The other day, I sat down to work on a new website. I logged on to my PC, and opened up good old Photoshop. Then I got to thinking – what is the most important aspect of a website? Is it the looks? How flashy it is? How many billions of back-links it has pointing to it?  Nope. It’s the usability. The whole point of the majority of websites is to attract customers right? So what’s the use of having a website with some space-age flash animation on it if the customer’s browser can’t display it? Or having a navigation that varies on every page, so that the user never quite knows where they are?

It all comes down to usability. If your potential customers can’t use your site, then it’s pointless. They’ll go back to their Google search and pick someone else! You may be wondering how all of this is relevant to the title of this article, but I’m getting there. You see, the importance of the usability and accessibility of your website is just about the only aspect of web design that hasn’t been ‘spiced up’ over the years. Alright, there’s more things to worry about these days such as cross-browser compatibility, flash animation, clever JavaScript actions and what have you, but fundamentally it still revolved around the same thing – the customer.

Sadly though, it seems that it’s the only thing that’s stuck around over the last decade or two. HTML 5 and CSS3 are dominating modern websites, and they are nothing like the old table-based original HTML. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) has brought a whole new level of functionality to today’s websites. The old <table> tags have been chucked away for the super-powered <div> tags, and width and height attributes have been stolen away by Mr. CSS.

However, it’s not just the coding that’s evolved so rapidly. Look at the quality of today’s logos and images compared to the older versions. A whole wave gradient-packed logo’s and designs have been unleashed onto the internet, and with staggering effects. (I’ll be making a compilation for you guys of the best modern logo designs shortly).

Flash animation has also made a dramatic entrance to the stage. Clever flash animations such as carousels and image galleries are all over the place these days. Thanks to increased broadband speeds, sites are able to get ever larger, opening up more space for bigger swf files.

The way we design has changed a lot too. It’s now the norm for designers to incorporate large amount of white space into the design, whereas we had previously just tried to cram everything into the smallest space possible. We’re also utilising huge typography, with 48px headers kicking about these days. You’ve probably also noticed a rapid growth of large, vibrant images amongst our pages (many of which have been inspired by Apple in one way or the other ).

Finally, modal-boxes/pop-up boxes are all over the place these days, normally concealing themselves as log-in boxes or contact-us forms. They usually darken the rest of the page and will have a shadow around the edge until the user chooses to close them, at which point the rest of the page will come back into focus and the box disappear.

Anyway, at this point I realised that I should probably get on with my design so the list ends here, but I hope you can agree/add to at least something I mentioned here. The web is a changing place, but most people don’t realise just how quickly it’s evolving.

Filed under: Other, Website Design by Matt