll see a concrete benefit from the new systems: better searches.
Right now, many sites use Flash to create animations and other effects that aren?t supported by the old HTML, and search engines can?t read and catalog the information on Flash sites. The new standards will lessen the need for Flash and allow developers to use text instead of images. The search engines will then be able to pick up this text and search it, thus making your search results both more concise and more comprehensive at the same time.
Internet Explorer doesn?t currently support the new standards, and the other browser companies are debating what format to use for showing video in your browser. The next big task will be to get an HTML5 compliant browser onto every computer in the world. So it may be some time before you see benefit of the new standards firsthand.
That said, the possibilities that they offer for developers and web surfers are so great that we have no hesitation in saying that the future of the web belongs to HTML5 and CSS3.
Source: http://ourcreativevillage.com/history-of-web-design/
2012 nfl schedule dishonored april 18 nfl schedule delonte west vanessa williams nicklas backstrom
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.