The History of Web Design [Infographic]

Web Design has changed dramatically since the creation of the web back in 1989 by Sir Timothy Berners-Lee and continues to change and advance at a crazy rate.

The first web page EVER created was recently put back online at its original URL after many years of only preserved screenshots, which was originally hosted on a computer built by NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded when he was exiled from Apple.

Text Timeline

1989 – Sir Timothy Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web
1990 – HTML, the first markup language, is created
1991 – The first website using HTML is launched
1992 – Table-based design is introduced
1993 – 10 Million + internet users / 600 + websites online
1994 – The World Wide Web Consortium is established
1995 – Flash and JavaScript are introduced
1996 – 74 Million + internet users / 650k + websites online

– CSS is introduced by W3C

– Frames become popular
1998 – PHP 3 is released, dynamic websites have arrived
1999 – 279 Million + internet users / 2.2 Million + websites online

– CSS3 brings more functions and features
2003 – 782 Million + internet users / 38 Million + websites online

– Web 2.0 introduces the age of user-based information, social and blogs
2008 – Ready-to-use software becomes more popular

– The Mobile Web begins to grow substancially
2010 – 2 Billion + internet users / 240 Million + websites online

– HTML5 is introduced

The Future – Drag and Drop

The current phenomenon in web design is DIY (do it yourself) web building tools that enable those limited in design and code to throw together sites with ease.

Whilst these are great for personal websites and those with limited skills, I would highly recommend steering clear of these types of services and builders if you‘re serious about your business. It looks very unprofessional and it‘s highly likely that you will end up with a website very similar to hundreds, if not thousands of others out there.