1990-1998

Lots of text, very little styling, sparse images.

Notable Websites

Some very popular and well-known websites from this period in history.

Amazon An American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington, which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.
Apple An American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services.
Microsoft An American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services.
Nintendo A Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto. The company was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Karuta by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards.
Adobe An American multinational computer software company. Incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California, it has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more recent foray into digital marketing software.

1990
- Archie the first search engine by Alan Emtage, Peter Deutsch and Bill Heelen
- WorldWideWeb the first browser by Tim Berners-Lee
1991
- Gopher text-based system that used the hierarchical menu structure for navigation by the University of Minnesota
- Line Mode Browser second browser by Tim Berners-Lee, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen and Nicola Pellow
- WWW Virtual Library index of websites by Tim BernersLee
- TheProject.html first website by Tim Berners-Lee
1992
- ViolaWWW first browser to support scripting, table rendering and forms by Pei-Yuan Wei
- BBEdit HTML first version of the BBEdit freeware HTML and text editor by Bare Bones Software
- First image on the Web by Silvano de Gennaro and Tim Berners-Lee
- Veronica search engine used in Gopher by Steven Foster and Fred Barrie
1993
- Mosaic first web browser with a graphical interface by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina
- Aliweb search engine specifically for the World Wide Web by Martijn Koster
- Doctor Fun online web comic
- IMDb the Internet Movie Database was launched
- MTV website started as an unofficial site
- The Trojan Horse Coffee Machine first webcam installed at the University of Cambridge
1994
- Yahoo! list of websites (later search engine) by Jerry Yang and David Filo
- W3C.org World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for the development of Web standards (HTML, XHML, XML, CSS, etc) by Tim Berners-Lee
- Mosaic Netscape 0.9 first one in a series of browsers, called Netscape Navigator in the subsequent versions, by Netscape Communications Corporation
- First web banner first web banner in Internet history on the HotWired magazine website by the AT&T Telecommunications Company
- GeoCities Internet web hosting company later bought by Yahoo!, by David Bohnett and John Rezner
- Art.net website to showcase artists in San Francisco
- Cool Site of the Day website to showcase websites
- The Nine Planets one of the first websites using a great amount of images
- .ping project internet art work that combines the internet computer network with television in an interactive engagement, by Antya Umstätter, Steffen Meschkat and Axe Schmidt
1995
- Opera 1.0 MDI (Multiple Document Interface) web browser for several webpages within the software by Opera Software
- Lycos search engine by Michael Loren Mauldin
- User Experience introduction of the concept by Donald Norman, Jim Miller and Austin Henderson of Apple Computer
- Batman Forever website official website for Batman Forever by the web designers effrey Zeldman, Steve McCarron and Alec Pollak
- PHP 1.0 first version of the PHP scripting language by Rasmus Lerdorf
- Amazon.com one of the first online stores by Jeff Bezos
- Internet Explorer 1.0 web browser by Microsoft
- eBay auction website by Pierre Omidyar
- Netscape Navigator 2.0 browser that supported JavaScript, animated GIFs and more HTML tags, by the Netscape Communications Corporation
- FrontPage 1.0 web editor by Vermeer Technologies later bought by Microsoft
- HTML 2.0 development that supported forms, tables, graphics, and a number of new tags
- Adobe PageMill 1.0 web editor by Adobe Systems that allowed users to easily create websites without any knowledge of HTML
- JavaScript 1.0 first version of an object-oriented avaScript by Brendan Eich of Netscape
- AltaVista search engine with high-performance hardware, by Louise Monier and Michael Burrows, later bought by Yahoo!
- Welcome to Securityland internet art work based on questions and answers about the issue of cultural control and personal practices in public spaces, by Julia Scher
- Please Change Beliefs internet art work based in interaction through text, by Jenny Holzer
1996
- Internet Archive digital archive for websites, music, software, video, books, etc., by Brewster Kahle
- JScript 1.0 implementation of JavaScript into the Internet Explorer 3.0, by Microsoft
- ASP 1.0 server-side script engine for dynamically generated websites, by Microsoft
- CSS 1 first proposal of cascading style sheets, by W3C
- Macromedia Flash 1.0 program used to create vector animations that could be played in Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer
- Crankcase one of the first web design companies exploring Macromedia Shockwave
- Spike Webb - Net Detective website showing a point-and-click adventure with visual and sound effects
- FutureWave.com earliest example of Flash used on a website using FutureSplash Animator
- Simpsons website one of the first websites using the FutureSplash player
- Dog-Ma – The Canis Minor Mission internet art work functioning a spaceship used for diverse missions in space, by Bettina Gruber and Christoph Lischka
1997
- HTML 3.2 development that supported new tags by W3C
- WAI the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the W3C consortium, was launched to improve the accessibility of websites and WWW services for users with disabilities
- Netscape Communicator 4.0 web application suite that included a web browser with CSS 1 support, Netscape Messenger email client, Netscape Composer HTML editor and Netscape Calendar.
- Internet Explorer 4.0 browser version with integration in Windows 95 and Windows 98 operating systems and freely available for the Mac OS, Solaris and HP-UX platforms, by Microsoft
- DHTML term used for the combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which enhanced interactivity and website dynamics.
- Dreamweaver 1.0 web editor only available for Mac OS, later for Windows too, by Macromedia
- HTML 4.0 new HTML specifications related with language semantics and the use of CSS
- Gabo’s one of the first websites using an innovative Flash intro and navigation, by Alberto Gabriel “Gabo” Mendonza
- convex tv. [on air] internet art radio collective focusing on media and culture, by convex tv.
1998
- A List Apart web design news and web development publication, by Jeffrey Zeldman and Brian Platz
- XML 1.0 final recommendation for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) to easily exchange information between applications, by W3C
- Mozilla open source project created after Netscape Communications Corporation released the source code of the Netscape Communicator 5.0 web browser
- Design is Kinky design community website by Andrew Johnstone
- Macromedia Fireworks 1.0 software that worked with both vector and bitmap graphics and was designed specially for web designers
- CSS2 new specifications with new features such as absolute, relative and fixed positioning, z-index, minimum and maximum width or height, etc
- DMOZ.org non-commercial, multilingual catalog of websites, by Sun Microsystems
- Adobe ImageReady 1.0 bitmap graphics editor for short animations
- Google search engine by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
- K10k design community website by Michael Schmidt and Toke Nygaard
- Box Acid Test web page that tested if web browsers supported the CSS language, by Todd Fahrner
- Eye4U one of the first websites that was a global phenomenon, which used a strong audiovisual approach
- NRG.BE first website using surround sound
- Turtleshell first website using floating particles
- Matinée first website using 3D vector graphics
- Full Throttle David Gary Studios : first website to have a loading screen/game
- Praystation one of the first web art and open source websites
- _readme internet art work about the issues of perception and ownership in the internet realm, by Heath Bunting

The Web in Eras of Design

The history of the web can be sub-divided into multiple eras, each one representing a certain time and having its distinct asthetic.

1980-1998 The internet's humble beginnings
1999-2003 Design meets the web.
2004-2007 Gradients everywhere.
2008-2011 The "modern" and skeumorphic era of design on the web and the mobile revolution.
2012-2016 Bootstrap everywhere!
2017-Today Material and flat design

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.